Creating an Oily/glossy Effect

Ive been seeing skins and clothing layers that give ones avatar an oily effect. Some look like white lines drawn on, others look incredibly realistic. I wanted to implement the glossy look with a product I sell, what is the best way to go about creating this?

Here is a photo I found in the Gallery forum of really good oil/gloss effect:

http://forums.secondlife.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=34379&stc=1


I`d appreciate anyone willing to give me tips on the best way to go about creating this, realistic looking as seen in the photo. Thanks!

Simple and fast way to go about it would be "Plastic Wrap" photoshop filter, used on selection that matches shape of item/area you are trying to make look glossy.

There have been lots of previous discussions of this and similar topics, such as rubber, leather, and shiny metal. Search and read.

A lot of it comes down to artistic illusion. For example, the picture you posted might only look good at night. In full sun, it *should* look different, but if the shine is painted on as part of the tattoo, it will look just the same...see?

For that matter, maybe the picture was post processed. Another possibility is that your computer has shiny turned on or off.

All in all, it is a very complicated topic. One more point, whatever Shosen Few says, believe it...

lee

Thanks, I didn`t think of that one I`ll give it a try.

Believe it or not, I did search before posting this. The term "oil" brings up nothing, and the term "oily skin" brings up 5 threads, none of which are in the texturing tips or geared toward learning how to make it.

Chck these link out, maybe they can be of help.


http://www.phong.com/tutorials/glass/

http://imgry.com/glossy_arrow/step-1.html

http://photoshop-indepth.com/lessons/3d_chrome/

Hope it helps.

I was going to write out a mini tutorial, but this one explains it so much better than I ever could



The entire tutorial can be found here:
http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

Thanks man, the glass tutorial looks like it might be a winner

you're most welcome, glad it was of use

And sorry about all the typos, my keyboard is acting up real bad lately...

Cheers

Nothing is working for me.

Basically im trying to create the oily effect on a transparent layer that I can hide and show in photoshop as needed. I understand how to do this stuff ontop of a background, but how the heck do I do like the plastic wrap effect with a transparent background??

Id be willing to pay someone to teach me how to do this, just not via paypal as I had to revert from business to basic account for awhile.

Jesse,
You could always use a base layer and do the plastic wrap, then take that texture - create an alpha and keep only the parts you need.

Youre probably going to have to paint it yourself if you want it to look right. Procedural techniques might give you a decent result but you cant control the effect. You can do this on a 50% gray layer set to Overlay mode with the dodge and burn tools, or just use the airbrush and paint in white on a transparent layer.

What makes a texture look glossy or shiny, is the brightness and falloff of the highlights. So on a dull texture, the highlights will look subtle and the transitions from light to dark will be soft and gradual. The glossier the texture, the brighter and sharper the highlight. That's what the picture I posted tries to show.

So place the highlights where you would normally place them on a dull texture, but make them whiter, smaller and sharper and your texture will look glossy.

1. Duplicate your background layer*
2. Run the plastic wrap effect on this clone.
3. Set the mode of resulting layer to "Difference"
4. Use "Copy Merged" command to capture that difference between layer with wrap and layer without it.
5. Paste captured difference into new image or layer. You can now discard other layers, the one you just created is what you're after -- when set to "Linear Dodge" or "Color Dodge" mode, this layer will apply plastic wrap effect to whatever happens to be underneath.

*) Note you might want to desaturate your original image to greyscale before this step. Running plastic wrap on image with colours will result in some colours remaining after step 3 which --unless you are after irridescent effect-- can be undesirable. Also, having the background layer is necessary --and temporary-- step just to give plastic wrap something to work with... since you are doing tattoos, i figure texture of 'clean' AV skin could be good starting point.

Damn, I didn`t realize there were more replies so I posted for help somewhere else.

Thanks all! I will try this. Hooray.

Also by reading this I realized a "DUH!" mistake I had made: Instead of coloring the shine WHITE in the alpha channel, I had it colored to grey which made for the white 'shine' look to be see through and off colored in world. *Feels like an idiot*

It is post-processed any good photoshop user should be able to recognize that the creator took a picture of their avatar and placed it within another scene.

Oh lord. Yes he took his avi and put in a background and also used some brushes. However, the oily skin is *not* photoshopped.

Thanks all who shared their tutorials, especially Annyka. This topic deserves bump.
It will help me improve my texturing projects I am having. I loved the area on perspective, especially the boob monster and skin tones.

I am not a fan of some of those oily skins because they really DO look like they are wrapped in plastic. I remember seeing it the first time and I was like, ugh! It's just not subtle enough.

haha, yeah some are hideous. I`m not a fan of them myself.

OK, based on my recent blender experiences, I can maybe be more specific here. Specular highlighting refers to the the way that light is reflected from a surface. Skin, of course, reflects light very differently than oiled skin. So as a different way to achieve this result, I'm playing around with blender as a way to get the the rendered specular highlights. I am thinking that I can do two blender unwraps, one with an "oiled" specular highlight settings and one without. From there, I should be able to use the technique listed above to get a difference between the two textures and apply that as a layer in my photoshop skin file. That layer will still need to be hand tweaked, but I'm hoping the blender pre-process will give me a great reference to work on the other parts from.