Metahuman Skin - SSS, Transmission and Subsurface Profiles in Unreal Engine 5

[Music] hello and welcome today I want to discuss using the sub surface profile shading method to obtain more natural looking results for your meta-human skin [Music] the frame of reference this is what we're talking about today subsurface scattering where light travels through some areas like the ear or the or the fingers on the hand here and scatters Across the Skin In other places you may have seen this as a child shining a torch through your hand for example on real engine docs we have this page subsurface profile shading model and it gives an example look um not using the subsurface profile and then using it you get a more natural looking result sometimes slightly smoother as well but we'll get to that and what is a subsurface profile for those of you don't know the subsurface scattering profile data is an asset that can be created shared and saved in the content browser the data is intended to be authored by artist and controls the distance the light in the subsurface should scatter the color of the subsurface the fall off color of the light once it has exited the object the data can then be applied to a subsurface material subsurface profile data can also be tweaked interactively meaning that you do not need to recompile the material to see the results of the edits with metahumans they already come with a subsurface profile with their material let's see that now here I have a scene with a metahuman and a point light which is placed slightly behind the character if I search for transmission and I enable it we get the subsurface effect on our metahuman the light shines through the ear if we get close enough probably a little too much but for an example it does show you what is happening this works because metahumans use a sub surface profile shading model let's go a little deeper into that now let's open up our meta human blueprint and I'm going to select the face and I want to find the head material here it is here's the material instance for the head there is a crazy amount of adjustments in here which I really like what we're going to search for though is scattering and here it is skin scattering make sure skin scattering is set to one now we need to scroll almost all the way down to the bottom [Music] until we find material property overrides and we're looking for this subsurface profile make sure it's enabled and I'm going to click on the folder icon um what I'm going to do is make a duplicate of this so I don't ruin the original I suggest you do the same [Music] and I'm going to name this add Bernice to it that's the name of my meta human character and then I'm going to select this icon here to make it the subsurface profile then I'm going to save and more importantly I'm going to go back and I'm going to compile my meta human blueprint this will apply that subsurface profile to your character right so the first thing I'm going to do is open up my subsurface profile I will place it side by side with my meta human so I can see what is happening and there are various values in here and adjustments some of these you will use others you won't for example I probably wouldn't touch the world scale settings okay so let's let's adjust some of these values to obtain different results if I start here with the mean free path color I've made it slightly pink and if you look at the viewport as I'm doing this you can see what is happening around the boundaries and with the transmission and the scattering itself I'm going to go to this boundary bleed color and I I want it to be very similar to [Music] what I've already chosen above if we take a look you can see what it is doing there we go and then I'm going to probably make these a very similar color maybe I'll make this one pink yeah like that for now that'll do and then if we come down here to transmission so these various values I rarely touch any of these these Extinction scale for example I wouldn't touch that let's reset that to its default [Music] um the scattering distribution I may use this if we look as we increase [Music] it kind of becomes sharper and lower values tends to distribute it in a way that makes it look smoother again if depending on what you're doing I I really wouldn't touch this value ior again a value I wouldn't touch I'd probably leave this uh the default [Music] um transmission tint I would use this uh as we can see it tints the transmission color uh maybe a red color in this essence um as you can see as pretty profound effect I'll leave it about there that seems to be okay load mix now in order to show your load mix I want to switch on the rest of my lights in the scene you can already see with my meta human that the character looks much softer so the low mix it kind of adds um a roughness so sweat basically you could achieve or or a wet look and so I just want a gentle amount of this but as you can see it kind of adds that reflection in the skin next one I want to adjust is mean path distance I would strongly suggest being very very careful with this for skin and because as you can see when you crank it up it really does make a difference so let's turn off my lights and just go back to the point light and as you can see it's adjusting the distance this subsurface effect seems to be traveling I'm going to be very precise here I think that's too much too if you look if you go too far with this you get like a candle effect now if you are doing a candle or a wax work style effect that would be fantastic but I don't want that for this meta human I just want to soften it gently so maybe 0.18 I'm going to adjust some of the colors again I kind of want a more orangey red color rather than a pink um Maybe yeah that seems about right and then again the boundary bleed color I will probably just copy the mean free path color and also this surface Albedo slightly there we go [Music] again there's no no size this is it's an art I would suggest and I'm reasonably happy with that so now if we turn back on the main lights and as we can see it it does have a profound effect if we just again the mean free path distance I want to soften the Shadows around the nose so maybe 0.22 and as you can see it's softened those Shadows there and I'm reasonably happy with this result [Music] if you would like to support the channel you can go to the link in the description and buy me a coffee from buy me a coffee.com alternatively you can click the thanks button underneath this video and help that way more tutorials are on the way but for now could you please hit the like And subscribe button and comment below with any questions I will see you in the next one foreign [Music]

Channel: Jobutsu

Views: 20,172

Keywords: Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 5, Unreal Engine 5.1, Character Creator, Character Creator 4, Daz Studio, Tutorial, Metahuman, Custom Metahuman, facial mocap, 3d character, ue5, Metahuman Skin, Metahuman materials, Metahuman Shader, Subsurface Profiles, Subsurface scattering, Subsurface shading, sss shading, unreal engine 5.2, unreal engine 5.3

Id: 4Ah4EBZPG8A

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2022