Making the Cheddar Warrior - the cheesy bits

You could argue that the entire Cheddar Warrior scene is a bit cheesy. But there's a wedge of Edam cheese in there that presented its own challenge along with its own simple solution

1 - Basic model

You don't get 3D models much simpler than this one. It's ready for some cheesy materials now.

2 - Materials applied

Here's the cheese with some nice cheese-coloured materials on it. But it doesn't look right. That yellow part doesn't look like cheese. It looks more like yellow plastic. I couldn't figure out why at first.

3 - Crusty edges

Edam cheese is a bit tougher around the edges and also a bit darker. So I've made that change. It looks a bit better, but it still looks fake.

4 - SSS

Then I realised that cheese is not completely opaque. It lets a tiny bit of light through the thin parts, and the solution was suddenly obvious.

In many materials, light penetrates the skin and scatters for a short distance below the surface. That's what happens in things like human skin, a glass of milk, candle wax, and cheese. 3D artists call that lighting effect 'sub-surface scattering'. Most of the time we shorten that down to 'SSS' to save thinking about all that spelling.

Once I turned on the SSS in my cheese it looked good enough to eat. I could move onto the next thing in the scene.

Making the Cheddar Warrior

• The foreground leaves
• The background tree
• Making a mouse
• The hairy bits
• The hazy bits
• Looking through the water
• Sticking it all together

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