Creature Skin Mat - WIP

MimicMolly

I've been wanting to make skin textures for a while now - specifically for some alien characters of mine since I've yet to find something that matches them precisely. I had sort of started about a month ago, but I shelved the project because other things came up. Even though I restarted this that a few days ago, shortly after G2F/V6 came out, I decided to document this work in progress today.

The challenge for me is improving the mat I'm working on and creating it from scratch in GIMP (or Photoshop Elements).

MimicMolly

The particular one I've started with is greenish-yellow, with orange lips. They also have dark stripes on their limbs and back. These aliens are also supposed to have a pair of tails, but my computer is too weak for me to create my own geo-grafted tails. The textures I'm making will use the V5 UVs. I like those better and GF2 & Genesis can share.

I'm also using SnowSultan's seam guides.

So far, I've finished the base of the face texture and the default eyelashes. (Those were fun to make. I might make some crazy ones later.) I need to do the body textures next, but the lack of eye textures look...weird. O_o

I felt like I cheated when I made the lips, since I used a photo of my own lips and edited it until it blended in. Perhaps some day I'll make those from scratch, like the rest of the face.

Novica

Wow, this is interesting! Using your own lips, eh? At least you know how to do this kind of thing, I'd be totally lost. Will be fun to see how this comes along- thanks for sharing!

MimicMolly

Novica said:

Wow, this is interesting! Using your own lips, eh? At least you know how to do this kind of thing, I'd be totally lost. Will be fun to see how this comes along- thanks for sharing!

It depends on what you want. If you want a specific kind of skin tone, then just begin with that color. Here, I needed this olive/yellow-green. Just think of each texture (face, limbs, torso, eyes, etc) as its own mini painting when you're working on the specific part in your editing software of choice. The seam guides are extremely helpful and the explanations on it are straightforward. If things aren't even, then you just go back and edit your textures until you're happy with it. To me, this is just tedious but will be rewarding in the end.

I started with the face because most of my renders are portraits or bust shots. Based on the seam guides and other textures I've used as references, it seemed the easiest one to start with. After I finish all of this, I need to work on the bumps and stuff.

I might as well mention it now but I don't use the clone tool. I don't like it (I'm not sure why) and it's easier for me to lightly paint over whatever needs to be repaired with textured brushes. By textured, I tend to use speckled/smokey brushes, that don't have any particular shape. My brush collection is small as a result. However, if you feel it's easier to do with it, then whatever makes you comfortable and gives you the results you desire.

And...I still need to do the irises and pupils.

MimicMolly

Here's what I've been working on the past couple of days. I'm working from the neck down now. I finished the eyes, sort of. (Need to add veins.) I will add more subtle stripes along her back. Then I'll add the thick dark ones in my earlier sketch. I must fix the seams!

I'm probably going to leave it green like this, even though these aliens were supposed to have greenish-tinged skin with the dark stripes. They also have horns (which I might re-texture at a later date) and tails. ): I need to figure out how to do the bumps so I can make it look more "real". I know people just grayscale the skin mat, but I guess I'll add more of the rough textures and vascularity. I also need to find more accurate hair. These aliens have bobs where the forehead is visible and all the bobs I have cover the forehead. (The hair also looks like cuttlefish tentacles, but post-work/editing can fix that, but not the forehead.)

Novica

That color looks good on her- she's got a saucy attitude. She's coming right along!

MimicMolly

At the risk of necro'ing my own thread, I decided to post anyway, but I have been busy the past couple of months and hadn't had time and/or motivation to actually finish. The skin texture. I think I might have time the next few days, but we'll see. X_X

I also tend to shelve my own projects to work on things for others, which also contributed to the delay. :S

Anyway, during that time, I somehow had time to make two [crappy] hair textures and a transmap for the Genesis MFD, as well as other non-DAZ stuff. >_>

The way things are going, I might get lazy with the texture and incorporate a merchant resource. (Perhaps for the bumps, IDK at this point.)

EDIT: The MFD transmap was made with GIMP + Sculptris. It's supposed to resemble the female Tavern Clothes from the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It's also unfinished. The outfit in the game has a bunch of bracelets on both hands.

MimicMolly

I roughly painted the markings using a combination of Sculptris and Ghastly's Genesis 1 Single UV Maps and Utility Paint Morph. It's going to be a bit challenging getting everything to line up since my project involves a V5 UV map and these free and very useful UV maps just have all the UVs from the default Genesis, not the add-ons -- like V5, A5, M5 etc.

Since I'm experimenting, anything goes. :P

I also tried to paint my own textures for SciFi Bunny for Genesis in Sculptris but the mesh deformed, IDK what happened. The body suit looks like a stubby pencil in Sculptris. I tried making it High Resolution, but it still came out like that. I know there's nice textures for it, but I wanted to make my own. I had a nice idea for a color, unlike my last attempt at texturing. XD

MimicMolly

I took the texture I made in Sculptris and put it up against my main texture in GIMP. The torso maps weren't so different, at least long the back of the head and down the spine. Since I am mirroring everything at this point, it made no difference. I will add some asymmetrical details later. At this point, I'm just trying to get the base down.

I will most likely make these stripes lighter and add "darker" stripes between the current ones. I will try to see if I can make thinner stripes along the back too.

I will work on that Bunny Suit the old-fashioned way too, no Sculptris. :)