these are the shadersettings for the renderings i posted earlier.
for the scale, the head is about 4,2 si units high, so i use realistic scaling and arealights with mr's physical lights node.



here is a slighty tuned version with brighter lighting including the new ibl and also env reflections. this also shows that a real specmap is needed (spec is a bit to much in general) and not only one extracted from the dispmap. i also used a bumpmap, gives some better reflection details.
bleeding is softer in this version.

Once again, looks great! Thank you very much for sharing.

i did another one, this time with ibl only and fg for sec gi bounce, means no keylight. the one in the rendering is generated by ibl and intensity is set thru sun intensity parameter.
two things, its perhaps a bit to dark because of my actual poor monitor and i need to tune the spec more. but the sss ist the same like in the other renderings. there was no need to tune this for the new lightsetup.

Thanks for posting these settings kzin - its helped me with this.

Are you using any camera exposure settings?

nice model.

no, i dont use the exposure shader here. i use is very rarely because i dont kneed it most time.

i played more with the shader and changed a bit the sss itself.
this time i used a way brighter version of the colormap as input for the epidermal scatter. that results is slightly better color preservation for scattering and overall color rendering.
i also used tony reynolds rgb radii settings this time but i had to change them a bit for more appealing result. i also worked more on the spec, but its the end here without a custom painted map.

Hey those are nice renders

I updated 1st post with a new version of SkinSSS2 and added the SimpleSSS2 compound

Kzin, diffuse having control over SSS was actually done by mistake. Although it obviously works out really fine, I repaired that in the new version because it's somewhat unexpected and some tuning control is lost. It's possible however to get the exact previous behavior by connecting the diffuse texture to both "Diffuse" and "Diffuse+SSS Multiplier" together - this is at least how it was wired by accident in the first version.

Old version still available here

Some other changes in the new version:
* Rendertree connectors/layout fixed, exposed "scale" for texturing and added Sampling Radius Mulitplier
* Tidied PPGs a little
* SkinSSS2 Compound has default values from Kzin's post above

thx, will test the new one as soon as possible.

first fast test with the new compound.
you have more control now thru the sampling radius multiplier, have to do more tests with it.

Looks so good I'm considering shaving my eyelashes

Here's a test I did with photon (lit with caustics only)