Starting Again 22/11/2011

[Artemis]

Hi everyone, I'm back (again). I found a lot of unfinished skins on my harddrive, and decided to attempt to complete them. Right now the only meshes I have is female_longhair and I'm having to transfer the skin from my macbook (which has photoshop) to a pc (which has CTool) sop its annoying not being able to fix alignment issues etc when i can see them in CTool.
But here's what I have so far. My avatar update from last year - finally. I still neeed to correct allignments on the flames at the waist and redo that awful face. and adjust the neck blending. but im quite pleased how she looks and i think my base skin was a success - i  could release the base skin if anyone thinks they would use it. but she doesnt have a face as yet. Any help/tips would be appreciated if you can see anything you think could be improved please let me know!

Spoiler

Also, does anyone know an alternative to photoshop that has similar brush tools? i love using my tablet and PS for the sensetivity and opacity tools, if theres a free equivelent for PC then it would greatly increase my workflow on skins thanks agaiN!

[Cyber Burn]

Glad to see you back Artemis, have you tried GIMP yet?

[Tomato]

GIMP is a good free alternative, If you're looking for something markedly less expensive then Photoshop but still more or less at it's level, I use Paint Shop Pro (it seems to be on sale for about $40, but even at max price it's ~$100, compared to Adobe's $700 price tag.) Whatever program you use is going to take some adjusting to, however.

[laughing paradox]

Welcome back to the fold, Artemis!

I am liking your current skin. The flames on the legs and arms came out very well.

[AfghanAnt]

I LOVE the way you handled the hair.

[Outcast]

Glad to see you skinning again Artemis. Very nice costume, the flame designs look familiar (i think i've seen them before in your old avatar?) but i still like them, they must have been very difficult to make. Did you do your own base skin? Looks pretty good to me. I'd be interested to download it.

[jeremy355]

Cool skin.

[Artemis]

Thanks everyone for the comments, I'm going to try and get gimp and see how it works with my tablet and hopefully it wont be too painful to learn.
here's what i have so far for the base skin.

Spoiler

I've adjusted the eyes and on the left hand side i've tried to make the blending between the darkest parts of the skin more subtle, i thought it looked a bit harsh and overly brownish compared to the rest of teh skintone. Ineed to check it in CTool but i'm thinking that's how i'm sticking with it. and then its just the fingers that need to be redone as far as i can see. but if anyone else has major thoughts please let me know, i want it to be as good as it possibly can be

[Outcast]

The face ,hair and fingers looks great to me. I wish i knew how you were able to do that. The muscles look ok too, but it would be nice to see how they look on a mesh in Character tool. I agree that the skin tone is kinda brownish. But people have different skin tones anyways so i think it's ok. Having tried to make a flesh toned skin myself, i have some idea how hard that can be.

I use Photoshop too. And i've also tried to learn how to use GIMP. It's very confusing when you're used to Photoshop. I think it would be great if there was anyone familiar with GIMP, make a simple tutorial for skinning. (Not a request though....just a thought.... )

[Artemis]

Thanks Outcast. It was actually quite simple to do....just - patience was required. and i've been doing it on and off for a year, at least. massive periods of just not even touching it but, i like how it looks.

Here's how it started:

Spoiler

I printed the wireframe for female long hair to fill a a4 sized page while still keeping the accurate proportion. I then traced the half torso/legs/feet and the face shapes and their major defining features were marked in.
I used charcoal to try and create a sense of depth, but I was only trying to give myself a starting point to go into photoshop. I didnt want to have to build up a whole base from scratch and i felt that the easy blending with charcoal would give me an easy time of defining musculature and giving some slight depth before actually going into PS.
From there i scanned in the pieces, and tried to smooth everything out, remove noise and then with a soft edged brush set at around 30% opacity in a mid grey with Other Dynamics - Opacity - Pen Pressure and Shape Dynamics selected i painted ontop of the original scan, trying to make it smooth and neat. I highlighted with a white brush at between 10-20 opacity at a time, just adjusting when i felt things were getting too dark. For me the hardest part was finding a skintone i was happy with. I spent about a week going from this pink to that pink to burnt sienna to tangerine. I hated colours for a long time...

[Cyber Burn]

If you want to see it in CTool, I'd be happy to help. let me know and I'll PM you my e-mail address.

[Artemis]

Thanks Cyber, it's fine though, I'm going to check it in CTool tomorrow hopefully and then know what I need to adjust. I have a question for people who have been using meshes by the community aswell.
Is it possible to make base skins for meshes by Vertex/Tomato/Valandar or even the mirrored FF meshes by just cutting and pasting from my current base? or do you think there'll be a need to do the entire process from scratch again as the mapping is very different?
Thanks, again for all the comments and critique guys!

[Cyber Burn]

I know from skinning Tommyboy's meshes, that they're slightly different in the mapping (the TF ones anyway), otherwise, I'm not sure.

[Tomato]

Thanks Cyber, it's fine though, I'm going to check it in CTool tomorrow hopefully and then know what I need to adjust. I have a question for people who have been using meshes by the community aswell.
Is it possible to make base skins for meshes by Vertex/Tomato/Valandar or even the mirrored FF meshes by just cutting and pasting from my current base? or do you think there'll be a need to do the entire process from scratch again as the mapping is very different?
Thanks, again for all the comments and critique guys!

I couldn't say for the others, but I know at least for my meshes, I tried to keep the mapping at least very similar (If I recall correctly, all you'd need to do is copy the feet for the mirrored portions, and redo the face... I made the head mapping closer to MB style for easier bald/masked skinwork)

[Outcast]

just - patience was required. and i've been doing it on and off for a year, at least. massive periods of just not even touching it ...

I think i know that feeling Artemis...but it sure feels good when it's all done.

Here's how it started:

Spoiler

I printed the wireframe for female long hair to fill a a4 sized page while still keeping the accurate proportion. I then traced the half torso/legs/feet and the face shapes and their major defining features were marked in.
I used charcoal to try and create a sense of depth, but I was only trying to give myself a starting point to go into photoshop. I didnt want to have to build up a whole base from scratch and i felt that the easy blending with charcoal would give me an easy time of defining musculature and giving some slight depth before actually going into PS.
From there i scanned in the pieces, and tried to smooth everything out, remove noise and then with a soft edged brush set at around 30% opacity in a mid grey with Other Dynamics - Opacity - Pen Pressure and Shape Dynamics selected i painted ontop of the original scan, trying to make it smooth and neat. I highlighted with a white brush at between 10-20 opacity at a time, just adjusting when i felt things were getting too dark. For me the hardest part was finding a skintone i was happy with. I spent about a week going from this pink to that pink to burnt sienna to tangerine. I hated colours for a long time...

Wow, i never thought or expected it to be based from a sketch.Thanks for explaining how you did it.