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Subsurface Group Slider: what does that do?

wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
edited December 1969 in Daz Studio Discussion

For that matter, I'd love it if we could get a clarification on all the subsurface sliders... but the subsurface group slider is the one that is the biggest mystery to me.

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,739
    edited December 1969

    It's so that you can avoid interference between different parts of the mesh - sub-surface calculations for a material will take account only of other materials in the same group, so setting the mouth to a different value (for example) can avoid odd glows, as can giving the teeth their own value. It's just an identifier, in effect.

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    so... in order for that to work, is the value to be equal to the number of material surface groups? I'm not understanding.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,739
    edited December 1969

    You give a different number to the materials you want to be treated differently, and the same number to groups that go together, Group 1 might be all the sking, group 2 the inner mouth, group 3 the teeth, for example.

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    OH! So it detects differences automaticall? Interesting. I had thought it would do that for everything. I typically have, let me think, the Cornea... sclera-eye whites-iris-pupil.... lacrimal... the mouth... the fingernails.. and the skin.. (I'm kinda thinking that the Lacrimal and the Genital Detail would have similar if not the same settings...)

    But you're telling me it'll detect the same settings automatically if I set it to the number of settings I have different? I would think you'd have to have a material group group setting as an identifier...

  • ReDaveReDave Posts: 815
    edited December 1969

    No it doesn't detect differences automatically, if you assign subsurface group "1" to all skin surfaces they will be treated the same (and most importantly there will be no boundary between different material zones that belong to the same group). In principle you could still change the other SSS properties even they are all skin and thus all belong to group "1", but it would be hard to get something that looks good.

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    Alright! awesome!

    Just out of curiosity, I noticed that lips often have different settings... would it be better to have them as a different surface group than the skin or the same one?

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    DOH! I just got it..

    Set the slider to 1 for Group 1
    Set the slider to 2 for Group 2

    Damn, that took me long enough!

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    Okay, so I'm setting this up on my muse (Samantha, as some of you are aware).... and I set the SSS Skin Group to 1, the Finger and Toenails to 2, the mouth to 3...

    NOW two questions:

    All the rest of the materials are DAZ Default Materials, which have no option for SSS. Do I need to have them on there so I can set the SSS Group or does it matter?

    IN the Groups, does the Genitalia Groups, as it is a geografted figure, follow the main figure SSS Groups, or is it just a separate figure?

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    wancow said:
    DOH! I just got it..

    Set the slider to 1 for Group 1
    Set the slider to 2 for Group 2

    Damn, that took me long enough!

    Not quite but close. What folks are trying to get across is that this function gives you the freedom to have different SSS settings for different surfaces on the same object. Forget the groups that are already there and look at it like this. Example all skin should be in the same SSS group if the SSS values are the same no matter what texture group there are list as.

    And no it doesn't matter that some surfaces have default surfaces and some special Human Surface Shaders like this.

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    You described what I said. All the skin materials would be set to Group 1, all the Mouth materials to group 2...

    What part of that was different from what you said?

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,739
    edited December 1969

    I think Szark thought you were loking at the numbers in front of the material names, which group things by the map they use, rather than just using the numbers as a way to distinguish separate areas.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Richard understood me just fine. :) Thx Richard. If you look harder you will see that Skin will be under more than one group, I was trying to point out that all skin surface no matter what Group they are named as can all have the same SSS grouping.

    Just trying to help.

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    Szark, thank you! I just needed clarity on it. You guys are awesome for helping me understand this!

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    No worries. My concentration is not that good at the moment so I am finding hard to get things across in a way that avoids confusing the problem further.

    But we got there in the end.

    The only time I have different groups for the skin is when I want to increase the SSS for the ears, so the Skin_Head would be in a group of its own, seperate from the other skin surfaces.

    Also there is nothing stopping us from using HSS/USS on all the surafces, eyes and nails etc. This is when the SSS grouping comes into its own.

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