This week in my Organic Modeling 2 class we got an assignment to render a realistic head using a SubSurface Scattering material in mental ray. The head model and texture is a free 3D scan from
Infinite3D, but we had to take care of baking the normal map, creating other maps like spec and SSS depth, adjusting the SSS shader, and finally lighting and rendering the model ourselves.
I'm pretty impressed with the results myself, but I still see room for improvement. At least a lot of the mystery surrounding the mental ray SSS shader has been lifted. :D
All the images are rendered in Mental Ray using Maya. In all the setups I use a single light with an HDRI probe to provide additional ambient light through Final Gather.
