I've been thinking about fake SSS. I've been thinking it might be useful to be able to have a map of the thickness of the model. This might be part of a backlit SSS look.
We can get something that appears to be a thickness map with surface "transparency" and "density" settings...
There is also a "Surface" constraint that can track an irregular surface. That setup is slightly more involved.
There is a tut on Surface constraint in post #4 here...
http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=45641&p=391354
One solution would be to constrain a ship to a bone that is at the center of the sphere, then animates the bone to move the ship on the surface of the sphere.
You would use both a Translate and Rotate constraint in this case.
Is the master0.lic file in an email right now?
-save it to your desktop
-copy it from the desktop
-paste it into every dir that A:M is installed in. V18... v16... whatever version it is you have installed, that license file will enable it.
You've run the A:M installer and it installed A:M somewhere on your hard drive.
Search for master.exe (32-bit) or master_64.exe (64-bit)
Put your license file in every directory that has one of those is in it.
I think this was the one. I haven't watched but a few minutes. I got the sense that some sort of compositing was being used which might be translatable to A:M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOcHxcCPoyI
Somewhere out there there's a long YouTube tut on an approach to fake SSS I've been meaning to read watch to see if it can be applied to A:M but I've not gotten around to it.
Are you referring to the "Average Normals " that is a Surface property?
Are we sure that is really the same as Porcelain?
In any event, i recall that 50% got me the smoothest result.
0% and 100% are opposites of each other , but least smooth.
If I were investigating it deeply I'd run the tests in some previous version just to eliminate the possibility that something has gotten out of whack since the features were introduced.
Also... when you did "Average Normals," did you set Normal Weight to some value? i seem to recall 50% was the smoothest.
Dione is one of Saturn's many unusual moons. It always presents the same face in its forward direction leaving one side light and the other side dark. You can examine this result from any angle if you make your own Dione model!
Download the rectangular projection of Dione's surface that was recently featured at Astronomy Picture of the Day...
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141107.html
Then apply it to a sphere to make you own model of Dione. Choose either "cylindrical" or "spherical" application and compare the visible result. I suspect spherical will be the most correct one.
Unfortunately it is not an elevation map so you can't make actual mountains and craters with it but it is fun to try if you haven't done much yet with decal application methods.