Mastering Skin Textures in Substance Painter: A Complete Guide for Stylized Characters

hey guys it's Monica at academic Phoenix plus and welcome to a tutorial on human skin which sounds really weird but very important to make your characters look alive in the previous tutorials we have modeled Kora UV maor textur and subance painter and now we're going to be focusing as specifically on her skin to make her look more like Kora if you are new to this channel I post tutorials on a weekly basis software includes Maya zbrush substance painter and so much more so if that is your sort of thing please consider subscribing so bring out that creativity open up that software and let's go ahead and get started in texturing kora's skin all right so here we are and as you can see she's got regular skin and when we take a look at the Shader it is a smart material called Skin So if you miss that part of the tutorial you just go into substance painter go to your smart materials and type in skin and you're going to see that we have a couple of types one one of them is just skin face which is the one I've used another one is skin feverish so if I want to make her look like she's being you know has some sort of zombie effect then there you go and then finally we have just regular skin which is just really simple so the nice thing about this skin is that it does make her little ears red and it makes her nose slightly red and things like that but let's talk about the theory of skin and then let's implement it in substance painter the big thing about skin is that we actually have these color zones the top of our foreheads is usually yellow white our cheeks and noses are red and then our chin is a gray blue greenish colored part of it is because of the blood vessels in our forehead there isn't that many blood vessels so therefore we see the skull a little bit more and the fats and everything so that's why it's a little bit more yellow over here we have a lot of muscles and all sorts of stuff so we get a lot of blood here and therefore it turns red and then the chin is pale because of the Shadows the Beards therefore we have significant significantly less blood flow here and there's a lot less Sun here and therefore we get that effect you can see that it was used in traditional paintings so when you guys are looking at traditional paintings and even regular Uh current paintings right now you'll notice that their foreheads have a tendency to be a little bit more yellow the cheeks and nose a little bit more red and the chin is a little bit more bluish gray this happens to even women so make sure that when you are trying to implement both men and women you need to put that color zones in there otherwise they're not going to look alive now if you don't want to use that grayish color like the five o'clock shadow that guys get after shaving so many times uh you can put a little bit of green which is a nice compliment to the red so it helps the lips pop up a little more more now skin zones are like this however in reality they're a little bit more breaking down so I'm going to be using this as a reference to color my character and then I also need to make sure that she get some melanin because she is actually of Darker descent and and finally don't forget veins you do have a lot of veins take a look at your mirror and you will see that we have a bunch of big veins going through our heads and we need to add those to make it more realistic and finally floss we want to make sure that we add floss so that cor looks like she is a human being and that that includes moles freckles pores so on so forth now lucky for me this already has pores so I'm good to go but let's go ahead and get started on doing the color zones all right the first thing we're going to do is create a layer and I'm going to remove all of these options because I don't need them I only need is a yellow color so again it's GNA be it's going to be pretty yellow so maybe a little paler yellow but I'm also going to reduce the opacity but first let's add a black mask next I'm going to grab a brush and for me I just need a nice rough brush so there's a variety of uh rough brushes that we can use including dirt which I'm going to make smaller by hitting my left bracket and then I can start going in now as you can see it's affecting the hair and that's because it's all in the UVS so let me pop up up the UVS let me go over here and go to 3D 2D mode so my focus is just the forehead now it is going to affect the hair because you know I'm painting but I just need it to be nice and chunky and I'm looking at my reference and we do have a little bit of yellow around here and I like the fact that it's splotchy because it makes it looks more realistic and then I'm going to add a little bit of yellow around her Mouse like around here maybe it's a little too big let me undo that going use smaller brush and just kind of get those tones go something like that I know it looks it looks like fun go ahead and reduce the opacity we are going to reduce the opacity pretty significantly and let's remove all the other stuff so going into the polygon field tool I want to grab the shells and then I'm going to remove it but make sure this isn't black and just go through and remove everything doesn't look like a big impact but it really does make a difference