Human Progress

**bobakabob** · 05-10-2014, 04:03 AM

Goodbye uncanny valley. Keep pushing the boundaries, Chris. At some point this guy is going to walk out of the screen.

**vector** · 05-10-2014, 04:12 AM

I'm starting hate Chris Jones...

he makes me feel so small

Amazing work, as usual

**kadri** · 05-10-2014, 07:24 AM

Amazing! Curious about the animation

**Chris Jones** · 05-10-2014, 08:32 AM

Heheh thanks.

Render time was 4 hours. That's not all down to SSS though; FFX slows it down considerably, and it really crawls over the brows and lashes (which are geometry). I can reduce this quite a bit with negligible degradation, as long as I'm only doing stills...

Here's the Sigma2 part of the network:

Click image for larger version.

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**prometheus** · 05-10-2014, 11:40 AM

Absolutely...Stunning!

Soo awesome...though I hope we soon can get improvements on VPR to show exactly the same as what the final render does, with all the skin materials and the rest of SSS shaders/materials.
Maybe that could have helped you getting to this even faster etc.

Thanks for showing it to us and giving a way some of the workflow.

Michael

**MSherak** · 05-10-2014, 11:29 PM

Originally Posted by Chris Jones

I was fiddling around with Sigma2, and found that not only does it behave in a more skin-like fashion than Simple Skin, but it also allows control over reflection blur, doesn't require a closed mesh, and displays none of that unsightly intersection glow. So now I've covered his whole head with it:

The main drawback is that it renders black in VPR. Despite this (and the crippled caustics and frangible FFX), LW has been a bit more cooperative this time around. I also reshaped the head and improved the brows and lashes a bit.

Holy *&^%!!! Fantastic work Chris.

**lardbros** · 05-11-2014, 06:53 AM

Very kind of you to share your techniques so openly Chris... Much appreciated!

**jasonwestmas** · 05-11-2014, 07:42 AM

Originally Posted by Chris Jones

I was fiddling around with Sigma2, and found that not only does it behave in a more skin-like fashion than Simple Skin, but it also allows control over reflection blur, doesn't require a closed mesh, and displays none of that unsightly intersection glow. So now I've covered his whole head with it:

Attachment 121826

The main drawback is that it renders black in VPR. Despite this (and the crippled caustics and frangible FFX), LW has been a bit more cooperative this time around. I also reshaped the head and improved the brows and lashes a bit.

The only things that destroy the illusion of realism is the consistent skin color around the eye socket area and lack of definition in the nose. Really nice regardless.

I would be surprised if you don't get flickering when you do a turntable of this. Sigma 2 is one of those prepass nodes. I never got an answer on whether or not they were designed for animation but I could never get them to not flicker (few years back) Perhaps the original sigma would render better.

**Netvudu** · 05-12-2014, 06:58 AM

Yes,as awesome as this render is, the fact the Chris is using Sigma 2 makes me skeptical about the flickering it will show in render.
At any rate this project is a milestone for Lightwave.

**BigHache** · 05-12-2014, 09:38 AM

Yup, digging it.

**bobakabob** · 05-12-2014, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by Netvudu

Yes,as awesome as this render is, the fact the Chris is using Sigma 2 makes me skeptical about the flickering it will show in render.
At any rate this project is a milestone for Lightwave.

A great focus for the Dev team to work on fine tuning Lightwave's renderer for sigma in animation and VPR. Chris's combination of SSS and spec is the best and fantastic r & d for the software. VPR should be able to render this node and it should be refined to be animateable if there are issues.

**Tobian** · 05-12-2014, 02:28 PM

I'd rather they just fix the issues of penetration that skin and simple skin suffer from, as they are much better shaders and already work with VPR. I am surprised Chris got such nice results from Sigma, as it always gives me pretty awful results. He's had to fiddle on with it to get the results he has.

**jasonwestmas** · 05-12-2014, 08:08 PM

Originally Posted by bobakabob

A great focus for the Dev team to work on fine tuning Lightwave's renderer for sigma in animation and VPR. Chris's combination of SSS and spec is the best and fantastic r & d for the software. VPR should be able to render this node and it should be refined to be animateable if there are issues.

I've never seen a progressive renderer be able to render pre-passes but I suppose it's possible in some form. I agree that it would be better to refine what lightwave has already rather than creating 10 different SSS nodes.