quote: "The "big deal" is that to render skin, marble and other SSS materials correctly, you do need true SSS. And you don't need such a trained eye to spot the difference. One simply looks a lot better than the other! And if you do animation, the difference simply becomes blatant!"

Really? Well, then I guess Steven Stahlberg's technique for skin is not very good then? He never uses true SSS. He employs clever use of gradient and falloff maps to simulate the effect, and his work on skin is truly groundbreaking.

What application are you using that employs true physically accurate SSS for skin? Even MentalRay's Fastskin SSS shader isn't actually using physically accurate scattering. If you try to use the physically correct SSS shader with mentalray, it's much much slower to render.

Physical accuracy is not really as important in animation as it is in stills, because you don't have the opportunity to scrutinize it. For instance, Radiosity, which is a physically accurate lighting solution, is usually too slow to use in heavily animated scenes, which is why they employ fake tricks like bounce lights and texture baking for such things in production situations. Major studios use AO, which is not physically accurate, for production. Hollywood fakes physical accuracy all the time, and no one really notices.

Message edited on: 10/30/2005 10:29