Just wanted to point out for those of you who weren't aware: The Blender Foundation has posted the release candidate for 2.67. As always, it contains several new features, but one that should be of special interest to the folks here: true SSS for the Cycles renderer implemented as a shader node.

You can find the release candidate here: http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.67/

Also, over at blenderartists.org, someone has used this new SSS node to re-create the Arnold skin shader. It's a fair bit slower than Arnold at this point, but the results (with a little work and tweaking) are quite nice. That can be found here.

The one downside I've noticed to using Cycles for DAZ/Poser figures is that most of the diffuse textures for DAZ/Poser figures contain fake shading information to trick the eyes. You'll often notice the area under breasts is darker, or that the inside of the legs is darker. This is done to make up for the limitations of older style renderers. Unless your lighting setup in Cycles is just right, these tend to stand out as being a little… off. With SSS, this effect is even more pronounced than it was without it, though I'm not sure why that would be.

Awesome news...thank you! :)

Laurie

Quote - ...The one downside I've noticed to using Cycles for DAZ/Poser figures is that most of the diffuse textures for DAZ/Poser figures contain fake shading information to trick the eyes. You'll often notice the area under breasts is darker, or that the inside of the legs is darker. This is done to make up for the limitations of older style renderers. Unless your lighting setup in Cycles is just right, these tend to stand out as being a little… off. With SSS, this effect is even more pronounced than it was without it, though I'm not sure why that would be.

This sounds similar to the "burnt-in specular" problem encountered in Poser when you want the shader to do the specular, but the image already has specular highlights due to how the photograph was taken: no criticism of technique, it's just a limitation of the approach, I guess. I really think this is where non-photographic-origin skin textures are finally going to come into their own.

BTW, that SSS shader node (as seen in the examples) isn't as easy to implement like it is in Poser... the node tree is quite extensive. Not for the faint-of-heart. :blink:

ETA: in other words, I haven't got it nailed down yet, myself. :biggrin:

Hair is another HUGE advance in Blender. Here is a close-up of Antonia with eyebrows and lashes done with particle hair (just noticing something not right with the lacrimal shader - need to look into that). Yes, they need work, but still...

Quote - This sounds similar to the "burnt-in specular" problem encountered in Poser when you want the shader to do the specular, but the image already has specular highlights due to how the photograph was taken: no criticism of technique, it's just a limitation of the approach, I guess. I really think this is where non-photographic-origin skin textures are finally going to come into their own.

Yep. Photographs don't just capture diffuse information, and with traditional renderers, that was mostly a good thing. Use photographs makes texturing considerably faster.

Quote - BTW, that SSS shader node (as seen in the examples) isn't as easy to implement like it is in Poser... the node tree is quite extensive. Not for the faint-of-heart. :blink:

Yeah, most of the approaches to SSS skin I've seen since the shader came out are pretty complex and extensive. I suspect that part of this is from trying to make a relatively versatrile shader that works for many models.  You can actually get some pretty nice results just mixing the SSS node into an existing material, either substituting it for the diffuse, or mixing it at some percentage. It won't be as realistic, and will likely require some cheating or tweaking for some situations (strong backlighting, e.g.), but the results can be quite nice. If you're not looking for photorealistic, you can also avoid a lot of that complexity.

Quote - ETA: in other words, I haven't got it nailed down yet, myself. :biggrin:

I'd be impressed with anybody who had it nailed down already, given it's not even in general release yet. Hell, the people who have created the skin shaders based on the SSS node HAVE impressed me, but that doesn't mean we're done figuring out how to use this new feature. :)

Yes, particle hair is also awesome, albeit a little tricky to use, especially for long hair.