I didn’t realize this was moved from LW. I get the emails when someone posts, but I hadn’t realized the move.
Anyway, I modified my guy a bit from the Medical Intubations. Same color map for head and neck but now with some channels from Richard Smith’s shader.
So, it’s LW with a painted color, spec and bump map for the head and neck (and detail maps in the future for close-ups) along with some procedurals, incidence angles and G2.
Can’t wait to see it wit more detailed maps 
The nostril is a bit weird, very dark and sharp.
So no critiques or comments 
If you think it is crap
don’t hesitate to say it. I would really like to improve
on it.
Here is a actual testrender:
http://home.snafu.de/bobtronic/WIP/hairtest_02.jpg
The hair is not perfect, but I am working on it.
For other views please look on the my post above.
peace and happy painting, Bob
I think you have to improve the textures and lighting to get some realistic results.:shrug:
Facial Deluxe: Yes, I have the diffuse too low…
Bobtronic: My model needs some work (I hate the mouth) and I’m afraid if you’re going for something “real” then I would start with the model. At this stage, it’s more stylized and caricature-ish. The texture’s, no matter how good, will seem off if the model is off.
A more recent progress pic, this time with hair. Using GI, HDRI, glossy reflection for the specular.
Comments and critiques welcome.
Cory Redmond
This thread rocks!
And i do feel that i need help with this.
Im revising the head of my human dude (see link to thread in signature). And i want to make a realistic skin shader + texture for him. But no matter what i try i never seem to get it right. Any suggestions? Im using Max5.1 + Photoshop
Cheers
Sir Manfred: I like your dude, except for the nostrils. I think the bump you have for the head is decent. The color and spec seem flat.
Houkah - interesting shading so far, but I think the skin colour is too pink and a little too saturated. You’ve created a nice soft look now you just need to establish your specularity a little more so that you can “harden” some of the areas up a little
bobtronic - firstly I think you need to improve the lighting on your model a little more. Get rid of some of those shadows. Your skin right now looks too hard - you need to soften it up somehow. Try using ramps to add slight highlights and edges to the model. Also break up the specularity because it is too even. And add more colour variation!
credmond - your guy is looking better and better. Your specularity is making the skin (especially on the nose and lips) look a little metallic though. Try adding some colour to the specular highlights to avoid that. Also try adding some gloss to the lips to make them look a teeny bit wet.
There is a slight blotchiness to the skin - it might just be the HDRI playing up, but it’s quite noticeable on the forehead and the cheeks.
Manfred! Nice to see you here too 
You are still working on this guy?! There is something leathery about his skin… Might be the bump map, I’m not sure. The skin is also a little too peach coloured in my opinion (too orange), and is looking a little flat. As Zarathustra also pointed out, the colour is a little flat - try adding a bit of variation.
I will try to make the bump and the color map better.
Here is an update where i changed the specularity map and made the backlight glow just a little stronger
Sir_Manfred:
Looks great so far, some things you can work on to get it even better are:
Try to model the head so it follows the scull underneath.
Try to simulate translucency on the skin, it will make it more look like real skin, rather than a dead corpse:)
Improve the eye areas, add some “wet” effect with a spec map, also do that to the rest of the heads shiny parts.
Render it with a more common lighting technique, try to simulate studio-light.
Sir_Manfred,
That is a nice looking model you have there. One of the things I would tweak a little is the nostril area. But overall its a very solid model and will hold up well to texturing.
One of the first problems with your skin as I see it now is the flatness of the color. I would address this lack of variation first before progressing further. The skin should be composed of several tightly related skin tones instead of just a few flat tones. One person’s skin example I would look at would be Ripper’s character you can see on page 29 of this thread where he shows the amount of mileage you can get off of just having nice skin variation at a base level.
After getting a natural look from good skin variation I would also add a good specular map. One way to build a specular map is to darken a bump map by adjusting its levels and then add broad moderate areas of brightness to specular map around the forehead and the nose area with a dodge brush. A higher level of brightness for the lips, and a lesser area of brightness for the cheeks (in accordance with where the oil or sweat collect on the human face). Its important to build on the bump map for the specular so its broken up in accordance with the skin pores and features of the face.
Sir_Manfred:
Swirly, yeah I know him. Funny guy actually:beer:
credmond: Nice to see some updates, you always improving it! The skin is really good now, but the lips bothers me, keep it up!
I think I may regret subscribing to this thread with the number of comments there are here 
I was just wondering how people did fake subsurface scattering? It seems that incidence angles (facing ratio) are used a lot and that the reflections add a lot to the overall effect. Would that be right?
Also do you normally run a gradient through the transluscence, incandescence, colour or diffuse channels? Or just some of them?? Or all of them??
Any information on getting a fast (ie not G2 or GI solutions) waxy sub surface look would be great.
PS there are some notes here from Siggraph - several covering sub surface scattering http://www.renderman.org/RMR/Books/index.html#Sig Some are extremely slow and technical, but there is some stuff on rendering coral in Finding Nemo that seems to use the facing ratio trick.
Simon
I simulate subsurface scattering pretty easy in LW, it may not be a perfect technique in all situation thought…
If I make a human head I normally add a gradient over the color-map, add some red color where the light don’t reach and some bluish where it hits. It works pretty well on skin. If we talk about smaller parts like a nose or a ear, a simple omni light with a limit region and strong red color can help getting the effect of light going thru.
by the way, I think I am ready to show you all some thing I worked on. My idea is that it should be Hugo Weaving, don’t think I am there yet though:)
http://www.freewebs.com/clawie/progress2.jpg (some trouble with the host, you have to cut the URL and paste it in a new window:shrug: )
The skin is made up just from a color map, no bump yet (just using the colormap as the bump for the time being). The secularities comes from a simple procedural.
Sir_Manfred,
The one big aspect which is keeping your head from looking realistic is the eyes, it seems when I cover them up with my hands the skin looks much better since the eyes are always the first place we look when viewing a human ( so therefore if they look non-realistic it makes the entire head look non-realistic ) . So I suggest first off that you work on the eyes or take them out.:wip:
cover the eyes up with your finger and you will notice the difference
Claw: Hey, no fair covering up his eyes with glasses.
The lighting, shading, and texturing look pretty decent so far.
The one thing I would work on first is the modeling. There is some nice detail in your modeling and parts of it look pretty strong but there are some problem areas, like the cheekbone mass and nose, that need attention. And it would be good for us to get a look at your eye area in another picture and some profile pics so we can crit the modeling further.
With regards to the texturing you might look for more color variation and a more subtle 5 o clock shadow. Hope this helps. Keep going. This looks promising.
Cory Redmond
