I myself am waiting for SSS and then do the hair and skin properly.
I fixed the link in post 168 and also did some changes to update the file to latest Cycles.
First test with Cycles SSS new node.
Now, that’s what I’m talking about !!! 
I am curious about other people nodes setup. I don’t feel the one I did is the better, but at the moment I can’t figure how to solve the problems it has:
- Shadows from the nose are not black but reddish
- The ears show not enough red through them
Probably the nose will need a “bone” mesh inside or a different image for the mix than the one I am using. And the ears would need a third SSS on them. It was easier in Blender Internal where you could say SSS affect only backfaces or frontfaces.
nice… is it working also on GPU? Some info on render times? Thanks!
2min13sec in my quad core
The SSS node is ignored in GPU mode, as Brecht said in the commit. At the moment is only CPU.
thanks… well is not a bad time at all even if on cpu!
New version of our dear floating head.
I fixed the shadow color from the nose and added a very slight fresnel reflection. Did also changes to lights and camera.
Is to be seen selecting sRGB in your screen. If not you can watch strange colors (probably too red)
Somebody please add a pair of eyes to this guy or paint them whatever , it’s like looking someone at the morg very disturbing.
I checked and there was a valid address. Well… edited the post and changed the link, I hope it shows now.
It was just color correcting the render to eliminate some red and yellows.
I was using lights that were not pure wihite but slightly bluish. I changed them to white and also changed a little the tone of the SSS texture so it has now less red, less green and more blue. So I think it looks now as it would look in such a setup with white lights. So making it easy now to create other light setups and hopefully it will work correct.
The Big Infinitowski
impressive bao,i’d personally tone down the glossy.Thats just preference though,i’ll study the the nodes more this weekend. Perhaps the bump is tad too low,and needs to be higher to break it up a bit.However i’m not sure how detailed the map is.
Would be nice if you labelled the sss nodes,so its clearer what they relate too.
feel free to share more experiments in different lighting situations.
have you seen this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-gNsbL6BmA at about 48mins in he talks about mixing a hard light with a soft light pass to get a good balance.
this was a higher res of the final result… http://s.cghub.com/files/Image/243001-244000/243525/869_max.jpg
perhaps it won’t work so well on male face though.
Yes, the glossy is a little high.
The SSS lacks bump so if I go higher on the diffuse it would show as dry. So is just waiting until Brecht adds bumps to SSS mainly.
I will post an image with the name of the layers later.
I was to do exactly that: to place the head in some known movies to see if it works.
Thanks for the links, will take a look later too.
wow, bao, jaw-dropping!
Well, here is a little explanation of the material for post 194 image.
http://i.minus.com/ie7qfDNB4c1Oo.jpg
Usually skin uses three layers: Epidermis, Dermis and Subdermal. I am only using two: Epidermis and Subdermal
1 is Epidermis and uses the texture image slightly desaturated and the radius is smaller than 2. It uses a hair mask so this layer only shows where there is no hair.
2 is Subdermal and uses the texture image with the red channel modified to look reddish. Uses a radius also high on the red. Initially I used also here the hair mask but the result was the same than not using it so I deleted that mask.
1 and 2 are mixed using as factor a painted texture so I can specify painting on the mesh where I want more subdermal or where I want more epidermis SSS.
3 is the “overall color” and uses the same texture of epidermis. If you change the saturation in that texture you achieve the skin you usually see in real life where the skin has very few saturation.
4 is a fresnel effect that lights slightly the face in parallel to the camera polygons. It adds a slight touch I like.
5 is a reflection layer with broad surface
6 is a reflection layer for hard highlights
We only have mix shader and add shader to mix these layers. I think something as “screen mix” or “overlay mix” would be very necessary for skin but it seems Brecht is following OSL and they don’t have there yet such mix shaders (screen, overlay). So perhaps we will never see such thing in Cycles. Screen is useful in skin to make it more soft to the light hitting it.
The bump maps are used in 3, 5 and 6. I also would like to use them in 1 and 2, but Brecht has not coded it yet.
The head used in post 195 is this one below and has these changes in the material and scene from post 194:
- The mix shader that mixes layers 1,2 and 3 was changed to 0.5 (instead 0.4) to make it less SSS
- The image used in 3 and 1 was desaturated to 0.7 (instead 0.9) so the head lost color and appeared more like in the guys of the movie
- The light in the scene was a hdr of a beach with the sun and blue sky and one mesh light acted as the sun.
If you compare this skin to the two guys of the movie you see this one lacks a little of pink and has too much highlights.
But well, in my opinion the two guys on the frame of the movie above have a strange not brighten skin under the Sun! For me their skin is with makeup to kill highlights. All the actors we see in the movies have this makeup. It is very noticeable in many movies and… what we must do? Highlights on the Sun or not???
yes I heard someone mention something about that screen node,why exactly might we never see that? would we then have to render a separate layer and screen it with compositing? for something as important as skin shading,It would seem odd to never have this option.
also,is this dermis layer you haven’t included the same as back scatter? how would you handle this if you included it? we probably need to use some kind of map to lock to a certain area? perhaps it can controlled via some kind of ramp or something similar to zdepth as a factor.
I figured out most of it,but your post makes it clearer now.thanks,and sorry if my questions are stupid.
edit: and yes people in movies are usually powdered up so their skin has a matte appearance rather than oily or greasy.