Techiniques in Skin Making

I seem to be at a loss with a few of the methods commonly used for skin making.

I've been messing around with doing my own for a few months now, and I've managed to come up with some great stuff......and I've learned some fun techniques on my own via trial and error......but.......I'd really like to keep progressing.

I use the Eloh Eliot templates and then I make changes to the layers and add my own. I do all of my own makeup with different brushes & layers and I've 'sort of' got that under control. My question is body shadow/hilights...... The provided layers for shadows and hilights are nice....but don't allow for much tweeking, especially if I alter the skin tones which I always do. I can do freckles with my own brushes..... but I'd really like to do more defined shadows and hilights. I just don't even know where to begin....it seems everything I try either makes the lower & upper torso mismatched....or simply doesn't translate well at on the finished skin.

Any pointers or tricks you might be willing to share? I sold my skins only briefly....but honestly I do it for myself.....it's just cheaper then grabbing up all the newest cool skins and going broke! I use PSE which I'm pretty adept with..... my challenge seems to be more about defining the where and how certain lighting should be applied.

Milla I am not familiar with Eloh Eliot's templates. but I understand that these are really nice and I've seen some good work done with it.

For highlights and shadows, it's entirely possible to draw in your own.

What I do is as follows:
1) Shadows: Using a soft brush and a slightly darker tone, I enhance the depressed areas by drawing in shadows. I use a slight gaussian blur after a few strokes. Vary your colors and progress from the lighter shades of dark to the deeper/darker ones for realistic shadows. Reduce opacity if the result appears too colored in or unrealistic.
2) Highlights: I do the same, using lighter variants of the skin tone. I also use white to really bring out raised sections. With highlights you can have a softer and larger brush. Again remember to reduce opacity if the effect is too obvious.
3) Optionally make a new highlights/shadow layer set to overlay and fill with 50% grey. Use the dodge and burn tools to draw in your shadows or highlights. Careful here though. I find going over the same areas with too much burn can result in an orange hue and too much dodge can yellow out sections of the skin.

In all cases, reduce the opacity of your brush to about 10% - 15%. It's more realistic to use a faded brush and multiple strokes. You can erase some areas using a partially transparent soft eraser. This builds up on the color variation and can add more dimension to your work.

If you stick to the same settings in terms of color and opacity, the tones of your templates should match fairly well. Seamlines are however a totally different ballgame and I have the best results working in a 3d program like Bodypaint 3d. I just skin the avatar in bodypaint using my photoshop files and with a soft or sponge effect clone brush bring in skin from matching areas to gently erase the line.

Skinning takes practice, but it's an intuitive process. Once you develop a workflow that works for you the whole effort will become easier and your skins will look very good.

It's also worthwhile to test your files often in SL as the result may look different there than on your computer. You can then adjust it as necessary in the very beginning.

I hope this helps. Good Luck!!

TY Ayesha!

I actually went on google and typed in 'skin shading' and the first thing to come up was a tutuorial on SL skin making!! Go figure! I've got the brushes thing down....it was just placement and keeping a steady hand/mouse LOL But I went in late last night and decided to give it another shot ... and presto I managed to not only create my own hilights and shading.....but I also did some very cool pink hilighting in certain areas the should give the skin a more realistic appearance.

We'll see what it looks like on the test grid LOL

Oh that's fabulous!!! I'm sure you've done a great job. Please post pictures if possible.

If I had only one bit of advice to give, frequent testing of the skin texture inside SL would be it. Most of the other advice depends largely upon style, technique, and software, but testing a skin directly inside SL as frequently as possible can really save a lot of time by providing an evolving snapshot of what the final result will look like, allowing you to avoid costly mistakes.

How you test the skin also matters. The test grid works fine, but you might also consider these other options:

1. The Emerald viewer has the ability to display wearable textures at zero cost for previewing.

2. Any viewer will instantly bake the the < *color.bmp > textures in the client character folder (different location on a Mac, but still there) when a rebake is executed. If you use your image editor to update those files then all you need to do after that point is press < ctrl+alt+R > to instantly preview your skin texture.

3. To this date I have found no faster method of previewing inside SL than combining Photoshop's action sets with a rebake. Using this method I average about 3-5 seconds between updating my skin texture and viewing those changes on a live avatar inside SL. This adds up to hundreds of previews within a single hour of work, if I need that level refinement.

Yup...I test on the beta grid all the time.

In fact...just a few moments ago I decided to make a minor tweek in one of my added elements and when I brought it into the beta grid I discovered a seam between the front and back that I hadn't noticed before....so...I uploaded the 'original' skin that didn't include my modifications......and low & behold....it was that original that had the seam issue. Now, to my frustration....I have to sort thru the layers and figure out where the seam has occurred. Totally annoying so I wont be using that particular template again since the other templates I've worked with have zero seams! Bummer tho.....so many other elements of the skin looked great. I'll probably just transfer certain layers to another template and *sigh* start over.