Blender Skin Texturing and Shading tutorial

In this tutorial I go over my workflow for texturing a typical realistic skin texture for a 3D character in Blender. I also use Photoshop to correct some stuff, but you can use Gimp or Krita etc. as well.
See below for all the resources I used during this tutorial. I hope you learn something, enjoy! :-)
===================================================
- Blend file: www.dropbox.com/s/wjlwo1fye2z...
- Raw skin textures and Brush-Alphas: www.dropbox.com/s/6p6dx1996ak...
- More advanced Cycles skin shader (free): www.blendswap.com/blends/view/...
- Digital Emily textures: gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/Digita... (Downloads are at the bottom of the page)
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Other useful texturing resources:
- Photoshop Nvidia Normal-Map (free PS plugin): developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-t...
- xNormal (free): www.xnormal.net/Downloads.aspx

[@potaterjim]

This is a really under-explained step for how crucial it is. Tons of videos on anatomy, modelling, PBR workflows, texture masks....But you try asking anyone how to actually _paint skin on people_ and the entire internet goes silent. Thanks for making this invaluable tutorial

[@ThreeTon14]

Exactly! I've been looking for this too.

[@fnoutlaw]

I know this is an older video, but this is one of the best tutorials on skin hands down. It's very thorough. I like that you're creating your own maps and showing others how to do the same.

[@adeniran_tayo]

Look no further, this is the best skin shading and texturing tutorial for blender!

[@adeniran_tayo]

Hi, once again, thanks for your tutorials. I would like to ask if this skin shading tutorial is like mini-pbr or pbr?

[@roxassora2706]

See the thing is, I'm not looking for "realistic" I just want to put skin on my model, who is not realistic.

[@RicoCilliers]

do yourself a favor and play the video at 1.25 speed. then you won't fall asleep ;)

[@patrickbeart7091]

Hah, I did this then saw the comment ;)

[@neatpolygons8500]

not at all! I enjoyed all of it :D

[@StrongFreeLovin]

Don't worry, I do it in 90% of Blender video tutorials

[@benhardwiesner6963]

I watch every tutorial at x1.5 ... Some even at x2 but for yours x1.5 was enought ;)

[@no00ob]

xD too late

[@crackpotgolfer]

Thank you! this is a great starter for people who have never made texture maps from scratch or cycle nodes. Following your nodes layout alone with my models existing maps already gave it a boost in depth and appearance

[@purveshvyas9946]

That's really very helpful to learn from you Rico. will learn something more from this. thank you so much for making this tutorial.

[@ThatsPety]

Man, this stuff is truly incredible. You should have like 5x the fans

[@nathanielscheurer1821]

Thank you for this! SO good :D Combined this with Mari for better control when projecting and got really nice results

[@RickHaskin]

Stupendous tutorial my friend. I had to speed it up a tad bit but that's ok! I plan to start tackling some of this in the near future and although I knew how to do this at a basic level, I learned TON from you.! Thank you so much for taking the time to make and share this video :)

[@JayAnAm]

Great work. Blender is not my favorite tool for texturing, but yu showed that it's also great. I love the shading and PS part. Thumbs up!

[@RicoCilliers]

cheers! Blender does have it's quirks, but with practice it can be a powerful asset in your texturing workflow ;)

[@JayAnAm]

Rico Cilliers Yes, absolutely.

[@arcei5726]

This video LITERALLY saved my life.

[@nandrianinaharifera4244]

Wow!! You're so inspiring, very nice work, that's really what I'm looking for. Thank you for the great tutorial :)

[@Radical_Dreamers]

Thank you 1000 times ! This is what i've been waiting for, I thought no one would ever explain this until now haha

[@RicoCilliers]

My pleasure :)

[@kyttehwytchwood6072]

You explain everything so well and you are very thorough. You also take your time and I love that as someone who is brand new to Blender. Thanks for the tut! ^edit: Liked and subbed!

[@NaokoPaq]

Thank you so much! This tutorial is amazing!

[@michaelgreg7]

Absolutely Phenomenal tutorial! Thank you so much!

[@Eirik_Tube]

Very good tutorial, informative and easy to follow. Thanks!

[@daanimegoatman6683]

This video helped me with my character model. Thanks for the wonderful tutorial.

[@theshadinglord8166]

thank you so mutch,just what i was searching for :) now i can start making my first game :3

[@pIatyperson]

I ask and you deliver! Thank you so much man!

[@RicoCilliers]

cheers man :)

[@Raksasa187]

thank you for the great tut!! very useful!

[@tsehoyin2]

Your video saved my day. THANK YOU SO MUCH.

[@rcgamesoficial2.011]

Obrigado mano! Este foi o melhor tutorial sobre Skin Shader no Blender que já assisti! Consegui um ótimo resultado em um modelo meu! Like and Thanks!

[@mrsqueen4589]

That looks 👀 insane awesome

[@xedvin1]

Great tutorial! Keep going!

[@bladesero8533]

amazing！I learn a lot from this video!

[@neatpolygons8500]

thanks a bunch really nice tips... I like the fact that you use blender internal for baking :D i do that as well

[@bartomiejseklecki3195]

Great work man, keep going. I'm sure more subscribers will come soon :)

[@RicoCilliers]

thanks! :D

[@andrew9840]

Great Tutorial Thank you!

[@abrahamwondafrash7549]

unforgetable tutorial!

[@commissarkitty3553]

Thanks, rico this helps out a lot, remember to set all your texture nodes except the base color to non-color data blender makes automatic gamma corrections which can alter the final result. Cheers!

[@RicoCilliers]

Good observation! thanks :) you're quite right. I frequently forget to do that :D

[@feindblut8939]

awesome tutorial, thank you very much

[@OscarAdan]

Thank You, it is really helpful.

[@maciejdoczyk8196]

Was quite a job. Thanks man

[@umair146]

This is what i was looking for....Thanks Man...you are awesome.....please make more videos. Just for a part of face...like only chin texture only ear texture.... Thanks

[@VirtusH]

Just a tip on unwrapping. Press 'n' in the UV Editor and check the box to display stretching, and set it to area. Just looking at your seams and unwrap I can tell you're spending significantly more texture space on the back of the head and other areas less important than the face.

[@synyewfei8013]

very good face texture tutorial!

[@azhdarmuhamad4787]

Great tutorial

[@vikramnayak733]

great job, thanks

[@reubenstarsky7328]

wow really nice. love it. keep it up sir

[@basselabdulkhalek7021]

Best video ever many thanks

[@santoshgujar5237]

Thank you, Sir

[@ser_giu]

Really nice tutorial

[@RebeccaBrunner]

Love how simple your shader is!

[@RicoCilliers]

thank you, yes! You'd be surprised how many good shaders are really quite simple :D

[@RebeccaBrunner]

Hey, since I have your attention and you seem to know what you're doing, would you mind critiquing a project of mine? I've literally spent days trying to get the materials on my latest model right but I can't seem to make the materials look nearly as good in Blender as they do in other programs such as Substance Painter.

[@RicoCilliers]

absolutely :) you can send me an email at rico(dot)cilliers(at)gmail(dot)com, or we can talk here, or whatever you prefer. I'm also on the blender discord channel..

[@RicoCilliers]

oh, or we can simply chat google plus..

[@RebeccaBrunner]

I like the idea of using G+ so I can get some more direct feed-back. I'll go ahead and e-mail you my scene and put together some images to try and explain what I'm going for.

[@ZigzauerLT]

Thank You!!! Awsome tutorial!

[@RicoCilliers]

cheers! :)

[@sams_3d_stuff]

Love You man ..... It's Awesome......

[@antigravitytomcat]

Hello Rico, thank you very much for this!

[@RicoCilliers]

no problem :) enjoy!

[@RomboutVersluijs]

Perhaps its better when working on the spec and roughness maps, is to use dodge and burn. You keep more of the details. You can also work with masked levels adjustment layer, this is better because its a non-destructive method. Which is always the best workflow.

[@jenovaizquierdo]

awesome video friend you made me subscribe, looking forward for more videos and learn..

[@paoutooPREMIUM]

Thanks for this in-depth tutorial! I have an indie game project I'm working on, and I'm fairly new to using all these tools. So do you think I could use this process to create a character in my game? I don't want to spend hours and hours on something that might cause lag in my game or something. Thanks!

[@python6069]

wow thanks for this tutorial

[@mamadouminta]

Thank you

[@zapfsaeule2]

Great and very helpful:) Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@nv7287]

Thanks for the great tutorial, really nice work! Just a question - Where would you plug the ambient occlusion in? How does it work in the node structure? Would have been nice to see the difference and what it adds to the scene. thanks again though I learnt a lot!

[@kendarr]

Blender uses cycles or eevee to render, ambient occlusion is not really necessary

[@hongik10]

Superduper awesome!!! Thanks^^

[@RicoCilliers]

thank you!

[@OK-zz4mu]

Came here to know about Skin Texturing. Ended up knowing about life, universe, and practically everything.

