Cycles visual tips and tricks thread.

One thing I have noticed that we have lacked in this forum is a clear cut tips and tricks thread that’s rich in illustration and visual examples, so I thought I would start one here.

The rules.

  1. -Make the example images clear and concise on what the tip or trick is
  2. -Don’t overwhelm the viewer with long-winded text in your posts, place text within the example image if needed
  3. -Try to avoid making a video, we want to have an idea of what can be done right away.

To kick off the new thread, I’ll start with this image on how you can get good quality SSS shading without darkening and with the maximum possible amount of energy without violating conservation rules (to get the scattering within the material to be as visible and effective as possible).


Let’s go :cool:

Great idea,will keep my eye on this thread.

Great !

Here’s something I use to control the radius (scattering light) of a sss node. Maybe you guys do this all the time, but maybe it’s useful for some newbees like me.


-R

It’s fine, I have found this idea to be of good use for simplifying node group setups containing multi-layered SSS (one input with a strong visual cue instead of three number fields).

Yes, one ring to rule them all :wink: I like the fast feedback.

Another case where the ‘add shader’ node comes in handy, better diffuse texture visibility on glossy objects (and thus better saturation as well) all while still conserving energy.


One thing that needs to be taken away from here though is that for 90 percent of material types (one exception being in my initial post), you would mainly want to use the add shader node to combine shaders that work with or produce different ray types. So for limited use you can do stuff like diffuse/glossy or diffuse/glossy/translucent, but not stuff like diffuse/diffuse or glossy/glossy.