My First Skin

Hello. This is my first completed skin. I've created it entirely from photos - no painting involved. I created the custom shape as well. Any critical comments would be more than welcome as I want to make skin design my business. If you happen to like this skin you can find it for sale at SLExchange and OnRez. Thanks!

Edit* Sorry. Forgot to give you a NSFW warning! Contains nudity.

Hi Anaema, welcome to the content forums!

I gave a critique of Trixi's skin in a previous post and pointed out several things to look out for in her texturing process. She uses an entirely different approach to skinning (all painted), but I think you can learn from her approach and, likewise, she can learn from yours (your skin has many more subtle details that are lacking in hers). She has a very even colorization of her skin because of her process. Your's, on the other hand has all the subltle color and textue variations captured in the the photos you pieced together. Incidently, you must have done some painting with a clone brush or burn and dodge tool to smooth out the seams and transitions. Even the best 3D painting app leaves something to be desired around the seams. I think you can benefit and improve your look from parts of Trixi's skinning method. While your body colorization looks very good, the head is not matching. The colors are off. Too much saturation in the lips (for natural color), and too little in the highlights. The cheeks, brows, and upper lip almost look frosted. There is a yellowing on the nose bridge and around the dimples in the corners of the mouth. This issue happens quite often where lighting situations are skewed by color in the light, or are different from one another. I'd be willing to bet that your body reference was photographed in a studio environment with neutral colored light, while the head shot was taken outdoors some place under direct sunlight (which accounts for some of the color shifting). You need to bring the head skin color, highlights, and shadows into sync with the body skin color. This, inevitably will involve the skinning techniques that Trixi is employing. Everything else looks really good. Nice seams, nice eyebrows, nice freckles, nice details over all, nice shape (which is important), nice skin tone on the body. You just need to work on the face color and it will be an excellent skin.

Link to Trixi's thread for reference:

/109/9c/238660/1.html

Holy Cats

Thanks so much Namssor. It's great for a first response to be so insightful and thorough. You nailed the same issues I have with my own skin. The color balance between the face and the body is off. I believe I've overblown the contrast in the face as well. When I said that mine was not painted, I suppose I meant not from scratch. I did do some cloning and blending on the seams - very observant of you. I am most aware of the differences between photo-generated skins as well as those which are painted. I love the stark detail of the photo textures: scars; pores; and tan lines, but the smooth gradients of painted skin is desirable as well. I think I will be reworking the face a bit - by toning down the contrast some. I may do a little hue and saturation changes to match things up better. I will post my second skin soon. That one was generated all from the same photo set. I hope to hear what you think of that one as well! Thanks.

lol. Thanks!

I really liked it speaking as a person who buys skins and had never made them. I like the light in the face and the pink tones in the skin. I think it is really good.

Thank you very much Dnali. That means alot ;p