very kewl work and experimentations, Jantim
Just downlaoded the materials and unzipped emā. Will give them a whirl in a momentā¦thank you so very muchā¦they are looking tremendously closer than anything I remember ever being posted with regards to zā¦thnx again
ron
[email protected]
thnx also Blainne, I just dled yours as wellā¦guess tonight I am goign to have a little fun with materialsā¦
Thomaskl - Last post I promise;)
Iāve been trying to get this effect and thanks to Jantimās matās 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.
Used Jantimās material so farā¦this is the resultā¦thnx muchā¦
ron
[email protected]
This took longer to render than createā¦knotty ball and conical stroke and the 2 mats of Jantims and a light setting someone recently postedā¦forgive my memory on whose that wasā¦grrrrā¦anywaysā¦greyscale and the zcolored versionā¦
Thomas your thread is growingā¦ 
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 canāt see anything thatās on another layer, and it can only see unshaded colors (which is why you need to bake first).
Blaine : I see you have been experimenting, thatās greatā¦you can get a lot out of the āoldā 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 iām glad that i donāt have to WRITE tutorialsā¦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 workā¦and you can get the āout of focusā 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,ā¦you can use refraction and transparencyā¦but the last time this topic popped-up, the thread ended in a bad way , so i was a bit reluctant 
jantim
Itās 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 Iām writing on post effects for Zbrush).
Yet another bunch of top shaders, itās a shame we donāt move the material stuff into one thread for fake SSS development.
Wayneā¦
This is an interesting thread.
Hereās my effort using a glow and transparency material (see zip). To make use of transparency I dupilcated the layer. Thereās also some red fog to add to the effect.
glow_SSS.zip (10.4 KB)
ZBrush can distort refractions if you turn down the RGB level of your tool and use the ārefractā slider in the draw menu. A refract of 0.33 is equivalent to an ior of 1.33 (water) and 0.5 is equivalent to an ior of 1.5 (glass).
Of course youāll need a background to draw over or else you wonāt have anything to refract.
You can then use the blur brush to blur your refractions.
Maybe someone can try that as a starting point?
I donāt have ZBrush with me at the moment.
smileman, i think the point was to make fake sss, not a cool glowing material 
little question, how to do transparency between two layers in Zbrush ? Iām stupid !!! 
That looks very good Thomaskl. I tried to replicate some of the render effects but it is simply not possible to match a physically accurate render engine using the ZBrush renderer, at least not without some tricks and some 2D editing. But on the bright side the following picture was completed in ZBrush in just under an hour, including a slight color and levels adjustment in Photoshop. What was your render time again Obviously I do not have quite the same quality, but still.
The key to the following render is not the material, although it of course has an effect, but the use of baking the material/render generated colors multiple times with tweaking of the material and lights in between. It is a bit difficult to explain but I hope the step by step below is clear enough.
Jantim: It is possible to have an in focus section at the middle using ZBrushās Depth Cue. Take a look at the curve below.
Its so damn cool to see, how you guys are are trying to approach the perfect SSS feel in Zbrush. As i started thinking about doing an SSS Setup, i was unsure about the way, vray handles SSS, because it is based upon blurred refractions, internal fog and the IOR of the material. Im not sure, if this is the correct physical way of simulatiing a real light distribution under a surface, because i dont own the brain, which is really needed to understand the complex theorie behind this special surface effect. My intrest resultet out of a little anciety of SSS, because the whole CG Community is talking about that for a couple of years, and i, for myself, wasnt able to get the plot in depth. So, i always was a little afraid of that phenomenon. The ways, the postet materials are working have one thing in common. They are all workarounding that "voodoo"-CG SSS Thing. I do like Jantims approach, because it does not need so much post work, as the approach TVEyes uses for his final result. At the end, you could render the image with any kind of linear material and do the whole SSS Effects in PS by painting. But respect and thx for the work you invested in this version. Its a cool result, man !
I had a hard day animating, and i am quite tired now (had some drinks, tooā¦ )
Have fun !
Thx a lot !
Regards,
Thomaskl
Donāt get me wrong. I am also praying that Jaintim can come up with a material that can do it in 1 or 2 passes ( pretty please Jantim, you donāt need to sleep this weekend ;)). But having said that, the multiple baking method is not so difficult, except if you have had a couple of drinks Thomaskl
I think ādrinksā was the magic word. I am off now. Have a nice weekend everybody and I hope you come up with some cool materials/workarounds to the SSS effect.
Ron Harris: Cool picture. I really like the effect of both versions. As you can see from my picture I would prefer some more contrast but the general color range looks great.
TV eyes thank you!
Hereās an experiment I just tried using the technique that I mentioned up above (if you set your RGB to less then 100 in the draw menu, a slider for refraction becomes available).
I duplicated the background layer and rendered it and baked it before placing the object on it. Then I went back to the original layer for rendering after the object was placed on the duplicate layer. Otherwise, my object wouldnāt be casting a shadow onto the ground.
Preliminary picture with refraction only (all ambient, no diffuse, some specular):
Here I blurred the refraction with the blur brush and then fogged it in a little (mostly in the middle) with the simple brush. I decreased the ambient and raised the diffuse levels a little bit:
Hereās the final render. For the main ingredients of this material I raised the anistropic diffuse up to 0.6 and the occluded ambient up to 0.5. I used a light blue color for colorize ambient plus a tiny amount of cavity shading to bring out the details a little bit.
My material is enclosed in the Zip file attached to this post.
SSSTestWingedOne.zip (6.34 KB)
nice work!!! its quite confusing! wish i new how to do stuff like that!!!
Well Thomasklā¦see what you did !..now everyoneās weekend will be spend tweaking materials and rendersettings :lol:
DarthWayne : you need a backlight and/or a radial light to get the best effect of SSSā¦but remember the material-settings āmimicā the SSS-effect, that is also its limitation !
Wingedone : "Coolāā¦your material looks like transparent wax.
marcus_civis : I never used glow in my materials-good idea-i have to think about it !
smileman : i infected you wit the material-bug -or worm, in this case-as well:)
TVeyes : Man , you seem to know every technical aspect of this program:o
I tried to get the effect of the focus in the middle by doing a two layer render and baking the first oneā¦but then the ādepht of field settingā of the second layer just ignored the "baked"pixols of the first render and blurred the whole sceneā¦
I someone can create a SSS-material it must be done by writing a new code for such a materialā¦iām just a button pusher and a setting adjuster
and i donāt think it can be done with the setting of the materials to this point!
Oh yes ,stalsbyā¦it is confusingā¦in the beginningā¦and even after a while !
jantim
Cool, i didnt know you could do refractions in zbrush Think i will find this usefull one day this thread roks
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