Tests with 2.5

Artwork Blender Tests
1


http://www.pasteall.org/blend/2374

a method for using volumes for SSS, using renderlayers and composite nodes. the textures are hopefully packed.
unfortunately, you can’t mix volumes and surfaces in material nodes. :frowning:

if anyone would like to improve it, I would be very grateful.

2

Nice ! Thx.
Could you explain your shader please ? How to use it with my own object ?

3

in layer 1, there is an object with a normal surface material, to look about like the outside of skin.
in layer 2, there is a copy of the object, except with a volume material, to emulate the inside of the skin.

in the composite nodes, the object in layer 2 is added to layer 1. (using renderlayers)

4

lookin’ good!

5

Quite a very interesting topic and amazing explanation.

6

update:
another messy .blend :no:
volumetric SSS_252.blend (891 KB)
http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/6426/volumessstest2.png

I remembered a very important point.
you must scale one of the objects slightly along the normals–in this case, I scaled the surface object out, but you could just as easily scale the volume object in.

the advantage of this method (as apposed to fake SSS) is that it’s fast to set up, and it doesn’t look waxy at all! :eyebrowlift:
and it’s physically correct, pretty much.

unfortunately, I am not that great at humans…
are there any blending life entrants looking at this thread?

7

About two months ago, I actually hacked the blender render pipeline so that it would treat a material as both solid and volumetric in one go. Got some interesting glass balls with smoke inside. Obviously being a hack it worked only up to a point but would be no use as a patch. Same with the wire option. I’m hopeful that this type of thing will possible in the shader refactor.

8

You can always try telling Brecht you’re willing to help with the shading refactor when that gets started, I think he would appreciate the offer at least.

9

Believe me, I’m in no position to help Brecht it was just a hack!

10

I will probably test this today when I’m done with sculpting of old dude

11

I will probably test this today when I’m done with sculpting of old dude

thanks. If you improve it, please share :slight_smile:

About two months ago, I actually hacked the blender render pipeline so that it would treat a material as both solid and volumetric in one go. Same with the wire option.

Cool, that would be really nice if BI could do that properly.

12

Ok here is my blend:
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/2431
Maybe spacetug you can take this further.
My result:

http://i40.tinypic.com/nd96x3.jpg
nd96x3.jpg563×540

(I will probably post multilayered sss test later without volumetric )
to me this method works fine but it has few flaws.

  1. There is no possibility of texturing subdermal, epidermal layers of skin and normal for volumetric material.
  2. Scaling volumetric mesh to fit inside surface mesh is kinda problematic if u have complex geometry - shell modifier can be solution, but I haven’t tested it.
  3. Because of 1 point - colors of skin get to washed - only 1 layer with surface texture will be blended with two untextured sss volumetric materials (epidermis, subdermis). Maybe more composing can help - eg. blending surface in color mode, and then again in screeen mode?

It works fine for simple models - probably you can achieve better results than blender sss, but its not so god for complex, textured models.
I may be missing something, because i didn’t have too much time to play with it, so fell free to test it yourself

13

I actually meant the material setup, not the model :o

14

Yeah. It’s good to be yourself. Same with you, I will try to do something. So I support your decision!