Subsurface Scattering Marble (ATAT)

For the bank lobby in Ben's film I had to create a marble material. I had already created a test for the marble material in pre-production but I don't think it had the proper qualities that marble has. I decided to create this new marble material by using a Subsurface Scattering shader. I made it using an SSS because marble has a level of absorption. This is why marble is used for sculptures because it has that absorption level that is similar to skin.

This is the pillar model I tested with. Here it has a SSS shader applied without any of the scatter layers. This SSS material is then connected to the AdditionalColour attribute of an mia_material_x shader. I am connecting it to an mia_material_x shader so that the final material will have Fresnel reflections.

Epidermal scatter layer applied.

Subdermal scatter layer applied.

Back scatter layer applied.

Marble texture applied to each scatter layer.

I also created a Blinn shader to control the specularity. This is because the specularity settings on the SSS shader aren't very good. I connected the texture to the colour of the Blinn and then connected the Blinn to the diffuse colour of the SSS shader. This is the final look. I will go back to the texture and make it slightly more red to blend with the colour scheme of the scene.

This is the shading network of the shader.