A Guide To - Skin Material With ZBrush and Single Pass BPR - PabloMunozG PDF

A Guide to Skin Material in Zrbush & Single Pass BPR by Pablo Munoz Gomez
a guide to
skin material
in zbrush &
single pass bpr by Pablo Munoz Gomez
BONUS
repurposing
the SKIN MTL
Including
for rendering resources
creatures
www.pablander.com 1
acne: pimples, blemishes, etc.

Introduction
I know I have kept you waiting for this tutorial for a while
but I took my time because I wanted to give you guys a
quality tutorial that you can easily follow.
Like my previous two eBooks: Creating dreadlocks with

fibermesh and Wet Clay material; this new tutorial is also
for an intermediate level user. However I do go over
some main things in detail and if you are an experienced
user you can follow the highlighted words and phrases -
that alone should give you a good understanding of my
workflow.
Let’s get started!
Research Dry:
I didn’t want to bore you too much with the research Thin
behind this tutorial so I decided to filter the information almost invisible pores
into what I consider to be the most relevant bits. Dull and rough
prompt to crack and peel... more wrinkles
Skin types
I have used many skin types in this project as well as
making new skin types by mixing several of the ones I
have made. For practical purposes, I will mention the
two fundamental types: dry and oily.
When working in ZBrush I used to think that dry skin

needed a diffuse shader and for the oily skin I could
just throw a specular shader on top to make it shiny.
Well, in some cases that simple approach could work but
it won’t get very realistic results, there are a few other
differences between these types of skin, apart from the
specularity.
Oily skin is thick, usually has visible large pores and

is often regarded as bad skin because of an excessive OK, so why is all of this important or relevant to this
production of sebum (natural skin lubricant), which tutorial? Well, since the idea is to create a realistic type
causes shininess and pimples. Oily skin is also less of skin (whether it is human or creature skin), taking into
prompt to wrinkles. account the characteristics of the skin type will help us
push the believability factor even further. This way we
Dry skin usually looks tight and is prompt to crack can avoid things that realistically won’t make much sense
and peel due to a lack of sebum (lubricant). It also has in general, for example, modelling an old man’s face with
a slower cellular renewal process which means that the a lot of wrinkles, pimples and skin bumps everywhere
cells do not repair as fast, making the epidermis thinner and then applying a very oily shader to it (this would end
(more on this later). Also, you can see “reddish” spots up being a mix of the different properties of the two types
more clearly. of skin and that is not realistic).
The above descriptions are concise but the main things Tip: If you are modelling a face with large pores and
we need to know from each type are: skin bumps, they are less likely to be located around the
eyes and neck.
Oily:
Thick Skin Layers

large pores
shiny Chances are you have probably used or heard about
less wrinkles
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this, especially if you have worked with subsurface this is a property that in nature, almost all materials
scattering materials. Let’s see how knowing these skin have (to different degrees). The way it works (in a
layers will help us with ZBrush BPR render. very simplified way) is that when the rays of light hit
the surfaces of a material, a portion of the rays is
There are 3 main layers: reflected and another portions is absorbed.
Epidermis: Outer layer - the surface The light rays that are absorbed by the material, are
Dermis: Middle thicker layer - layer of connective tissue “distributed” inside the object in various directions
Hypodermis: Inner layer - mostly the fat storage before exiting it - this is an easy way to think about
the term scattering and all this, happens under the
surfaces of the object so clearly Sub-Surface is a good
name for it.
The rays of light that exit the object, after being

scattered, are what we see and because they have been
passing through the material, we get a taste of what is
inside the material (sort of). What is inside the skin
material is exactly the same for every person regardless
of their skin colour or the type of their skin. I will super
simplify it for you - just call it is BLOOD.
Understanding this will make it easier for you to create all

If you are familiar with renderers such as Mental Ray, sort of materials with SSS, ranging from a wax statue to
V-ray, Arnol, etc., you probably know that is standard to an alien creature with green skin and blue blood, not just
have 3 layers or 3 maps like these ones: human skin.
Now let’s simplify the concept of the 3

Layers of the skin even more. From this point
onwards, and for the purpose of this tutorial,
I will just use two terms Inner (Dermis and
hypodermis) and Outer (epidermis) and you can think
of them as the blood inside and the skin surface.
You will get a better grasp of this when we go through

the practical stuff. I just wanted to share a bit of the
theory in the way I assimilate it.
Skin pigmentation
These three maps helped me to create something like Skin colour is mainly determined by a substance
this: called Melanin and basically the more of this substance
that a body produces, the darker the skin will be. Of
Knowing this is course this is the result of natural selection and in a great
very useful and deal to protect the body from Ultra Violet rays. The dark
when implemented skin protects the body from UV rays much better than
correctly, it give lighter skin.
amazing results.
The way that There is an interesting article that you can read if you’re
ZBrush does SSS interested about pigmentation, it is a bit dense but it help
is a bit differently me to understand a couple of things:
though, so let’s see
if I can explain how Zonios, George., Bykowski, Julie., and Kollias, Nikiforos.
SSS works a bit (2001) Skin Melanin, Hemoglobin, and Light Scattering
better: Properties can be Quantitatively Assessed In Vivo
Using Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy, Journal of
First let’s get Investigative Dermatology, 117, 1452–1457.
the meaning of
SSS out of the For this tutorial, here is what I think is useful: Dark-skin
way. SSS stands protects the body better than the light-skin from the
for Sub-Surface UV rays.
Scattering, and
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The way I interpret this information in practical terms,

it might be not entirely accurate but, I think it works: the
Main features that need to be
Melanin substance hels the skin to provides protection reproduced to create a realistic
from ultra violet rays so is like a “shield”. The sun rays skin shader
bounce when they hit the surface of the skin, so the
more protection a skin colour has (in darker skin), the Here I will just quickly summaries a list of skin features
more rays that will bounce; the less protection in the that I think are essential to achieve a realistic render.
skin (in lighter skin) the more rays will go through. With
this in mind, let’s summaries the key features of each Diffuse (texture, colour)
pigmentation: Secularity (shiny, oily)
Translucency (SSS)
Dark skin has a “stronger shield”:
More rays bounce from the surface - more specular Building up a skin material and setting up a render
Less rays that can go through - more subtle SSS effect in ZBrush is much easier if you treat the characteristics
of the skin as steps of a process, so I would start with
diffuse as step 1, followed by specularity (step 2) and
finally the SSS (step 3). This will make more sense soon
when you get to that part of the tutorial.
I hope I haven’t confused you or bored you too much by

this point, either way I think the next part of the tutorial
will paint a clearer picture.
About BPR render

