Slashdot Mirror
Perfect Digital Skin
ILMfan writes "BBC Technology is describing a new graphics algorithm for creating perfect virtual skin. This technique by graphics wizard Henrik Jensen (the guy who invented photon mapping) is already being used in movies (it was used on Gollum in Lord of the Rings, and it will be used in the soon-to-be-released van Helsing movie). And perhaps more exciting is that several game companies are planning on using it for their next generation games. So John Carmack are you listening? Any chance this can be included in DOOM3? Of course there are endless other opportunities for virtual humans with perfect skin :-)"
Just in case anyone's wondering what that magical technique is: It's called subsurface scattering and simulates the light flow within materials, not just on the surface.
Right, when I saw this article I was thinking: "What, something beyond subsurface scattering?" This has been out for a couple of years. That doesn't make it any less cool, but I'd like to see more Slashdot stuff on newer graphics techniques, like General Purpose GPU stuff (www.gpgpu.org) or new illumination models. It doesn't have to be front page, but I'd like for the graphics topic to be a little less "lite".
Derek
Don't Panic...