3Delight for Maya | Subsurface Scattering

You want some subsurface scattering using mental ray shaders but rendering with 3delight? Sure, no problem:

In this scene, I have a spotlight casting raytraced shadows and a poly object (helix).

Rendered looks this way

Now, let's create the misss* shader. For this tutorial I'll test 5 different versions (misss_fast_shader, misss_fast_shader_x1, misss_fast_shader_x_passes, misss_fast_simple_maya, misss_fast_skin_maya) and then you can decide on which one to use.

First, misss_fast_shader1:

Well, it doesn't look like there is subsurface scattering at all. That's because there are some attributes needed for subsurface to work (3DelightForMaya-UserManual.pdf, page 37). To add those attributes, select your object and in the assignment panel click on the checker icon to add a new Geometry Attributes Node. From the Add/Remove Attributes menu, select Subsurface Scattering -> All. Set "sss" as the Subsurface Group name (or anything you want).

Let's render again

Ok, there is something now. You can modify front and back scatter color as well as its weight but you can't control the radius here. If you kept reading on the manual, you'll know why. Anyway, select your object and open its delightGeoAttribs node. Set 'Coefficient Scale' to 0.5 and render again

See?

Now let's try the other shaders. This time, misss_fast_shader_x1

Looks gray and there's a message in the terminal window (or maya output window) complaining about a shader that 3delight couldn't find. 3Delight for Maya provides header files in the `$DELIGHT/maya/rsl' directory; these header files are used for translating the Hypershade nodes to RenderMan shading language source code and there's no header file for misss_fast_shader_x1 and misss_fast_shader_x_passes. You can still use any of the other shaders, write your own, complement the missing files or let know support about those files.

Now, misss_fast_simple_maya

And finally, misss_fast_skin_maya

Another one with misss_fast_skin_maya with diffuse weight set to 0 and new random epidermal, subdermal and back scatter weights.

This, as you can see, is pretty basic. You may want to know how to render separated passes, how to connect texture maps and how to use them properly to get skin renders, why you get bright lines sometimes and how to deal with them, how to use global illumination, how to get subsurface using point clouds... or you may not.

In any case, the 3delight forum can give you some hints, since this has been asked before.

Here is a small animation using ncloth and fast skin shader: