You can create a new layer like the “skin” layer for anything you wish (Cloth, Hair, Leather) But for this tutorial I am just going over how I painted the skin. Once the layer is masked you can now fill it with your base color and it will stay inside the area you masked. With the “skin” layer selected click the paint bucket tool and click anywhere on your canvas. It should fill in the masked area with the color you selected.
Notice how we can “see through” the wire frame template even though it is on top, all because it is set to Multiply. This will come in handy when placing things like the hair line, eyes, and shadows. Now we are ready to start painting in some basic shadows (Under his arms, back muscles, under his chin…) We will be using the paintbrush tool, but we must first set a good brush that will not make dramatic changes in color. Once the Paint brush tool is selected, there should be an option to change it at the top of the screen. Then, set the opacity to about 30%, change to a darker shade of skin color and paint away! (Make sure you are on the “skin” layer when painting on the skin) My process is posted below.
Before I go into too much detail, I like to use a trick to give the skin a more textural look. Create a new layer above your skin layer and label it texture. Then find a nice natural and tileable texture and add it to this layer. Then change the “texture” layer properties to Multiply like we did to the wire frame render and play with the opacity (around 15-30%). You should end up with a fairly realistic looking skin texture to add detail.
You can now see that a little bit of nice looking detail was added to the pigment of the skin. Even some wrinkles and blotches like on a normal face.
Once you have your texture applied and basic shades down, keep working with different colors and making shadows and highlights more defined. (This is where your creative art skills and time management come into play) Once you have a high level of detail painted you can use some tools to take it one step further. The tools are the Blur Tool, Burn tool, and Dodge Tool.
Texturing Overview – Final Texture :
After Painting the basic shades for the face, I added eye brows, sideburns, cuts, and eyes. I created a new layer for each of these additions.
3DTotal
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This looks a lot easier than it really is. I am no great “painter” in Photoshop but practice makes perfect! It is great to learn to paint all your textures instead of stealing them from photos. It gives your model your very own look and feel! You also get some great experience. I am consistently saving and checking out how my model looks in 3ds Max to make sure everything is looking OK. Make sure you do the same.
Texturing Overview – Everything Else :
Now I will show you how everything else turned out because I’m sure your character is not completely naked!
Once your Finished painting your textures, save your file out as a .TGA and apply it to your model inside of 3ds Max. Check where the seems are and make sure the texture blends nicely. Once you are finished you are ready to rig your character using a pre-existing skeleton from one of the Unreal characters!
Texturing Overview – Overview :
Join me next week when I take you through the Rigging and Importing of this character into Unreal.
