A Good Fleshy Skin Tone
 

I placed this post in another section of the forum but never got a response so I'll try here. I've been messing around with colors for a skintone close to or matching human skin tones and I noticed how great the flesh tones of Mr. Incredible looked and I'd like to try and mimic that. Do any of you have any ideas on how to achieve this with or without subsurface scattering?

Russell

This is kinda what I'm going for...

...But...
 

...all I'm coming up with is this...

...Annnnnnnd...
 

....this!...


Russell

SSS is just how light is distributed on translucent surfaces, a good light set up is often key to getting good SSS effect.
sss is not a skin tone and is not always needed.
here is a good start,
create a blinn shader, assign it to your head,
remove the default reflection and turn it to 0
remove any specular highlights on it.
give it a color of RGB: 220 165 170
create a basic 3 point light set up.

open the hypershade

select your head mesh, and in the hypershade shift select the blinn,

then bake out a tecture (in hypershade: edit>convert to file texture)
turn on keep lighting and shadows and bake a 1024 map.

then bring it to photoshop and start tweaking.

then maybe u can use your color map in conjunction with a SSS shader .

I George I Think I've Got It!
 

Vlad, I tried what you said to try but it didn't work but I did adobt a few of the pieces of the puzzle and I may have solved my problem... I think. Take a look at this pic. It's a dark picture only b/c I didn't turn on the key light but you can see the SSS showing a bit on his head. Thanks a lot! A difference changing from a Lamber shader to a Blinn makes. :)

Russell

vladimirjp,
I like that explanation!

Okay... latest update. Here he is as I've rendered him today. I'm satisfied with the color of his skin but I'm still not getting the results I crave with subsurface scattering; i.e. the light absorbing in his ear. I'm using SubScatter from LightEngine3D.com and it works but I'm not sure what the best settings would be. Anyone else using SS for their work? Can anyone give me yet another explaination of SSS - maybe why the light wouldn't be showing through his skin? Thanks in advance!

Russell

Another render...
 

Here's another rendering from further back. Notice his ears? I want to get that effect as in "The Incredibles" where Buddy (the boy) is standing outside and the sun is shining and you get a really good SSS effect as the sun shines brightly. Thanks guys!

Russell

EDIT: thought u was using maya :P rushed the post, so ignore everything i just said... lol


to adjust the levels where light hits the object, you can modify the color offset attribute of the shader.

this attribute on its own will brighten the entire model (or where the shader is assigned anyway) you can control the attribute to lighten and darken specific areas by mapping a ramp shader to it, since color offset is a single channel alpha the values of 0 and 1 will represent black and white- adjust the shader to how much you want to bleed light into it.

remember to only use Black and White (represents 0 and 1) this requires some playing around with but the result will be that you will lighten areas where its dark.