Lazy Duchess

WIP Log - Sims 3 Shaders 3 - Skin shader!

Added 2022-10-03 14:36:53 +0000 UTC

Soo here is some more progress, touched up the Sims shaders this time.

The above comparison is a before and after - there's a bit going on:

The hair shader has some fake scattering, making lighting go over the edges a little. Still not completely hapy with it but it looks kinda neat.

The skin shader does a bunch of things, has the same translucency effect as the hair plus a "thickness" texture for making certain details more translucent and reddish as light hits them. The specular is also redone, and there's specific math for ear translucency when the lighting is right.

I'm also experimenting with the eye shader a bit, trying to make more interesting reflections.

The new specular code is more uniform, and is not nearly as strong on clothing as vanilla TS3 shaders are. This is completely customizable though, if you want shiny clothes back or something.

Here you can really see the SSS in action! Though admittedly the shininess is a little out of wack, he looks kinda sweaty.

Finally, here's a scene with most effects in action.

You can also see a subtler effect I've implemented here, which is "light bouncing" - If the room is bright enough the Sim will be slightly illuminated with the average color of the room and the walls, floor and ceiling.

As for the shader framework itself, I've finally gotten around to implementing include files, which means that code and variables can be shared.

So in one file you can now easily configure and toggle features!

Oh and I almost forgot, this is a little shadow experiment which I thought looked REALLY cool. It's kinda buggy and didn't really work great, but it made for some very convincing night/overcast shadows.