Olila’s Second Life - Tutorials & Diary Diary & Tutorials

Wanna make your own skin?

There are many ways to make skins - I’m sure all designers use different techniques. This tutorial is to get you started and then find out what works best for you.

Before we start I want to point out that we are NOT going to create a “super duper high quality designer skin”! I’m just going to show you some basic techniques that works good for a first skin. The actual DESIGN will be your own work…

The tutorial is for a female skin and even though I will try to keep it really simple this tutorial is in several steps so you have to have some patience… That’s because creating a skin can be rather complicated…

For this tutorial I’m using Photoshop CS, but I’m sure you can make it work with older or newer versions, PS Elements and other graphic programs, like Paint Shop Pro, Gimp etc.

BUT! Your program must have functions for layers, transparency and Alpha channels - and you have to be able to save your files as TARGA (TGA) files.

  

Skintexture

This is something like what a human skin would look like close up:

And in this first part I’m going to create the “skinlooking” layer for the Head, Lower and Upper body - to prevent the skin from looking too smooth. There are many ways to this and I’m going with the easiest one

OK! Let’s start!

1. Prepare the files

• Open up Robin Woods Texture-Map Templates for the Head, Upper-body and Lower-body. (If you don’t know about these templates, read this tutorial post: Making Clothes & Skins - Preparations Part 1.)
  
  
  
  
  Rename all the template-files and save them in a map where you will find them. I named mine: Skin_Head, Skin_Upper-Body and Skin_Lower-Body




• Create a new file. Select: File/New from the top menu bar and create a new file size
  3072 x 3072 pixels. (Big, huh? We’re gonna make it smaller later!)
  
  
  
  
  I named the file: Skin Texture ORG.




• Change the foreground-colour to a skinlike colour you like to have on your first skin. It’s rather hard to get the right colours for a skin - but if you get it wrong you can change it later!
  
  
  
  
  I used: R:200 G:137 B:96 (#C88960).




• Now select the Fill Tool.
  
  
  Fill the layer with the foreground colour.I called this layer: Skincolour.




• Open the Skin_Head file.




• This is what the Layers palette looks like (if you did the steps in the Preparation-tutorials ).We are going to use the Shading-layer to get an idea of how the skintexture will look on the avatar head.




• Hold down SHIFT and drag the Shading-layer from the file Skin_Head to the file Skin Texture ORG.
  
  
  In the Skin Texture ORG file: Make a copy of the Skincolour-layer. I called that layer: Skin Texture. Make sure that layer is selected. Now the file looks like this:

2. Create skintexture

• Select the Skin Texture ORG file and zoom in rather close - so you can see what the final result will look like!
  
  
  Select Filter/Noise/Add Noise from the top menu bar.
  I used the settings: 4.5%/Uniform/Monochromatic. Click OK.




Select Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur from the top menu bar.

I used the setting: 0.5 pixels.

Click OK.




• Select Image/Adjustments/Hue and Saturation from the top menu bar.
  
  Turn the Saturation slider to -100. This will turn the layer grey.
  Or select Image/Adjustments/Desaturate witch will make the same result.




• Now turn the Blend Mode of the Skin Texture layer to Overlay. It will look like this:
  
  

3. Template Sizes

Have a look at Robin Woods Texture-Map Templates for the Head, Upper-body and Lower-body. As you can see the head takes up almost the whole surface while the upper and lower body is much “smaller”.

If we would use the same “skintexture” on these three files the texture would look good on the head but very stretched out and big on the upper and lower body… Like some strange decease or something.

That’s why you will have to shrink the skintexture a little for the upper and lower body.

There are most certainly other ways around this and you might want to shrink the texture more or less to make it look good - but this is one way of doing it. Read on!

4. Crop the Head Skintexture

OK! So we’re going to crop the texture-file for the head. NOT resize the image: CROP!

• Make sure the file: Skin Texture ORG is selected and select Image/Canvas size from the top menu bar. Set the Width to 1024 and the Height to 1024.
  
  When a pop-up asks you if you wanna clip the canvas click: Proceed!
  
  This is what the file will look like now:
  




• Hold down SHIFT and drag the layers: Skincolour and Skin Texture from the file: Skin Texture ORG to the file: Skin_Head.
  
  




• This is what the file Skin_Head should look like:
  
  




• IMPORTANT! Select the file: Skin Texture ORG and hold down: Ctrl+Alt and hit Z to return the file to its original size: 3072 x 3072 pixels.

5. Resize & Crop the Lower & Upper Body Skintexture

For the body-parts of the skin we are gonna use both resize and crop to make the skintexture of these parts look “the same size” as the head on the final skin. First make sure the file: Skin Texture ORG is back to its original size: 3072 x 3072 pixels.

• Select the file: Skin Texture ORG and chose Image/Image size from the top menu bar. Make sure Constrain Proportions is selected and set the size to: 2048. select




• Make sure the file: Skin Texture ORG is selected and select Image/Canvas size from the top menu bar. Set the Width to 1024 and the Height to 1024.
  
  When a pop-up asks you if you wanna clip the canvas click: Proceed!




• Now drag the layers: Skincolour and Skin Texture from the file: Skin Texture ORG to both files: Skin_Upper-Body and Skin_Lower-Body in the same way you did with the Skin_Head file. The “skintexture” on these files will now be a little smaller than on the head since we resized it before cropping.




• Select the file: Skin Texture ORG and hold down: Ctrl+Alt and hit Z to return the file to its original size: 3072 x 3072 pixels. Then save it! This way you will have the original file to work with if you want to change something later.

6. Ready! Done!

Now we are ready and done with the skintexture part! The Layer-palettes of the three files: Skin_Head, Skin_Upper-Body and Skin_Lower-Body now looks like this:

And the files will look something like this. Save them!

7. Final words

The settings in this tutorial is just examples I used for this purpose. Play around with them and make it work even better and create your own style! Also search the web for other tutorials on “texturing skin” to make the texturing part more sophisticated. Here is one in 3 steps (opens in a new window):

Texturing Skin in Adobe Photoshop, Part 1

Texturing Skin in Adobe Photoshop, Part 2

Texturing Skin in Adobe Photoshop, Part 3

Tjingeling for now!

Tutorials by Subject

Skin Tutorial - Part 2 - Basic Shading: Head »

 

Updated: December 2007