If you have a good color and bump map already then I'd just apply VSS and see how it looks. I'd use more shine than usual and probably change the color of the SSS for the gray alien. It looks like there's a bit of fresnel reflection, too. There's no reflection in my VSS skin shader so that would have to be added if you wanted it.

If you're asking about a fully procedural skin, something close to that could be made with a few nodes. However, the subtle pink around the eyes and lips would be difficult without a color map or some sort of mask to drive the color change. The veins are easy. It might be difficult to get the translucence I see there without real SSS, but we could get close.

I have an alien like that on my home PC but I'm on the road for the week as usual. I have to do some serious work today and can't play with alien skin shaders. pout

what color should i use for the ''blood'' ? 
you think it is red or blue? if i use blue what color should the skin be?

thanks

I don't know. I'd guess orange. But I don't think we can make skin look like that without real SSS.

i think specular will be very important.

Quote - what color should i use for the ''blood'' ? 
you think it is red or blue? if i use blue what color should the skin be?

thanks

I would load the picture you wanted to emulate the skin of  into a paint program such as Photoshop or GIMP and use the color picker too sample the colors in the picture to give me a starting point.

thats also a good idea. thanks.

That looks good. Needs real SSS, but pretty good for Poser I'd say.

Are you using procedural color or image? I'd do some more interesting stuff with Turbulence into a Blender, using some veiny color in Value_1.

I might also mess with a Spots node and a Clouds node or even multiple of those. Run them in series.

the figure comes with a skin texture. but its very dark and the contrast is to big. i made it lighter.

 i will try with spots and clouds

with turbulence you realyl can do some veins. thanks for the tip. i want to have a low number of nodes. not to fancy but a subtle effect.

On the face I made a map that "pinked" up the colour around the eyes and lips, as bb suggested.
Needs work but looks ok.
That ever elusive SSS would really help.

wooow thats amazing. thank.

it really looks like its under the skin.

I think that's partly because we have some licence to use a shinier surface, and also the vein details just look like they belong under shin (maybe the Softness setting on the Spots nodes help by diffusing the effect).

Also affecting the illusion of surface layering is that the bump is distinctly different to the underlying veins detail.

yes bump is different and the edge-blend also helps.

amazing.

did you come up with this yourself? 

The spots with the edge blend? I made it for my Cole Alien a couple of years back (it may have been an adaptation of someone elses shader for something else, I can't remember) - but it was on a shader setup using the skin node which didn't work nearly as well. The big difference is using it with VSS.

You've addressed all the key points. The vein being blended with the skin color is a good way to achieve the sense of translucence and depth to the skin. We can go a little further with that and get a more accurate rendition of seeing the vein through a thin layer of skin.

A couple of years ago I did some experiments with a shader that simulated multiple layers of translucent stuff. When I have time, I'll post some more details on this technique. It has so much math you almost have to do it with matmatic.

I posted a script with this at RDNA but it is gone now. I'll have to re-create.

http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25570

My favorite of those shaders is attached here. But the effects shown in the rest of thread are worth studying.

Oooo, I love that "snotty" version, and the transluscent effect is really convincing.

Quote - That looks great Dan.

You've addressed all the key points. The vein being blended with the skin color is a good way to achieve the sense of translucence and depth to the skin. We can go a little further with that and get a more accurate rendition of seeing the vein through a thin layer of skin.

A couple of years ago I did some experiments with a shader that simulated multiple layers of translucent stuff. When I have time, I'll post some more details on this technique. It has so much math you almost have to do it with matmatic.

I posted a script with this at RDNA but it is gone now. I'll have to re-create.

http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?t=25570

My favorite of those shaders is attached here. But the effects shown in the rest of thread are worth studying.

wooow. imagine if we now add the technique for making custom specular. it would look even more real. 

thanks

The specular looks excellent! With that lighting, I can't tell any details about the skin coloring, but what I see looks good.

That is nice lighting - working very well with the background. It's probably not going to be the sort of setup where the vein details would be too apparent. I'd like to see one with a different setup that showed off his skin more.
It's kind of a surreal idea visually to see an alien in a typical rural landscape on a sunny day, especially if the hit of realism is good.

yeah its hard to see. i will do a new example. i am now reading about BB's disgusting gels. but i can not find the script. i dont need to make it complicated i just need to know whats the basic setup for this. because i am thinking in changing the texture to make it like its under the skin.

if i understand right it needs to be more soft and blury right? skin is not like glass.  i am looking at my  veins under the skin and they are more blury.

Quote -
It's kind of a surreal idea visually to see an alien in a typical rural landscape on a sunny day, especially if the hit of realism is good.

offtopic. i made this. very happy with the final result. 
www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php

here is a test where i used blur on the texture. i think it gives a better illusion like its under the skin. because its not so sharp.

It looks convincing.  You may need to bring up the coloration on the veinous network depending how lean the alien is.  Of course, some areas will have less noticible veins than others (i.e., outer forearms, gluteus maximus, calves, etc).

those are not veins. some color variation on the skin.  just something that it doesnt look so ''simple''

but i am still nto happy how it looks .will experiment more.

Well done - the skin looks believable and the lighting match is excellent.

This is interesting to me, Dan. You're getting to be a BB-tool addict, eh? VSS, EnvSphere, GenIBL. You left out the ShadowCatcher. Can't be a BB-tool addict without really placing your figure in the sphere-scene. LOL

I left a post in the gallery but I still have to say that this is an amazingly well-created image.  As BB mentioned, even the lighting is right on.  It would be interesting to see your new node arrangements for the extra material. 

Bravo IceBoy, very well done. Looks great. I too would be interested in your node setup.

Quote - Well done - the skin looks believable and the lighting match is excellent.

This is interesting to me, Dan. You're getting to be a BB-tool addict, eh? VSS, EnvSphere, GenIBL. You left out the ShadowCatcher. Can't be a BB-tool addict without really placing your figure in the sphere-scene. LOL

 I've had a fun time playing with all this stuff. I have to say, setting up the EnvSphere and creating the lighting for this was so easy using your tools - all credit to you for working all this out. I managed to find some of the nice hi res Equirectangular Maps at Flickr.com that you suggested as well so creating a quick scene was virtually painless.
I'd only had a brief chance to play with the tools before now but I am very quickly becoming a convert - they make life so much easier (hopefully they'll be standard tools in P8, or at least they should be). I haven't explored the real usefulness of VSS yet, and I do need to experiment with the shadow catcher.

I'll try and get a screenshot of the final skin shader posted later today or tomorrow. I warn you , it isn't pretty, and the customised versions of the EF textures that I used as control maps may make it difficult to reproduce exactly.

One additional thing I did (not shown here) is to run a blender node out of the PM:Bump. Value_1 of this is connected to the Diffuse node, and the Blending is set to 0.25. This was an attempt to soften the bump a little near the terminator as the skin was tending to look dry with the full bump strength in this area. You can hardly notice the effect in the render above, but it had been really visible around the neck.

Hope you can make some sense of this.

It doesn't look too hard to duplicate.  Thanks for the post; it will give a greater insight to further node manipulation.

Baggins,
Would there be a dumbed down version that you could show of using a tiling texture from FilterForge?
Like maybe trying to get the underlying skin to show some of those jelly brains you made?
Dumbed down to say 4-6 nodes with a tiling jelly brain diffuse, bump and specular?
please??

Quote - Bravo IceBoy, very well done. Looks great. I too would be interested in your node setup.

what carodan posted. i changed the colors.