Hi all!

Total neophyte here, and, like many, somewhat frustrated by the lack of web-based info out there. I'm interested in purchasing Houdini, migrating away from Maya and so forth, but I would like to know what the current state of play regarding realistic skin shaders available. I've seen some impressive shots with Mario Marengo's “FullSSS” implementation, and the skin shader included in the “Artistic Shaders” bundle. I'm familiar with the brickmap method of RAT/PRman, and see Mario's implementation is similar, but always had problems with that “translucent bleed” through thin spots like ears and so forth.

Obviously, misss_fast_skin_maya (and equivalents) is an artistic solution that doesn't really use true SSS, but its results are great; is something like that possible in Houdini? It's not a dealbreaker for me in terms of actually buying Houdini, but it would be nice to know what sort of time I'm in for regarding realistic skin shaders ahead of time!

Thanks in advance

Callum

If you download the build and install the apprentice non-commercial license, you will notice in the Material palette that there is a SkinSSS shader. As long as your object has the SSSScatter SOP applied to it and is correctly referenced in the shader it will work. Of course, it will need to be tweaked based on the object and lighting.

No idea how realistic it is, as my skin is covered in a hard chocolate shell that allows for virtually no light penetration.

Also check out Serg's shader on OdForce and on Exchange, it's not a point-cloud solution:
http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?showtopic=2262&st=168 [forums.odforce.net]

Dragos

yeah that shader works realy well. Ive still got to test out displacements, bump and spec but the only downfall i guess is it can get quite slow especially with alot of polys.

Other than that its really good.

These look great! Thanks for your help guys.. I really think I'm going to like Houdini. For my purposes, the PBR capabilities of Mantra are perfect, and it's a lot less buggy than Maya is rapidly becoming

I know the learning curve is a little steep, but once you get past the terminology, it really doesn't appear any harder to learn than any other software, and I find its interface and tools more user-friendly than XSI or MAX (shudder). Plus the node-based approach to modeling/animation/everything is truly innovative… apart from its cost (which is now a total non-issue, thanks to its $7995 price-point) I really don't understand why, apart from its reputation as solely a dynamics/particles solution, Houdini is not as widely used as it should be… I know The Wild was practically 100% Houdini, but this is a very elegant piece of software.

Looking forward to getting my feet wet and producing my first images/animation with this!