Rendering the Enforcer - ZBrush Creature Design: Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games - page 666

7. Open the Material modifiers and click on the S2 slot so that the settings for the SSS shader are available.
Set the Fresnel Factor to 10. This pushes the lighter colors of the gradient toward the edges and keeps the
darker reds and magentas toward the center of the object.
8. In the Mixer, set the SSS slider to -35. Setting this to a negative number makes the effect more prom-
inent toward the center of the object and will eliminate the odd fringe effect seen in the previous render. It
also cuts down on the overall strength of the effect.
Finally one additional “cheat” you can use to sell the look of the skin is to increase the Wax Modifier
slider. The wax modifier simulates translucency by adding a warm coloring to the edges of shadows cast
on the surface. This gives a slight glow to the skin.
9. In the Render palette, turn on the Wax Preview button in the Render Properties (left image in Figure
10-19). This option just gives you a preview of what the wax modifier effect looks like on the surface.
More importantly, it keeps the warning window from appearing every time you adjust the Wax Modifier
slider (see right image in Figure 10-19).
10. At the top of the Material palette, set the Strength slider to 60 in the Wax Modifier subpalette of the
Materials palette. Create a BPR render. The result is shown in the right side of Figure 10-20 .
Figure 10-20: Left image shows a BPR render of the skin material after all the shaders have been com-
bined. The right image shows the render after tweaking the shader values.
11. Use the Save button in the Material palette to save the material as enforcerSkin.ZMT. Save the project
as well.
Paint the Skin Highlights
The skin material is starting to take shape but the specular highlights look very even, giving it a very “CG”
look. Skin naturally has variation in the amount of shininess it has, depending on how much oil and sweat is