Hi Folks


I have not seen any video tutorials on SSS, so I thought I might take a stab at it. If you watch the entire tutorial you should be able to use this great AM feature with little to no issues. I have some tips for why things might crash and how to work around.

1. I forgot to note that A higher sample % will increase render time were as Higher extinction values will decrease render time.

2. As far as I know you can only view SSS when you perform a render to file.

3. Put SSS in groups at the very bottom of the group list.

4. Larger objects may need larger extinction values to get a desired effect.

5. smaller objects will most likely need smaller extinction values to get a desired effect.

6. 99% of the time using the same value for all RGB extinction values will cause the chipping anomaly.

7. smoother results come from varying all RGB extinction values so that no two are the same.

Update 8. Be very careful when creating groups with SSS. Limit the groups that have SSS. SSS has to be calculated over everything in the model that has it assigned to a group whether it is shown in the camera or not. In other words if its not in frame dont have SSS assigned to it otherwise you will get LLLLLLLLLLLong Renders


Enjoy. Click to view attachment

Update if you are having problems playing the video download this version , it has an H.264 codec.

Click to view attachment

Nice job Jason, very helpful.
Thanks

Very helpfull ,I learned a lot from it thank's

Glad to help. If you folks could pay it forward and create vid tuts on subjects you feel confident about that would really help the community.

I feel we can increase the advancement of AM and abundance of quality work if there are more vid tuts readily available on evry subject concerning cg and AM.


I hope together we can start a movement of contributors.

three thumbs up !

Thanks for doing the tutorial, Jason. Unfortunately I get the following error when I try to view it:

"Error -2048: Couldn't open file SSS_Demystified.mov because it is not a file that QuickTime understands."

I recently allowed Apple to update my QuickTime so I guess that is what is causing the problem. Anyone else getting this?

no fine here and i did the upgrade also 7.6.4

Very nice tutorial. Thanks!

That explained a lot!

I never tried SSS because I just did not understand enough to try.

Now I think I can give it a go.

Thank you very much,

No problem with QT Paul and I updated this morning before watching this movie

I'm afraid I also get "This is not a movie file"

What codec is it in?

It only worked for me if I right mouse clicked and chose "save as".

That's the only way I ever download a movie.

Since about 1998.

did not work for me either (rt click, save)

I always download first unless the movie size is 1 MB or less. I managed to view this tutorial, eventually, with MS media Player but QT doesn't like it.

Everyone who the movie did not work for. Did you update quicktime? and did it still not work after that?

me too - eventually got to view it in MS media player- but there was no sound - when I clicked on properties of clip in media player - it said Sonic AVC Decoder DMO for the video codec. There was nothing for the audio codec.

I can't use the latest Quicktime , it isn't available for my OS , Win2000. They stopped at 7.1.6

H.264 and the AAC audio codec work well for me. If you compressed to those it would be more widely viewable.

I am encoding a new version with H.264. for you folks that had trouble

Point 2 will be changed in the next version and point 3 fixed ....

I wonder what the reason for that is?

I'd have thought lower extinction values mean less SSS effect which would mean less time-consuming math to do it all.

It kind of makes sense to me. Remember that the lower the number the closer to the surface of the mesh which means more volume to calculate. as you increase the extinction distance the deeper you go into the model and there is less volume to calculate.

I could be wrong, YP has a much better explanation.

That's great. When did you fix point 3?

I have 2 requests

1. Can you increase the samples to 300% I feel this would allow better results when keeping the RGB extinction distance values the same.
2. Can you add a save preset and apply preset option so that as you experiment with values in the extinctions you can save the settings as presets and name them. It would make it easy to apply a library of presets. Adobe After Effects has had this ability I think since CS1 and it is a huge help and time saver. In fact if you could implement this feature for global settings like group settings that would be great. Just think about it. If I wanted to apply a look that took me hours of tinkering on another model with all sorts of unique properties like color, SSS, specular color, roughness, and so on, I could simply go to a pull down menu in the group that has a list of all the global group presets I have saved over the years and then just apply them. This would be a huge feature for AM 16. The more I think about it, you could add this feature to everything, like hair, materials Chors lights.

It would be great if there were Global group presets that you could save and apply to entire groups and additionally Sub presets that you could save and apply for individual property categories.

Example:

You could apply to a new group a global group setting that modifies all the properties in the group for a look you saved called "Skin" which had preset values for diffuse color, SSS extinctions and so on. Then you could have sub presets for the different properties like diffuse color that you could additionally apply sub presets which were named something like Dark skin, or light skin which would only effect the diffuse color or what ever sub property you had saved a preset to and were applying it too.


In addition to naming the presets it would be great if you could save a picture so that when you pulled the apply preset drop down menu not only would a list of names come up but Pictures of renders associated with that name. This would give a more "Apple" like intuitive interface. The responsibility for adding the pictures would be on the user to render and save to the preset.

Could you also create the ability to import Group presets? This way users could email presets to each other or post them on the forum and easily reproduce looks and effects.

Nice tutorial! Thanks!

The volume from the surface to 1 cm deep on a mesh is less than the volume from the surface to 2 cm deep.


where is that?

I think its measured the opposite of what you are thinking. But I could be wrong.

Here is YP explanation.

Click to view attachment

interesting point below, however I think the solution is to use displacement. Zyrin may know more on this subject, he is the master at this and should be doing tutorials.



Click to view attachment

If you right click on a post # in the upper right corner you get a link to it you can copy..

Thanks didnt know that

Did the h.264 video work for you Rob?

Yes. I've just tested the first minute, but it appears to play correctly. I'll torture test it some more.

thanks!