Madart Graphics - Tutorials

Tutorial: Painting a face/skin texture in Photoshop. Color map.

Eyebrows & eyelashes

The eyebrows can be done in several ways.

Textured
Hair
Fur

As this is a texturing tutorial, we'll texture the eybrows. I have two separate objects for the eyebrows and have imported the UV layout into Photoshop.

The image is cropped, the original image is 512x512.

Let the background layer be pure black, or it won't become totally transparent in your render.

Start by drawing the general shape of the eyebrow on a separate layer.

Next use a small, hard brush to paint the little eyebrow hairs. I have used the following settings.

Use a white brush on a black background layer. This will be our transparency map.

Study different people's eyebrows, some are bushy, some are naturally neatly combed. Notice the direction of the hairs. This is a plucked eyebrow.

But to make the eyebrow look more real, add some smaller hairs around the eyebrow and some in among the other hairs. Just simply use a smaller brush. Again I do this on a separate layer.

Pick a softish brush and lower the opacity, paint in some white colour on a layer below the other layers. This will make the eyebrow look softer and a little darker.

This is the finished transparency map.

But what about the colour you say? You can either use a procedural for the colour or paint a texture. I paint a very simple texture. I have used a variation of brown colours.

I have used one of the layers to make a bump map, with a very low setting in the 3D-application.

For the specular color map I have used a copy of the main eyebrow layer and added a layer mask. I have used a black, soft, low opacity brush. With this brush, paint in the layer mask so that the eyebrow is not so strong in colour. You could also use a eraser to get the same result, but I often use layer masks, as it's easy to make changes that way, by just using a white brush to get the image/layer back. I have used a light blue colour and a brownish colour to paint lightly over the eyebrow in the paint mode. You go from the mask mode to the paint mode by simply clicking on the thumbnails.

These are the maps for the eyebrows.

Next we will start making the eyelashes. They can also be made in several ways, but this is how I texture them.

I use pretty much the same technique as with the eyebrows.

Use a small brush, with the same settings as you did for the eyebrows.

On a new layer use white colour to paint the eyelashes, this will be the transparency map.

The outer edges of the lashes are somewhat transparent and thinner. Unless of course the person is using mascara and you want really thick eyelashes.

To achieve that effect, add a layer mask. Use a soft brush to paint ireggularly over the eyelashes. Paint very lightly.

For the color map I have made a quick and simple texture.

And that's it!

Good Luck!

Custom Brushes 1 | Face texture 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 | Eye

Tutorials