Realistic skin in substance painter?
polycounter lvl 5
Hello. I'm trying to make realistic skin using substance painter and substance source. Realistic skin is new to me, as i was focused on sculpting and stylized low poly so far. Perhaps my model is a bit to low poly for realism? Anyway, i'm not quite happy with results i achieved so far and i feel stuck. Any suggestion and feedback would be appreciated... For start, can you even make realistic skin up to todays standards by using substance painter? Model is my Elon Musk portrait 
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And then this one is really popular too, by Tom Newbury. Goes a bit more in depth to some of the above processes mentioned: https://gumroad.com/l/BLge
Good luck!
I improved the texture a bit. Upper render is from marmoset, bottom from iray. Still only used substance painter... This is of course far from quality in tutorials you posted. Which suggest i will probably need to learn that method... Still i would love if it would be possible to achieve something similar with substance alone. Much less pain.
Most of the works I've been impressed by involve really large maps -- like multiple 4k maps for a single face, and there is also some advanced shader work going on as well. Like the subsurface scattering, and multiple channels for different dermis layers, etc.
I definitely don't know enough to say how far you can go with just the standard PBR textures, but my hunch based on the little bit of research I've done is that you've got to get at least a little bit into more advanced shaders and also go beyond just the standard PBR texture channels. Have you looked at the UE4 realistic skin/hair/eyes project? (assuming you are talking about game characters here). Even staying with the Iray renderer in substance painter, that projects documentatioin may start giving you some idea of how to go about, along with the tutorials at XYZ textures.
Here is with some SSS applied in Blender Cycles. I know it's not perfect. But i think i will continue with the rest (hair and eyes).
I think result is not that bad considering how faster and easier it is to make skin pores using substance painter, then with texturing xyz-mari workflow. I know the quality is not the same, but this can still be usable for in game model for example.