ZBrush Gives you the option to render with
Best, Preview, fast and flat. The BPR (Best-Preview
Render) gives the best quality for 3D models (in edit
mode) and this is what we will be using.
Light skin has a “weaker shield”:
Absorbs more sun rays - more diffused light It is good to know that although the idea of this tutorial
More rays that can go through - stronger SSS effect is create a good looking single pass render, the BPR
render will always render each pass separately (as long
as you turn it on from the BPR passes). You can tweak
your image further after rendering it anyway.
The reason I use BPR over the other methods is that it

gives me a lot of control when creating each pass
and also when adjusting the image all within ZBrush.
NOTE: For a lot of the images I create, I definitely like to

tweak the passes separately and do the compositing in
Photoshop (I also enjoy the compositing process a lot).
The single BPR pass, however, gives me a fast and nice
looking render that I can quickly fine tune without leaving
ZBrush. It also allows me to create nice turntables and
dish out multiple angles of a single model very very
quickly.
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You are probably familiar with this but let’s take a look
Creating the at it anyway to understand how this works could help
you enhance the effect of realistic skin with the BPR
Skin Material single pass.
We are getting closer to the good stuff, so in this section The Wax Preview is very cool, I like it because you can
I will guide you thought my process of creating see the effect in real time while you are modelling and
materials in ZBrush. If you have read my previous if you know how to tweak it, you could get a very nice
tutorial on WET CLAY, you might already have an insight looking skin material with nothing more than this.
on my work-flow, therefore the intro to the materials However, sometimes the Wax Preview render could
section in this tutorial will be brief (you can refer back to work against you. I have seen very nice and detailed
the WET CLAY tutorial if you want, because the process sculptures that overuse the effect and end up loosing
of creating a material is the same). contrast and definition.
Bottom line, this will be a step by step tutorial showing In this following section, I will show you some practical
you how I created a very specific thing: A ZBrush examples of each one of the attributes for the wax
skin shader for single pass render using Best- preview render. If you would like to test this yourself as
Preview Render. What this means is that this method you read it, make sure you turn it on from the render
will probably give you great results when rendering skin properties AND make sure that the strength slider from
with ZBrush BPR, but it might not be the ideal material to the materials wax modifier is more than 0.
use during the modelling phase or to render other type of
materials.
Why ZBrush Materials instead of

Matcaps
OK, for the skin shader I used a standard ZBrush
material rather than making a skin MatCap for 3 main
reasons:
1. I wanted full control on the different attributes of

the material (i.e. diffuse and specular). OK, let’s take a look at the wax modifiers... Wax (the
real material), is a material that has a very strong SSS
2. I wanted the material to react to the light rig I effect. You could potentially say that the stronger the
created. Remember that MatCap (Material Capture) SSS effect is, the closer the material is to wax. If we
also captures the light so this is not ideal for what we move the strength slider down a bit, you can tell that it
are after. is less waxy and it starts to look more like the SSS effect
in the skin; a bit more subtle.
3. I used a head model with Polypaint Texture so I The specular slider allows to add or remove the wax
didn’t want to affect that with any colour or diffuse effect from the highlights, this is quite handy since you
information from a MatCap. can subtlety add a fake SSS to some dark areas and
transitions on your 3D model.
With all the testing that I have done with MatCaps and
Standard Materials I realised that in most cases (and
also depending on what effect you are after), when you
tweaked a MatCap to the point you are happy with and
then you added a colour or texture map, the result was
somehow inconsistent. With a standard material, on the
contrary, if a colourless model looks good with just the
material, when a polypaint layer or texture is applied the
render, will look much better!
Understanding the Wax Preview Fresnel allows you to move the wax effect so it faces
the camera or you can shift it to be angled away from
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the camera. The exponent multiplys the intensity of the 1. I like to work with small document while I create
effect. the shader so I can render it fast; I change my
document size to: 1080 w X 720 h and drag the head
tool onto the canvas.
You can also combine the Fresnel effect with the 2. The tool has polypaint which you won’t need at this
Radius. The Radius allows you to spread the wax effect point, so make sure it is off (not visible) and assign
so if you set the value very low you end up with a very the model a Quadshader (at the bottom, from the
sharp effect. material library).
The temperature is a nice effect that could be

subtle but powerful. If you are making human
skin, regardless of the pigmentation,
the temperature should be hot or red simply because
the blood is red. If you were making a fishy creature
or alien that has a cold blue blood, you could change
this to be cold and this will help create the effect.
3. I also like to position the model on an angle that

is not too close or too far (in distance), basically an
angle that I can see the general shape and at the
same time, judge how the shader looks with the
details of the model. I also like to store that view and
I suggest you do the same. In case you move the
OK, so let’s keep it simple. The wax preview will be model, you can come back to the same position. This
useful only after the skin shader is built to add an extra will be very handy later, when you are comparing the
subtle effect but it won’t be the primary feature of the effects of the shaders.
material. The idea here is that the effect will be achieved
from the material channels and the way the shaders are
mixed, you can therefore have extra control and a more
accurate result.
Building the skin Material

OK, here is where the real fun begins! In this section I
will show you step by step how I created a simple shader
that, with a little tweaking, could give you very good
results using the BPR.
Open up a new document to start fresh and load the Now, before we continue there are a couple of things
Pablander_head.ZTL, it should come up in the lowest you might want to know (in case you don’t) about the
subdivision level. If you want, you can use your own QuadShader. First thing you will notice is that it looks
model, but I suggest you follow the tutorial with the like the model is overexposed, instinctively you may try
model I shared, just so you can see precisely what I will to lower the intensity of the light BUT DONT! The shader
show you through the steps and match the results you looks like that by default. The 4 “slots” that make the
will be getting. This first steps do not need to be in shader are ON, so the effect of the shader is being
this order but I usually start like this: multiplied by 4. And, the other thing you might notice
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is that the attributes of the QuadShader are the same Turn off all the shaders except the first one, I will
as the ZBrush default SkinShade4, so why is the only talk about the shader attributes necessary to
QuadShader more suitable for what we are trying to do? create this skin material but if you want a bit more info
of what each one of the sliders do, check the ZBrush
Well, put it this way: you can tweak the SkinShade4 documentation or my previous tutorial that talks about
and get pretty good results already so with the the wet clay material.
QuadShader you have 4 times more control. This
will make more sense as we progress. Also to Set the Ambient slider
avoid confusion I will refer to the QuadShader, from now between 20 to 25 and the
on, as Skin Material, because each one of the “Slots” diffuse all the way to 100.
inside the Material are actually Shaders. The idea is that this Shader
1 is going to be the colour/
4. Go ahead and open up the left tray dock in the texture of our material.
Materials palette and expand the modifiers of the Also, for this shader, I
material, turn off the shaders, one at a time, and you tweaked the diffuse curve to
will see the effect getting less and less strong. look like this.
Just click on the curve to

create a point and drag it,
this is a tiny little trick that
will add a little bit of “fake
SSS”. Basically, you are
editing the fall-off of the shader, so with a curve shaped
like this, you will get less contrast on the detailed areas
of your models. The reason I said is a fake SSS effect, is
because with a fall-off like this you get less shadows
and less shadows could suggest that more light is
passing through, filling the little areas like pores and
bumps and therefore suggesting the SSS effect (very
basic but it all adds up towards the final material).
NOTE: by the same principle, if you invert the shape

of the diffuse curve, you get a “velvet” type shader
or exaggerating the same curve shape you get the
“posterise” effect. (Ambient set to 0 for these examples):
OK, that’s about it for setting up the project. I suggest

