Project4_Texturing with SSS shader

Texture a photo realistic character is never easy.

I tried to approach this goal with using photos and SSS shader.

I mostly used photo shop for texturing.

I used http://www.3d.sk/ for downloading human photos.

This website isn't free but it has many valuable stuffs.

I put the font, side and 45 view and matched it using eraser and clamp tool with different opacities.

Here are some photos I downloaded and used for texture map.

Here is my finished texture map.

SSS shader.

SSS shader gives more believable texture with transparency of human skin.

I first set the numbers of SSS shader and than imported different texture maps.

The options will be different by your lights settings and object size, you have to find your own number by lots of testings.

Epidermal map

Epidermal map is for out side skin I made Epidermal map by 50% desaturation of the original color map. and I gave 0.4 for Epidermal weight, which is very light.

Sudermal map

Sudermal map is in between epidermal and back scatter. it should be orange to red color as human. blueish for reptiles. I gave 0.6 for Sudermal weight in Maya so it shows in the epidermal skin. I just simply add more Orange color to the color map and darken some parts to need to be dark.

Back scatter.

I think Back scatter is the most tricky part in SSS shader.

I can only see the back scatter on thin parts like ears and fingers.

I gave the back scatter weight value at 1.0. It should be stronger than both epidermal and subdermal maps. Back scatter map was made from the color map with full saturation and red.

I also paint veins in the ears and darken every edges.

You can put you overall texture map to diffuse weight or overall weight.

diffuse weight will give you a soft color for overall, and overall weight will give you a very strong

color for hole body. I used diffuse weight for an soft skin texture.

Diffuse weight map

After I set my settings I applied all the texture maps to each layers.If your texture map is darken or lighter than your layer colors, you also need to set the numbers again to make it better.(if it's darker lower the weight, if it's lighter higher the numbers.)

Here are some of my final render images which shows the transparency of the skin.