I’m currently working on a long-term project where I need access to Cubic Subsurface Scattering. This is mandatory and a non-negotiable aspect of this project. I have tried many things to get cubic subsurface running in Blender 5.0, as the files I’m working with are already in that version and downgrading would be a great hassle. I found out that the latest version that is still available for download that has cubic subsurface scattering is Blender 2.93. I remember vaguely that Blender 3.0 was the introduction of Cycles X, so I figured that during the overhaul of the engine, Cubic and Gaussian were left out as they were effectively obsolete. This “inconsequential” omission has sent me into a spiral for almost 3 years now, and only yesterday did I realize that the answer to my problems was cut in a Blender update before I even started this journey.
That brings me to today.
I tried using OSL, stealing the subsurface node’s .osl file from Blender 2.93 and changing whatever I needed to. I got the errors “bssrdf_cubic/gaussian not supported by the current render engine”, so that’s a bust.
I then tried taking the files and code relevant to SSS from Blender 2.93 and putting them into Blender 5.0. This obviously did not work.
I then had a great idea that almost kind of worked. I used Blender 2.93 Cycles as an addon for Blender 5.0. Except it crashed. Consistently.
So I’m out of ideas, running out of hope, and I really just need help. I don’t know what I’m doing at all, but I know for certain this is a MUST for my project to be even close to finishing.