[@RicoCilliers]

that's the way I like to do it! :D I'm still working on the Quantam Physics side of things, but seriously that would probably be "paid content" ;)

[@OK-zz4mu]

Lol thanks man for the full package tutorial! Keep staying awesome :D

[@AntoninusPius100]

LOL

[@user-zq4bn2hu5y]

@@OK-zz4mu 42

[@OK-zz4mu]

@@user-zq4bn2hu5y H I T C H H I K E R ' S

[@93Esper]

Amazing video :)

[@ArtPomelo]

Would be great to see your new tricks with blender 2.8 and eevee.. but still very helpful.

[@fevrocks1]

Awesome tutorial and very useful. Thanks.

[@RicoCilliers]

cheers :)

[@fevrocks1]

You are welcome. Have a great week!

[@Frostbitecgi]

this video really help me a lot ... thank you very much ^_^

[@RicoCilliers]

no problem :)

[@carlos3765]

Amazing skills and beautiful work. Very interesting. I think I can now do some better skin on a MakeHuman!

[@othmaneeljacfi3747]

i don't know if you still make videos but +1 sub for you, thx for your time and tutorial, really grateful

[@RicoCilliers]

Hey thanks for the sub :) I still create tutorials as I find time, so keep a lookout for them ;)

[@shafeeshafeeq6128]

Thanks

[@pruthvirajrathod5849]

awesome :)

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

47:26 Have you tried the new “Random Walk” option for the SSS shader that was added not too long ago? Just to see what you thought of the difference.

[@tayam92]

Thank you for this! I've been looking for this tutorial for months! Would this work as well with Eevee? Also, how would you use the AO map to make this better?

[@tankkar]

this is cool

[@mindock]

Among your 49 dislikes consists of folks who never got it, this right here is golden.

[@AlimayoArango]

Good stuff! thanks :D

[@RicoCilliers]

cheers :)

[@mujuningaiza]

Gr8 work, until Alimayo Arango appreciate it this looks very nice......!!!

[@cgiink]

Very nice tutorial! Any chance for a Blender 2.8+ version ? Please. Thank you, subscribed!

[@tempstep4058]

Good tutorial. I'm using Gimp in place of Photoshop.

[@ZELFOR]

Master!!!!!

[@phumlanimbabela-thesocialc3285]

thank you very much Rico. ;-)

[@RicoCilliers]

+Phumlani Mbabela - The Social Critic no problem man!

[@callmecraig3046]

Rico, you're the man, man.

[@RicoCilliers]

Thank you sir!

[@callmecraig3046]

@@RicoCilliers Wow you even put your brushes in the files. Thanks man. Do you have an art station or somewhere where I can view more of your work?

[@RicoCilliers]

I Appreciate that! Feel free to check out my artstation page here: artstation.com/ricocilliers

[@callmecraig3046]

@@RicoCilliers Already found it man :)

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

39:07 It occurs to me, you could have arranged your UV map so the left and right sides of the head, and other parts where you were relying on X symmetry, were overlapped (and flipped as appropriate) to share the same parts of the texture image. For example the left and right ears could share the texture image in this way. That would greatly reduce the amount of painting/repainting work you have to do, since the image need only contain one copy of each of those areas.

[@sunnydav970]

Very good tutorial bro pleas make a tutorial on how to texture cloths

[@biology-of-life]

17:46 Man that is creepy xD. Great Tutorial!

[@ezra3457]

what is it that you do when you select high res and low res model? I've been searching online and idk what i'm looking for because idk what it is that you did or do. Thanks!

[@findo9615]

Its gonna think about this for awhile LOL for baking

[@1InVader1]

Still one of the best texturing tutorials, not gonna lie. The really cool thing would be if you could paint on multiple textures with the the brush for pores and 2.8 actually is capable of something like that. So when painting pores you could also affect the specular, roughness and bump height map as well, since in those spots in addition to the color map, making the pores shiner (since they are typically filled with grease). The best part would be that this way on all the textures the detail would be mapped onto each other and you don't have to worry about extracting the detail you need in photoshop for the roughness and other breakdowns. Gone will be the days when you need to sculpt this kind of detail and bake it.

[@RicoCilliers]

this is actually very possible in blender 2.8, if you assign certain materials and specularity values to a single mask, then paint that mask. I've done it before but will try to explore it in more detail

[@1InVader1]

@@RicoCilliers Yeah I've seen a video on that, only problem is that you will want different values for different attributes of the material (roughness, displacement, etc.) and you need multiple textures for that. Masking will only allow highlighting places for all attributes, which could be useful for stuff like skin micro displacement (sub pore level). You prepare some tileable textures for skin microdisplacement, roughness, specular and AO (combining all of these already gives you a material) and then using the mask you can tweak equally how much of that "material" you want applied in specific places. Problem here ofc is that you need those textures prepared, but if you can afford to buy textures like this from sites like texturing.xyz then it's a cool method.

