Random Walk Skin Vs Random Walk 4.0

[CookItOff]

Hey Thomas, I see that you’re making changes for 4.0 Beta. I noticed that the Global setting don’t have an option for the new Random Walk Skin setting. Thanks for the work, It’s great that I can start loading characters into 4.0 to test now.

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Here is a comparison between the two. I didn’t adjust another values minus switching Random Walk to Random Walk Skin.

Random walk skin seems to keep the SSS from bleeding in certain areas i.e. fatty area of nostrils where it meets the cheek, indention between the lips and nose, mouth creases. Also the SSS color seems to be more natural with Random Walk Skin.

Thanks

I only made adjustments to the head material not body or anything else.

Download both images and flick between both and you can really notice the difference.

Random Walk:

Random Walk Skin:

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[Alessandro Padovani]

I don’t advise to use random walk with daz figures, since random walk only works fine on continuous close meshes and genesis figures are not. Below a comparison with the monkey in 4.0 we can see bleeding artifacts apart burley that works fine. Also random walk doesn’t work with eevee it reverts to burley.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/4.0/render/shader_nodes/shader/sss.html

That said adding “random walk skin” as an option is just a matter of the enumerator I guess, I have no specific advice for that apart not using it.

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[Alessandro Padovani]

blender 4.0 sss

[CookItOff]

I disagree. And I’m not sure why you’re using Susan as a test case as its mesh is nothing like the DAZ G9 mesh.

The default CB looks noticeably worse than Random Walk Skin in the ears, folds of the nose, and the eyelid edges and folds. With CB you have a plastic look and lose Normal Map detail. Also the SSS with CB is magnified in those areas mentioned above and it allows way too much light to pass through. Trying to dial in those trouble spots makes the overall skin look worse.

Random Walk Skin, designed to be used on skin, allows for a more natural look and doesn't highlight those trouble areas like CB does.

Either way glad it will be trivial for Thomas to add.

Here are comparisons of the two different settings. Save both images and open in a viewer were it’s easy to flick between the two.

Random Walk Skin: Below

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CB: Below

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[Alessandro Padovani]

I am not sure what you disagree about. What I reported above are technical limits documented in the blender manual and the test scene with Suzanne quickly reveals those limits. Then your personal preferences are another matter of course.

[Thomas Larsson]

Random walk (fixed radius for Blender 3.x, xkin for Blender 4.x) has been added to the subsurf option, with Burley still as the default. So this is the same as Blender does. I don’t have an opinion about what is best, but it makes sense to me to do the same as Blender.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Commit 6ecc292.

Nope, here fixed radius is back in 3.x but the new 4.0 “random walk skin” doesn’t appear in the global settings.

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update. Oops .. I forgot to update both 3.x and 4.0. The new “random walk skin“ appears in the global settings, but if I try to import a figure it gives an error.

steps:

1. set “random walk skin“ in global settings (blender 4.0 beta)
2. import G8F as principled

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[Thomas Larsson]

I don’t have access to a decent win 11 machine until Monday, so I cannot test Blender 4. However, the crash should be gone. I use the same sss settings as random walk fixed radius.

[Alessandro Padovani]

Yep, commit d269bb8 works fine thank you for the fix.