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Skin making tutorial? |
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Niko Commerce
Registered User
Join date: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 1
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09-06-2008 15:57
Hey, I've seen lots of tutorials about using templates in Photoshop, and how to bring them into Second Life and everything. What I can't understand, is how exactly you start out to make skins in Photoshop. Do you use actual pictures to get the skin from, or fill the whole thing in with a skin color and work from there, or what?
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Peggy Paperdoll
A Brat
Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 4,383
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09-06-2008 17:11
From what I understand (and from my experience in making clothing) you cannot just take a picture of a person nude and plant the textures on the templates. There are distortions with the avatar mesh that causes stretching and scrunching of the textures that are applied. So you really need to make your own skin tones, lips, nipples, pubic bits, etc. and using the UV mapping grid lines distort your flat 2D texture to look correct when it's wrapped around the avatar. It's way too much for me......but I've been toying with the idea lately.
![]() What most do is use real pictures (for referrence) to draw the skin incorporating the necessary distortions to make the skins correct when applied to the avatar. There are a few well known skin makers that frequent this forum that will probably come along and give you some more useful information. It's probably the hardest thing to do well in SL.........hence why the good skins are not cheap. ![]() |
Charlotte Morellet
Registered User
![]() Join date: 14 Aug 2006
Posts: 64
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09-08-2008 10:12
Niko, check out this tutorial:
http://olilas-secondlife.com/2007/12/tutorials/skin-tutorial-part-1-skintexture/ it's probably the closest thing you will find to a true skin making tutorial. The thing with skin making is that is requires a lot of personal skill and lots of time. Everyone has their own methods of how to do it, but this tutorial shows you one way. Once you can understand that, you can develop your own method. _____________________
Visit Soda: Skins, clothing, eyes and more!
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Soigne/132/124/24 Watch the Soda Blog for updates and Specials: http://sodadesigns.blogspot.com |
Seshat Czeret
Registered User
![]() Join date: 26 May 2008
Posts: 152
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09-10-2008 06:29
Do you use actual pictures to get the skin from, or fill the whole thing in with a skin color and work from there, or what? Yes. Or rather, some people start with photographs and distort them. Some people start with a basic skin colour and add noise and other distorts to make a 'skin-like texture'. Some people probably start by putting the makeup they want on and then painting skin on a new layer to match the makeup, though that 'feels' backwards to me. So the answer to your question is 'yes'. It's like any other sort of art. Ask fifty artists, get fifty different answers. _____________________
My blog: http://seshat-czeret.blogspot.com/
My shop: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Achlya/199/185/102 |
Namssor Daguerre
Imitates life
Join date: 18 Feb 2004
Posts: 1,423
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09-10-2008 08:00
It's like any other sort of art. Ask fifty artists, get fifty different answers. |
Clarissa Lowell
Gone. G'bye.
![]() Join date: 10 Apr 2006
Posts: 3,020
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10-06-2008 04:21
Any 'easy' way to know where to put the shading?
I tried making a skin - I was pleased w/how the nipples turned out, but some of the body (muscular) shading was not quite in the right place and of course, the shading/highlighting was nowhere near as complete as necessary. Is it a matter of doing one paint stroke at a time and loading it into SL repeatedly? I did use someone's viewing program from here first, but there is no 'zoom in' option, so one can't view details like that very closely. Unlike in a certain other game, one can't view other's work and see what they did, other than in Appearances in a really tiny format. So I have some idea but - well, I'm asking if anyone has a template where the various muscles should be shaded/highlighted I suppose. I wouldn't trace it (to me that's harder than drawing it anyway and not nearly as fun) but it would sure help being in the ballpark. There are skins I really admire, but to me, I'm sorry, not that much difference between the $2000 ones and some freebies I've seen...Although I'm sure the new CS4 extended will really up the ante. |
Seshat Czeret
Registered User
![]() Join date: 26 May 2008
Posts: 152
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10-06-2008 05:33
The only way I know is just that - have a previewer of some sort, and just keep experimenting until it looks right.
Draw, upload to the previewer, correct the drawing, lather, rinse, repeat. _____________________
My blog: http://seshat-czeret.blogspot.com/
My shop: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Achlya/199/185/102 |
Anik Pavlova
Registered User
Join date: 15 Jul 2005
Posts: 49
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Beta Grid
10-21-2008 11:49
Has anybody mentioned the Beta Grid for free uploads - it's saved me a fortune in linden for testing how things are going with a skin.
It's free to upload. Cheers, Anik |
Jini Hammerer
The green chick
Join date: 22 Jul 2007
Posts: 196
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10-21-2008 12:42
making skins is just like any other art media.
There are some fantastic artests with in second life, and there are some that take shortcuts to make a buck. Some folks BUY their skins and clothing textures from 3d sites on the web importing them into the game and selling them at massive profits. While there may or may not be anything wrong with that, any one thats spent hours and hours on end looking at and working on their own skin designes in photoshop or gimp or what ever they are creating in can tell some of the import jobs. Tell tail signs, the toenails are on the sides of the toes LOL and other oddities. I had a friend who got such a skin with the screwy toenails, not cheap either a good 5 k skin.... she asked about the gimp toes and they told her it was a second life bug. not going to droop names but .. look at the feet when you look at skins ;P I make my skins layer by layer kinda like clear films one on top of the other with a solid base color for skin tone.. What this does for me is this. I can change any feature of skin with out having to start over brand new. if there is certain shadings that work fantastic on a dark skin they make look too dark on a light skin same with highlights. if i want to reposition the belly button for a different body stlye is simple as moving it, maybe i want a differnt looking belly button i can do that too. If you are making your skin from scratch to finish with out the use of a 3d modeler, there is no more efficant way then layer everything in my opinion. |
Pocket Pfeffer
Vide Cor Meum
![]() Join date: 19 May 2007
Posts: 586
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10-21-2008 17:39
Here's another skinning guide you might want to take a look at. It mainly deals with photosourcing etc...but it's definitely worth a read-through...
/109/e1/246059/1.html |