new painting method

Ruz

just worked out a new way of painting faces.
It involved making a layer above you base layer and setting it to bevel and emboss, make it fairly soft.
Then paint things like cheeks, chins and brows on this layer . this way you always get brush strokes that have a leaning towards roundness than flatness. the good thing also is that you can adjust the layer opacity and the bevel and emboss settings can be tweaked too.
Also you can use the smudge tool on that layer and you can get nice flesh folds etc .
Its kind fo like a 3d brush stroke , but can be easily tweaked.
Not sure if this has already been done before , but it gives my work a lot more depth anyhow.

Takes a bit of messing around with , but it has improved my work no end.

pior

Sounds interesting Ruz... Dou you have any example pics at hand?
And what about different emboss levels? Dou you create like, 3 layers for light, medium and high bump?

Wanna know!

Ruz

I created 3 layers for detail levels, although you could lots fo different layers for different effects.
So for a broad cheek area I would increase emboss size, for brow furrows, decrease emboss size. i also used actions to avoid having to keep setting it up every time. I will try and post some examples soon.
Just a few thigns to note, the smudge tool really does work well in this case, you can push the blobby stoke around and get some nice fleshy looking strokes, erase out the bits that look a bit awkward
I suppose the way to look at it is that the stroke is self shadowing and because its a brush stroke it does it locally.
works well for bags uder eyes and stuff.

FatAssasin

I've done something similar with metallic objects in textures, but never thought to do it with faces. On the one hand it seems like you're losing some level of control, but on the other I can see how it could save time. Good thinking.

Ruz

you lose a bit of control in that it can be a bit of a pain ot get 'exactly' what you are after. I only use it after I have painted a half decent base texture. Its problem areas like cheeks and brows which I sometimes have problems with, so its really helped me here.
It may sound a bit 'gimmicky', but it can really work well if you tweak the settings/layer opacity.

Snowfly

that's pretty much the same thing Painter does with its impasto brushes. use a slight bevel/emboss effect to fatten up the brush strokes. i like the look very much, but it doesn't work well as a base layer, as you mentioned.

never thought to try this in photoshop though! clever.

Ruz

also discovered I can get more control by not using the bevel and emboss, just wack on a new layer, and smudge 'just' on that layer, , though I am still using the bevel and emboss for 'cheeks' and biceps etc
My previous way of working was to paint and smudge on one layer, so this has been an interesting development for me.

Gmanx

Isn't that a similar technique to Dave King's old tutorial where you have a layer for base colour and a layer on top (set to hard light and filled with grey) for 'shading', adding light and dark tones (or painting with a mid grey brush set to bevel-emboss)? Can you give us an example? I tried to find Mr.King's tutorial here on Polycount, but he's in the process of updating it.

dejawolf

yeah it's quite nice, used it on the beastdog model 3 months ago, to make the creases stand out more.

Ruz

I tried that method, but I could n't quite get away with it.I did try the grey brush wiht bevel and emboss, and that works quite well also. i had it on soft light though, about 50 percent layer opacity

I used to smudge on one layer , but found that although it gave me a nice smooth effect, it tended to flatten out mi work.
At least blending layer by layer enables you to build up depth in a more controlled manner.
At the end of the day I still mainly paint with the airbrush and smudge when required.

ScoobyDoofus

Ruz: I did this years ago, and was partly how I started off doing texturing. Ultimatly I found it to be far too limiting for me personally. I still use it for things like scratched/dented metal, but thats about it.

EDIT: 1 small note is that I would fill my later with a decent skin-tone and then paint the layer mask, rather than the layer itself. This way, I wouldnt have to switch to the eraser tool, or worry about the color of my brush. I was just painting black & white, like a depth/displacement map.

Ruz

strange how the technique i was trying to pimp seems to have lead on to trying other things. Its good to experiment!!

Thanks for the tips scooby doofus, will give that a try too

Ruz

Just a quick demo of what I was talking about.

Right hand side is the paint over if it wasn't obvious.

spacemonkey

I usually slap on a level adjust - set it to something suitable over bright and paint into the layer mask like scooby mentioned.

It does sound like an interesting idea Ruz so I'll have to give you idea a try.

jehuty

@ Ruz:
this sounds pretty interesting but i have problems following your expanation... so the quastion i have is can you make somekind of step-by-step (mini)tutorial for it. if you have time of course.

Ruz

Ok, Jehuty. i will try and write some kind of tutorial at some point. I am a bit busy at the moment wiht work, but sooon as i am free I will do a step by step .

jehuty

cool man... take your time... i am glad your going to do it... thx!