Texturing Skin in Substance Painter for Real Time Characters

hello everyone welcome back to my channel where we create photorealistic assets together in today's video I will show you how to create skin texture and substance painter before we get started I want to let you know that the full version of this tutorial is up on my camera the tutorial is fully narrated over two hours long that includes the modeling and texturing of the armor the modeling of the face and extended version of the texturing of the face I also upload their project files as well if you are interested in checking it out I will leave the link down below let's get into the skin texturing of the face first I want to show you my displacement projection with picture XYZ this is what I used to get the skim displacement but before I use this method actually try out some pre-made skin texture material that I was able to get from substance source it was a very interesting experiment and it was very good to know that that kind of method exists and I still end up using it a little bit and you will see that later on but the skin type options are limited I just didn't think that I will be able to cover the entire face with proper skin detail since try to create a face displacement map in substance painter only didn't work out for me so my next best option is to use a texture XYZ map I got one of those multi-channel maps and I will project it onto this face as accurate as I can for anyone that never used texture XYZ map before the multi-channel map basically has three channel like any color map the red channel the green Channel and the blue Channel and within each channel it actually has a different level displacement there's a one displacement that's a broad displacement there's one that's a medium detail displacement and there's one that's a fine bump displacement with all this different level of details separated out into different maps you can adjust as you wish what kind of level displacement you want for the face so there's way more flexibility so my plan now is to project this inside of Mari and then displace three different level details within ZBrush until I find a level that I like and export that version as the high resolution version for my substance paint obviously my face is very different from the texture itself just have to match it as close as I can with some patience it can work this is the finished version of the paint I didn't bother painting into area that I know we're not gonna see that's covered by the helmet so this is good enough for me as you can see I have three shuffle nodes connected to my paint layer wines for red wines for green and one is for blue this is how I will be able to shuffle those channels out of this web map this is a good chance to show you what they look like on their own as you can see they are actually quite different I will export those three maps out and show you how to displacement in ZBrush before I can displace these maps I have to invert them in Photoshop I've set down because that's how you E's are in ZBrush of course you can do that in ZBrush as well within ZBrush you can just import this displacement map make sure the texture map is on and then you can see that's the result we get from one of the displacement you can adjust the displacement intensity to the level you like I make sure I have later on so even after I bake the displacement I have the options to adjust the intensity I will bake this displacement on this one late year and I will create a brand new layer and import the second displacement and bake it on the second layer I would do that with all three different maps after they are all inside of ZBrush I will adjust the level to the way I like it and that will be the final displacement for this face you I decided to make her face a little bit bumpy ursin so she's wearing armor I assumed that she's outside a lot so she might have bad skin actually I planned to attach to her skin not so smooth and perfect it's a little bit more interesting to texture skin like that I will export this version of the model as the high-res and show you what it looks like after I baked it in substance painter this is what it looks like after debate he actually looks pretty good but I do realize there's a little artifacts right underneath the nose I don't think that has anything to do with the displacement yourself I think I have some UV overlap here so just gonna quickly fix that you can probably tell the version I was making a substance painter does not have the eye and the lashes I didn't want to include the eye and the lashes in the bake because I do not want to create weird shadows around the contact area so it's better to bake the face on its own and import a version that has the eye and the lashes you can swap out the base geometry in substance painter anytime you like just have to go to edit and project configuration we can finally start texturing on this model the first thing I need to do is to make sure that the phase displacement quality is where I needed to be I projected everything from texture XYZ but sometimes either due to projection or maybe the quality of the texture I might still not have everything and for this model I realized that the nose tip is really lack of displacement so what I would do is to use one of the preset material there's a material called human nose tip skin I create a new fill layer and assign this material to that fill layer adjust the displacement to the level that I think it's going to work and also adjust a toweling to the level that I think it's gonna work and then I assign a black mask to it and just paint on the nose tip area if you want to adjust the level of displacement that you get from one of these preset material you have to go to high train that's where you can change it