Bio materials

[Judicator]

Hey guys,

I'm working with biological and medical animations, yet there's one thing I can't seem to figure out.
How do I make these fluffy, a bit slimy cellular/bacterial materials? I'm spending too much time on them and I can't afford it.
Maybe you have some tips, or know any tutorials?
Results I'm looking for should be something like this:
http://obutecodanet.ig.com.br/index.php ... -conhecem/

[funky75]

Hi Judicator,
all this kind of effects is about incidence and some bump or displacement..
use an incidence with mixer from red to white and the rest is done by Bump/displ. (simple vision of course)

Nems.

[rnk]

i'd go for some fractal displacements and incidence shading. hope this helps, if you didn't already go down this path...

[Judicator]

I'm already working with incidence. But I like the idea about displacement, bump is just not enough.

[Hirazi Blue]

When working with complex custom shaders, the commercial procedural texturing addon Enhance XSI is a life-saver. It's basically the only commercial plugin I use and at $69 it's very reasonably priced, I'd say.
;)

[kiwimation]

Try using a scalar curve node after your incidence node. It can give you some nice control. I also render my Edge or incidence out as a seperate pass. So i can play with it in comp.

[Judicator]

Thanx for the idea of incidence pass, kiwimation. It may prove useful.
As for the commercial addon, I've ran into this one some time ago, but not yet sure if I should buy it.
But, for example, how would you recreate something like these?
http://www.shaders.co.uk/enhance_xsi/su ... enSkin.htm
http://www.shaders.co.uk/enhance_xsi/su ... Gorred.htm
http://www.shaders.co.uk/enhance_xsi/su ... ogSkin.htm
Is it just a simple texture with displacement, bump and high glossiness?

[rnk]

if you want to get something similar, i'd say the best way would be to mix together some fractals. and use these to drive color, displacement, specular etc.

here's a link to binaryalchemys shader collection which i think is "essential" ; ) the 4d fractal and cell3d are great for these kinds of materials.

http://www.binaryalchemy.de/

Newcomer (<20 posts) alert: please use the URL tags - HB

[azurecgi]

If you are regularly producing medical animations that look like the examples you indicated, you should really look into Zbrush (or Mudbox)!

[angelous4x]

this was a good start for me

http://caffeineabuse.blogspot.com/2008/08/dna-shader.html

but getting bumps and displacements from mudbox would be good for that fine detail./

[Judicator]

If you are regularly producing medical animations that look like the examples you indicated, you should really look into Zbrush (or Mudbox)!

They could really help, but it would take a lot of convincing my boss to buy any of these.

this was a good start for me

http://caffeineabuse.blogspot.com/2008/ ... hader.html

Now that's really useful. I almost achieved something similar on my own, but I'm still not satisfied. Hope this tutorial helps. Thanx!

[azurecgi]

All the medical stuff I do now uses SSS as it gives a lovely 'organic' feel to surfaces. The only downside is that they are slow and prone to flicker in Mental Ray! (I do most rendering via Vray now ;) )

[Judicator]

All the medical stuff I do now uses SSS as it gives a lovely 'organic' feel to surfaces. The only downside is that they are slow and prone to flicker in Mental Ray! (I do most rendering via Vray now ;) )

Maybe you know some web pages with medical modeling/shading/rendering techniques or tutorials?
I didn't have experience with this kind of work before, so it's a bit too sudden for me