Skin with multilayered sss experiments

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Have you ever manage to simulate human skin, only with Blender materials? An artist from the Blenderartists forums, called Pixelvore, has made some incredible experiments with SSS and Nodes to simulate human skin, and the results are amazing!

And of course, the material is available to download. Visit this thread to read the description, of how Pixelvore planned the shader, and to download and see some great examples, of the material applied to character models.

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    • http://byronsdesigns.com ByronK

      That is an incredible material. Thanks.

    • http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~jcottr Jonathan

      Pixelvore is so awesome! I’m in admiration

    • Pixelvore

      Thanks guys ! It’s been such a surprise to see this … :) [ proud of himself ] not really a surprise, after all… [ proud of himself ] I just hope that my/our (I’m not alone, truly) will help as much people as possible.

    • http://nicknamfx.blogspot.com Nicknamz

      awsome results, very good examples on blenderartis, thanks Pixelvore.

    • http://scientification.wordpress.com wayne

      woah…. that’s right up there with the mental ray SSS shader… and way simpler as well!

    • Dusty

      Yeah! been following this thread stealthily for a while. Awesome progress!

    • http://www.nation3d.com Nation3d

      i most to say….
      AWEEEEESOMEEEEE skin

      hahaha….

    • tyy

      what the hell man this is nothing compared to zbrushes settings now zbrush has real skin blender i dont think this is real enough zbrush is superior than blender ,huh you call this real skin hell it isnt close look at the zbrush forumns youll be shocked your jaw will fall youll be amazed left wondering if only blender could do that but i,m sorry to tell you blenders still tooo young to handle it the skin above isnt even close

    • parafan

      tyy – And do you think anyone would continue to work harder within *any* package with such unkind words?

      The community greatly benefits from people working hard and sharing their work.

      I say Bravo!

      While I consider myself a novice, I relish the contributions such as this that others make.

      parafan

    • http://e2-productions.com/ Dion Moult

      Wow! That is impressive stuff you have there!

    • Bob

      The way the skin (material) covers contours, surfaces, and the way it reflects looks very human-like. I for one am very impressed. I’ve been looking for something to cover the head I’ve been working on, and this looks great. I haven’t seen what zbrush has, but I do know what skin looks like (and it looks a lot like what Pixelvore has created.:)

    • jacques

      just a bit too shiny in my opinion but really nice nonetheless

    • Pixelvore

      Well, Tyy, don’t base your opinion on the image you see on this page, rather check the thread… If you take a look at the last pages of the topic, you’ll see that the results are really realistic, I’m not kidding (the image you see was chosen simply because the others renderes I had hosted didn’t exist anymore…)
      Just take a look at that image, with HRDIBL, and the same shader as mine, basically : http://images28.fotosik.pl/215/52d252f708e3b688.jpg
      You’ll probably agree that, even though it isn’t photorealistic yet, it is close to it…

    • bautz

      Wow… it’s scaring! Very good job!
      Tyy, check the thread on the forum

    • tyy

      OH MY im sorry if i offended you guys i can be harsh at times yes i see pixelvore your comming close to becoming photorealistic but its not there yet
      the shader above should give something like this http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=050205
      http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=042366
      (close to skiin but youll know thatits not real )

      some awesome examples e,xamples which are really good lol heres the reason why i said what i said :
      this one is why my jaws dropped @
      *********
      a must look at it!!!
      http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=058068
      ——————————————————————–
      http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=031398
      http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=048784
      http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=048910

      cheers pixelvore you too are doing a great job man i only encourage you to do better cheers making blender better !!!!

    • tyy

      here you go love me for this heres how you can create a very very realistic skin lol its not really a purely from blenders origional materials but it can be lol try it just use nodes and creativity your one step closer look at the man setup that should be it see ya laterz

      http://pixolator.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=57740&page=4&pp=15

    • Pixelvore

      Tyy, I’m glad to see that you changed your mind^^ The examples you linked are amazing… I hope we can achieve such a realism with Blender, though it seems hard.
      There is still work to be done in these areas :
      - we need to work on the texturing part, because using one color map isn’t enough. Just check the topic on the forum, you’ll see (it’s long to explain^^)
      - We also need to explore furthermore IBL techniques, which are unfortunately not really developped in Blender, in order to improve the realism furthermore. Matt Ebb has written a patch for HDRIBL and it seems really great, I need to test it.
      - IMO the specular part of the shader isn’t ok by now : the sss diffusion and no-sss diffusion are quite good, but specular highlights still suck. All specular shaders of Blender give too less control on the specular lobes, I find, and the speculars do not simulate the reality correctly. Luckily, speculars can be fully replaced by raytraced soft reflections, more physically plausible, the only problem being the render times explosion…
      Those are the main “axes” of exploration… If anybody has some idea… Post on the forum ^^
      All I hope is that in the next months, we’ll see some great renders using that kind of shader : it will only help the realism to grow :) But at least, we’ve done a shader which doesn’t look terriby plastic looking when rendered, and that’s cool. For example, that render (from me) is imo vey pleasant, and perhaps it would be photorealistic with hand painted textures instead of procedural ones : http://www.imagehosting.com/out.php/i1726687_Solemn.jpg
      Thanks for your feedbacks in any case !

