Model a transparent body

Question

I created a human body shape in blender. I need to show veins or organes in that body but still be able to reconise that it's a body. I tried glass but a glass body look's strange and is full of reflections. Any idea in wish direction to take this ? I'm trying to get something kind of like that :

@cegaton yes that would be the answer but how he would get the same result, if your node stup there is showing the edges a harder and semitransparent color and the rest transparent in the object? — Michael Ben David, Mar 07 '19 at 06:51
@MichaelBenDavid just use the proposed node setup on the outer layer of the skin. The other objects could use other materials depending on the desired effect. https://i.stack.imgur.com/92Yjt.png and https://i.stack.imgur.com/lA4a2.png — , Mar 07 '19 at 07:21
Possible duplicate of How to render a mesh transparent with a color on its edges only, with nodes? — Rich Sedman, Mar 07 '19 at 08:42
Doesn't look like a Duplicate Q to me. I don't think this is the ghost effect done with fresnel. This looks more like a negative film effect where shadows are the bright parts. Probably a better solution to this using compositing nodes and render layers than shader nodes. — Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny, Mar 07 '19 at 12:57
Try the AO node in 2.8 that you can invert to drive the transparency and color to get this "x-ray" negative film effect. — Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny, Mar 07 '19 at 13:29

cgslav · Answer 1 · 2019-03-12T22:45:19.567

This method is working suprisingly well in EEVEE. It's fully real time (fast, very fast). In Cycles also. And it is very flexible.

Material setup

Basically it is mix between Emission and Emission Transparent shader.

I've used Normal input to drive Facing Blend value, this is for making "highlights". Color Ramp is for fine tuning intensity of those highlights. By rotating sphere inside Normal node you can achieve many interesting setups. The one from example is pointing downwards.