3D World - Girl at Window Tutorial

This past week I have focused on a tutorial from issue 210 of 3D world Magazine, looking at skin shaders in V-Ray, following on from the dragon practice, now onto the actual resources.

Not having access to V-Ray, and with Renderman not currently working in Maya 2016 extension 2, I looked through the article and took tips and parts of using sub surface scattering shaders, and applied them to mental rays shaders.


Pretty happy with the result here, I think it could have come out looking nicer in Renderman or V-Ray, I didn't find the MILA skin shader very intuitive to use, I have also gotten a lot more used to lighting in engines like renderman. First attempt was not successful, but spending longer lighting the model on the 2nd attempt, definitely improved the result. One thing I don't like here is that the skin is just a little too shiny or has a bit to much specular in a few areas.


Comped together in Nuke as usual,

The render straight out of Maya:


Passes comped together and Background added in:


Added some light spill from the window:


 The final grade


I quite like the result, it's a more cartoony, somewhat soft shaded image compared to the tutorial, but definitely something I would like to try again. Possibly in a different engine, or with another crack at these shaders, tying to get a more closer to reality look.

I would also like to try this using HDRi lighting, at least to get a base down as this might produce a nicer looking result.

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