Messiah: Render Notes

FTM - From the Manual.

ShaderFlow (fake SSS)

Okay, this is gonna go kinda like a tutorial.
Trying to get some kool SSS effects with messiah,
Gary (Chikega) and I made a nice candle example with messiah back in the summer.
While it was kool with the end results, it was rather extensive and long-winded.
So here's a quickie.

Create a cylinder. Surface it and named it whatever.
Load it into messiah.
Go to setup mode- Tools- add metaeffector - add a effector. Place it on your cylinder inthe picture below.
make sure it has a nice falloff.
Add a nice pointlight and position it like so.

FTM:

The Gradient_&_Fresnel shader, as its name suggests, is actually two shaders in one : a gradient shader and a fresnel shader. They are combined into one because they are most commonly used together. i.e., while fresnel is quite useful all by itself, gradient is useless without some form of input. And since fresnel is the most common input to gradient, they are combined into one for efficiency and to reduce the complexity of the shader flow.  The three blocks that make up this shader are : Gradient , Color , and Input Parameters .

Okay. Now go to render--> material TAB
select you (name) material.
Give it some color.

Go to translucency and add ("+") a Gradient_&_Fresnel

On the gradient panel, setup like so
.

Then switch over to the Input parameter (to the right).

On the "u" input, add ("+") a Weightspot

Ok . we slow down and give you manual stuff .
the "U" input node is for

u:  Lets you choose a specific part of the gradient to use.

its staying at 0.0, cause i want to use the above gradient as is. But you can move around and animate it.

Weightspot

The WeightSpot provides an area for a shader to show upon.  It can be used for lots of interesting effects, such as materials that burn away.

PopupList (pulldown):   Use this pulldown list to select which weight field you want this WeightSpot to use.  For example, you can use MetaEffectors , Curves , etc.

Invert Weight :   Inverts the influence of the weight field.

Local Coordinates: Computes the effect in the local coordinates of the spot/surface/object rather than in World Coordinates .  When this is on, it will allow you to move the object around and not have to worry about where the weight influence items are.  It will look like they are moving with the object.

In our case, we are using "metaeffectors".

Notice when we added the weightspot shader from the gradients panel, the value of the weightspot tool
attached fro the "U" , make note that "value" is usually what you want to use.

However the color of the greyscale gradient is driving the translucency channel. See above.
The candle is mimicking light being transmitted thru it. What if you move light source, then just animate
the effector and fake the look.

So this is a fake SSS using the translucency channel and a meta effector.
Just one way to do it, you can always experiment to get different looks.

Download my finished project file

Mail errors and questions to Julian