you save and let’s start building the Skin Material.
Creating the diffuse shader

For the diffuse shader, I’ll be
using the first shader of the
material (first from left to right),
the order of the shaders is
important because the way we
are going to mix them.
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Let’s try to keep things as simple as possible, so the last thing I changed for the diffuse
shader was the specular: I gave it 2 points in the specular slider and tweaked the curve to
be smoother:
I also like the specular colour to always be white. To do this, I changed the colorise
specular slider to be 100 and selected white for the specular colour. Finally, I added a bit
to the high dynamic range modifier.
You might notice that the model looks overexposed, almost as white as it was when you first
applied the Quadshader. Don’t panic, this is intentional, turn on the polypaint by clicking
on Colorise. You’ll see that the texture looks OK on the model. Leave it on for now, and
we just need to tweak a couple more of sliders that I’ve found to be very useful, but are
not that popular.
They are the Anisotropic Diffuse and the Anisotropic Specular, you can easily achieve the same velvet effect
I mentioned earlier by changing this attribute because what it does, is shift the effect of the diffuse (or specular)
shader across the model. So, 0 means there is no effect and 100 means is completely inverted, I left the
Anisotropic Diffuse at 0.28 and the Anisotropic Specular at 0.19.
You won’t see much difference by changing the specular This is exactly what we need to see at this point,
slider because we only added 2 points to the slider, so it almost a flat texture with not a lot of shadows and
will be very subtle. very few contrast areas. Kind of an in-between a
contrasted diffuse shader and a completely flat shader.
That’s it for the first shader, 3 more to go. If you hit BPR
right now you should get something like this:
Creating the Specular shader

I mentioned earlier the main features I think
are necessary to reproduce the realistic skin, so the next
one on the list is specularity and for the purpose of this
tutorial, I will try to create a generic “specular”. What I
mean by that, is that it will be in the middle of dry skin
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type and oily skin type (this way you can save a generic material that is easier to tweak depending on the nature of
your future projects).
The specular or “shininess” of the skin is achieve by adding a specular shader to our current material, which so
far has the diffuse shader we just built and 3 more generic shaders. First, let’s set up the model so we can easily
judge the contribution of the specular by itself... Turn off polypaint, turn off the diffuse shader (click on the little
dot from the slot 1 of the material) and turn on the shader 3. The shader 3 will be the specular we are going to keep
shader 4 for the SSS contributions and shader 2 for an extra cool effect.
So you should have something like this again:
From this shader we are only interested in the specular. Go ahead and slide the ambient and diffuse attributes
down to 0.
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Great you should have a black model with some shiny more trick I would like to share with you, and it’s again
white bits, this is what we are after because the idea is to using the Anisotropic Specular slider.
modify JUST the specularity and “nothing else matters”
(for this shader). However, you might notice that the Zoom into the model and change the values of
model is not completely black and some volumes the slider up or down to see the effect, this is just
are still recognisable, this is because by default, the shifting the material’s specular but be careful not
ambient light from the light palette should be on. to overdo it, this needs to be very subtle. Here is
We haven’t got into lights yet, but for now turn it to 0 too. a comparison between 0 and the value I decide to
use.
Now we are going to use the specular slider OK, last but not least, we need to define the way our
to determine the intensity of the shiny bits and the specular shader is going to interact with the previously
specular curve to define how “oily” or how “dry” the created diffuse shader.
skin is going to be.
Go back to the front view you set at the beginning...
Document > ZAppLink Properties > Front.
Let’s turn the Polypaint back on and also the diffuse

shader (shader 1). Hit BPR. Suddenly the specular
effect looks too strong right? Well that is because
we haven’t set the way shader 3 is being mixed. The
Mixer sub-palette is where you can control how the
shaders from a material interact or blend with each
other. It sits just below the modifiers sub-palette from the
materials palette, shift + click on it to expand the mixer
and keeping the modifier still visible. Make sure you
have the specular shader still selected since the mixer
properties are unique to each shader.
So let’s try to get

something that is
half oily and half
dry. For this model
this is the value of
specular and the
shape of the curve
that I think works
nicely.
This is pretty much

what we need
from this shader.
However, there is 1
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I’ll explain a bit more what areas so the rest can go).
the different sliders from
the mixer are, but for now Try rendering it again you should see the
we are only interested in the difference straight away… And, that’s it for the
blending mode. If you are specular contribution, you might want to change the
familiar with Photoshop and I shininess of the shader later on but for now is good
assume you are, you will see enough to move on to the next shader.
that the blending modes
are almost the same as the Diffuse and Specular recap
Photoshop layers blending modes...
If you were to take a single render of I hope everything makes sense so far, but just in case I
the diffuse we created and a single want to do a recap of the two shaders we have created
render from the specular we created and composite to simplify the process even more, now that you have
those passes in Photoshop by setting the blending mode a better understanding of what they are and how they
to Screen for the specular layer, you will get something interact with each other:
like this:
We have used a QuadShader material with 4 slots
(shaders) and we have used only 2 of those shaders
that form the Material: Shader 1 being the Diffuse
and shader 3 being the specular. We set the mixer
properties of the specular to be screen and enabled
the “black” button so at this point if we render we
should get something that looks like this:
It is very subtle again but when creating materials it’s all

about subtlety, hopefully you can see the specular effect
here:
From the Mixer sub-Pallet change the blending model

to Screen just as you would in Photoshop. Try rendering
right now and see what happens...
The model looks

super white, to I would say that here we finish with the basic part of the
fix this you need tutorial and we are ready to move on to the advanced
to enable the little second part of building a skin material for BPR in a
attribute box next single pass.
to the blending
modes called
“black” to tell ZBrush we want to apply this specular Creating the Sub-Surface Shader
shader (or pass if you are thinking in Photoshop layers)
on its own without blending it with any other shaders... The SSS shader will give the material the third main
we only need the specular information (the white shiny feature I described earlier: Translucency. This effect is
a bit more complicated than the two shaders we have shader 4 and click PasteSH.
already made, but I hope this guide will provide you with
an understanding of how to manipulate and leverage the Cool, before anything else, it
power of this effect within ZBrush. Before, we get started would be a good idea to save
let me say a few things about the SSS shader: the material (or the project if
you want) and give it a proper
It will vary from model to model, so if you are using name. From the material
your own head/object to follow this tutorial you will get library simple click on save
different results. and give it a name.
It’s an effect that is dependent on more than just the Also, to speed things up a
shader, which means you need to take into account the bit, since we are going to be
light, the material modifiers and the render properties. dealing with render settings,
light and material modifiers, I suggest you dock the
There is not a magic number or formula that gives light and render palettes to the right tray so you get
perfect and/or consistent result, so you WILL have to something like this:
tweak the SSS settings when using the material with
another model as well as in other projects.
Having said that, I will mention what I found to be the

most relevant attributes needed to achieve a good result
across a variety of lighting set ups and models. I will
provide the steps necessary to set up the material in a
way that it is easy to customise and change, so you can
use it with other models too... The whole point of this
tutorial is to help you speed up your workflow.
The first thing we need to do is grab the properties of a