another area that I noticed the displacement is a little bit lacking for me as the lip area and fortunately we have a lip material is that a substance painter so I'm gonna do the exact same process adjust a height to the level I want for this one it's not exactly Tyler Bo's so you'll have to move the texture around into position that's gonna work for the lip and then I will sign the black mask to it and feel without that area a little bit better I test out some basic rendering array just to make sure all the displacement are good at this point we can finally get into the coloring process this is the fun part first thing I want to mention is that make sure you have good reference skin is such a subtle thing and you need to make sure your reference is high resolution enough where you can actually see the details to be honest searching for the reference itself is a little bit of a challenge for skin for this character I will not give her any makeup so everything on her face is gonna be the natural skin color so for reference wise I was searching for girls without makeup but still photos on the Internet are just not great I find some stuff that was usable but most of the things are so photoshopped and it just looks super flat because I purchased the texture XYZ for my displacement it actually came with the albedo as well so I was looking at that one a lot for my reference so first thing I'm doing here is add a base tone color with a fill layer any of these colors it's completely flat there's no texture in it the second layer I create is a redness layer since besides this brownish yellow tone the next biggest color on the face is redness so I'm gonna put on the flat red color and put on a black mask and just start to sketching out the area that I think is gonna look reddish by the way I'm using the third brush and I really toned down the opacity and the flow of the brush I also activate a symmetry just to speed up the process in terms of the distribution of the color of the face I highly recommend James Gurney's article about the subject in general the center area of the face a little bit redder and anything that's closer to the bone you will see more yellow tone and sometimes a colder tone like blue or purple we will have to add every one of those colors into a different field layer and paint out the entire face once I'm happy with the reddish color distribution of course we'll always have to improve it later the next color I'm going to do is this dark circle around the eye which I'm going to use a bit darker brown color I also see this kind of darkness around the nose corner as well when I say reddish tone and yellowish tone exactly how red and yellow it is depends on the kind of skin tone you're going for for this character I assume she's outdoor a lot she's going to be a little bit more on the tan side and also her skin quality is not going to be the most smooth that is why I'm using this reference where the girl's skin is not looking the best I find that this type of skin is a little bit more fun to texture because if the girl is covered in makeup then everything is just gonna look super airbrushed for this girl she really has this dark circle around her eye and that's what I'm going to replicate the next color I'm gonna do is the LOH tone which is mostly around the forehead and underneath the eye from the reference I also see quite a bit of a yellowish tone underneath the nose and also a little bit underneath the mouth the yellow color is gonna be around some areas that's closer to the bone so there's less blood flowing through underneath the skin when the skin is getting really close to the bone that's when you're gonna see some blue purple or even green you I am adjusting all four color I have currently at the same time even though they're stacking on top of each other because I'm using such a subtle dirt brush with low opacity and low brush flow you can always still paint with a color that's underneath I'm also constantly adjusting the color itself see how they mix together you can also choose to go to the base color mode or the mask mode to double check what you are painting the next color I'm going to add is the bluish tone I see those blue tones mostly around the corner of the eye and sometimes I see them underneath the eye a little bit as well and is mixing with some dark red colors so sometimes it might start to look a little bit purple this is also the area where you might see some small red veins now we're just painting the color we'll add those smaller details later I will also add some bluish tone near the tip of the nose anyway that's a little bit closer to the bone basically with this reference I kind of really like how red her nose looks it looks like somebody that got some sunburn on the top of the nose and I kind of liked that for my character so I'm gonna add another darker tone just for the nose area and it's gonna be a bit red there is no one way of painting skin color it's really depends on the character and what kind of skin quality you're going for what kind of characteristic you want to have on the skin you just have to make sure every detail you add is added in a very subtle way all this color painting of the skin is very fun but we're at a point where we are getting decent amount of color going on on the face but because we're painting with a brush at the moment everything is looking a little too airbrushed and blurry even though we are using a textured brush so what I would do is to add another field layer inside of the black mask I was painting on and assigned this procedural map black and white spot I will adjust this procedural map to the size and frequency that I like and multiply it on top of the paint I've been doing I find this map is a really great way to actually give some sort of subtle shape