when it comes to the color let me increase my percentage just a little bit more there you go next is going to be red so I'm going to double click this and call this yellow I'm going to duplicate this so you can do contrl D I'm going to clear my black mask right click clear mask and I'm going to change my color to Red make him a nice looking red and in this case again grab that brush make sure you are on the mask and in this one we're actually going to be doing her nose oh and you might as well make it 100% so we can actually see it so I'm definitely going to cover her nose definitely going to be covering her cheeks and all along here again I want it to be splotchy and you can also turn on symmetry but to make it look a little bit more alive I'm going to go ahead and just painted myself so I'm just going to go through and paint her uh a little bit of her eyes over here I might as well add a little bit in her ears as well again it looks a little biz are but that's okay and I might as well make this a little smaller and just give it a little color here her lips again all the splotchiness is on purpose because we want to make sure that it looks kind of like veins all right she looks like she's been uh through some sort of paint let's go ahead and grab our polygon fill and remove the areas that we don't want so her eyebrows things like that so I do want to keep her ears go back to the paintbrush and then I might as well duplicate this layer before I move forward duplicate layer let me hide it go to the red layer and reduce the opacity there we go so I'm going to call this red and then finally we're going to use the blue so I'm going to right click clear the MK change the color to a blue you guys can go as blue as you like or if you want to go a little bit more green you also can so kind of like a bluish green if you want I'm going to go for a little more blue and then same story we're going to grab our mask and for this one I'm going to paint a little bit under her eyes just like in the reference picture and I'm also going to go ahead and color around her chin [Music] area like so I am going to make this a little bit more in the teal area so just a little bit more in the green and just like before we're going to reduce the opacity okay so this is the blue right so let's compare what it was before so let me go into 3D mode so we can look a little closer so this is what should look like before and now this is let me bring the red a little bit more because I feel like that's the most important there we go and I am going to reduce my blue a little bit more because I do just want it to be a little bit more subtle and then bring out the yellow a little bit more something like that let's bring the blue back doesn't take much right so this is what it was before should look very like un alive even though it was a cool looking texture but with this it makes her look even more alive red might be a little strong let me reduce the red a little bit more next comes the veins right so I'm going to duplicate the blue one cuz I'm going to use a similar color so you again you can right click on it and choose duplicate layer or do a control D and these are going to be my veins now again I'm using a tablet again I'm going to recommend that you buy a tablet because it's super helpful and it's basically replace my mouse you can buy a little one or you can buy a larger one if you like I just use a baby a little one I'll share an Affiliated link below on the ones that I like to use one I use as antique at work and then I use my little tablet at home it will help you because it's pressure sensitive and you'll be able to draw all sorts of details really quickly so let me clear this clear my mask and I am going to grab a hard brush because I'm going to you know draw on it and I also need this to be a little bit stronger and I'm going to change this to a deeper blue here we go beautiful let me clear this uh let's see pink clear mask all right so again I'm looking at a reference so I'm looking at this one I'm going to turn on symmetry because I'm not interested in doing the same thing on the other side totally up to you if you want to do a symmetry or not and again I'm just kind of going through just following the reference and just going like this up and over and then I'm going the other one actually goes behind the ear you don't really see it but I'm just going to go ahead and draw the same on all right and it looks like this one beer off to the side press X if you feel like you messed up which I kind of did so I'm going to be very gentle as I kind of go in and draw the rest of the [Music] veins so again I'm just looking at my reference and just kind of following what it does and this is going to help make my character look alive if you need to fade it off just hit X and then you can kind of remove some of it so you can kind of Fade Away make it a little smaller just going of fade it away all right something like that you can add more and then I'm going to re reduce it significantly all right so you can see that really quickly I can get a nice looking let me turn this off uh veins and again it's very subtle but it makes her look more real and that's really important when we're developing our character now as we talked about before she actually is significantly darker I like to add What's called