material that allow us to play with the inner and outer
values (remember when I said I was going to simplify the
skin layers dermis and epidermis into inner and outer? You’ll also notice that I turned off the diffuse and
Well, here is what that concept comes into play). From specular and turned on the SSS (shader 4) so my
the materials library find and select the FresnelOverlay model is just a black silhouette.
material, then expand the modifiers, select the shader
2 and you will see that it doesn’t have much but it does Let’s start with the
have inner and outer sliders. shader modifiers.
The best way to
understand how it
works is by testing,
so at the bottom of the
modifiers sub-palette
you can see 4 squares
or colour inputs, click
on them and select
a vibrant colour for
each one of them:
from left to right:
Yellow, red, green
and blue. You should
already see some
changes in the model
but we need to set all
the values to 0 so we
can test the contribution of each slider separately, set
ZBrush allows you to copy and paste shaders between everything to 0 and the Fresnel factor to at least 1 (so
materials and this is what we need to do to make the SSS we can actually see the effects).
effect part of our skin material. Make sure you are in the
second shader of the FresnelOverlay material and click OK, so the first two sliders are inner and
CopySH. outer additive which based on what I mentioned before
will be equivalent to dermis and epidermis (not entirely
Go back to the materials library and find the accurate but it works for illustrating the concept). Here
QuadShader you’ve been working on, select the is where it gets a bit confusing, because when you
think about dermis and epidermis you probably think as The next two sliders, Inner Blend and Outer Blend are
layers with different thickness but the inner and outer actually the attributes of this shader that I prefer to use.
attributes work based on the canvas view and the The Inner Blend uses the same principle of the facing
normals of your model, for example: in this sphere, I ratio but it blends the colour set in the InnerBlend picker,
have set the inner value to 1 and left the outer to -1. so if you move the slider to 1 you’ll see the effect:
In the same manner, if you reset the inner blend to

And in this one I did the opposite. 0 and move the outer blend to 1, you’ll see the same
effect BUT with the facing ratio “inverted”.
Basically, forget about layers and think about facing Keep in mind that these results are also depending on
ratio. The facing ratio is usually known as the Fresnel the number set in the Fresnel factor (currently set at 1),
Effect and almost all materials in nature produce you can narrow the effect or make the outer and inner
this effect to different degrees. Briefly speaking, the colour spread over the model even more by changing
Fresnel Effect is a set of mathematical equations the Fresnel value. You can even invert the effect by
use to described how the light behaves when it setting negative values:
travels between mediums with different IOR (Index
of refraction). This effect is clearly visible in materials
such as glass, water and/or metal. Let’s put things into
context and see how using it can help the skin material
we are building...
We’ll tweak these later, at the moment I’m just showing
One of the main features I listed before about the skin you what each attribute does... Now, look what happens
is obviously the Translucency, and the translucency if we set the inner additive to -1, the outer additive to
is really the SSS effect (how the light is scattered in 1 as well as setting the inner blend to 0 and the outer
translucent materials). The FresnelOverlay shader blend to 1:
we are using is the best option we have to recreate this
effect since it allow us to play with the facing ratio for
the material by tweaking its inner and outer values. In
the skin material, the inner value will be “yellowish” while
the outer will be “reddish”.
I hope I haven’t confused you too much but let’s get

on with the practical stuff... With a bit of practice this
process will come as second nature when creating other
materials.
Basically ZBrush is Blending the outer additive colour Try making a BPR render after enabling the SSS....
(red) with the outer blend colour (blue) making it Nothing happens right? Why not? We have tweaked
purple. This is even more evident if you set the Fresnel the modifiers sliders, enabled the SSS in the light
factor to 0. So the reason I suggest to set the colours palette as well as the render properties, so what are we
in this shader to such vibrant distinctive hues, is to missing? Well, we have set everything in ZBrush for the
be able to see the interaction between them. Blue SSS to happen, but we haven’t defined HOW the SSS
and red makes purple and so on, feel free to try other shaders behave in the Skin Material (remember: when
combinations and you will get pretty cool results. I think we set the blending mode of the specular shader (S3)
you get the idea of what you could do with this shader, to be screen and all that?). We need to go to the Mixer
so let’s get back to the tutorial and onto the next step. sub-palette for the SSS shader (S4) and tell ZBrush to
MIX this shader as SSS by simply dragging the slider,
Next, we are going to set the colours of the inner, outer conveniently called SSS, to 100.
and blends to be a more realistic flesh colour so I choose
something like this:
We want the outer colours to be within the red hues

and the inner colours to be yellowish. Once you set
the colours, copy and paste the whole shader 4 into
the shader 2. This is the extra effect I was talking about,
which we will tweak it later. For now, just pass it into Once you have done that, try BPR again and see if you
shader 2, turn it off and select shader 4 (SSS) again. finally start to get excited about this process.
OK, let’s put the outer blend slider to 1 and all the rest
of the sliders back to 0, including the Fresnel effect. Hit
the BPR button. You should get something that looks like
this:
Wohoooo! We are getting closer! The following

section will be about HOW to tweak the SSS from the
render settings and the material modifiers.
Render settings SSS

This is the SSS Now that we have the SSS effect working for us, we can
effect, but we can’t start tweaking the settings from the render palette. What
see it yet since I usually do, is create a document in Photoshop and
we haven’t enabled paste screenshots of the renders, so that every time I
any light to have the do something different in the settings I can check and
capability to render compare the changes. I will guide you through what I
SSS. And, the have found to be the best settings for this particular
render properties for project, so you don’t have to do any of that.
SSS are also off; to
enable them, simply From the render palette, expand
click on the “SSS” the sub-palette called “BPR
buttons under the light SSS”. The first thing you see, is
sub-palette and the a button that says SSS Across
render properties palette. Subtools, click on it to enable
it. This button determines how
ZBrush will light up the subtools
as a whole (when is on), or individually (when is off). So basically because the higher the number you set in
if you have a model made out of multiple subtools, you the Angle value, the more Rays you may need to make
should leave this ON unless you are after some particular the spread effect look smoother. Examples below:
look. Regardless of the number of subtools I have, I
tend to just leave this ON.
Next, you have the rays and the Angle attributes,

these two are directly related. Basically, the higher the
number of rays, the softer the SSS effect would be.
Keep in mind that increasing the number of rays will
increase the render time. At a glance, it might be hard
to see the difference that these values have, but take a
look at this contrasted image rendered with 1, 30 and
100 rays:
I’m going to leave the Rays at 100 based on what I had
said earlier, because I will use the Angle value of 360.
This is not a must for the tutorial or SSS effect, this is just
my preference as I will edit the light later to have more
diffused shadows (if I wanted a more direct light with
sharp shadows, I would probably lower the Angle value
to accommodate the “lighting conditions”).
Moving on, you have the Res value (Resolution) and

the Blur. The resolution in pixels is linked to the size
of the document you are working on. For the moment,
I will leave the resolution as it is (at 400), but for
final images will increase the number to something
like 1000. You could go higher than that, but in most
cases you get very good results without having to set
crazy numbers here. The Blur is linked to the resolution
Obviously, 100 rays look much better than 30, but usually and setting higher values will give a softer SSS effect.
you don’t really need more than 50 rays. However, for I don’t change the Blur too much, but feel free to test
the purpose of this tutorial, I will leave it set at 100 for various options and see what works for your project.
best results (you’ll see why after reading the next couple
of paragraphs). Finally, you have the VDepth and the LDepth. OK, these
two settings are very important to achieve the effect we
The Angle will affect how narrow the SSS effect is, want, so I will try to briefly explain them separately:
based on the light source, the way I understand it, is that
the value you set in the Angle slider will determine how VDepth (View Depth) will take the SSS effect that we
much the SSS effect will spread around the model, have set up and offset it based on the view. Look at
taking into account the light position. For example, in these 3 screenshots using different values:
these images, I set the Angle to 1 and to 360, and I
moved the light source to the right.
When the Angle is set to 1, the effect is only visible along

