Skin shader

[Dune]

Awesome!

[WAS]

Here is a first take on Digital Emily

After the early experiments above, I wanted to take things a step further and for this I needed better source data. Some of you might remember of this. This workflow has now been refined and developed by many VFX studios, always pushing the limits in terms of accuracy and fidelity toward realistic digital humans.

Anyway, this project shares its sources files for research purpose, and even though most digital doubles now rely on much better model and textures, this is still a solid base to work on. So here are a couple of renders with the same lighting scenarios as the previous tests.


Render times were between 2h30-3h for a 2k frame. What bugs me the most at the moment is that I cannot get a nice clean terminator when the light is a glazing angle. I will have to investigate that. Also  the ray depth is too short to have subsurface in the eyes, so I had to resort on diffuse for the eyeball. Lots of noise in the eyes too, which is sad considering how nice the caustics look! I will have to find a better way to control the specular roughness too.

I was using her yesterday but couldn't fix her eyes. Can you share how you did that?  Also mine doesn't have hair on her head from obj version and textures? O.o

[KyL]

Yeah the eyes are a pain... I had to offset in V the image map shader to get the iris and the eyeball textures at the proper size, then use a merge shader to merge both with a ramp and get the right iris size...  I wish I could have better eyes textures/models.

The hairs are in the raw color map, I realized they are here by mistake. They are probably less distracting than a bald head so I will leaves them here!

[WAS]

Yeah the eyes are a pain... I had to offset in V the image map shader to get the iris and the eyeball textures at the proper size, then use a merge shader to merge both with a ramp and get the right iris size...  I wish I could have better eyes textures/models.

The hairs are in the raw color map, I realized they are here by mistake. They are probably less distracting than a bald head so I will leaves them here!

Offset in V the image map? I think I'm confused.

[KyL]

Yes, instead of moving the UVs of the mesh. I think they did this to have easy control over the iris size. This way you can animate the pupils too, which is quite clever

[Oshyan]

Wow, not bad at all! What Max Paths and AA/pixel noise threshold values were you using?

- Oshyan

[KyL]

Thanks. This was rendered at 10AA with the robust sampler at 1/16. Noise threshold 0.03 and 36 paths limit.

[sboerner]

Amazing! Keeping an eye on this, for sure.

[Oshyan]

Ah ok, interesting. If you get a chance, try AA8, 1/64, same PNT or 0.025, and a higher path limit, maybe 100. Just curious if it would improve the noise levels without increasing render time (due to higher adaptivity). I am personally finding that increasing max paths doesn't increase render time as much as I would think, for a greater corresponding increase in quality.

- Oshyan

[WAS]

Ah ok, interesting. If you get a chance, try AA8, 1/64, same PNT or 0.025, and a higher path limit, maybe 100. Just curious if it would improve the noise levels without increasing render time (due to higher adaptivity). I am personally finding that increasing max paths doesn't increase render time as much as I would think, for a greater corresponding increase in quality.

- Oshyan

Speaking of that are paths in TG representative of larger numbers? I've read up a lot of documentation on PT and most scenarios fires soooo many more paths than TG. Thousands.

[KyL]

Speaking of that are paths in TG representative of larger numbers?

Don't forget that this is the number of paths per primary rays. So at 10AA 36 path you are giving a maximum budget of 10*10*36=3600 rays


I aksed the same question a while ago

try AA8, 1/64, same PNT or 0.025, and a higher path limit, maybe 100

I usually use more path as well and less AA. However in this case I probably went the opposite direction for the eyes, the caustics being hard to sample. I will try your suggestion though!

[Oshyan]

I think it may work the reverse of what your intuition was telling you, i.e. for hard to sample caustics, you want more paths not (I think) more AA. At least that's been what my tests have shown me so far.

- Oshyan

[DocCharly65]

Awesome Digital Emily renders!

[KyL]

I think it may work the reverse of what your intuition was telling you, i.e. for hard to sample caustics, you want more paths not (I think) more AA. At least that's been what my tests have shown me so far.

- Oshyan

Here is a render with 6AA, 1/65@0.025 and 100 paths. It is a little bit cleaner and it rendered twice as fast! Caustics aren't better though but still, great rendertime/quality ratio!

[Dune]

Terrific, and indeed very fast.