Still in the Mud

As I’ve now got the features on my digital sculpt as close as I can get them to my subjects photograph I have now started the texturing of the model. We have been taught UV mapping and the techniques for imprinting these, however I found the technique of replicating and transposing sections of the subjects skin onto the model does not work well enough for me. Whichever technique I use, either stamping or projecting, none of them give a particularly three dimensional feel to the skin. So to create a skin that looks like it has the ‘depth’ of real skin I have been experimenting with the ‘spray’ tool and using one of the stamp presets.

Below are examples of sprayed skin that I experimented with to try and create a skin-like texture...

Obviously I would have to use different types and strengths of these sprays for the different areas of the face, smooth for the eyes, more bumpy for the cheeks etc but this could be corrected once an all over skin tone was applied.

I eventually found one I was happy with and applied it to the skin and then began the process of painting/colouring the model. I used numerous paint layers, layering them on top of each other and altered the strengths before I got a tone I liked. In the skin on my reference model much like the issues with the hair, I found that a lot of the variants in colour were more to do with shadowing than actual coloration of the skin. However there were ample enough areas to apply variations in order to give a ‘life’ to the skin, such as a bluish hue around the eyes etc.

The eyes themselves were painted separately and with a small enough brush/airbrush so that iris and pupil detail could be applied, perhaps the detail wouldn’t be seen but it would help them look realistic.

I came across a few issues with the colouring such as the fact that once colours were layered over each other, if a new colour was applied it would react with the colour layers beneath it and create an odd hue.

After a few final tweeks I checked back on the tutorials and literature to see if there was any more detailing or adjustments I could make before I finished but alas any further detailing would require other software packages such as Lightwave, zBrush etc and I wasn’t ready to make that jump yet.