managing surfaces for realistic fingernails and toenails?

jardine

i've been trying to improve the look of bare/unpolished finger- and toenails in a character skin i've been finetuning. messing around in surfaces and adjusting texture files, i've managed to get a nice realistic graduated fleshtone for the fingernails--but it applies to the surface of the nail, when it should (realistically) be under the nail, and seen through it.

trying to get even that far working with toenails--i was amazed at how differently the default surfaces are set up. and tweaking them so they offer the same adjustment options that the fingernails started with and then making the same adjustments...yikes.

is there a way to adjust the actual thickness and opacity of the nail? transparency seems to mostly adjust some surface color that seems to be providing (kinda faking?) the vascular tint of the flesh beneath the nail.

i'm probably overcomplicating something there's a simpler solution to. i'd just like my character's nails to look as natural and healthy as the rest of her. :)

suggestions?

thanks!

j

nonesuch00

Well you'd probably want to make a small geoshell for each finger and toe nail and give that some variant of a partly transparent shader for the nails.

mjc1016

Which renderer and which base figure?

jardine

thanks, nonesuch00 and mjc1016...

i'll have to give the geoshell approach a try. sounds good.  :)

i'm using iray on g3f.