Tips for sub-surface scattering (SSS) for realistic ceramics

[scooternva]

I have been futzing around with sub-surface scattering (SSS) all afternoon to try and make a semi-decent coffee cup and cannot for the life of me get anything approaching the translucency or scattering required. There's nothing here help-wise in the LightWave forum that I've been able to find, and the only search hits I've gotten in other forums are years old and/or for Cinema 4D.

I've tried adapting what I've seen in the C4D help documentation to LightWave, but the best I've been able to achieve is a very, very black (but shiny!) cup that sort of looks like it's doing SSS, but no amount of tweaking is getting me anywhere close to my goal: a simple white china- or porcelain-like surface.

Before I declare defeat and just use a combo diffuse and glossy material, I thought I'd shout out into the darkness and hope someone can give me just a very basic hint or two. If I just had a passable starting point, I think I could feel my way from there. Thanks!

[scooternva]

No one models ceramics? Is this thing on?

[Lewis]

Can you show use examples/problems you might think you have/expect, I never used SSS for ceramic materials so far and none of my Architect clients argued and said it's not looking like ceramics .

[slv]

Hi _ yes _ i think there is a confusion, because ceramic is a fired clay object.
For more realistic render, you can add some micro rifts, cracks on a layer surface coat film reflection.

https://5500k.fr/

[tomas.base]

Try my porcelain and possibly modify it.

[elsksa]

Try my porcelain and possibly modify it.

Hi Tomas, I am curious to know why a γ2.2 gamma-exponent has been applied to all your shading network. Octane should allow you in its preference, to change the color picker from Linear-sRGB to non-linear sRGB (with an EOTF applied, likely the approximation of the piece-wise function) thus making this operation not required.

[tomas.base]

Try my porcelain and possibly modify it.

Hi Tomas, I am curious to know why a γ2.2 gamma-exponent has been applied to all your shading network. Octane should allow you in its preference, to change the color picker from Linear-sRGB to non-linear sRGB (with an EOTF applied, likely the approximation of the piece-wise function) thus making this operation not required.

I don't know how to set it up in Lightwave as far as it goes. The recommendation for the LW plugin is to set all items in colorspace to linear. Then I have to correct the gamma everywhere. It is not in the plugin settings.

If I set the LW setup so that the picked colors match the IPR (Palette files = sRGB, DisplayColorSpace = sRGB, others LINEAR) then I don't have to correct anything, but it doesn't match ShaderBall. It is faster for more complex scenes. And that's the problem, because in a difficult scene, I have to wait a few minutes before I see the result.

Sometimes I use Standalone to create the material, for example a gradient node is badly used without a graphic slider.

I also prefer the LW palette in linear, the default one, because LW2015 under Windows 10 is non-functional in some things about color presets in the palette. It took me a while to figure out how to sync the Modeler. LW is already dead.

I'm moving to Cinema 4D, but I will miss the LW experience from version 5 for a long time.

If someone can set Lightwave so that the RGB spectrum without GAMMA correction in IPR corresponds to ShaderBall, then I'm probably blind, because I tried all the options to set up ColorSpace in LW. Or can someone advise me how.