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[gimymblert]

It's less about observation and more about impression, the more you remove information the more you need to amplify some parameters to compensate, but more precisely, I target what is called silver black skin as it is under represented and I'm trying to find a basis to have variation between character of darker skin colors. This silver thing isn't just a black skin stuff, not all pale skin are pale roses either some appear more "grey" for example used in gothic character. Skin is incredibly diverse but we tend to hove to some abstraction, as dark skin is under abstracted I try to explore various condition of stylization by starting by the subtler and more difficult one.

The other solution is to measure directly skin albedo (color) using known lighting condition and a mc beth chart to calibrate (and polarized filter to remove specular).

Its an ongoing research, life would be simpler by just going default lol

[mankoon]

I think paint studies of examples that match your target- (silver black skin) would be a good basis for your goals. You probably already did some paint studies but hey, there's always something to learn from.

[gimymblert]

That remind me that I should share this too

I had been looking at saturation range of skin, but it turns out color is more and more difficult to handle on a very bad screen, I used a hsl range of hue between 0 to 15 and a sat range of 15 to 38. The gradient goes from h0s15 to h10s38 horizontally and vertically is a an arbitrary Luminosity gradient.



Left side feel more natural to me ON MY SCREEN
Right side looks like it makes up for great subsurface or accent

In fact the h0s38 is what put me off in term of range on other drawing (not pictured here)

Morality, it is still the good old hue shift to yellow, art rules never lie. The things seems to be desat red and sat orange (avoid dark sat red).

However the jurry is still out of stylized highlight ...


AND two colors clear cut simplification structure too (shadow and skin OR specular and skin)

Edit:
Also I currently try to define "canon" colors i'm confident with before going wild with variation FROM it, in each style (aka clear cut edge to smooth to almost realism). I'm basically trying to find a style guide for further development.

[JWK5]

Ditching reality for a moment, here's an attempt at "faking it" for a more stylized approach. I tried to keep in line with what you already had but adjust for color. I still need to play around with it more (it's a bit flat here, but again I wasn't sure how much will be done "in-engine"), but the blue shadow undertones against the complementary orange of the overtones seems to be a step in the right direction. I will keep at it.

[gimymblert]

The engine limitation in this case is clear, no light, texture only

[JWK5]

Which the topic title clearly states... Sorry, I am still waking up. lol

Are the colors closer to any closer to what you have in mind?

[gimymblert]

I tried those color too, that's where I left last time (need to progress elsewhere)

Color is THE hot topic on this lol, I generally let time decide longer, I came back to it at different time to see, last time I was fighting over 3 increment of hue so ... lol I need to let the subjective brain sock in it first instead of making snap judgement, color depend on the actual disposition of the mind at a moment too, I learn this the hard way lol The snap judgement is part of my brain growling too much red.

However I calibrated capture with uniform light of some skin exist, except that is just one sample:



Notice that red isn't much a contributor, orange is more present (except in the lips of course)

It might be in linear space so you need to gamma correct it first (pow 2.2, or the simplification which is multiplying the image with itself which lead to pow 2)

If you really want to grok at it for the fun I can provide you with the original 3D data to mess with the texture, I learn the hard way that volume make it even more tricky to paint baked light.

[gimymblert]

Here is another experiment I did:
i took a black manga character and tweak the color until I was satisfied
the original is top left

Never read it, just found the character on google image

also corrected the darker version to something that actually works




Edit:
I added a 3rd version above by adding the image to itself twice (to simulate the shader effect in case of mario galaxy like fresnel to make contour pop). Not bad at all

edit2
added the "add"x1 on the right of the "add"x2 version
the "add" version are closer to a satisfying version of what I want to acheive.

The version I tweaked all feel more natural to me by a long mile. It's not blue despite what teh eyes tell you, except the bottom right of each image because of the sky blooming into it.

[JWK5]

Forgive my MS Paint scribbling... Some more color exploration. Still messing around.

[JWK5]

[gimymblert]

I will always forgive your art

[JWK5]

Thanks, lol!

Here's a few more, I'm still messing with it all...

