psmike

Update - Shader changes due to new Blender version

Added 2022-09-26 18:34:42 +0000 UTC

In the last few weeks, I have updated my workstation and with it some of my currently used programs. Especially with Blender there were some new great features and essential improvements with the last updates.

Version 3.3 however changed the way how volume materials are working. This change made rendering volume materials faster but unfortunately you are now limited to a single volume material per object.

If you do so anyway, volume bleeding will occur on models with multiple materials, which is very noticeable in close-ups of highlighted areas.
(Feel free to zoom in on the areas marked in red to see the issue)

This problem has also been discussed in this thread, but it doesn't look like it will be fixed soon: https://developer.blender.org/T101061

As I'm using volume materials to illustrate "iray (daz render engine) like" subsurface scattering (SSS) within cycles (blender render engine) in all of my current projects, this change forced me to create a new subsurface scattering shader setup without using volumes...

On the right side of the comparison picture of this post you can see the results.

I tried to get the same results, but these configurations are just fundamentally different from how they work, so some areas look worse, and others look better than before. Please feel free to let me know your opinion on this new shader!

Even though this shader took me more time than expected, my projects will benefit from all the other new features in the newest Blender version.