Light oriented fresnel ramps etc...

Very often here I express some wishes saying 'specific light oriented fresnel ramps', 'fully editable fresnel ramps', 'using the diffuse and specularity channel as masking channels too' etc. I know that it is very difficult to understand what all those things at what purposes are aiming. That is true. So I decided to send some samples for the ‘specific light oriented’ fresnel ramps at least, now, for being understood. In fact it is a very easily perceptable thing when you give some visual samples. It is something producing the feel of having fill lights directed on an object without having them actually. This gives the opportunity on having such light effects on a choosed object without having them for the surrounding ones. It is like having colored self shadows (imagine a diffuse channel where you have the option of replacing the light and shadow areas with colors). By this you may produce some very interesting effects giving the impression that the material itself has some elements inherent in its nature that produces such color plays. It is something we meet in impressionistic painting too, where the shadows (the self shadows too) have color.

As is evident it is something that has not to do with texturing but purely with shading. Something that procuces mainly light-material interaction effects.

The samples below are achieved by image editing some Kerkythea render layers.

Avariant any idea? Is it possible to implement such a shading way as a plugin?

Something further, this time for a good fake sss. It is a well known method. It is purely faked but it has a quite decent appearance. And, all this in almost zero render times. The samples below are acquired with image editing by combining different render layers. The main role is played by the depth render layer. In fact when you combine it with a texture and a specularity pass (you may mix some diffuse pass too, in a proper amount, just as in good cooking) you have a very efficient sss effect. And you have it whatever the lights’ position in your scene are. If you have them in a reverse to the viewing angle position you inverse the depth layer (I am putting the sample image, below, apart). So simple. Now imagine that you have a ‘depth’ channel in material editor which the only thing it does is to apply to an object of choice a depth render pass, with so simple options as ‘inverse’ and ‘contrast’ (for conveying different sss depth effects). And then you may apply to it some diffuse, some specularity or even some reflection or refraction to it. And, there, you have it. I think it is not a bad idea, if we decide from the appearance. It would be a good solution especially for close up object renders.

In the long image below, in upper line are the components, below are slightly different kinds of results achieved by playing with the contrasts and intensities of the components.

Not to forget, all those good results in this trick owe their quality to the new improved depth render. So many thanks for this so useful tool too Ghianni.

Extreme, that second one (faked sss) is a great idea in my opinion and you did a good job explaining the process. I think this one is actually doable. You would just need a depth procedural and use it as a mask layer. I suppose it's worth a try

About the light oriented fresnel, I don't know. I don't doubt that it can be done, but given the tools available for the material editor, I don't know that it can be done as a plugin. G provides a lot of functionality to the plugins so...maybe, but I can't think of the how at the moment.

1- not sure what I'm looking at here.
2- FASCINATING
3- FASCINATING

Fletch, happy that you find those ideas interesting. Really, there are so many things that could be done related to the enrichment of material editor, so many ways of finding solutions for having cheap, in render times, high quality results that it is quite worth focusing on the field.