Any tips for subsurface scattering

[mykyl1966]

I find that even on my machine it takes at least 20 seconds to calculate SUbsurface scattering as I am adjusting it to try and find what I am looking for.

Any ideas?

Cheers

Mike R

[mykyl1966]

This is what I am after. If you hold a candle up to the light you get a darkish core and lighter edges.

Is there a way to fake this with shaders for animation.

Almost the opposite of the fake fresnel plugin. This is for an animation so needs to change as the object moves around. basically a slightly darker core and then the outer edges could have glow and/or translucency added to them. Whatever it is. Is there anyone out there who can help.

Cheers

Mike R

[mykyl1966]

Ever had the feeling you are kidding yourself that you actually exist. You seem to be aware of typing a couple of questions in a couple of threads. Sometimes your mind even goes as far as to to say 'yup, They are reading your questions.' however you slowly begin to realise that maybe you actually did drop dead at some point in the recent past. Your posts are figments of your imagination...

Yup. I am strange but its a well known fact that solitary confinement does something to your mind. That and two recent questions that dont elicit a single reply but plenty of readers. ;) he he he.

(Dont worry you will get used to me.)

Mike R

[tonytrout]

There is a substantial tutorial on modelling a candle in the carrara tute section with an sss wax shader, but it wont help your rendering speed.

[mykyl1966]

Yup I know about that and for stills thats fine. Thats why I changed my question to how to fake the effect for animation as SSS is no use there.

Cheers for the reply.

Mike R

[tonytrout]

There is a soft cutaway shader using glow and fresnel at
http://digitalcarversguild.com/gallery.php?Page=21
which might be adapted with a bit of work to what you want

[Thomas]

Subsurface is slow on most render engines. This is an heavy processor ogre and no tweaking is possible... That's the main problem of SSS (I have this problem too)
The only hope is to have an aproximation shader, much faster than the current one..

[mykyl1966]

tonytrout,

Thanks for that. i think this is about the closest I will get to what I want.

Thomas. I understand about this thats why I see plenty about fake SSS in other apps. Thanks anyway

Thanks

Mike R

Hi,

Yes the SSS is slow but like Thomas mention it is the same in other engine. The big plus is that the SSS in the Carrara 5 is one of very best out there in that it uses the Photon mapping technology and it gives very natural results.
You could also try a mixture in the translucency channel.

[LoneGunman]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Subsurface is slow on most render engines. This is an heavy processor ogre and no tweaking is possible... That's the main problem of SSS (I have this problem too)
The only hope is to have an aproximation shader, much faster than the current one..

Yep, aproximation shader would be nice for that, also, some kind of solution for displaying displacements is needed as well, those are very heavy on processor too (it takes sometimes couple of minutes to see it in preview)