It seems to make sense that the side of a cube towards the light casts a shadow on the side away from the light, thereby blocking any translucent effect. But wouldn't that be true for a 3D ear as well?

The picture is a ball and cube primitive, each with a diffuse node linked to their translucent nodes. The ball at full scale shows no translucence, and the cube shows some near the top edge (left).

But reduce the Z Scale to 3 percent on each (right), and the translucence shines through! The distance between the surfaces seems to matter, and ears are thin where the light shines through.

hmmm... just like in real life...

as ynsaen said! :) if you need to get the effect stronger set the value of the translucence Color higher and let the program thinking the cube or the ball is from heavy mat glass. :) and everything works exact as in real life.

Did you use raytrace shadows or shadow maps? Mazak

I used depth map shadows. -Jeff

This effect doesn't look good with ray traced shadows. When using depth map shadows, you can also vary the map blur and bias settings do get different effects.

Using multiple lights with different settings, I was able to get this effect:

Lit entirely from behind, no light on the camera side! -Stefan

Great effect stewer :) I was trying to do some translucence with Elle. How do you do the depth shadow mapping?

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