Fake SSS on One sided Geometry??

[nbjsargent]

Hey all;

I'm a visual effects student working on a project involving an underwater kelp forest. What I would like to know is how i can go about shading the kelp leaves to produce a varying translucency effect, similar to subsurface scattering. Because of the amount of geometry that I have to solve, and the distance they are from the camera, I cannot add thickness to the geometry, but I still need a subsurface effect. If you look at any image showing a kelp forest you see the leaves of those things are very thin so they have different levels of opacity depending on the angle of light. I am just looking for some guidance on capturing this effect.

Thanks!

[sam.h]

What I think you need is translucency. You can mult this with noise or a texture to add variation.

Have a look at the translucency shader in houdini for how to do it in VOP SHOPs

Edited September 24, 2009 by sam.h

[Erik van der Tier]

Simplest way I know for achieving this is by inverting the normal vector in your surface shader and normalize it and use that as the normal for your diffuse component. Works fine, and is very cheap.

Cheers,

Erik