At the same time, I proceeded to draw the second, deep layer. There are many veins, and lots of blood and flesh and the result looks terrible, but don't worry about it. If you put everything together, you get a very good base for render settings (Fig.15 & Fig.16).



Using the method of trial and error, I was looking for "perfect skin". There were a lot of variants and so I've only shown a few examples here (Fig.17 – Fig.19).




I would like to note that these options may have light (more about this later), and project all the maps. Here, I gave preference to the mental ray SSS fast skin shader to make the material on the different models appear slightly different (Fig.20).


I want to caution you against blindly copying the settings shaders. This will not change the results. Every time I've tried to copy the settings another artist used, the results were garbage. I did not begin to understand what the slider is responsible for and nor do I know how it relates to anything (maybe with the size bar on the "world” scenes, I don't know). In any case, the scheme is simply to help you understand the general meaning of SSS material. I also want to stop at a bump bar. I lost the file with the exact settings, so I have written the sets from memory with numerical values. This may not be accurate, but the meaning is clear.

Lighting

A lot of time was spent with lighting set up. I needed light sources. I tried to use the sunlamp, but it did not work and I was perplexed. At last, I figured it out. Unscrew the brightness of lamp stands and the area will be much higher, giving me the desired result. So, to achieve something with the look of a beautiful painting, set the multicoloured light reflectors (Fig.21).