the edges of the model and when it is at 360, the effect
spreads, reaching other areas of the models. Now
you can see the nose and other volumes of the face. You could think about this in the following way: Imagine
You could also think about this as how diffused the the whole SSS effect is contained within an invisible layer
light source is. A value of 1 would be equivalent to or box, and when you change the value of the VDepth
something like a torch light (very narrow light source), slider you are offsetting that container box, closer or
and a value of 360, will be like a bright cloudy day further away from the view:
(very diffused light, that covers a greater area, equally).
The reason that Rays are related to the Angle value is
NOTE: The front face of the box is facing directly

towards the view of the document; the model is on an
angle purely to demonstrate the offset of the SSS.
LDepth (Light Depth) also does the same but based

on the light source. So, in the previous example, The mixer for the SSS shader
the imaginary box doesn’t move in the direction of the
view but rather in a straight line between the model and Now that we have a general understanding of the render
the position of the light. In the images below, I have settings for the SSS we need to mix the shader with the
moved the light source exactly behind the model and diffuse and specular shaders. Before you turn them
tested the LDpeth with values of -100, 0 and 100. ON again to test the material, I want to clarify a couple of
things…
The SSS effect is very subtle in most scenarios but

is present nonetheless, so you should judge how much
of this effect you want to add to your render based on
things like the intensity of the light source(s), the position
of the lights, the thickness of the model, etc. The human
head for example, will have varying strength of the SSS
effect, depending on which part of the head the light
goes through. The effect will be very strong along areas
such as the ears and nose, but almost non-existent
around the skull and other bonny areas.
Hopefully this image will serve as an overview of the If you do a render right now with the values I provided,
VDepth and LDepth sliders: you should get something that looks like the images
below on the left. There is a lot of “spreading” into
the skull, chin, cheekbones, etc. This is intentional FOR
NOW because we will fine tune it from the mixer
inside the material, to get something more like the
image below on the right.
OK, so let’s see how this was done using the mixer for
this SSS shader. Open up the Mixer sub-palette and
for this shader we are going to concentrate on only 2
Finally, you have a little button called “Spd” next to the attributes (that is all we need): The S Exp and blending
LDepth, which stands for Sub-Pixel Depth, I usually leave mode.
it ON because it produces a more accurate SSS effect,
but turning it OFF while testing stuff, will speed up your
renders.
To sum up, these are the best values I found to work for
what I want to achieve:
Change the “S Exp” from 1 to 2. What this slider does, achieve different looks (more on this in the bonus
is change the falloff of the SSS effect so the more you section), without altering the SSS or wax preview
increase the number, the narrower it will look, that is the settings.
reason I left the other settings to let the SSS spread quite
a bit, so that we can control it from only one attribute in 2. It adds an extra level of control when we tweak
the mixer. the filters in the rendering section.
Now we need to change the blending mode from I made this shader in the exact same way that I created
normal to add and turn on the Black button. That’s the shader 4 (luckily nothing needs to be altered in
pretty much all we need to change here in the mixer. the render settings) so play with the sliders and get
something that works for you. Like you see in the
previous picture the main slider to change within the
mixer is the Fresnel attribute. If you want the settings I
used, here they are:
The extras effect - Shader 2

The Shader 2 or what I’ve been calling the “extra
effect”, is simply another layer of sub-surface
scattering. However is not dependent on the
SSS properties from the render settings, since it’s
actually based on the Fresnel slider within the mixer.
Let me show you what I mean:
OK, this is more or less the process of creating the

Skin material. In the next section I’ll cover Lighting,
rendering and compositing (within ZBrush). But,
before we move onto that part, I will add one final thing
to our shader - that is the wax preview. To do that turn
shaders 2, 3 and 4 OFF and shader 1 ON (our diffuse
shader). With only that shader selected, go to wax
modifiers (just above the materials modifiers) and set
the strength to something like 50. Play with the Fresnel
and Radius slider until you get something you are happy
with. You can refer back to the Understanding the Wax
Preview section earlier in the tutorial. These are the
settings that I liked:
The image above displays the effect of shader 4 (SSS

effect) and shader 2 (Fresnel SSS fake). As you can see
from the image on the right the effect is basically a red
colour edge that defines the volumes of the model
a bit better than what the shader 4 does. I found
this extra effect to be extremely powerful for two main
reasons:
1. It’s a middle ground between a full SSS and

a wax preview and can be easily customized to
lights; and, the rest are disabled. Go ahead and click

Skin Material Recap the button to create a new light, you’ll get something like
this:
Let’s see what we have so far. We created a Skin
Material that uses/combines 4 shaders:
Shader 1: diffuse shader and is relatively flat.

Shader 2: fake SSS.
Shader 3: specular shader.
Shader 4: SSS effect.
The way that all these shaders mix with each other and

create the final look of the materials, is determined by
the mixer in the material properties (and the render
properties for the SSS). Below, are renders of each
At this point I will recommend that you to turn OFF the
individual shader and then a combined version of the
SSS pass from the render properties to make the test
material:
renders faster while we set up the lights. Also turn OFF
the primary light, so that you can see the effect from
the LightCap on its own. Render the image and see what
you get.
Now, if you hover over

the black box with the
light on it you’ll see a red
little dot, click on it and
If it doesn’t look too exciting yet, remember that this
drag it towards left side
tutorial is about creating a skin material to render in a
of the box. The shape
single pass using BPR, so we have only completed part
of a sphere will become
of the process - setting up the material. Now, we need
more obvious, hit render
to dive into the rendering and lighting.
and check the results.
Lighting and rendering

Now, that we have the skin material 95% ready
(allowing 5% for other tweaks during the rendering
steps), we need to set up the lights for the scene. At
the moment there is only one light in the project, which
is the KEY light casting shadows, with the SSS property
enabled. In this tutorial, I won’t go too deep into the
different types of lighting setups or why the light plays
a big role in the final image, because that would be a
whole new tutorial in itself. I will keep it simple and only
have a 3 point light system.
The 3 point light system is standard but it’s good for what
we need right now. The 3 lights are usually:
1. Key lights (primary light source).

2. Fill light (generally a diffused light source placed Cool, you can see how the lights (red dots) you placed
on the opposite side to the key light source). in the LightCap sub-palette are then translated to the
3. Rim or Hair light (a light placed at the back, to scene, very closely to how they look in the black box. At
enhance the silhouette of the subject). this point, we are going to turn everything ON again,
because now we need to judge how everything is
We already have our KEY light, and we can worry going to look as a whole, not simply individually. So
about the shadows later. To create the Fill and Rim turn the SSS back ON from render properties as well as
light we are going to use the ZBrush LightCap which, the primary light properties.
in my opinion, speeds up the process a lot.
From the LightCap sub-palette, once you create a light,
Go to the Light palette and expand the LightCap sub- you will get its attributes below the black box. Create
palette, in it there are two buttons: diffuse and specular; another light by clicking new Light again and move this
and, a big black box, which is a preview of the lights one to the right (you can use the “Light Index” to select
and it’s black because there are no lights in it yet. Right and navigate between the lights).
below it, there is another button: New Light - to create
If you render now, you should have something like The next step is to change the Falloff. This attribute
this (if not, make sure the SSS in render properties and determines how the light is distributed in the space, you
the primary light are enabled again): can think about these properties as the shape of the light
source - how wide or narrow the cone of the lamp is. Set
the Rim light to a lower number like 0.4 and the Fill
light to 5.5.
For this render, I have also lowered the intensity of the