the melanin layer so I'm going to add it and this one is just for color and it's going to seem really simple but basically the idea is that I'm just going to go in and darken the layer so you want to pick the color that you want and then you can try multiply and then reduce the opacity right so the idea is that she is going to look darker you can also try other ones such as uh let's see overlay oh that looks too red uh devot okay some of these are not working but uh that's that one's kind of fun but the point is is like with multiply and other ones you can kind of reduce or increase the in and then that way you can darken and brighten her as much as you like here she is let me just get pick her color so I'm going to grab this I need to move the image to the side and I'm going to click here and just kind of pick that color this with multiply but this would be like that doesn't seem right well according to the reference image that is her color which is interesting so let me try multiplying it and then I am going to reduce that or I can keep it at normal and then just reduce the color as well right but the point is is that you can still see the textures and everything else and it still brings out the blotchiness so again it's up to you I personally like multiply more and then I can make her a little bit darker this way let me try other ones such as overlay uh soft light there you go she's looks like a zombie there uh I personally like multiply I feel like that's a nice color and then just kind of reduce it now the trick is is that you will need to do this for the other skin so that she matches melanin I am going to copy this contrl + C and go to the body and do here's the skin I'm going to open it up and basically paste crl V there we go so now our whole body fits that color so you can go back to the head and then you can increase the intensity if you feel like you've lost the detailing so if you want to bring the blue out a little bit more you can you can bring out the red a little bit more if you want to you can bring out the blue a little bit more if you choose to so on so forth so all of this are supposed to be the under layers of the skin the fats the tissues all that stuff and then of course the melanin is on top of that let's go for freckles so we're back here I'm going to add a new fill layer once again I'm going to remove everything so remove the height metal all that Jab and then I am going to choose a dark color cuz this is going to be her freckles add a black mask I might even go darker still and it's up to you which way you guys want to do this people like to try to paint it in so we have a dots and you can kind of make them small and just kind of add a couple of freckles here and there so that's kind of like a nice way of adding a little bit of information to the character don't forget to do some smaller ones right again the tablet's super helpful you can add a couple and you can cluster them that's always really nice you kind of add a few [Music] more so that kind of gives her those those nice little freckles you can make them a little bit just you know little different sizes and things like that you can always flip the color and help remove some of those back and then of course you can always paint them away too right so that's kind of giving her a little bit of a freckled look uh you can reduce the intensity if you feel like they're too strong let me go ahead and call this freckles let me copy this and bring it into the body I'm adding it to the skin face layer because it's already masked so I'm going to go in here and just going to add a couple of freckles let me make it a little darker and then just add a few freckles here [Music] if you want to add a mole or something like that you can also you can just use the brushes whatever you like but I'm just going to go ahead and just add a little bit of texture um to make it feel like she's well from like the Mediterranean or I know she's from the north but uh that kind of gives you a little bit more information and don't forget to add a couple here and there on the neck cuz they're everywhere how do I know because I have freckles they're everywhere so let's add a maybe a couple in ear pink and pink all right so now we have some skin and of course to make her feel like she's got eyelashes I would like to create some actually in 3D but I do want still want to have that eyeliner so let's create a new new layer I'm going to go ahead and create a black mask again I'm going to remove all of these things though I might keep roughness just in case and I'm going to be looking at her reference image because there's a she does have I know it's eyelashes it's anime eyes but I'm going to try to mimic something similar to her so I'm going to go back into my brushes remove this little X grab the brush and I'm going to choose a hard brush and this color probably is going to be in the dark ER kind of dark gray I wouldn't go all the way black but I'm definitely going to go uh dark to do her eye makeup make sure you turn on Symmetry and just going to kind of draw kind of like what she has it's kind of more arcs like this and then color it in even guys have some sort of eyelash now probably don't have this makeup section here that I'm drawing but they definitely have some sort of eyeliner and that eyeliner is just