Subsurface Settings

Sorel

I am most curious to know if people use the SSS shader on things other than skin, and if so if they have any images to share and or tips and other useful info.

I rendered a scene today, but decided to toy with SSS a bit. I didn't put it in too many things, mainly just the hair and the leaves. I'm not very fond of this hair mainly because of how the textures look and the bends it has but I figure I should use it in something eventually. I applied the SSS base and then used the SSS toolbox and applied all presets related to hair and then some adjustments of my own. Also added some noise to give the hair a kind of fine texture. I used the Velvet B High preset, hair refraction preset, SSS color Brown, shading rate 8. I must say I quite liked the results...and now hate myself for not trying this on other hairs sooner lol. I quite like the effect it gives. Anyone else done anything cool with these?

Khory

I've used sub surface on things like marble and so forth. Mostly just things that had some thickness and would have a higher chance of light bouncing around inside them. The reason being that I am a bit of a tightwad about render times. I have also used translucence on leaves in the past and you can get some really lovely effects with that. Again I try not to go hog wild because of render times.

Sorel

Yeah I was thinking about doing a scene of up close leaves with translucency just to see how good I could get it to look. I actually pay more attention to details in real life now that I've started doing this just to see how I could apply real world stuff to my renders.

Khory

Several years ago theSea did a stunning render that used translucence on the greenery in the scene and I was just stunned by how lovely the work was. The thing about translucence is things can get to "light" sometimes and studio isn't always smart about when the light would be blocked nor does it take into account "thickness" very well.