A bit of advice? Using Subsurface scattering on only part of a character model?

Fluffy_hug_of_death

Hi, I'm in my final year of studying animation at University and I have a character created by a team member. I want to use a sss arnold shader on only part of the character. So the face and hands, and then I want to paint the rest of the body with a different arnold shader. Is it possible to simply select the faces I want to use the sss shader on and assign them? And I'd have to UV unwrap before this I assume?
Sorry these might seem silly questions, <the pressure of third year O_o > But I appreciate any tips and advice
Thank you!
Fern

musashidan

Exactly, just use a multi-material. Different parts of the mesh will have unique mat ID. In Max the mat is called multi sub-object. I'm sure Maya has an equivalent.

Fluffy_hug_of_death

Thank you!
Is the multi-material a specific material/tool do you know sorry?
Thanks again!

Justo

Nope, it doesn't have to be specific. Just select faces, give them the ID you want and give the entire object a multimaterial. Assign different colors to each material inside the multimaterial, so that you can see in your model if there's anything wrong. 

The purpose of this is so that you can then apply different materials (like SSS) in your render engine, like Unreal or Toolbag. The multimaterial being applied in your 3D app is more like a preview, unless you intend to render in there too.

Fluffy_hug_of_death

Thank you Justo! 
I will be rendering in Maya using Arnold, apparently arnold doesnt like multimaterials very much? But I guess the only way to work around that is to solve those problems when they appear haha XD
Thanks for the advice! super helpful

musashidan

You can just use the Maya multi-mat. It will work fine with Arnold.