to the brushstrokes if you look at the skin everything can seem very very soft but it actually has a shape at the same time it has this soft bus body look that is what we're creating with this procedural map and I will assign that to all of my colors from the reference we could see some very visible poor detail especially on top of the cheeks so what I would do is to use the curvature map that we baked inside of substance painter and turn it into a mask I will create the new field layer that's a slightly darker red and assigned a mask to that layer of course just a curvature mask itself is not enough we will have to use levels to adjust it to the point that we see the skin detail on top of the cheeks clearly even after the level this mask is a little bit too all over the place so I'll have to go inside and paint a certain area I'm also experimenting using the entire curvature map as an overall retinas mask so we can start to see some of that displacement detail inside of the skin once I'm happy with the level I will reduce the opacity so it's not too all over the place and too strong once I have all the colors and skin detail I'm doing a lot of adjustments to mix them in a different way adjusting the color adjusting the level and also constantly checking my reference to see how I can get there closer to the real thing one technique I like to use for checking is to turn off all the layer and turn the background one by one and you really see what every layer is doing to the texture and it will be easier for to you to realize where is the problem I also want to work on the roughness map a little bit more and our curvature map is come into handy again because for the roughness inside the pore is going to be rougher than the skin on top by the way I'm separating all the different material elements into its own fill layer so there's one section of two to three few layers that's just for the look of the roughness and there's too few layers that's just for the scattering of the skin and all the color I've been painting the only effect color so for the roughness section I have one base roughness that controls the entire face and I have another field layer on top that's for the shinier area of the face and another field layer on top that's for the rougher area of the face so I can always go into different layers and adjust them as a wish and it can also paint on material masks for the specific area that I either want it to be shinier or less shiny for a face in general the shinier areas are around the eye and top of the nose and lips you once I feel like this back is working okay we're back to adjusting the color of the face I'm working in some more bluish tone because I think there's more areas needs that kind of color variation also constantly adjusting other color as well this is really a refinement process I just have to check out all my different references and making sure I'm capturing all the characteristics of the skin this is what it looks like at this point and I think we're ready to ask some more imperfection and specific details on the skin for the imperfection of the skin I was watching a toriel that's been published by substance about texturing a character and I realized that there are so many very useful material on substance source that can help us at imperfection in a very quick way so I decided to download a few of those materials and try them out on my character so here is more of a demonstration of exactly how to use those material the first thing I'm trying to add our freckles there is a premade freckle shader on substance source and that's one I'm using currently I think the most confusing thing of the shader is that once you assign it to a field a year you have to turn off the skin color otherwise it's gonna overwrite what you have so far once that's done you only see the freckle on your skin you have all these adjustments you can use like in terms of color density how much normal bump you have on the freckle it's really just a matter of playing with all these options and get a look that you like once I have the amount of freckle and the kind of color I like I will assign a black mask to this field a year and painting the area that I actually want the freckles to show up I repeated the same process for all the skin imperfections I have and I will show you all of them I have a layer of skin cracks because I assume she's a little bit more sunburned it's mostly around the cheek area I also added some red vein close to also the cheek area and underneath the eye and also around the corner of the nose I added two different layer of freckles they kind of have a different color and I used the freckle material one more time but this time is more for some kind of reddish discoloration around the face last but not least she needs eyes I'm just gonna be super lazy here I assigned a substance I material to the eyeball shape this is also a great material where you have a lot of adjustments you can use and that is the end of the tutorial I had a lot of fun creating this character and hopefully this process is helpful for you as well if you enjoy this content please like and subscribe and I will see you in the next one

Channel: Artruism Digital

Views: 219,872

Keywords: mari texturing skin, skin texturing mari, substance painter skin material, substance painter, texturing an asset from start to finish, realistic textures for beginners, substance painter texturing an organic asset, creature texturing in substance painter, substance painter skin texturing, substance painter skin shader, substance painter skin, sculpting, zbrush, concept, maya, tutorial, film, vfx, game art, animation, character, 3d, creature, quixel mixer

Id: zdoUI17Canw

Length: 22min 20sec (1340 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 24 2020