CGTalk - Leigh: Skin Texture Help

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lrf

11-04-2005, 11:44 PM

I purchased your book "Lightwave 3D 8 Texturing", and it really has improved my understanding of realistic texturing. Many of the photoshop techniques explained in the book are great for original/fictional characters. A problem I have though, is in the use of photographs when applied to human faces.
What is your best advice for creating image maps based on and derived from a human photo reference. I have yet to find a tutorial available just for this technique.
Thanks for any help

leigh

11-04-2005, 11:50 PM

Glad you enjoyed the book!

Regarding your question though, I am not sure what kind of advice you're after. Ideally you're going to need some evenly lit photographs, but once you have those, it's really straightforward to blend them together to form the texture. What part of the process are you having trouble with?

lrf

11-05-2005, 12:51 AM

Thanks for the fast reply!

Blending the elements together as you refer, is probably where I'm having the issues. When using a Uvmap of my subject's Human head.
I understand the concept of painting an original texture map based on imagination. But where I'm confused is in the area of using the Human photo and applying it to an exported uvmap. Is this a process of reshaping the photo's elements to fit into the uvmap layout? As I said before I'm lost but trying to learn this area
Thanks

leigh

11-05-2005, 01:19 AM

Well you can try warping the photos to match the UV map. The trick is to get all the right photos - orthagonal ones from the front, sides and back, as well as angled ones. To be honest I can't say I've ever had any problems blending the photos, but perhaps I have always been lucky in getting suitable photographs for the task.

Using a combination of cloning and erasing, you should be able to blend the photos to match your UV projection.

lrf

11-05-2005, 01:42 AM

I'll will certainly work with your advice, Thanks for your help!

cyphyr

11-05-2005, 08:37 AM

I dont know if this would work or not but if you have either poser 5 or 6 then it has a utility (face room maybe ?) that will allow you to take side and front photograph and merge them into a complete uv map. Although not a complete solution it may form a starting point.
cyphyr

BldRnr

11-07-2005, 10:14 AM

Gnomon has an excellent DVD called Texture Painting by Paul Campion that addresses this very issue.

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