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

gimmy we've been over this a bit in the scret forums (that this is a crazy quixotic task because painting black people is the same as painting white people -- same optics on the skin, same lighting situations, etc -- you need painting practice, not a crazy study of black people's skin) but one extra note:

IT's 3D a fresnel would be shader, but unpractical in unlit texture

This is false. You can and should paint in the 'fresnel' or rim lighting if this is a diffuse only texture. Painting in multiple light sources and refraction was ubiquitous in the 'old days' of diffuse only texturing. This is the same as how you paint in reflections, highlights, etc -- it has to be done with some care, because in certain lighting situations it may look weird if you go wild.

Diffuse textures of today (designed to be paired with specular, normal, gloss, etc maps) are very different than the diffuse maps that should be used in a game without those elements.

[gimymblert]

Show an example of painted fresnel somewhere that feel good in face and profile.

Also Just because it is the same as painting pale skin does not mean I'm satisfied with random look or random colors. Pin pointing the right set of color is a common thing in art design whatever.

[JWK5]

you need painting practice, not a crazy study of black people's skin)

He needs both. More knowledge is every bit as important as more practice. I don't think the study is all that crazy, I am actually learning quite a bit myself as I experiment with it.

painting black people is the same as painting white people

It's the same general concept but a very different application. It's like the difference between painting green grapes and painting some purple grapes, functionally they are the same but in actually painting them there are some very stark differences in how you will have to go about it. You can observe similar circumstances here. It really comes down to what it is you are trying to express with the representation. I think that is where he might be driving himself crazy, the representation is fairly straight forward but capturing the right feeling is pretty difficult.



EDIT: You ninja'd me.

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Show an example of painted fresnel somewhere that feel good in face and profile.

Also Just because it is the same as painting pale skin does not mean I'm satisfied with random look or random colors. Pin pointing the right set of color is a common thing in art design whatever.

Gimmy: Most 'golden era' lowpoly 3d art (quake2-3 era) paint in rim lighting that still holds up at other angles. You can sortof imagine it being the same as painting an object in a relatively small cube with all 6 sides lit up -- you have light hitting from every angle, fading torward shadow at each edge. Usually front/top/back lighting are significantly brighter, because of the average lighting situation in the game. You are not painting textures to simulate real properties, you are painting an unnatural lighting situation.

http://www.shotgun-graphics.com/skinz.htm
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/43/c1/fe/43c1fef10180396ff63de33447147958.jpg
http://www.bobotheseal.com/portfolio/Contract/Contract_ThePlucker02.jpg
http://www.kevinjohnstone.com/Polycount/images/news/visor1.jpg

note the bright hits as the forms turn on all of these -- it's more subtle than a crushing mario galaxy style rim light, but it's the kind of thing I'd leave to a fresnel shader on my current projects.


JWK5: afaik (i havent looked at grapes closely lately) green and purple grapes have fairly different levels of translucency -- there is a much bigger consistency change between different kinds of grapes than there is different tones of human skin. Black skin has the same properties as white skin.

In your photo of the walking dead actors you can see pretty clearly that aside from the woman's skin being smoother due to traits irrelevant to her race, all 3 of them have almost identical optical properties, the same reddening around the cheeks, the same specularity, the exact same warm tones around thinner parts of their skin -- the only difference is the base tone of her skin.

[gimymblert]

The skin is similar, the readability is different

[JWK5]

More experiments...



Never mind the Elmer Fudd faces there, I was just quickly testing using slices from the gradient to get a general skin tone range. Needs tweaking (the gradient) but for the most part the general idea works nicely.

[JWK5]

[JWK5]

I am using Game Maker Studio for my current project, I want to have a create-a-character setup but since the game is 2D, not 3D, I will be doing this using layered sprites. My two options are to color by hand each skin layer individually or have one base layer that I can use GMs image_blend with. I gave the latter option a go and in order to make it effective I needed to come up with a base gradient that would blend well with any given skin color. I got pretty close here, but I still need to toy with things some more. Not sure if it has any use to you, but I figured I'd share.