Corona Skin Material

Skin is one of the most complex materials to render, with many properties unique to skin that cannot be covered in an all-purpose shader. The Corona Skin Material makes it easy to control and adjust the look of the skin and renders fast and efficiently with realistic results.

The Corona Skin Material is a dedicated SSS material for rendering skin. Its main target is character design; however, it can be used to render any type of layered SSS material, including Human skin, the skin of animals or imaginary creatures, fruits, and rubber.

The Corona Skin Material has all necessary SSS effects enabled by default and works out of the box, so there is virtually no action required from the user to set it up. The available properties do however allow for the creation of various types of materials.

Level – This is the intensity (also considered as the visibility) of the reflection color.

Color – Specifies the color of the skin on lit parts of a surface.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the above color.

Mix mode – Controls the blending mode of the texture map or shader over the color.

Mix strength – Controls the intensity of the texture map or shader that is being used.

Amount – Controls how much the skin is defined by subsurface scattering as opposed to the diffuse component. A value of 0% results in no subsurface scattering, while a value of 100% results in full subsurface scattering and no diffuse component.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used to control the amount value.

Radius scale – Controls the size of the subsurface scattering of all layers. Works as a multiplier of each layer radius.

Layer 1

Weight – Defines how much this subsurface layer affects the material. A value of 100% means that the color scattering defined by this layer is fully applied, while a value of 0% means the layer is not used at all.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the weight value.

Scatter color – Defines the scatter color of subsurface scattering, i.e., the color that can be observed in the shadowed parts of the material.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the above color.

Mix mode – Controls the blending mode of the texture map or shader over the color.

Mix strength – Controls the intensity of the texture map or shader that is being used.

Radius – Defines the subsurface scattering radius, i.e., how far the color scatters from a place that was hit by a light beam.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the radius value.

Layer 2

Weight – Defines how much this subsurface layer affects the material. A value of 100% means that the color scattering defined by this layer is fully applied, while a value of 0% means the layer is not used at all.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the weight value.

Scatter color – Defines the scatter color of subsurface scattering, i.e., the color that can be observed in the shadowed parts of the material.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the above color.

Mix mode – Controls the blending mode of the texture map or shader over the color.

Mix strength – Controls the intensity of the texture map or shader that is being used.

Radius – Defines the subsurface scattering radius, i.e., how far the color scatters from a place that was hit by a light beam.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the radius value.

Layer 3

Weight – Defines how much this subsurface layer affects the material. A value of 100% means that the color scattering defined by this layer is fully applied, while a value of 0% means the layer is not used at all.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the weight value.

Scatter color – Defines the scatter color of subsurface scattering, i.e., the color that can be observed in the shadowed parts of the material.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the above color.

Mix mode – Controls the blending mode of the texture map or shader over the color.

Mix strength – Controls the intensity of the texture map or shader that is being used.

Radius – Defines the subsurface scattering radius, i.e., how far the color scatters from a place that was hit by a light beam.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the radius value.

Layer 1

Level – This is the intensity (also considered as the visibility) of layer one reflection color.

Color – This is the color used for layer one reflection.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the above color.

Mix mode – Controls the blending mode of the texture map or shader over the color.

Mix strength – Controls the intensity of the texture map or shader that is being used.

Glossiness – Controls how sharp or blurred the reflection is. A value of 100% (white if a texture map or shader is used) gives completely sharp reflections, while a value of 0% (black if a map is used) gives completely blurred reflections. Glossiness is the inverse of the Roughness value used in some other applications.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the glossiness value.

IOR – Index of refraction (IOR) for Fresnel reflections. This controls the amount of material reflection in a physically plausible way. Higher values create stronger reflection. Set this to 999 to disable the Fresnel effect (i.e., to create a mirror-like reflection effect).

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the IOR value.

Layer 2

Level – This is the intensity (also considered as the visibility) of layer two reflection color.

Color – This is the color used for layer two reflection.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the above color.

Mix mode – Controls the blending mode of the texture map or shader over the color.

Mix strength – Controls the intensity of the texture map or shader that is being used.

Glossiness – Controls how sharp or blurred the reflection is. A value of 100% (white if a texture map or shader is used) gives completely sharp reflections, while a value of 0% (black if a map is used) gives completely blurred reflections. Glossiness is the inverse of the Roughness value used in some other applications.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the glossiness value.

IOR – Index of refraction (IOR) for Fresnel reflections. This controls the amount of material reflection in a physically plausible way. Higher values create stronger reflection. Set this to 999 to disable the fresnel effect (i.e., to create a mirror-like reflection effect).

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the IOR value.

Level – Specifies the opacity level. Both the opacity constant color and texture map are multiplied by this number. Setting 50% and using white color is equal to using 50% gray color or using a texture map with output level of 50%.

Color – Specifies the opacity of the material. It can be set as a constant color or mapped by a texture map.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used instead of the above color.

Mix mode – Controls the blending mode of the texture map or shader over the color.

Mix strength – Controls the intensity of the texture map or shader that is being used.

Strength – The missing coefficient between the texture and constant color. 100% means only the constant color is used, and the value in-between blend the texture with the constant color.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used for the bump channel.

Min level – Sets the displacement distance applied to areas with black (0.0) texture. Measured in world space units.

Max level – Defines the strength of the displacement effect. It is the world space displacement distance applied to the areas with white (1.0) textures.

Enable water level – When enabled, this option enables the clipping of the displacement starting from the 0.0 values or black areas of the texture map or shader.

Water level – Sets the clipping distance in world space units.

Texture – Defines the texture map or shader that will be used for displacement.

Mode – Defines the mode used to calculate the displacement. Available modes are:

Normal
Vector tangent
Vector object

Material ID – Defines an ID for the material that can be used in the Corona Compositing tag or in the Corona Data shader.

Normals filtering – Determines how normal and bump maps are filtered:

None – No filtering is applied to normal and bump maps, providing high accuracy but potential noise and flickering.

Linear – Normal and bump maps are filtered linearly, just like other map types, potentially affecting material appearance with varying camera distance and render resolution. 

Roughness Modulation – Utilizes linear filtering for normal and bump maps while also adjusting material roughness to maintain consistent material appearance regardless of camera distance and render resolution. Default filtering method in Corona 11 and newer. 

SSS mode – Switches between different SSS models. Diffusion is simpler, faster model, while Directional is a more complex, slower, and more realistic model recommended for human skin.