Forum: Carrara

Subject: Indirect lighting and SSS textures

ShawnDriscoll opened this issue on Nov 27, 2005 ยท 34 posts

ShawnDriscoll posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 5:13 PM

Does indirect lighting affect SSS textures the same way that distant lighting does? Or does SSS ignore indirect lighting in scenes? If it doesn't, what tips do you have for realistic images of SSS objects and indirect lit scenes?

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

MarkBremmer posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 6:24 PM

Hi Shonner, The SSS shader does accept indirect and environmental lighting. HDRI maps work wonderfully on SSS objects. Bounced light from a spotlight or distant to an object with SSS works fine too. At least that has been my experience. ;) Mark





ShawnDriscoll posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 6:29 PM

Here's my try at it. Three distant lights and a ground plane. The sky light was turned off. Maybe too much light or too much SSS?

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

ren_mem posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 8:02 PM

Seems like the lighting. Maybe try diff three point. Ambient may also need adjusting. What kind of settings do you have for sss? Someone w/ better lighting experience particularly w/ skin could jump in. Is that the skin shader?

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

bwtr posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 8:23 PM

Shonner, if of any help. The attached had the streetlamp set at 47%,the hand lamp at 23% and the Realistic Sky as it came at Global Brightness of 106%. The pig skin is the C5 skin shader and rendering was Indirect Ambient Occlusion Only.I went through an exercise of reducing lighting to get this --which is till too strong I guess.

bwtr

ShawnDriscoll posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 8:49 PM

I used three lights at 100% brightness. Ambience was turned off.

I will post my SSS settings when my next render finishes. Now for a dumb question: Does an object's highlight/shine affect a lit scene?

The main skin is a procedural shader using the noise channel as a mixer with a prime skin color (for a slight freckle look up close). The noise channel is used for bumping the skin as well.

I'm working on a decent highlight/shine for her skin, which I forgot to do all this time. The lip/nip areas are seperate objects from the main body.

Message edited on: 11/27/2005 20:55

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

ShawnDriscoll posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 9:04 PM

Here is the SSS setting for the skin.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

ShawnDriscoll posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 9:07 PM

And Athena with some shine to her skin.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

bwtr posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 10:00 PM

I reduced the C5 Skin Shaders shininess to nil because, for me, it was far too glossy. Have you tried using the C5 shader and doing various modifications to analyse the effects? I note your transparency is nil. It looks like some may help?

bwtr

ShawnDriscoll posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 10:10 PM

I don't know if transparency is supposted to be used with SSS for humans. I'll check it out though. I used a highlight of 17% and a shine of 3% on her skin.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

ren_mem posted Sun, 27 November 2005 at 11:08 PM

You know it seems like some trans is worth playing around with. Might help to have another layer w/ the translucency or some kind of transparency and a texture. It seems a bit like a hen's egg (too opaque). The shine doesn't look bad to me. The texture is, of course gonna make a difference. The pig is a bit too translucent. I do think the areola is a bit big tho and the texture/color a bit off. I am sure that is something you will tweak tho.Fun stuff.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

bwtr posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 1:01 AM

Shonner. For the starting point of skin, what better than Skin Lab2 from www.lavers-place.com. I forget where I originally downloaded it from (free) but it is a wow resource which will benefit from SSS. Basically it's a great big layered Photoshop psd which you can modify as required. Very clever. It's not at that site? Will find where.

Message edited on: 11/28/2005 01:05

bwtr

bwtr posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 1:19 AM

And Skin Hairy 1. psd. Both before my very eyes and can not find the source!!!

bwtr

ShawnDriscoll posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 1:20 AM

Let me know if you find it. I'm curious what the texture looks like. For now I'm using Carrara's procedural shader abilities which are world famous by now. But I'm thinking I should have used Anything Goos for her skin instead of what comes with Carrara. AGoos seemed to have better control of matching generated splotches with their bumps.

I'm rendering Athena in my kitchen right now, so it's too late to change out skins.

Message edited on: 11/28/2005 01:21

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

ShawnDriscoll posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 1:39 AM

Here she is my kitchen. I like how the SSS affects her arm when the morning Sun hits it.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

bwtr posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 4:32 AM

SkinLab2

bwtr

bwtr posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 4:36 AM

Skin Hairy1. Don't forget to slide over to right to see the Layers.

bwtr

bluetone posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 9:04 AM

www.lavers-place.com comes up empty. Care to post the file for all to share? :D

bwtr posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 6:05 PM

The two .psd files total 27.2MB unzipped. How can I give access to them other than sending via e-mail? Can this size be put onto here?

bwtr

ren_mem posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 6:48 PM

Maybe as a freebie...zipped. Give credit of course. Seems like on a 3d forum that kind of size isn't an issue.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

anastasis20 posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 6:50 PM

Its www.lavers-place.co.uk Looks useful, thanks for the link.

ren_mem posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 7:01 PM

Could always send via chat too. Looks useful. Someone grabbed the domain...could have been a hijack.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

ren_mem posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 7:19 PM

yeah..nice.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

bwtr posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 8:40 PM

Glad the site was found. On the Readme it was just .com. If I find the source of Skin Hairy I will post.

bwtr

bwtr posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 10:48 PM

The following two images indicate some of the posibilities from those pdfs when used in Carrara 5 with sss and sundry other fiddling. IE --experimenting!

bwtr

bwtr posted Mon, 28 November 2005 at 10:49 PM

The second one.

bwtr

ren_mem posted Tue, 29 November 2005 at 1:57 AM

Looks like same thing in skin lab that you have in skin hairy. I think the colors are a bit off in places, but great find.

Message edited on: 11/29/2005 01:57

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.

bluetone posted Tue, 29 November 2005 at 10:00 AM

Thanx for the updated link! :D

ShawnDriscoll posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 12:49 AM

I thought I'd try another indirect lighting shot of Athena to test her shine again. The nips were re-modeled. The skin is a procedural shader.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

ShawnDriscoll posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 12:51 AM

Here's a close up showing the slight bumps on her skin. Also trying a different texture on her nips.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

bluetone posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 9:40 AM

The skin looks great, but the nipples ring false to me.Like the texture is too small or something. It should have some of the same bump mapping of the rest of the skin, but with extra for the nip and surrounding area.

ShawnDriscoll posted Thu, 01 December 2005 at 6:39 PM

I can't get SSS to work with the nips yet so that their texture/color blends with the rest of the body's skin. I had some luck with Anything Goos and will post them later. Eric, if you're listening, is there a way in Anything Goos to tell it to ignore certain perimeter edges instead of acting on all of them on an object? Like having only one end of a tube be Gooed rather than both ends of it?

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

ShawnDriscoll posted Sat, 03 December 2005 at 9:06 PM

I'll try SSS again later when I understand how it works better. The C5 Beta manual states things in reverse from how they seem to work. Here is an Indirect lit scene of Athena (she has her helmet on) with Poser 5's Judy standing behind her. They are both sporting the same procedural skin. Both figures are 6ft tall to give you some kind of scale.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG

ShawnDriscoll posted Sun, 04 December 2005 at 2:39 AM

Tried to add veins.

www.youtube.com/user/ShawnDriscollCG