Ubersurface shading question

Ongoing Moment

I have been looking all day for a list/explanation of the added nodes in the surface tab when you use Ubersurface. I go to the "currently being written" DS4 manual and the surfaces tab is woefully under explained.

Any links to a more in depth list of Ubersurface parameters (besides the omnifreaker wiki page). I have been researching SSS for 2 days now and see how other programs handle this feature. Would like to incorporate that knowledge into the DS4 Ubersurface settings.

Maybe a DS3 documentation manual link so I can see the previous documentation which was carried over in this version. Feeling rather frustrated. Maybe I just need to go into the shader bricks next and forget about the surface tab? But I am afraid that would add a new layer of complexity without proper documentation. The price for free.

Thanks

David

Jaderail

What you need to read the Ubersurface help file,(if it is still active.) it explains the added features.

jaunke_29fff27795

Edit: you didn't want the page i gave :down:

Grtz Jean-Claude

Ongoing Moment

Jaderail - Thanks for your response. The help file in the UberSurface package goes to the Wiki page. It breaks down Refraction and Scale in the SSS settings but omits what group and rate settings. Maybe a breakdown of the translucency and specular 2 also.

Probably my newbie showing through right now. Maybe these are common knowledge things. But if you are trying to figure these things out there is no way to know this. The shader mixer has different names for those SSS settings. At least I think they correspond to the sliders 1 to 1.

Jaderail

Your right. I never noticed it did not cover all the settings. I'm at a loss now.

vwrangler

davidscameracraft said:

Jaderail - Thanks for your response. The help file in the UberSurface package goes to the Wiki page. It breaks down Refraction and Scale in the SSS settings but omits what group and rate settings. Maybe a breakdown of the translucency and specular 2 also.

Probably my newbie showing through right now. Maybe these are common knowledge things. But if you are trying to figure these things out there is no way to know this. The shader mixer has different names for those SSS settings. At least I think they correspond to the sliders 1 to 1.

One aspect of this recently came up in another thread; Subsurface Group Slider: what does that do? Basically, the Group function allows you to assign different skin surfaces to different groups so that you can handle the subsurface settings for those groups of surfaces differently. You could put the nails in one group, the mouth in another, the head in another, etc.

No idea what the subsurface shading rate does. I know that Interjection defaults to setting Subsurface Shading Rate to 128, and when I've looked at the settings for the various elite skins with HSS baked in, they've also got shading rates at about that level. When I tried to find information on subsurface shading rate, almost everything I could find said, almost word for word, "This attribute specifies the shading rate used for the subsurface simulation". Shading rate in general controls quality -- the higher the shading rate, the higher the quality, I believe, up to a point, but it also increases render time somewhat. (I hope someone can correct me if I've got that wrong.)

Depending on what you're trying to do, the other thing you need to look at are the Translucency settings, especially the strength. I've noticed that for a few characters, especially the fairer ones, translucency strength can easily be set much too high. (A couple of redheaded characters I've seen have had translucency and SSS set so high that they glowed under direct light, and UberEnvironment HDR Dawn turned them glowing purple.). Generally, on normal human skin, you don't want translucency strength set higher than 10%, unless you're dealing with infants or extraordinarily fair people.

RawArt has a tutorial on using SSS and 3Delight/Studio at DeviantArt. He doesn't go into much detail about what's what, just how to get where you need to go. Pay attention also to the discussion underneath the tutorial, especially between Rawn and jamminwolfie. Note also that if you're working with characters with dark skin tones, where Rawn talks about using pinks and grays, you'll need to use browns and yellows, respectively -- though a rather grayish yellow, if you can swing it.

Hope this is helpful.

Ongoing Moment

vwrangler - Thank you for taking the time for such a detailed post. It really did the trick for Daz S4.

David

ReDave

vwrangler said:

Shading rate in general controls quality -- the lower the shading rate, the higher the quality

SSS Shading rate is the same concept, although usually a different value from the Scene-wide Shading Rate. As all shading rates it makes a square of the specified size: if you have 64 as shading rate, the image is gridded by squares of 8 pixels per side (8*8=64). Then it computes the number of samples you also specified for each one of those squares for AO or whatever. So, all other parameters being equal, a smaller square (=shading rate) means a clearer picture. Since SSS tends to be less visible than Diffuse you can get away with much higher SSS shading rate values. 128 is a very high value, but I don't use SSS very often.
Nice post, I was unaware of Rawn's settings.

vwrangler

ReDave said:

vwrangler said:

Shading rate in general controls quality -- the lower the shading rate, the higher the quality
SSS Shading rate is the same concept, although usually a different value from the Scene-wide Shading Rate. As all shading rates it makes a square of the specified size: if you have 64 as shading rate, the image is gridded by squares of 8 pixels per side (8*8=64). Then it computes the number of samples you also specified for each one of those squares for AO or whatever. So, all other parameters being equal, a smaller square (=shading rate) means a clearer picture. Since SSS tends to be less visible than Diffuse you can get away with much higher SSS shading rate values. 128 is a very high value, but I don't use SSS very often.
Nice post, I was unaware of Rawn's settings.

Thanks for the correction; I was pretty sure I was getting something wrong, but I was completely blanking on what it could be. Apart from dealing with raytraces for reflection, I hardly ever touch the render settings directly -- someone (don't remember who, unfortunately) put some render presets for Studio on sharecg.com, and I use those and pretty much forget about them otherwise.

vwrangler - Thank you for taking the time for such a detailed post. It really did the trick for Daz S4.

David

Glad I could help!