bagginsbill "That's the only problem you see? Fantastic :) I'm sure more problems will reveal themselves once it come into being and starts getting used." Yes, that's a sure thing. Everyone who developes software that other people use knows that. Anyway, using math nodes to control input values and automatically generating sliders for these math nodes sounds like a promising idea. Let me just mention one alternative approach that I used in a data visualization package. It's more or less a compromise between plucking all the information from the graph and handcoding it: use a tiny configuration file, one line for each slider, button or whatever. In that line, specify a node name (or a pattern that may match various node names), a parameter name, the label to use for the generated control element and possibly other things, like the lowest and highest allowed value for that parameter. This can be very flexible if you use Python's regular expression library, and your angular bracket approach could be coded as a special case. Oh, well, maybe that's an idea for V2.0. :-)

THANKS ALOT! Baggins, I'm glad that you were able to extend what I started! You mastered the Front FS/SSS really well! I'm gonna try it out right now!

anyone found a way to make bagginsbill's SSS work with raytraced shadows?i am playing around but no luck.

What SSS are you talking about? I don't use any of these anymore.

Are you referring to the FastScatter node? That stuff was a dead end, even if you use depth-mapped shadows it still blows.

Your input on nodes is always helpful bagginsbill, thank you!

Quote - What SSS are you talking about? I don't use any of these anymore.

Are you referring to the FastScatter node? That stuff was a dead end, even if you use depth-mapped shadows it still blows.

what do you mean? 
its a good way to get some glowing ears when using a light behind the figure.
i really dont know why would it be so bad?

Because it doesn't stay on the ears. It lights the entire head. All the tricks we tried (Takezo, face_off) amounted to multiplying the fastscatter with other things. In the end it was the other things that were actually the effect. Basically the fastscatter is always full on or nothing, which amounts to an ambient effect. You can see it if you look closely at any of the renders where the FS was emphasized enough to see it clearly. There is always a hard line at the terminator. Every time I see that hard line of pink/not pink, I know there is FS being used. Combining it with Diffuse basically means you're using some arithmetic involving a constant and a Diffuse node.

Which is why in my latest VSS shader, there is a term that has 1 - Diffuse() in it. You can make it FastScatter() - Diffuse() if you want, but it amounts to the same thing pretty much, so why bother?

then we make a matte for the ears.
it doesnt work like ambient because if you have no light behind then there are no glowing ears.

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.

This is just 10 degrees from the side, and 80 degrees from the rear. I would not call this back lit. Would you? Because it isn't anywhere near behind the ear. Not even a tiny part of the back of the ear is lit from this angle. Is that clear?

Why is the entire side of the head lit, and uniformly? I agree only one side is lit, but how it is lit is identical to ambient. Useless.

could we maybe do a trick only with the difffuse node?

The Clay is a diffuse node - it just has a slightly more complicated response curve than the normal Lambertian calculation. With Roughness set at 2 it produces a very uniform response to light, regardless of angle of incidence, like ambient, but only where light reaches.

Look at the combination: FastScatter - Clay. The Clay with such a high Roughness acts like the light-facing side of the FastScatter. By subtracting it, I remove the uniform glow from the light facing side, leaving only the true backlit parts.

Still this combination was not enough to make the thing work right.

then i guess we have to tweak it for specific lights.

subtle glow in the ears can make the render better.

I am a little confused. In the first post the Diffuse_Value and Specular Value are 0 (zero). Is this not the same as switching them off. Why plug anything into the Diffuse_Value if the value is 0 (zero)?

Also, if my model has a specular map, how does this affect the structure. Do I plug it into the alternate specular or the Specular Color?

Yes it does switch them off, for rendering. However, preview ignores that, and tries to show what is in the Diffuse_Color. Preview makes no attempt to display what is in Alternate_Diffuse.

However, that doesn't fully explain it either, because lately I think preview only shows a texture map if you plug it directly into Diffuse_Color, not indirectly through other nodes.

All I can say is I made this post 3 years ago when I knew nothing.

If you want to use a specular map, you'd plug it into the specular nodes in the lower right, into specular color channels. However, if the map is largely gray, and has little white in it, this will significantly decrease the amount of specular effect. You'll have to compensate by increasing the reflectivity.

Thanks