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

The Skin Tutorial - Part 5 is based on the earlier parts of the Skin Tutorial. You can find them on this page: Tutorials by Subject.

In this part we are going to create lips for the head-texture.

I’m going to use different techniques from what I used in the earlier parts to make you aware of that there is many techniques one can use when creating a skin and that the best is to choose one or several that works best for you.

Still and Again: The final result of this skin isn’t going to be a ‘really-high-quality skin’. This is to get you going making your own first draft.

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

Lips

Lips… Well, they are kind of tricky to get natural so I’m going to use a picture for this. For my life I can’t remember where I got this one - but I’m sure you can find a picture of your own for this purpose.

This is what my pic look like ( ignore the ’sample-stamps’ ):

Open the picture in Photoshop.

Duplicate the Background-layer by rightclicking the layer (not the thumb-nale) and choose ‘Duplicate Layer’.

Use the ‘Crop Tool‘ to get rid of the parts around the lips you don’t need. Something like this:

Right-Click the selection and choose ‘Crop’

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At this point it’s smart to adjust the size of the picture. Select Image/Image Size and set the Height to about 65 pixels (Constrain Proportions checked) if you are working with your skin in a 1024×1024 pixels file.

Use Select/Select All (Ctrl+A) and Edit/Copy (Ctrl+C) to copy the lips-picture into your clipboard.

Open the Skin_Head file and create a new layer and make sure it’s selected. Use Edit/Paste (Ctrl+V) to put the lips in that file on a new layer. I called this new layer ‘Lips’.

Open the UV-MAPS folder and make the layer: Fills Vector SO visible. Use the ‘Move Tool’ to put the lips in the right place. Something like this:

Use Edit/Transform/Scale (or Free Transform Ctrl+T) if you need to resize the lips.

Open the UV-MAPS folder and select the layer: Fills Vector SO. Use the ‘Magic Wand Tool’ and click to make a selection.

Now ADD to this first selection (make it bigger): Hold down Shift and click unselected parts of the mouth over and over until the whole thing is selected - I call that ‘+Clicking‘.

Smart feature, huh?

Select the layer: ‘Lips’ and inverse the selection (Ctrl+Shift+I). Don’t forget this!

Hit ‘Del’ to take away the parts of your lips outside the selection.

NOTE! Your lips do not have to fill the whole “mouth-area” of the layer Fills Vector SO. The important thing is that your lips don’t go outside it!

You can use the ‘Lasso Tool‘, ‘Eraser Tool‘ or whatever tool you prefer to get rid of the parts around the lips you don’t need. I also used the ‘Eraser Tool‘ with a rather big soft brush and a middle opacity to soften the edges a little around the lips. Something like this:

Colour

The colour of the lips in my lip-pic does not look natural (if yours do you can skip this part). So I’m going to give them a new colour - something natural because if I want a lipstick-colour-look I can create that on top later. You might not agree on what looks natural… But this is what I did.

To start from scratch I first turned my lips into grey. Image/Adjustments/Desaturate (Ctrl+Shift+U).

Then Image/Adjustments/Color Balance (Ctrl+B) with the settings: Midtones / +55 -25 -50.
Then Color Balance again with the settings: Midtones / +20 -20 -20.

Smudge

Maybe you don’t need or want to do this - but at this point I smoothed the lips with the ‘Smudge Tool’. I used a soft brush ‘13 pixels’ and ‘Opacity 50%’.

ADVANCED! To make this work better I opened the ‘Brush Palette’ (to the right in the tool bar) and clicked ‘Shape Dynamics’ - then unchecked ‘Spacing.’ This will make the ‘Smudge Tool’ BLEND the colours, instead of just smearing them around.

Now my file looks like this:

Lights & Shades

Do your lips need some lights and shades? There are many ways to do this, I’m sure, but I’m going to do this freehand since my lips aren’t totally even.

Lights

Create a new layer an put it on top of the layer ‘Lips’. Use the ‘Brush Tool’ and a light colour. I used the same as I used for lights when creating the nose: R:249 G:200 B:173 (#F9C8AD) and a soft round brush ‘13 pixels’ and ‘Opacity 100%’.

I painted a light area reaching slightly beyond the top of the lips. I then used the ‘Eraser Tool’ to smoothen the edges. Looks like this! Not that pretty, huh?

I placed this layer UNDER the layer ‘Lips’ and named it: ‘Lip Lights’. I turned the ‘Blend Mode’ to ‘Light‘ and the ‘Opacity’ to 75% ( other settings might work better for you ).

Looks like this! Better, huh?

Shade

Create a new layer an put it on top of the layer ‘Lips’. Use the ‘Brush Tool’ and a dark colour. I used the same as I used for shades when creating the nose: R:65 G:46 B:29 (#412E1D) and a soft round brush ‘13 pixels’ and ‘Opacity 100%’.

I painted a dark line at the bottom of the lips.

I then blured the line a little: Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur and ‘2.0 pixels‘.

I used the ‘Smudge Tool’ to smear out the edges:

I named the layer: ‘Lip Shade’ and turned the ‘Blend Mode’ to ‘Multiply‘ and the ‘Opacity’ to 50% and kept it on top of the layer: ‘Lips’.

At this point I set the opacity of the layer: ‘Lips’ to 75%.

NOTE! If you do this or if your lips aren’t totally opaque from the beginning you might want to get rid of the part of the ‘Lip Light’ layer that shines through the lips. Maybe by using the the ‘Eraser Tool’ or select the lips and delete that part from the layer: ‘Lip Light’.

I created a new Folder (Set) by clicking the pic of a folder in the Layers palette. I named that folder: LIPS and dragged the lip-layers into that folder to make the them easier to handle in the future.

Lips Ready!

Tjingeling!

Tutorials by Subject

Updated: October 2008