Gentlemen at the Old Bath (censored version) (Patreon)

Hello everyone,

A new image for November. It's the image based of last month winning suggestion "The Prince and the Pauper : Two almost identical muscular guys with a chance meeting in an old London bath house. (Suggested by Richie)"

I have to say I didn't know how to do this at first... But after trying different angles and possibilitiés, the locker room where both can get undressed and showing their clothes and their bodies was the best way to picture this in my opinion.

I spent almost 2 weeks on this image... Not only on the image by itself but also on the skin shader. I finally understood why my skin shader was not as it used to be. I'll explain that at the end of this message, so if you're interested, I'll do a paragraph about this. 

Now, I'm posting the uncensored version and naked versions (one completely naked and one only with the underwears off).

I'll send the November rewards links later tomorrow. I'm a bit late, sorry for this sorry.

I hope you'll enjoy this image. :-)

Take care,

Alex

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About the shader:

In April 2022, I've changed my graphic cards (I had 2 Nvidia 1080ti) and bought a huge 3090ti to get faster renders mostly.

But as I was working on my first image with the new card installed, Blender, my 3D software, indicated me that it couldn't make a render as the card was not recognized. I was working on Blender 2.93 at this time and I had to get a more recent Blender version, Blender 3.0. 

But as I did, I realized that Blender had changed completely the calculation of SubSurface scattering (SSS), what helps me to create the translucency of my characters's skin. The type of calculation was different, the scales were different... A complete different shader module) 

So I tweaked my whole skin shader to get something close to what I had before but it wasn't exactly that. Something was off but I couldn't spend more time on this because I had to produce images...

So most of the times, I had to "fake" that skin softness that I love im my older images in Photoshop. It was extremely frustrating because 1: I was spending a lot of time on that and 2: I knew that it was not as good as it was. 

2 months ago, I spent a whole weekend working on this issue, creating a softer skin shader. I used it first on the campfire image. It was better but I had issues in certain lightings, angles. The part around the eyes were weird, I had to cover this up (they were kind of glowing yellow...)

And the other day, I search on internet to see if someone else had this issue but didn't find a thing. So I began to search for video tutorial about this new shader module in Blender, to see how it works, basically...  I found a great video and I suddenly understood where my problem was coming from!! You have several option to calculate how the SSS works in Blender. By default, it was set on "Random Walk" but the results were horrible. Then, I tried the "Random Walk (fixed radius)", and the results were better. There was a third options at the top, Christensen Burley but the results were close to The "Random Walk", terrible...

So I stayed with the second option and tried to get the best of it.

But in the video, the guy said: "The Christensen Burley" option is close to what we had before with the "Gaussian" option in Blender 2.79, 2.8 and 2.9." And this "Gaussian" option was the one I was using before, giving my moels this soft touch that I loved. He added in substance that the only change was the radius, that wasn't fixed.

And it clicked: the terrible results I had with the Christensen Burley were due to the radius. (how the light enters the model and how the Red, green and blue component of the light scatter through it) 

So I reworked my shader nearly from scratch, and it worked perfectly: I was getting the same softness that I had before with my skin shader. No weird results from different angles,  no more "blocky" aspect of my shader, that "plastic" feeling that I had and had to correct in photoshop, no more yellow glowing around the eyes...

The only thing missing is the fact that before, the texture applied on the model was blurred as the light enters the model. So I had to tweak this in my shader, creating a way to blur my textures. 

And the reslut is really were close to what I had before. I spent a whole evening on this and went to bed at 3am, doing tons of testing, modifications, etc... 

I was so exctited that I finally got my old shader quality back that I couldn't sleep. :-D

I've already started my next image after the one I just posted here. A very "fleshy" character. I can't wait to experiment this new shader on him.

So stay tuned for more!! :-) 

Alex (feeling like Austin Power who got his Mojo back!!! ;-) )