request for a howto: SSS - caustics

killingpeople

can someone make me a larp themed educational video explaining how to render caustics and sub surface scattering in 3ds max (8)? or just a link to a paragraph-less tutorial on it. or a picture of a cool looking fish.

thanks in advance.

i made this:

jgarland

This is a pretty cool looking fish. As far as your other requests go, I can't help you.

MoP

For sub-surface scattering you will have to use Mental Ray.
Then assign a "SSS Fast Skin Shader" material to whatever you want to have SSS.

I'm not sure what you mean by caustics, again that's a mental ray thing, but if you just mean light bouncing from diffuse surfaces (radiosity), then you can do that by using Max's Advanced Lighting options:

Press 9 to toggle the Advanced Lighting dialog.
Put the number of "Bounces" up (2-5 is a good range to start with).
Push the "Object Mult" and "Colour Bleed" values up (try double the defaults!).
Drop down the Rays/sample value from 250 to about 50, it'll be a faster render to test how the lighting looks, you can put it back up to a higher number later for a slower but less grainy render.
Turn off "Adaptive Undersampling", it generally makes things look blurry and in my experience doesn't save that much rendering time.

All of this stuff is well-documented in the Max Help, just look up "Advanced Lighting" and it lists all of the values and what effect they have.

CheeseOnToast

Mop, check the OP's name. This may not be entirely serious...

MoP

Then again, it may be seriousness dressed in clown shoes

Illusions

I can do a text action RPG...

There is a large gray menu in front of you with numerous radio buttons to check, and forms to fill out, what would you like to do?

>Go to MentalRay

You proceed to another large grey menu, with different options. What would you like to do?

>Turn Caustics on

You check the button that says "Caustics". What would you like to do?

>Make art

I'm sorry I do not understand that command. If you would like a list of commands, type 'help'. What would you like to do?

>help

Caustics will only display in a scene with transparent objects that have refractions and caustics enabled. What would you like to do?

>Make transparent box

You make a large transparent box. What would you like to do?

>Render

There were no lights in your scene, and you went to render. In the darkness, you were eaten by a Grue. You are dead.

MoP

> What is a Grue?

killingpeople

this forum is about helping.
all you mother fuckers get gold stars. best thread ever.

Illusions

The grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth. Its favorite diet is adventurers, but its insatiable appetite is tempered by its fear of light. No grue has ever been seen by the light of day, and few have survived its fearsome jaws to tell the tale.

dejawolf

grue? pweh, thats the perfect description of a norwegian troll.
if they are hit by sunlight, they are turned into stone.
norwegian mythology states that the mountains are made of giant petrified trolls.

dejawolf

as for SSS tutorials,

here's a half decent one.
http://www.lamrug.org/resources/doc/sss-skin-tutorial.pdf
lengthy though, but you learn a few things.
for most of this shader stuff you have to be a programmer,
completely void of artistic talent.