    • Pixelvore

      Tyy, about your last post : I’ve already seen that page :) In fact, I’ve been reading quite a lot of pages about skin shading over the past few weeks :D That page is especially useful for the texturing work, which still needs to be explored as I said (I have no decent model with decent textures for tests… The Progg/Emo head models lack realism I find, though they are really good looking. I mean, they aren’t really ok for that kind of test…) I saw on the page you linked that the guy was using really contrasted textures, and that’s what we’ve done on the last pages of the topic :)

    • Pixelvore

      Tyy, about your last post : I already saw the page you linked :) In fact, I’ve been reading quite a lot of pages about skin shading over the past few weeks ^^ That page is really useful concerning the texturing work, so it is precious… A lot of artists seem to paint 2 textures, one for the top layer of the skin, and another one for the subdermal layer. (and sometimes another one for the makeup, all that kind of stuff, which isn’t part of the skin.) So I think I’ll use that technique in my next tests. Unfortunately, I’ve no decent textured model to be used for tests (the Proog/Emo head models lack realism imo, though they are really good looking. I mean, they cannot really be used for that kind of test.) And what’s more, I’ve to take exams in 3 weeks :D

    • Aristocrata

      Incredible!

    • Ben

      From someone who has spent a lot of time in Blender working on humans and skin – hats off to you! I’ve been following the thread on and off for a bit but the latest images are great! Congrats on getting “BlenderNationed”!

    • G7Pro

      These look great Pixelvore. The only reason I can see that tyy likes the stuff from the zbrush forums so much better is that all the skin shaders there are wrapped around breasts. Keep up the great work! and thanks for making the shader available.

    • http://www.creaturefeature.info Ataru

      Sweet! Looks very nice, actually! :-D Nice job!

      @tyy – Dude, they created this skin with the limitation of using no textures. Calm thyself. Yeah, ZBrush’s stuff is good. But Blender is up there, and free. So just be happy, OK?

      @jacques – yeah, skin isn’t shiny. But that’s not hard to fix… just adjust the specularity. Really has nothing to do with the nodes and SSS, at least I don’t think so.

    • tyy

      lol man <<always calm just giving a dose of truth cheers its honest opinions (Lol who doesnt like breasts?) i know i do but thats not the point man the point is about comparison and constructive criticism even though it may sound like dissing blender believe me blender will only get better but right now dont compare a cat to a lion even though they are related texturewise cheers i suppourt blender but i also suppourt being honest

    • tyy

      lol one thing i,m sorry but the best skin shader was on the nude thread no really its not the nudity which got me amazed but the texture you know the same could have been acheived in blender throught procedurals i sat and began whiping up aseries of procedurals but none gave a satisfying result they were just goood but not excellent heres acouple of blends

      *skin is supposed to be lil bit shiny cause of its oily ness

      http://www.heavensdream.tk/downloads/almostperfect.blend

    • tyy

      i cant help it i have attention for detail
      lol one thing i,m sorry but the best skin shader was on the nude thread no really its not the nudity which got me amazed but the texture you know the same could have been acheived in blender throught procedurals i sat and began whiping up aseries of procedurals but none gave a satisfying result they were just goood but not excellent heres acouple of blends

      *skin is supposed to be lil bit shiny cause of its oily ness

      http://www.heavensdream.tk/downloads/almostperfect.blend

    • http://www.digitalbite.com Jacek Brzezowski

      I must say that the image chosen in this note is a big misunderstanding for me. I looked at it and thought “gosh… it looks ok, but why everybody is so excited? it looks more like plastic!”. So I started to read comments to see if anybody has similar opinion and therefore I actually looked at the thread mentioned (I assumed that the image chosen is the best one) and I was convinced by what I saw. Truly great job here!

      And please – for future – do show images that will make “wow” effect instead of making some of us wonder what the hell is this?

    • Pixelvore

      Jacek, it’s because the images I had hosted on ImageHosting had been deleted. I hope you know what I mean :)
      About the Blender vs The_Others debate… Well, for me, there is no debate : I cannot afford anything but Blender, since it’s free, and I don’t want to crack ZBrush, or Maya + Mental Ray, or whatever. That is the best argument I have…