Any tips for painting skin/muscle definition?

Tom Ellis

Hey all,

I'm currently working on a character for which I wanna use painted textures as oppose to photo sourcing.

I'm just curious as to how best to know where muscles etc are to paint correct values. Lighter on raised areas, darker in creases etc.

While I've never done a hand painted skin texture before, I guess I always assumed the AO map would help. I've done an AO bake however and in this case, while it's definitely a great help for the clothing creases/seams, there's not enough to clearly see muscle definition.

So are there any common tips/techniques to knowing where to paint muscles?

I'm guessing there's a better way than simply knowing how the topology looks in certain areas.

Many thanks

Mr. Bean

https://shop.3dtotal.com/index.php?cPath=28_31

Good tutorial where the skin/muscles etc. are hand painted in.

Tom Ellis

Cheers Mr. Bean,

I've actually got that tutorial, and forgot it covered hand painting!

Thanks for the reminder.

Although that's on a character that doesn't have normal maps so there's no sculpted muscle so to speak, I want to paint the muscle values to match where they are sculpted on my mesh if you see what I mean.

divi

did you light your model yet to see if you even need to paint in any shadows?
you could increase the spread in the AO bake so it picks up more dark, but generally if there's no dark in the ao bake, then there'd probably be no dark there in reality.

Tom Ellis

Thanks for the reply Divi.

I haven't properly lit my model yet but that's a good point. I just stuck a DX shader on it in Max to check out the bake.

Thinking about it now, I should have considered the lighting factor. Although I guess I just want to paint some value in rather than just leave a simple skin base. The shadows as you say will probably take care of themselves when the lighting is added.

Emil Mujanovic

If you have a normal mapped mesh, you generally will only paint in the colour values on the your diffuse map and not so much your tonal values. The shadows and highlights will be sorted with your lighting and specular maps.
As divi suggested, using an Ambient Occlusion map multiplied on top of your diffuse could help define some forms and create that extra bit of depth to your mesh. The trick is to just get the skin colour right and adding a few blemishes and colour variation to make it believable and realistic.

Tom Ellis

Many thanks Emil, I will give that a go.

I'm not at my work computer right now so this is one of those 'forward planning sessions that aren't much use without the work in front of you' situations but Ive got visions of this flat coloured bore and I'm figuring it out in my head before sitting down to work on it... Which admittedly is a bit dumb.

Thanks again!

pior

The very best way to start is to simply do a painting (2d illustration) of the character you are working on, with the render quality you eventually want to achieve on the texture.

Once you are done with that, transferring the style over to the texture will be a lot easier.
Of course you can always think, "oh wth is this guy talking about, I meant texturing tutorials plz!" but I can assure you you will progress much faster this way.

Good luck!

Tom Ellis

Aha cheers Pior.

I know what you mean, and you're right, that will help a lot. In relation to the tutorial request though, I wasn't so much looking for a tut on painting as I've done enough (bad and mediocre) hand painting to know that practice makes perfect, I just wasn't sure if there's a trick to painting in the right places.

Where to paint, rather than HOW to paint, so to speak.

BradMyers82

Like Emil mentioned you don't want to paint a lot of values when you have a normal baked mesh. So the real trick is to get the colors down. You can search the net to find info on how bodies tend to have color pools in certain areas. I can't think of any off hand, but if you google it, I'm sure you will find something.

My favorite skin tutorial is Ancient Pig's tutorial which for a while I used to follow to the T. Now I have developed some of my own methods, but I think Ancient Pig's tutorials is a great place to start. Although he focuses on the face, the same general techniques apply for the body. You just need to look up what colors to pick and where to use them in general. Anyways you will find Ancient Pig's tutorial here: http://www.pig-brain.com/tut01/ap_facetut.pdf

Good luck man, post up some of your work on this, I would love to see it!

Tom Ellis

Many thanks Brad,

That link is awesome, cheers for that.

I may well post my progress providing it isn't too shameful

Thanks again

divi

http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/category/entertainment/watch/v851708WcEQPerQ

might be nice to do that on the highpoly and project the polypaint to the low.