I'm looking for someone to develop an SSS macro for distribution with 
humanoid POV-Ray models generated from MakeHuman (an open source humanoid 
modelling tool).

The next release of MakeHuman (currently being developed) already has a 
built-in export option that creates a POV-Ray mesh2 object with UV-mapping 
and corresponding texture maps. The impressive SSS images on pbi have 
prompted interest from the MakeHuman team to also have an SSS macro that can 
be output with the POV-Ray model and distributed under an LGPL license.

Would anyone with SSS POV-Ray knowledge/assets be interested in working 
(with my support) on developing such a macro for the generated models?

Regards,
Chris B.

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Chris B wrote:
> The impressive SSS images on 
> pbi have prompted interest from the MakeHuman team to also have an SSS 
> macro that can be output with the POV-Ray model and distributed under an 
> LGPL license.

Was their interest piqued by my SSS work? My last technique is fraught 
with problems. Individual light sources have to be taken into account, 
the model shouldn't be transformed after the SSS is applied, dark areas 
on the target object cannot be illuminated, it won't work with 
radiosity, and the parse times can be very high to produce an effect 
suitable for something like human skin.

> Would anyone with SSS POV-Ray knowledge/assets be interested in working 
> (with my support) on developing such a macro for the generated models?

I would, but all of the afore-mentioned problems will make my last 
technique difficult for the end-user.

I have some ideas for a very good SSS effect, but it will require new 
features to be added to POV-Ray. Most of the features needed for this 
are already there, but need to be applied for this specific task. I 
think it can be done without bloating the core. E-mail me if you are 
interested in hearing my ideas. I can post an example image somewhere to 
show you how it will look. Is the MakeHuman team willing to wait until 
POV can natively support an opaque surface SSS effect?

Sam

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I might be wrong but wasn't one of the advantages of the 'solid' povray 
objects compared to the 'triangle'- / 'quad'-based scanline renderers 
that you don't need SSS to create realistic see-through materials / 
effects / whatever?

Not that I would be against SSS. I just don't understand it :-)

Greets
Arne

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> Was their interest piqued by my SSS work?

Yes, and, by the way I was very impressed too.

> My last technique is fraught with problems. Individual light sources have 
> to be taken into account, the model shouldn't be transformed after the SSS 
> is applied, dark areas on the target object cannot be illuminated, it 
> won't work with radiosity, and the parse times can be very high to produce 
> an effect suitable for something like human skin.

I did take a look at your macros but was unable to follow what they were 
doing. I also took a look at Wikipedia about SSS and, although I understood 
the basic explanation of the principles, I wasn't able to piece together how 
one could start implementing that in code. I should say that I'm not very 
strong on high quality textures in general.

>> Would anyone with SSS POV-Ray knowledge/assets be interested in working 
>> (with my support) on developing such a macro for the generated models?
>
> I would, but all of the afore-mentioned problems will make my last 
> technique difficult for the end-user.

ok.
It would of course be ideal to have a generic, easy to use SSS technique, 
but if that's not currently possible then it may be sensible to scale back 
the objectives. Given that we have control over the exported humanoid figure 
and quite detailed information about the model available within MakeHuman, 
is there anything extra that we may be able to generate into the exported 
model that might assist with implementing the technique?

The next option down the scale could be to work on a standard lighting and 
camera setup that would enable sample SSS images to be generated, although 
the average user may have to fall back on just the uv-mapped texture maps 
for incorporating the models into their own scenes. A small team of artists 
is currently starting work on manually crafted ethnicity, gender and age 
morph targets. A standardised SSS scene could enable a nifty set of graphics 
to be incorporated into the MakeHuman user documentation and, if we could 
incorporate something as a rendering option into exported POV-Ray models, 
this could provide users with something that they could play with and that 
may inspire them to further explore and enhance the technique in the future.

> E-mail me if you are interested in hearing my ideas.

Thanks. I will.

> Is the MakeHuman team willing to wait until POV can natively support an 
> opaque surface SSS effect?

The upcoming release of MakeHuman will hopefully be relatively soon, but 
enhancements can certainly be added to future releases of MakeHuman to take 
advantage of any parallel enhancements in POV-Ray.

Regards,
Chris B.

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"Arne Kleinophorst" <Sir### [at] spamdebitelnet> wrote in message 
news:48e9321a$1@news.povray.org...
>I might be wrong but wasn't one of the advantages of the 'solid' povray 
>objects compared to the 'triangle'- / 'quad'-based scanline renderers that 
>you don't need SSS to create realistic see-through materials / effects / 
>whatever?

The model exported from MakeHuman will be a mesh2 object made up of 
triangular faces. I'm not sure whether other techniques can get such high 
quality results, maybe they can. The best I've seen so far have been the SSS 
results.

Nevertheless, other techniques aren't ruled out. In fact, I'd be quite happy 
to output multiple textures from the MakeHuman export option and give the 
POV-Ray user the choice of which texture to use at render time. Maybe it 
would be good to have one reasonable quality, quick to render technique and 
one best quality. I've come up with a texture using specular and diffuse 
that look kind of ok to me and that renders in seconds, but I have to admit 
that textures aren't really my strong point, so ideas for improvement would 
be welcome.

> Not that I would be against SSS. I just don't understand it :-)

I've read a little about SSS and find it produces impressive results, but I 
can't really claim to understand how it produces those results, and I've 
never been able to reproduce such impressive results myself.

Regards,
Chris B.

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