This is a tutorial on how to make a facial bump and specular map. I want to give you a general idea of what to look for when creating a bump and spec map. This tutorial will work more as a guide for creating these textures, and is not a step-by-step tutorial.

My plan from the beginning was to make a tutorial for Photoshop, but more and more people are using Z-Brush for the finer details, quite a few people are using a photo as a base and painting on top of that or painting the whole texture by hand. I hope that which ever method you use, you will benefit from at least part of this tutorial.

The Character

There are a number of things you have to take into consideration before you create the textures for your character.

* Gender
* Age
* Environment
* Occupation
* Make-up?
* Health
* Smoker?
* Drinker?
* Habits
* Scars?

I am sure you can add other things to the list in regard to your specific character.

Naturally you will have made these decisions before even starting working on the character.

The skin

Now we will take a look at the facial skin in general.

A persons complexion varies greatly. These are just general guidelines.

Dry skin:
* Pores are less visible.
* The skin might be flaky.
* The skin is matte. Soft specular highlights.

Oily skin:
* Big visible pores.
* Shiny skin. Sharp specular highlights.

The sketch below shows the generally greasier areas of the face where the pores are more visible.

Below are close-ups of two nose-tips belonging to two elderly people. One has visible dark pores. The skin is greasier and has more specularity, sharper highlights. The other has barely any visible pores at all. Notice how the skin is dry and flaky. It's quite matte looking.

Notice also how some pores are concave while some are convex.

concave= inward
convex= outward

The forehead and cheeks

The face have smooth, firmer and thicker skin in younger people. As we get older the skin starts to loose it's elasticity and becomes thinner. The skin starts to sag and gets dehydrated. Wrinkles start to appear. At first fine lines and then deeper wrinkles.

In our late 30's and early 40's one can see a change in the appearance of the skin in the cheeks and forehead. Up until then the skin is quite smooth.

Look at the photos below and notice the fine wavy lines and indentations in the forehead and the cheeks.

If the character is a woman, and she is using heavy make-up, lots of powder and foundation (coloured cream), then the pores and the uneveness of the skin won't be as noticeable.

In real life some people's skin don't age as quickly as others, but you should only take that into consideration, if that is part of your character's story.

Wrinkles at the corner of the eye

Below we can see how the lines and wrinkles radiate from the outer corner of the eye, and how they follow the same direction. Notice how the finer lines have become deep wrinkles in the older woman.

Creases in the forehead

In the photo below we can see a criss-cross pattern in the forehead of an older person.

Note the little bumps below the eye.

Bump and specular maps

For the bump map, I usually start off with a medium grey, so that I can make indentations with the black colour and protrusions with the white.

A tip is to use a slightly lighter or darker grey while working, as the cursor "disappears" when over the medium grey (50% brightness). Can be a bit annoying.

I ususually use a couple of noise layers, one with gaussian blur applied to it, as a base. This is to get some base irregularities. I use very low settings, barely visible in the texture itself.

If you are using Photoshop I suggest you make your own brushes to work more efficiently.

For the specular map I use a grey map (Background/base). If the skin is generally shinier I use a lighter grey and if the skin is matt I use a darker grey.

White in a specular map gives strong specular highlights and black no specular highlights at all.

Make a habit of always making new layers. You will want to use some bump map layers for your spec map. Keep "white" layers separate from "black" layers in your bump map. Use the "white" layers for your spec map.

One thing to notice about the pores is that they often run in lines. Look at the image below. This is a cropped image from a forehead. A quick and easy way of making a lot of dots in your texture is to make the following brush settings. See below. Make sure that you vary the brush by adjusting the settings.

The red dotted lines are there as an illustration.

Adjust the settings for Shape Dynamics, Scattering and Spacing.

Use a small irregular brush for this. By adjusting these settings you can easily get varying sizes to the pores and ireggular lines.

On another layer draw lines with a low spacing of the brush, in an appropriate size to make creases/wrinkles along some of the "pore-lines". Add other lines as well, follow the above guidelines for the skin that you want.

Vary the brightness of the grey to make pores, lines and wrinkles of varying depth and height.

Use several layers so that you easily can remove one layer or make corrections to it.

Remember that the face is organic and there are a lot of irregularities in the skin.

Use a low opacity setting and greys that are close to medium grey (50% luminance). Choose a lighter/darker grey as you go. Make sure that the end of the lines and edges are soft and that there is a good gradation to the greys. See below. You don't want a crease or wrinkle to start abruptly.

For the spec map, I make a duplicate image from the bump map.

I make the background layer and noise layers darker.

I remove all the light coloured layers, I don't need them.

All the dark coloured layers I keep and make them darker. These are the areas of the face where the light don't reach that well.

I take a big soft brush and paint in the shiny areas of the face, with a lighter grey. Then I use a custom brush and erase some of the colour to get an unevenness. ( A layer mask works well for this.)

I hope that this tutorial has been of some help to you.

Madeleine Wettstein