slimy tentacles / SSS Research and Materials

[Blaine91555]

Nice slime.

Jantim - great effort. I've learned a lot by reverse engineering your other textures and it would be great to see how you did this.

[slocik]

I bet jantin will make it much better :] Go, go material master :]

[Patton]

Cool, is that rendered in Zbrush?
Patton

[jantim]

Thomaskl...i don't think it is possible to combine all of the effects of your render(s) in one Zbrush render !
The combination of translucency AND transparency is a real pain to get in Zbrush,..you need layers in this program to get transparency , and in combination with "depht of field" , transluceny and transparency ,with a pinch of self-ilumination is a big trick !
You can get backlighting..but the 2.5 D pixols react not in a texbook way to your settings..the Zbrush universe needs a new Newton to define its laws

I had been experimenting with a sort of fake sss for some time...the first sss-like material was made, i think, by Jotajota-his alienmaterial-and i used the same "reverse egineering"that Blaine91555 used on my materials , on his material

you need a material with settings for " inner" & "outer" an some occluded ambient...just do a search on Jotajota to dig up his material !

i posted a collage of older renders that have a bit of sss and screensnapshot
and a material that was not to big to download..its not the material in the renders ..these are to big due to the images i used in the channels






and yo need lots of light..and fog to get the best resuls

jantim

[jantim]

Made a small variation on the last material..and used its transparency settings in a two-layer render :



and one with a similar material in blue



jantim

[Thomaskl]

Hey, youre getting closer. Even if you can`t match my Vray-mat exactly, this current material has a class of itself., especially in the second render. In the first rendering, it would just need some Refraction IOR and blurryness and it would be great. But, as i can imagine, Zbrush cannot dirstort refractions..
But quite impressive !
Thanks for your materials. I will take a look at these in the next few days. I have a big job since two days and may not stop animating, because the previs has to be finished by Tuesday next week. (damn, i am tired....)

Thx and best regards,

Thomaskl

[smileman]

Great Jantim, your materials rocks!!!! Thank you , I learn by this way !

[Blaine91555]

Jantim - Thanks so much. I've been able to learn a great deal from the materials you have shared.

This is a variation on a skin shader I've been working on for a wax look. Done partly by reversing the transcurve and adding a touch of transparency. Also tweaking the lighting. I've included the lighting.
The background is Augustine which has been being a BAD VOLCANO lately.

[Ron Harris]

very kewl work and experimentations, Jantim Just downlaoded the materials and unzipped em'. Will give them a whirl in a moment...thank you so very much.....they are looking tremendously closer than anything I remember ever being posted with regards to z....thnx again
ron
catfishmn@aol.com

thnx also Blainne, I just dled yours as well...guess tonight I am goign to have a little fun with materials...

[Blaine91555]

Thomaskl - Last post I promise
I've been trying to get this effect and thanks to Jantim's mat's I finally figured out a way to do this. This will not work with flat faces like a cube. Default lighting and must be rendered in best mode with shadows on, flatten off and on a different layer.

[Ron Harris]

Used Jantim's material so far...this is the result..thnx much..
ron
catfishmn@aol.com

This took longer to render than create....knotty ball and conical stroke and the 2 mats of Jantims and a light setting someone recently posted..forgive my memory on whose that was....grrrr...anyways....greyscale and the zcolored version....



Thomas your thread is growing....

[aurick]

But, as i can imagine, Zbrush cannot dirstort refractions..

Actually, ZBrush can! The trick is for you to first render what will be seen through the refracted object and then bake the layer. Next, draw the refracting object with an Rgb Intensity of less than 100 and activate the gyro. The Draw palette will have some settings become available for refraction.

Unlike materials-based transparency, this is done entirely on one layer. The refractive object can't see anything that's on another layer, and it can only see unshaded colors (which is why you need to bake first).

[jantim]

Blaine : I see you have been experimenting, that's great..you can get a lot out of the "old" Zbrush renderer- i hope there will be an small update in ZB 2.5- the settings that create the outer-rim, can,and are used to make skinmaterials !

smileman: well i'm glad that i don't have to WRITE tutorials..i just render them!

Ron : your renders look great !..and your tentacles look better then the ones i rendered

Thomanski :The Vray-renderer is fantastic for this sort of work..and you can get the "out of focus" blur in Zbrush-but you cant get a mid-section of your render in focus and have a blur for objects that are near and beyond that focuspoint.

Aurick : Yep,..you can use refraction and transparency..but the last time this topic popped-up, the thread ended in a bad way , so i was a bit reluctant

jantim

[DarthWayne]

It's really good to see a lot of people working to try and get a good Fake SSS material. The image above is something I knocked up using the jantim shaders with a few tweaks. I had trouble getting the translucent effect that jantim got on one of his renders further up. Any pointers Jantim? I did add a little smoke in amongst the veins in photoshop (test for an ebook I'm writing on post effects for Zbrush).
Yet another bunch of top shaders, it's a shame we don't move the material stuff into one thread for fake SSS development.

Wayne...

[marcus_civis]

This is an interesting thread.
Here's my effort using a glow and transparency material (see zip). To make use of transparency I dupilcated the layer. There's also some red fog to add to the effect.