Question about skin texture

Krisonrik

Hi, I am new to the board, and very excited to join this community. I was wondering. Is there any particular technique in painting human skin texture mapping that can make it appear to be flawless, yet realistic. For example...
You don't see pimple,fleck or other random stuff. Yet, it looks real. So my question is, now to paint a skin texture that resemble this kind of skin?

MoP

Well, that photo's been airbrushed, that sort of skin almost never occurs in real life

However, if you want to paint fesh like that ... well, you just posted a great reference image.
You can see in that photo how there aren't really any harsh edges anywhere, nor much contrast except around the eyes, nostrils and lips. The colour fades to red around the cheeks, and the highlights are very soft, the only major one really being on the nose.

So yeah, you have the reference photos ... use those colours and contrasts and paint your own, see how it comes out!

Daz

Welcome.

Along with what MoP has suggested, If it's for an in game character, I tend to 'imagine' a light source very much like she has. Which is somewhat above and in front of the face, with soft edge shadows. Once you've figured out where the light source is, you can paint in subtle form such as cheekbones etc. I aspire to have my female characters end up something like the above. Sort of airbrushed looking, but realistic. Because with lower texture resolutions, skin blemishes dont look so good, so I think for sort of PS2 level content, cleaner textures work better. I don't actually *always* paint from scratch though. Sometimes I might even find a good front on photograph, and use that as a basis for a texture and heavily airbrush into it. That way my colour choices are somewhat realistic, but I lose all the residual colour noise from the photographic source. I'd post some texture flat examples but I don't own the rights to post 'em sorry! Ruz who hangs out here paints from scratch but has a similiar somewhat airbrushed look I think. Can't find any of his work right now though. Perhaps he will be kind enough to share If he sees this thread ;-)

MoP

Yep Daz, you just described my exact workflow for painting low-res female faces for PS2-level stuff

KDR_11k

Be careful with that ref pic, she's not looking straight at the camera so you have to model the head slightly lowered and turned to the side. From your other thread it looks as if you're using that as a front ortho ref.

Downsizer

i was told never model organics in ortho. always perspective, with a camera FOV matching the picture.

Krisonrik

The 3D models that I posted here were not based on her. But you know... asian face But since I suck at it... a lot of errors made her look like alien... >.> Any studio want an Alien modeler? I will give you goofy head for sure (j/k).