main light (Key light) slightly from 0.85 to 0.72 and also
added a bit of colour to the Fill light.
We need to get rid of the shadows from the Fill and

the Rim light, in the LightCap sub-palette, change the
Shadow slider to 0. At this point, I also changed the
strength the Rim and Fill to 5 and 2.5 respectively.
Hopefully you can now see some of the effect of the Skin
Material working nicely with the light setup. The next
thing I want to do is get rid of those strong shadows
coming from the KEY light and make them more
Now the effect of these two lights is quite obvious but diffused. That is achieved through the render settings.
at the same time it is overly strong. We are going to For this reason, I like to treat Lighting and rendering as
tweak each light separately to get a nice fill and back one section.
lighting effect.
Open up the render palette and we are going to tweak
The aperture determines the diffuse and specular falloff the BPR shadow:
of the light, in other words, how soft or how sharp the
light blends with the dark areas. A number of 1 will
give you very narrow lights and a number of 180 will be
a very diffused light source. From the LightCap settings,
change the aperture of the Rim light (the first one on
the left), to something between 40 and 50. And, for
the second light change the value of it to 100. This
way you are telling ZBrush that you want the light source
1 to be quite narrow (to simulate the Rim light) and the
light source 2 to spread over the model a bit more.
The first two sliders FStrenght and GStrenght control
how strong the shadows are, FStrenght is only
concerned with the casted shadows on the floor. By
turning it to 0.01 you won’t see much difference (unless
you have a floor). The GStrenght on the other hand,
deals with the intensity of the shadows on a global
scale. What this means, is that you can change these
sliders and this will affect the shadows’ strength of
each shader. Huh? Shadows for each shader? What?
OK, so there is something else I didn’t mention during
the material creation which is the environment sub-palette. The reason I avoided it was because it is more relevant
now that we are dealing with rendering settings and also, because it is awesome! So simple, but so powerful. Let me
explain:
Environment Sub-Palette
In the same way each individual shader we created has options in the mixer sub-palette, they also have an area
called Environment that has 3 simple options: Shadow, Ao and vibrant shadows and AO. These attributes are
unique to each shader and the Shadow and Ao slider refer to the strength of those features for each shader. Maybe
an image will illustrate better what I mean. Here are the 4 renders - I switched the Shadow slider to 0 for each one of
the shaders that make up our skin material:
Perhaps the image above gave you a better idea, but if not, I want to explain this in a different way BECAUSE I
really want you to understand these Environment settings. If you didn’t know about it, this is probably the best TIP
you will get out of this tutorial. I’m serious! It blew my mind when I found out about it. It will slightly change the
final look of your renders but you will definitely see the difference in many ways.
TIP: Each one of the shaders we created have different properties and different ways that they mix with each
other in order to create the Skin material, but they all react to the light in the same way (to some extent). The
Environment sub-palette allows you to change the intensity of the shadows for each shader that make up the material
INDIVIDUALLY. The reason I think this is very powerful, is because it lets you “mask out” or lower the influence of
the SSS shader shadows, for example. I can still get the shadows I need but wherever the effect of the SSS is, the
shadows will be less prominent, enhancing the overall look of the render.
Take a look at how it works with practical examples, for image A, I took our KEY light and placed it
behind the model and left all shader environment shadows at 100. For image B, I simply changed
the environment shadows of the specular to a lower number (83) and the SSS shader to 0 nothing else:
So you see how different the renders are and how much more realistic the image B is. In the same way you can
change the Ao (ambient occlusion if it’s enabled from render settings) slider, to affect each material.
Finally, the button called Vibrant Shadows and AO if The attributes below rays and angle: Res (Resolution);
turned ON, will give you a vibrant saturated shadow. If Blur; VDepth and LDepth; those were covered in section
you have ever rendered an image that looks like the discussing the BPR SSS sub-palette. These work in
shadows are “burning” or are red towards the edges, the same way. The rest of the settings I generally don’t
here is how you turn that effect OFF. touch, but it is worth mentioning a couple of these briefly,
in case you want to tweak them:
Back to the shadow render settings...
Gamma: this slider will change the “gradient” effect
Now that you know that the Environment shadows between the areas that have shadows and the areas
slider works for each shader individually, it’s easy to that don’t get shadows, lower numbers mean almost
understand what the GStrenght does. Basically, it no gradient and higher numbers refer to almost no
lowers the intensity the shadows on a global scale: shadows.
Falloff: works in junction with the Gamma slider, you

won’t see much difference unless the gamma is set to
1 or lower. I haven’t noticed this to make much of a
difference (like I said, I barely touch these settings...
for me is just good enough to know they are there).
Max Dist: this slider will change how “far” or how

“close” the shadow will cast.
DistFalloff: works with the Max Dist slider and will

change the speed of the shadow’s falloff.
Final tweaks to the material

Go ahead and do a best preview render of what we
The shadow Global Strength slider value is really up have so far and let’s see what works and what can be
to you, and it may vary depending on the look you are improved.
seeking to achieve. For example, a lower value will
suggest brighter environments, but a strength of 1 could
suggest a very dark environment:
From the render, I can see 3 things that are not quite
right:
The next sliders are Rays and Angle which work in 1. The SSS effect on the ears is maybe too strong and
the same way as the counterparts from the BPR SSS the red looks like it is almost emitting light.
sub-palette previously discussed so I won’t get into the
details here. Just a quick tip: when you set the Angle FIX: From the mixer, I changed the blending mode
to a high value, you should then increase the number from “add” to “screen” that makes the whole SSS
of rays too in order to contribution less bright.
retain a good quality
render. In this tutorial, I 2. The fake SSS from shader 2 has a
have set the Rays to 60 (I very saturated red and is overriding some shadows.
will change this value to
120 for final render). An FIX: Select the shader 2 and from the Environment
angle of 90 seemed to sub-palette, turn OFF the “Vibrant Shadow and AO”.
work well to achieve the Also, in my case, I wanted to spread the effect of this
look I was going for.
shader a bit more from the edges, so I changed the F

exp value in the mixer from 1.1 to 0.8 Render, filters and
3. There are some “stepping” in the shadows cast by
Adjustments
the chin.
The final stage, this is my favourite part (along with the
sculpting!). When everything has been set up and
FIX: As I mentioned earlier, for the final render I will
the model is ready to render, I can spend a lot of time
change the shadow rays from 60 to 120, and that
fiddling with the layers and passes. I always do some
should do the trick.
sort of post production to my images. I treat my renders
as my RAW images, so I always do some sort of colour
One more thing: I thought the specular needed to
correction, or curves adjustments, split toning, etc.
be slightly more visible so I increased the specular value.
I would usually export my passes separately from
Here is a render test with the tweaked material:
ZBrush and do the compositing in Photoshop. but
this tutorial is about creating a workflow for a quick
and nice render, all within ZBrush (that is why we
initially spent some time setting up the skin material
so that when we hit render, ZBrush would combine
the shaders as passes), we therefore can bypass
the compositing in Photoshop. Fortunately, ZBrush
also allows us to do some final adjustments and
refinements to the image after the render, by using
filters and adjustments.
Render
At this point I will edit the size of the document to
get a larger image. Go to Document, and change the
I think it looks much better now, remember that when

dealing with materials, subtlety is key. Finally, before
getting into compositing with ZBrush I like to move my
light around and make various renders to test the
consistency of the material:
dimensions to suit your needs, I changed mine to:

Position your model in its final pose or whatever
angle you like to do a render. I chose a very generic
and straight pose just for the purpose of this tutorial, but
you should be able to get a more interesting shot.
One last thing I like to do before rendering is to change

the camera angle, so that I get a more photographic
effect given that my camera position is quite close to the
subject and therefore the “lens” of my camera will distort
the perspective a bit.
You can achieve this from the Draw menu, by simply
changing the slider called “Angle of View”. That’s it! Hit

render and we can start with the filters.
The Filter Type: a drop down menu to select the type of

Filters filter you want. So for the first filter (F1), you can change
the “noise” to be a “Hue” filter. In fact you can change all
If you are familiar with Photoshop, filters in ZBrush,
12 Filter slots to be the same Hue if you want.
are like the different adjustments you can find in
Photoshop. One of my mentors once told me that
Below, the filter type you have is the blending mode.
“masking is the backbone of the technical aspects of
This applies the same concept as the blending mode
compositing” and through my experience, I have to say
we had used when creating the shaders (or the layers
that knowing this has helped me a lot. In Photoshop
blending mode in Photoshop).
you can bring all your passes, start masking things OUT
and blending all the layers to create your final image. In
Filter Strength: will modify how strong the effect of the
my opinion, the power of using filters inside ZBrush,
filter will be.
relies on the capability of masking the effect of the
filter by a wide range of attributes without having to
Filter Opacity: control the overall opacity of the filter.
create a mask or extra stuff.
Section B contains:
Let’s start by opening the filters Sub-Palette within the
render palette. The filters selection and switches
All the sliders you are going to need to mix and mask
(to turn them ON and OFF) are identical to the way
the filters with the final images. This is one of those
we selected the shaders in the Skin Material and by
things that is better to see how it works, rather than read
default they are all OFF so let’s turn the first filer ON
the theory behind it, so let’s get to it...
My filters workflow
I like to start in order, that’s why I enabled the F1 and
turn more filters ON as I go.
As opposed to what I did with the Skin Material set

up, where all shaders were turned OFF (except for the
one I was tweaking), I like to see how the filters work
together.
First, I set the filter strength to 100 (in this case, F1 is

The first filter is the noise effect, when you turn it OFF noise) so I can see clearly what the filters do and how
you see the effect immediately, that is another great they are affecting the image. Then, I start playing with
thing, you don’t have to re-render every time you adjust the sliders from section B to get what I want.
a filter.
I want to add noise over the whole image so I just want to
The whole filter sub-palette tune down the noise strength and opacity.
looks a bit overwhelming at
first because of the number
of sliders it has, but once
you get the hang of it, the
level of control it provides,
is fantastic. I won’t explain
every single filter but I’m
sure that with a general
guide on how they work,
you can figure out the rest
for yourself. I divided this
sub-palette in 2 sections
to easily digest what the
attributes are for. The The second thing I would like to do, is to sharpen
sections are Filters A and some Areas of the render to enhance some of the
Filters B. details, like pores and imperfections, so I turn on the
filter 3. (You can simply use the filter 2 and change the
Section A contains: type to be Sharpen).
12 slots where you can Like I said, I change the strength and opacity to a 100
add filters (so you can add and also change the Radius (first slider from section B)
up to 12 filters. I usually to 25. The Radius is the degree to which the effect of
don’t use them all). the filter is spreading.
effect very subtle but necessary.
The rest of the filter...

F4 - Orton: I use this to brighten up some areas at the
back. I used the Depth slider to enhance only some of
the areas away from the camera.
You can see the effect very well, but what I want now
is to only to sharpen the areas that are closer to
the camera. Here is where the masking I mentioned
before, starts to shine. Change the Depth slider
to something like 0.2. Basically, what we are doing is
telling ZBrush to apply the Sharpen filter based on
the “depth” pass, so the positive values will sharpen F7 - Colorise: I like to use the colorise filter to add a
areas closer to the camera and the negative values will bit of colour to my shadows. I set the blending mode
sharpen the parts of the model furthest from the camera. to Screen, selected a blue colour from the colour picker
and I also did a few things differently from previous
You can also increase the Depth Exp to multiply filters:
the strength of the mask (narrow the effect). And these
concepts apply for the rest the sliders from section B, so 1. I set the Mask slider to 1, this constrains the
you can apply your filters using the SSS as mask or the effect to the mask pass, so you won’t see the blue in
Fresnel effect or Shadows, etc. the background of the canvas.
I then tend to spend some time getting the right 2. I want the colour to primarily affect the dark areas
amount of strength, opacity and altering the radius of of the render, so in other words, I want to make the
the filter: shadows a bit bluish rather than purely black. To do
this, I use the Shadow slider.
3. I used the SSS slider with -1 this way I tell ZBrush

I want to use the SSS pass as an inverted mask
(because of the negative value) so that the colour
blue ignores the areas were the SSS pass is
stronger (like the ear on the left).
For the rest of the filters, the workflow is the same, so

let me summarise it. Then, I will simply show you the
settings for the rest of the filters I use to get final image.
Recap:
1. Turn on the filter slot F#.
F8 - Red: I use the
2. Select the type of filter you want. red filter to slightly
enhance the effect of
3. Set strength and opacity to 100 and Radius to the SSS. I used the
a higher number than 1 to see the effect of the filter. Fresnel as mask to
achieve those reddish
4. Use the rest of the sliders to decide where and how soft borders and also
the effect is applied. only wherever the SSS
pass is stronger.
5. Tweak the settings back to values that will make the
F9 - Red: I use another Red filter to add some colour There is not a massive difference but they do change
to the details in the skin, such as pores. I use the some things. I reckon they help, in general, to make
Cavity slider to limit the filter to those areas. the skin in the render a bit softer and slightly brighter.
The adjustments
Alright we are getting
closer to our final super
setup. The last thing
I want to show you is
the Adjustment, the
last sub-palette from the
render palette. Click
on the button called
“Adjust” to enable the
adjustments. By default,
F10 - Blue: I use the blue filter to add some variations everything is set to 0
to the skin tones so that not all the areas are “red”. I (except gamma that is
basically played around with the masking values until I 1), so you won’t see any
got something that I was happy with. immediate changes like
when you turned ON a
filter previously.
This palette allows

you to correct 3 things
basically: 1 Contrast, 2 Brightness and 3 Gamma.
But, it gives you a lot of control since you can tweak
each individual channel Red, green and blue).
By modifying all these values you are able to get some

pretty cool results and split tone effects without leaving
ZBrush:
F11 - Saturation: I use this filter to saturate the
shadows just a bit, very subtle overall effect.
Also, you have curves at the bottom of the sub-palette

and you can change the curves individually for Red,
Green and blue. I tweaked the Adjustments a little
bit, and managed to get something that looks good to
me. Let’s compare the RAW render versus the final
Composition with filters and adjustments:
That’s it for the filters, let’s compare the “RAW” render
with the one with the filters applied...
Cool… I think I have covered most of the things I wanted

to show you. The last tip or suggestion, is to use the Conclusion
filters and the adjustments to get something that you
think looks cool, then step away from your computer, So the tutorial has ended up being quite long and it took
then come back, judge the overall image again and me a while to put everything together, but hopefully it will
tune everything down a bit. Here is my final image, give you a good insight into my workflow. It isn’t perfect
I changed the background colour, reworked on the or the only one by any means. If you are able to take
adjustments and repositioned the light towards the something away from this, even just a tip to improve your
centre. art or speed up your process, then the time I put into this
is well worth it.
I know we are all super excited about the upcoming

