You seem to think you understand it. Did you do the experiments I have done? Perhaps not. Let me do one for you again.

Then you should experiment yourself and learn why it sucks.

If you do all your experiments with a light from straight behind, you will be fooled into thinking it is pretty good. You must try other angles.

If you do all your experiments without any IBL, you will be fooled into thinking it is pretty good. With IBL it glows like ambient in all directions. It becomes uncontrollable. And I refuse to render without IBL.

It is only when you try to use it in a shader and you want it to work in more than just one tightly contrived scenario that you discover it is useless, or that you can get a better effect through other means.

And your suggestion to make a matte for the ears is amusing. That is what Mec4D did once, and she declared that the FS node worked great. In reality, she had drawn, by hand, exactly where the SSS should be and how much there should be. Feel free to draw whatever you want, but when you multiply your drawing with a constant, you can't claim the constant had something to do with the beautifully modulated effect.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)