Human Skin WIPs and Tips (Everyone feel free to post your own skin WIPS here too)

#1481

Oranges are good, har,
one thing i’m not trying to accomplish is total photorealism (then i would take a photograph, har har). Call it ‘isomorphic’ if you like. I.m.h.o. 3D graphics allow you to take it a step further (or at least a different direction)… Over-do it a bit, enjoy the freedom all those nice tools are giving us…
My inspiration comes from meuck, egon schiele, vaughn bode, manga to name a few.
I thought it lookz kinda crisp, it’s a style thing i guess. My crit to me would be that here and there the texture smears a bit, and the subsurface scattering is a bit too intense (or maybe i like intense… har)… There’s also no bump and no spec-map yet. Stuff like that
Forgot to mention, i did some photoshopping on her.
Here’s a photoshopped version next to the original render. The original might look more realistic but a lot more boring to me…
Maybe you like the other render better, but that’s a blinn and still WIP…
You can check out my progress on the WIP thread if you like (…oranges… :slight_smile: )
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=43&t=566410

so… any thoughts on if we are supposed to rebuild reality, or discover new forms and styles? Maybe that ought to be a new thread (?)

#1482

Here is an attempt I made a few weeks ago using Essence: The Face assets and Fry Render

The noise is due to having too much displacement. I’ll get around to fixing it at some point.

And yes the pupils are squirrelly :frowning:

#1483

Hi, here’s my contribution. The model is taken from “Essence:the face” while i’ve done everything else. 3 lights, fg, sss in maya/mental ray using photoshop/bodypaint for textures. I followed Alvarez tutorial on gnomonworkshop site for sss skin shading and it’s quite simple to achieve this result, i’d reccomend that tutorial to anyone interested in skin shading!
:slight_smile:
Ravèz

#1484

Hi, this is my actual state in creating human skin. It’s done in fryrender. My Material have actually 6 Layers: 2 Reflection plus Diffuse, Epidermal, Subdermal and Backscatter like FastSkin. It’s not finished yet (like my headmodel).

Edit: Sucking Image removed^^

#1485

Here are a couple renders I kicked off today. Max and Mental Ray with FastSSS.

#1486

Hey, as I improve my love for making the skins, here is another render…same character…just evolved…some feedback would be awesome


#1487

This is my contribution, with eman’s modified XSI SSS shader:

#1488

Looking cool Jester, as usual :slight_smile:

#1489

Hi! I got a question on how do you guys go about in creating skin texture for the body? Do you create it from scrap or by using photo ref and blending them all together? I try to use photo ref to blend some the skin together, but after awhile the details on of the skin doesn’t seen to flow and some parts where I tried blending begin to lose its details.

#1490

I used to paint my texture. In my opinion it’s the best if you go ofr the ipression of the texture and detail, and not for copy the life

#1491

you use to?.. ha ha so what is the way you do it now?

#1492

Oh sh*t…my ENglish is bad…:slight_smile: This is the way I create my textures, that’s what I meant to say.

#1493

IC… Did you created it something like from this tutorial?
http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=31082

#1494

No, I painted everything directly in zbrush. There is an excellent tutorial on zbrushcentral covering that subject including a really nice video tutorial

#1495

Ooo… THanks again j3st3r ! Is it possible to post me that topic link here?

#1496

I use procedural texturing for skin. See http://www.shonner.com/drafts/shonner_skin.pdf

#1497

Two questions about skin:

Whats the general rule about colour pigmentation with skin, is there a set theory about which each colour tone relates to? ie could you say all fat areas lean towards one range, while area close to bone lean towards another range, creased areas, expose areas, unexposed, etc when you look at skin you can see green, purple, blue, reds …

What produces the colour of skin? am i right in thinking its a combination of blood vessels and light? this leads me to think if i map a head from photography then its needs to be close to grey or very pale, remove all the previous light information, and use the SSS (blood vessels) in conbination with the CG light setup to produce the skin colour, is this correct?

Thanks,
Dave.

#1498

I certainly wouldn’t aim for such a scientific approach… And most people aren’t after 100% photorealistic results anyway, the large majority actually overdo the translucency effect as it’s usually more pleasing to the eye.

What I’d do is to look through the CGChoice Gallery and check the threads for all the images I like. Most artists are pretty generous and include at least thumbnails of their textures and sometimes even shader settings, all of which you can learn from.

Now, the most common approach is to use Mental Ray’s Fast Skin SSS shader, it’s available for Maya, Max and XSI as well, out of the box, and it’s relatively simple to use. It has three SSS layers and 2 specular layers combined with glossy reflection (which is IMHO just as important for good looking skin as the SSS).
So you have the following layers from the inside out:

[ul]
Back scatter: for light coming from the other side as seen on ears, fingers etc. Simple red color, maybe mask it out for specific areas.
[/ul][ul]
Subdermal: stuff under the skin, generally orange in color. Use color corrected version of the main skin texture; maybe remove superficial details like birthmarks, wrinkles, freckles etc.
[/ul][ul]
Epidermal: skin itself, only a few milimiters thick. Faint pink color for the skin texture (or tan if that’s what you want), maybe remove internal details like veins, capillaries.
[/ul][ul]
Overal diffuse color: surface, can be the same as epidermal; if you have make-up and stuff like that, you may wish to add those only to this layer.
[/ul]

There’s a builtin falloff for speculars (bluish tint so that when it’s added to the reddish skin, the result is closer to white than yellow) with front/side values; it also seems to mask the glossy reflection with the specular map. You can add gloss maps etc. if you wish to.
I recall that Gnomon has a video tutorial on the shader as well, but I don’t remember if it’s free. If not, it’s well worth the money IMHO.

If you don’t have access to the shader, because you’re using LW/Blender/C4D, or a different renderer, then you may try to assemble something like that yourself.

So that’s it basically, and again, I’d rather study the work of other artists capable of producing nice images instead of going for scientific research, which - IMHO - hasn’t really managed to create good looking stuff…

#1499

Thanks Tamas,

A nice indepth explaination.

Strange i hear that all the time, “not after 100% photo realism”. I must be the acception, because that’s exactly what im after. Its a personal challenge :slight_smile: more a question of why can’t we recreate a photorealistic skin shader that drives me to find out.

I think this is the closest i’ve seen so far, pretty amazing shader:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=132&t=648595#

But still looks CG, can’t quite figure out why, any thoughts?

What are the two specs and glossy for? I understand this is probably to recreate the surface oil effect.

So the back scatter is a control mask for the back light effect? why does this need to be red? would it not make sense to be a black and white height map? i guess it also controls the colour too.

So would you add vaines to the subdermal? or would this go into the back scatter? hmm

Thanks again.
Dave.

PS using max.

#1500

Hi, everlite, I think, you’re right. Without SSS it have to look like a Corpse.
Something dark, blue, gray. And the SSS brings life in it.

Here’s the last Version of my own Skinshader, inspired by FastSkin -
this is Diffuse only:

and this with SSS and Reflections:

(rendered in FryRender, model is my “Willpower”-Girl)

HTH :slight_smile:

John Strieder