Preserved Topic: Skin Tones ?

Has anyone got any advice on creating realistic skin textures ? i notice that wheni look a close up of a face for instance, you can see tiny bumps that light up from sweat, wondering how you realistically re-create that effect ?

There are several ways you could go about it. Work with noise and maybe some clouds and airbrushing. That's how I'd do it anyways.

Does not really have to do with bumps and such but a hint I learned a long time ago about skin tones is to use a small amout of green in your shadows and such . In painting you might make your underpainting green and allow a bit to show through layers, for instance...

what in the who now? Green?

???

Sure green. Think outside the box.

It seems to me that "thinking outside the box" in this case goes against the request for "realistic skin textures"...

Are you looking for something like this, Axle?




[edit: The skin in that appears to have too much texture in my opinion, but oh well.]

[This message has been edited by Human Shield (edited 08-27-2001).]

Look in the upper left corner. That's green.

borrowed your image. Hope ya don't mind

You've got more green in that skin then you realize HS.

[This message has been edited by Jeni (edited 08-27-2001).]

Actually, that's a range of brown/oranges, from 180, 146, 110 to 138, 104, 68... at least, according to Photoshop.

Here, I upped the color saturation for the skin layer. You'll see now that it is in fact an orangish color... A hue of 32 is what I use.





[This message has been edited by Human Shield (edited 08-27-2001).]

No i don't think they mean go for the lizard-green skin color!!!

Intead realize that skin isn't made up of just pinks and reds, there can be other colors, sometimes you might use alot of blue. Who knows. I think it has alot to due with your background.




Self-Mutilation: The Fun and Easy Way To Prove You're Stupid

It's about optical illusion. Green in skintones is a given. At least according to the art professors I had. I painted with green in the upper left hand corner. It tonally appears the same as the shadows in the textures (whether it is or isn't).

Not everything has to be taken so literally as bright green on a peach background.
*where's Peter when I need him?*

Right
No ones saying people should SEE Green, but rather that you use green to make it look 'realistic'




Self-Mutilation: The Fun and Easy Way To Prove You're Stupid

I'm confused. Why did you make it orange?

FIGHT !!! FIGHT !!!! LOL, i think that HS is on the right lines here, although i can understand about the green thing and the optical illusion, but the police dont buy that when i run a red light, nevermind, i want a good skin tone, so i can experiment a little for close up shots, and detail, the hair on the skin is my next hurdle.

Certainly, green is in there. That's because Green is the G in RGB. That means that green is in white. But you don't need to apply green directly to get the hue you want. Even in the edited image you made where you painted green over it, it's still got a greater red value than green. The upper-left most pixel is 144, 126, 90, that makes it an orange color. See, what I'm saying is he can get the right skin tone without applying colors separately. Why do an underpainting with a layer of green to adjust the hue, when you can just adjust the hue right on that layer? That's the whole point of having channels.

Anyway, back to the topic, which didn't involve skin coloration, but rather, skin texturization...

Oops, I added some shadow to the tattoo image and accidentally saved over the original... well, that shouldn't mess things up too much, we still have Jeni's copy to look at to see the old version.

Wouldn't ya know I saved over the one I d/l from you!
Anyhoo, you got my point. That's all I wanted. To make good shadows and depth, one needs to think in multicolor. That's the point. If you're going to paint on orange (which is made up of Magenta and Yellow), Cyan is best added, as well as black for shadows. It's just more realistic that way. Whether you choose to do that as an independent layer, or actually change your overall hue through your channels is up to you.

Actually, I just use the burn tool.

That's cool. I personally (working in print) prefer more control over my color and documents. I never use the burn tool. But that's just me.

Edit>That came out a lot snottier then I meant it. I meant that with print, colors are precise. That's the way I work. Just me. Doesn't mean it's better or anything.

[This message has been edited by Jeni (edited 08-28-2001).]

All of those have the right colors, but they look like something other than skin.....

I don't have anything constructive to add...

I've found out that you can use almost any hue when creating skin as long as the light sources make sense in direction and intensity.

Somehow - if the rest of the picture matches - your mind just tend to interpret it as colored light cast upon the skin.

Look at a few pictures and paintings and you'll see what I mean.
Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell has quite a few paintings that look realistic, but when you start nitpicking at the colors you will see very few that are what we like to think of as skin colors.

One basic practice is to look at any object - being a piece of skin (your hand?) or any other object - and really try to make out the colors, no matter what your mind "knows" about their presets.

For example:
You know an egg is white. But if you'll paint it all white, you'll end up with a flat oval blob.

So you add some shadows. We like to thinkn about shadows as being darker, and darker white tends to be gray. That leaves us with a body with some depth, but without much vigor or life.

If you really *look* at an egg before you you'll see the color shifts coming from the lightsources that is casting light at it and from the surrounding objects reflecting their color onto it. (I believe it's called radiosity in 3d apps. Could be wrong).
If you add those tones at the highlights and shadows you'll be much closer to photorealism than before.

I hope some of this made sense....



[This message has been edited by Nimraw (edited 08-28-2001).]

I've got a book by Boris. In the intro he discusses his approach to painting flesh tones. Extra green for some parts of the body. Has to do with how close and how strong the blood flow is beneath the skin or something. Damn good read. When it comes to painting flesh tones, I gotta listen to Boris.

damnit Warjournal. You're too quick for me

I just realized I forgot the part about the tones changing according to blood flow beneath the skin. Started up the computer again, just to see you beat me to it...


Would that be Fantasy Art Techniques by Boris?
I think I got three of his books...

-nimraw

Actually, I'm not sure about the tite. My copy has been buried in a box for too long. All I can really remember is that Conan is on the back popping some chamgaigne. Well, it's got the National Lampoon's European Vacation poster that he did. Jeez, that's all I can remember.

Believe it or not, Nimraw, you beat me to mentioning Boris. I had a post all prepared, but I couldn't get through. When I finally did, your post basically forced me to chop my down. Right back at ya, tough guy.

Wait a minute... it also shows him doing roughs in ink. And how he works from Polariod pictures. Very cool to see his rough pencil sketches and Polariods being turned into a finished piece.



[This message has been edited by warjournal (edited 08-28-2001).]

Nimraw:Perfect sense As i said just because you use green doesn't mean people SEE green.


Self-Mutilation: The Fun and Easy Way To Prove You're Stupid

Axle, try noise, brush strokes, lighting effects, etc to get the texture you want for your skin.

Hmm I guess I cheated and used a texturizer for my hand...

Prolly not the best way but it looks decent :P

That's okay, I cheated too. The texture on my sig was made using a third party application, sort of. I applied an alien skin filter to a layer of grey and set the color mode to something or other over the skin layer to give it that speckled look. But I'm trying to help someone who, as far as I know, doesn't have anything besides the basic filters, so I'm attempting to advise him using those. The blind leading the blind...