supposed to represent eyelashes because it's the it's one of the highest contrast areas in our faces is the eye our eyelashes and our eyes so you want to make sure that you have that even if it's a male character just make sure that you add that in there so you don't have to do anything extensive and it doesn't have to be very dark but uh it would be a good idea to add that in there to make them look more alive and I'm going to take a look at her UVS I'm going to grab this tool make sure that selected and then make sure that these are selected as well so that's dark because we want to make sure that if the eyes move you're going to see that on the other side for any accidental painting such as over here I would probably paint them out hopefully that's all there is I don't see anything else so there we go so that's going to be her eyeliner and don't forget the lips let's add another new layer this is going to be her lips again we don't need any uh well I'm going to keep the roughness and um I might keep them height just because I might need to make some streaks let's go ahead and figure out a color now Kora in the reference doesn't really have much of a color difference but we all do so let's go ahead and make a selection for her skin color WR one and then I'm going to go for a little bit more in the redder section so I might bring it in just a little bit of a change we'll see if that's a good fit let's add a black mask I'm going to grab the polygon fill and actually grab not shells but faces and that is way too pale so I'm definitely going to change it but right now let me just grab this as well so let's grab the faces let me change the color cuz that doesn't look uh great and just going to make it a little bit more that's a little too pink wh let me go for a little bit more skin something like that is that too here you go lipstick that's the fun thing about this you can do all sorts of stuff with this maybe like it's a little too much I think that's okay for now and then go back to this the Black Mask I'm going to paint cuz I need to remove some and add some sometimes it's just faster to paint [Music] it how does that look actually looks pretty good okay for the color for the roughness I am going to probably reduce the roughness a little bit so it's a little shinier but she does need some lines I'm going to increase the hype map just a little bit and then there is an anistropy that I can use I do want to increase the tiling that's I'm going to rotate it 90° and I am going to significantly rot reduce it let's go to the height and we can try changing these things to like multiply and then you can see that I now have uh I can keep the gloss I can keep but I can also keep the lines so that's a that's a great way of controlling it you can actually go to the particular area and I can reduce just the height if I needed to right so there you go all right why don't we take a look at what she look like before and what she look like after so let me make some room here so this is what she started off she started off uh looking pretty pale in comparison it actually looked okay but then once you start adding all the color zones the veins the melanin the freckles the eyeliner and then the lips you can see how much more alive she actually looks like so again before after definitely looks like she is well like a real person can't wait to export her and then her eyes are going to be a big deal too um in the next video tutorial we are going to cover how to do gometry hair so I'm going to show you guys how to texture hair in substance painter but I'm also going to be showing you guys how to create xgen hair in Maya so that one's going to be a lot of fun because we're going to use guides to create realistic hair so she can look cool and of course we're going to replace her eyes uh but there you go that's how you make uh skin I love doing skin it takes you know some time to get it all built up but once you have it it's actually really fun let me know what you think by leaving a comment below if you learn something or you think it's interesting and you want to see more please like and of course subscribe that is your message to me letting me know that you like this and that you want to see more uh don't forget to comment I read your comment ments I may not be able to respond to all of them but I do read them so please leave a comment I would love to hear what you think if you feel like my videos are helpful to another artist out there please share it would be wonderful if you could share my videos with other individuals other artists just like you take a look at academic Phoenix plus.com there you can find free resources like 3D models ebooks resources and so much more so take a look at academic Phoenix plus.com so again thank you for watching I really appreciate it let's go ahead and finish her up by texturing her hairir

Channel: Academic Phoenix Plus

Views: 2,406

Keywords: tutorial, how to, videos, 3d, cg, korra, legend of korra, substance painter, texturing tutorial, texturing, digital art, texture techniques, creative process, stitching, character design, textures, Texture mapping, realistic texture, details, skin texture, skin, stylized characters, female, texture in substance

Id: fVX2Vfks5cc

Length: 22min 31sec (1351 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2024