ZBrush - Keyshot integration and that will supercharge
all of our renders. However, I still think that ZBrush can
produce amazing things as it is right now. This tutorial
was never intended to replace a more elaborate work
flow to produce higher quality images, but rather to
provide you with the option to obtain multiple variations
to choose from, without having to take your passes to an
external editing package, and to do this within very short
period of time (once you set everything up).
Keep in mind that every time you do a

Best Preview Render, the individual passes are also
being created. So if you want, you can take your quick
render to Photoshop for further improvements, using the
passes that ZBrush generates.
Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed creating the material and the setup
as much as I liked writing the tutorial. I tried to keep
everything very informal and casual because I write
based on my notes that I take as I progress on my
projects. However, if at some point you would like
to know more about something in particular or need
any help, feel free to contact me by email or on my
Facebook page, if I can I will always be happy to help.
I’m working on something really cool and I’m very

excited to say that it might be ready for early next year…
Now that we have completed the whole Material and I can’t say much at the moment but if you enjoyed this
rendering set up, you can generate as many renders as or any of my previous tutorials, you are probably going
you like. Changing the angle of the shot and maybe to like what is coming! You can follow me on Facebook
the position of the light to get a more dramatic effect and Twitter to keep up with my updates.
like these extra renders I made, all took under a minute
each. Finally, I made this tutorial for the ZBrush community,
so I encourage you to share it around your networks
if you found it valuable and useful. The only thing
I ask for, is to share the original link to the PDF not
the actual PDF so I can track how well the tutorial is
received in addition to directly receiving feedback from
you guys, which will better mould the next tutorial.
Please send me links to whatever you do using this

method. I would love to see what you come up with and
I will be happy to feature your work on my blog.
I appreciate the Facebook page likes! All the best and

happy ZBrushing!
Bonus Material
As I promised here is an extra bit of tutorial where I show you how easy is to modified the material to suit other
needs.
I will be using an alien head which is just a quick Dynamesh sketch with polypaint and I will show you how I
created this:
first I loaded the saved project from this tutorial and

load my alien head as a Ztool with polypaint information.
I followed pretty much the same steps I described at the
beginning of the tutorial to set up the project, document
size, etc.
then I imported the material and open the Modifiers sub-

palette. This is the section I used to modify the material’s
properties a bit to make it suitable for an alien skin.
I change the settings for each shader individually,

with the the diffuse shader on and the rest off, then the
fake sss, then the specular and finally the SSS.
For example with only the diffuse shader on this is how

it looked with the material we previously created.
But since the colour scheme for the creature is blue

I changed the outer blend and additives to better
match the tones of the polypaint just changing the colour
pickers. And tweaking the sliders a bit.
And this is how it looks with minor tweaks. Mainly I

tune the ambient down and reduce a bit of the specular
and slightly changed the diffuse curve.
For the specular shader the render looked like this for
this creature.
The fake sss or shader 2, looked like this with no

alterations.
But I wanted to create a more “gooey” and wet so I

tweaked the specularity curde and intensity as well as
the fresnel slider from the mixer.
I also wanted a more dramatic lighting so I changed

the shadows to be a bit sharper and repositioned the
light.
For the shader 4

(SSS) this is how
the creature lookd
with no tweaking After getting the light source in the place I wanted,
I simply started to add the filters and tweak the
And just by adjustments sliders to get this:
adjusting the inner
and outer sliders,
setting the colours
to a blue tones,
and the S exp
from the mixer
sub-palette I got
something like this
Like I said, you can always

take the passes that the BPR
generates and do some more
tweaks... I took this guy into
Photoshop but I only took the
beauty pass, the mask and
the depth and changed the
background (that is why I
needed the mask) and added
finally I turn all the shaders ON to see how they look... a bit of depth of field (using
the depth pass) and some
really minor adjustments
with the curves. All under 5
minutes including render
from zbrush.
So the material we created could be very easily altered

to get all sort of skins types and even non-human skin. I
hope you enjoyed this little bonus section and talk to you
soon!
Pablo Munoz G.

A Guide To - Skin Material With ZBrush and Single Pass BPR - PabloMunozG PDF

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A Guide to Skin Material in Zrbush & Single Pass BPR by Pablo Munoz Gomez

acne: pimples, blemishes, etc.

Like my previous two eBooks: Creating dreadlocks with

Let’s get started!

When working in ZBrush I used to think that dry skin

Oily skin is thick, usually has visible large pores and

Thick Skin Layers

The rays of light that exit the object, after being

Understanding this will make it easier for you to create all

Now let’s simplify the concept of the 3

You will get a better grasp of this when we go through

The way I interpret this information in practical terms,

I hope I haven’t confused you or bored you too much by

About BPR render

The reason I use BPR over the other methods is that it

NOTE: For a lot of the images I create, I definitely like to

Why ZBrush Materials instead of

1. I wanted full control on the different attributes of

The temperature is a nice effect that could be

3. I also like to position the model on an angle that

Building the skin Material

Just click on the curve to

NOTE: by the same principle, if you invert the shape

OK, that’s about it for setting up the project. I suggest

Creating the diffuse shader

Creating the Specular shader

So you should have something like this again:

Let’s turn the Polypaint back on and also the diffuse

So let’s try to get

This is pretty much

It is very subtle again but when creating materials it’s all

From the Mixer sub-Pallet change the blending model

The model looks

Having said that, I will mention what I found to be the

The first thing we need to do is grab the properties of a

In the same manner, if you reset the inner blend to

I hope I haven’t confused you too much but let’s get

We want the outer colours to be within the red hues

Wohoooo! We are getting closer! The following

Render settings SSS

Next, you have the rays and the Angle attributes,

Moving on, you have the Res value (Resolution) and

When the Angle is set to 1, the effect is only visible along

The reason that Rays are related to the Angle value is

NOTE: The front face of the box is facing directly

LDepth (Light Depth) also does the same but based

The SSS effect is very subtle in most scenarios but

The extras effect - Shader 2

OK, this is more or less the process of creating the

The image above displays the effect of shader 4 (SSS

1. It’s a middle ground between a full SSS and

lights; and, the rest are disabled. Go ahead and click

Shader 1: diffuse shader and is relatively flat.

The way that all these shaders mix with each other and

Now, if you hover over

Lighting and rendering

1. Key lights (primary light source).

For this render, I have also lowered the intensity of the

We need to get rid of the shadows from the Fill and

OK, so there is something else I didn’t mention during

Falloff: works in junction with the Gamma slider, you

Max Dist: this slider will change how “far” or how

DistFalloff: works with the Max Dist slider and will