[@vineetkumar5081]

Great tutorial... Is there a way to achieve the same results in real-time without rendering

[@thisisprankbaby6313]

Огромное спасибо за урок!

[@cgiink]

Nice, thank you for the tutorial. Is it possible to recreate this tutorial for Blender 2.8 ? Please

[@PrashanSubasinghe]

you = awesome

[@leatherandpoemscharmyman5774]

hi I would like to know how to create a micro displacement map for blender for pores? and specially for masking...I do not how to create mask for differents areas...I do not want my mouth and nose has the same pores as the rest of the faces... thx.

[@RomboutVersluijs]

Would be nice if the texture could scale along when you zoom in on the model. Its a lot of extra work now resizing to the correct ratio, very easy to make mistake. PS is there a hotkey to hide the texture really quick? I like to use the option to turn of while doing strokes, its quiet hard to see what you doing otherwise i find.

[@linuxva]

Very good tut . Thanks . Deleted files .

[@LucaDiCecca]

hi Rico, did you try to use Principle Shader for Human Skin shader? What do you think?

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

10:31 Be aware that Photoshop has limitations operating on 16-bit-deep pixels, and cannot cope with 32-bit-deep pixels at all; Gimp and Krita don’t have such limitations.

[@roxassora2706]

That's why I prefer GIMP. That and it's for people who don't have a credit card, like me.

[@chexuian440]

Will you redo one tutorial without using the stencil? Thank you so much :D

[@paulreader1777]

Great tutorial - thanks! What are your machine specs, considering you normally work in 4K resolutions?

[@RicoCilliers]

Hey Paul, My specs are: AMD 8350 CPU, 12GB RAM, and a Nvidia GTX 760 4GB VRAM Graphics card. I think RAM and VRAM have the greatest impact when working with 4K-8K textures.

[@paulreader1777]

Thanks Rico, Gives me a benchmark to aim for. At the moment I'm just fiddling at the edges of Blender with Windows 10, a Celeron processor, 4G Ram and no graphics card.

[@GottoGure]

Thank you for video how to explain how to bake texture after i watch video i learn a lot stuff and i have question about baking texture if texture was something like goosebump sweat or wet which type of texture i should bake it?

[@RicoCilliers]

great! Well goosebumps would work the same as skin pores in generall, except they would bump outwards instead of inwards.. wet surfaces are usually not baked, but painted in using black and white textures, and these black and white textures are then used to drive the glossy part of the material, which will hopefully make it look wet.

[@moonylou04]

Do I need to have a high and low poly? I didn't sculpt i straight went to modelling so I don't have any high poly

[@nemanjamilivojevic9747]

@Ricco Cilliers do you bake it as diffuse or combined? Pls help me with bake settings. Thanks!

[@MrBelenus]

neatly explained in a good amount of time, thanks for this tutorial. just one thing, voice ambient was like a bit coming from deep closed place.

[@RicoCilliers]

thank you! Yes I recorded it on my laptop, in my room. so its kind of crappy sound. I'm looking at getting a better microphone one of these days.

[@MrBelenus]

thanks again, looking forward to more of your tutorials

[@Uthu777]

Dear Rico, since the revelation of principled BDSF 0n 2017, do you have by any chance created this similar tutorial with that setups? (Asking too much lol) I'm not quite sure where to connect the OCC and the Specular image texture of mine.

[@NicoGamez]

does this work when i download a pack that has the model in grey and the skins?

[@xxerbexx]

wouldnt you paint the pores on a bump? why are you painting them on diffuse i dont get it :/

[@georgewls4851]

Rico you sexy beast, thanks for the awesome tutorial dude!

[@Bry.L]

hi rico, this came at the perfect time. i wanted to ask a question, why did you select both the sculpt and retop before baking? i did all of the high res sculpting on my retop head and added pores, veins, etc with alphas. i haven't reach the point yet to begin baking and just wanted to know why before moving forward to projection painting

[@RicoCilliers]

Hey there, the reason I had to bake my High-res details to my retop, is that my High-res mesh has very bad topology when I export it from Zbrush. If you sculpt directly on the retop, it means you will have good topology, and in some cases baking won't be necessary. Although if you ever need super-fast viewport performance, (or realtime for games) then it's almost always necessary to bake the details to a low res mesh. I hope that kind of makes sense :)