I have done everything I could in an effort to get sub surface scattering to work. I checked and double checked the forum and technical reference (I couldn't find it at all in the technical reference!), I downloaded other people's files that were supposed to work. I un-installed it, cleared Hash Inc entries from my registry, and reinstalled it.

And what do I get for my trouble?

A blackened shape. If I try to render to a file I get an Exception Error.

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Nixie's file http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...face+scattering

System Specs:

AMD Sempron 1.8ghz
2gb DDR RAM
Windows XP Professional SP2
Nvidia Geforce 6200

Animation Master 15.0b Web license

There are some strict rules for using SSS that must be adhered to in order for the effect to render correctly.
SSS was something of an extra feature that was put into A:M and has not yet been fully codified to the point of being well documented. There are several topics here in the forum that trouble shoot it very well though.

The three areas that immediately come to mind that interfere with SSS rendering correctly are:

1) Threads must be set to 1 (I don't think v15 lets you adjust the threads in Tools/Options at the moment so if you are running Dual Core with multiple threads you'll have to set this elsewhere)

2) SSS should be applied to a Group that doesn't have Decals/Images assigned to it.
You can have two separate Groups assigned to the same Patches. Just make sure the one with SSS assigned to it doesn't have all the extra stuff assigned.

3) SSS is particularly susceptible to inverted normals. Note: This doesn't appear to be your problem.
Having patches with inverted normals caused triangular artifacts/black splatches in the rendering.

Occasionally changing SSS settings will trigger the black rendering with some graphics cards that won't go away until you restart A:M/reload the project from scratch. This one seems hard to pin down as every graphics card seems to have its strengths and weaknesses. For me generally restarting/refreshing/reopening Windows/A:M will set things right.

Disclaimer: I really don't know all that much about SSS but have helped quite a few people troubleshoot through the rough spots. Chalk most of it up to lucky guesswork.

Here is more tips that I remember to have seen in some place:

4 ) the group that contains SSS must be the last one in the order
5 ) SSS just works in RENDER TO FILE .... render mode (Q) causes black objects ...

SSS will only render to file.
The other major rule of SSS is Single thread only.
It is not affected adversely by decals, and in fact decals are neccessary to vary the effect over the surface.

That being said, just in case this latest version was broken, I tested it. Works fine on this end, with my modest settings.

Post your settings

What settings are your half-extinctions? Lower numbers eat more memory; try setting all to 50 or 30 too see the effect first, or lower your density setting. My computer chokes on fractional numbers, unless I set the density way down. Sometimes I multiply the recommended values by 2-10 to get similar results with way less rendertime/memory eating.

#010 + SSS has in my experience been a memory problem.

OH.

Ok, I'm just being a noob. What I did was I took Nixie's file and added sss on the model without realizing it already had a sss group. Not only that, but his settings weren't all that visible until I bumped it up.

The sss is very fast, but I have to set the density all the way up to hide the pattern.. I guess it's ok because it's skin.. but still.

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The density has to do with how many samples are used, not the density of the material.
The size of the actual model can affect this too, like is it 10 cm tall, or 5, & so on.
Tinker tinker tinker!
Glad you got it going =)