Makeup and skin tones

So I'm at the point in my skin making odyssey where I'm beginning to do the makeups. I thought this would be the easy and fun part (I thought alot of it was going to be the easy and fun part), and that I could simply paint each makeup style and have it look good across all the skintones.

Well, I was wrong again. I have 6 skintones ranging from pasty white to chocolate brown, and a makeup layer painted on a fair face looks awful on a darker face and vice versa. No matter how I play with layer modes and transparency, I just cannot create a 'one makeup fits all" solution, and have had to resort to each skintone having its own separate makeups.

I guess i shouldn't be surprised, since even in real life, you wouldn't use the same makeup for all complexions, but I'm lazy, and I would really like to avoid having to create 6 times the makeups and have a 500 layer photoshop file.

SO, my question is this: What kinds of strategies, workflows and tricks do the skinmakers and makeup artistes use for managing makeup across very different complexions? Will I have to just bite the bullet and give each skintone its own individual makeup? I may have to do just that for the darkest and lightest tone anyway, but maybe I'm missing some easier solution.

Thanks

There's not really any way to escape the reality of needing to work to produce what looks good, but you can employ a few tricks to work more efficiently:

1. Build all 3 body areas into a single file/image.

2. Use layering effects to create dynamic layering and reduce the number of layers you need to keep. If the layering effects are really complex, you can save layering effects in a much smaller file/image layer to reduce file size, then import them back into your master file when needed. Just remember to label them creatively so you know which is which.

3. Use actions to automate the processes you repeat most frequently.

4. Use nondestructive layering whenever possible (see #2).

5. When dealing with opaque skins, the lips and hair can be made slider tintable. This is a way to reduce the amount of makeup produced, but can sometimes look less realistic over all.

I'll add to this list if I think of more.

Thanks Namsorr

That's the second time Ive heard about combining all three body parts into one file, so I tried it for myself. My file is now HUUUUGE but its nice to have it all in one file.

I've pretty much faced up to the fact that each skintone will need its own makeups, so I spent the evening organizing and grouping my layers. The problem is that each overall skintone is built up with a stack of interacting layers, so I've had to duplicate the whole stack for each tone. I suppose I'm finished enough that I could merge those layers, but I hate to lose my layer flexibility.

I did figure out enough to put the makeup on stacks of different layers roughly corresponding to real makeup, so I can mix and match them and play with the layer blending modes and styles to get different effects on different tones.Unfortunately, its looking like I will have to duplicate all of those sets for each skintone too. I wont be surprised if I wind up with a 200 layer file.

I didnt make the skin tintable, because I really don't like the look of the system makeup, but I did make the eyebrows and kitty semi-tintable, so there is some cutomization there. Even so, I still wound up having to make a darker and lighter shade of hair to fit the skins.

All I can say at this point is Oy! skins is hard work!

Anyway, thanks for the tips.

Hey, if it's any consolation, my last female skin is up to 356 layers, 14 alpha channels (ones not embedded in shapes), and 1.5 GB. On the bright side, it's backed up, twice!.

wow.

I dont feel so bad now

Ok, I went and put all the body parts in one single file, and everything worked out great, except for one thing. How do I deal with the Alpha Channels? If I can only have one Alpha, then how can I make that work for all three layers?

Here's a picture that shows some of my workflow. If you look on the the right side monitor you can see the skin file behind another image in a 4096x4096 pixel by 4 section grid with 3 of the grid sections containing 2048x2048 body areas. The head portion is offset to the left verticle center. I only need a single alpha channel to cover the entire grid. I have actions that crop, resize, and save all 3 grid sections as TGA files to the client character folder with the click of a mouse. On the left monitor I click on "Rebake Textures" and... presto, my skin shows up inside SL nearly instantaniously. This way I get to see my skin in it's full glory inside SL with all it's quirky lighting dynamics on any body shape I choose. I can repeat this process as many times as I like without paying the L$10 upload fee until I'm absolutely sure the file is ready. When I am ready to upload the final textures I just grab the 512x512 tga files from the character folder and upload them into SL (server side).

Most of that went right over my head, Namssor.

Still that's a really interesting workflow. I didn't realize you stacked the sections side by side.The funny thing is that's actually how I started my skin, with the 3 sections stacked vertically, and I wound up separating the files because I didnt really like them all together. But then I never made scripts that would automate the cropping, so it was a bit of a pain and the final targas always wound up a pixel or two out of alignment, which is enough to show up on the model.

I think Ive seen somewhere your description of how you get the textures into the viewer without uploading them and that sounds really interesting. Could you point me to where you explain that technique?

Thanks

Here you go Annyka:

/109/b0/21673/1.html

Look at #'s 32 and 48 in that thread.

I should also add that the description I wrote there was before "Rebake Textures" was a feature in the client (or maybe I wasn't aware of it at the time, dunno).

The reason the images are on a side by side arrangement is because the real estate on the edges of the body areas is more forgiving that way.

As far as alignment goes, I use my own rendered UVW's straight out of Ultimate Unwrap3D. I can choose to output them at 2048x2048 in separate images, or as laid out in my photo below. This eliminates alignment issues because I can check individual body areas against my grid layout very easily.

Thanks Namssor! I'll give it a try

Wow Namssur! Thanks for this tip. Here I was waiting for the test grid to do my final testing and uploads and you just told me how to see them with no upload at all. Perfect!