This month, Substance Source magnifies the smallest details on a body. 52 new high-resolution hybrid micro skin materials join the collection. The textures are dedicated to character artists and created in partnership with our friends at Texturing XYZ.
Prepare the moisturizing lotion: we are zooming in on every pore and wrinkle of the human skin… with a few surprises besides.
A while ago we added facial epiderm microtextures on Substance Source. Recently, we embedded full facial scans into Substance Painter, allowing artists to create highly realistic character expressions. Today, we aim to expand this collection with a selection of micro skin materials of body parts. Your characters get textured from head to toe with the same level of realism!
Look closely, as every character pro does, and you’ll notice that the skin color, surface thickness and grain is never uniform and differs from one person to another. The micro grain of the epidermis is modeled by the shape of the body; it also glides over the surface of the muscles and stretches when the body moves.
We organized the selection in different body parts. For each one, we collected several samples, which should allow you to mix multiple grains together in Substance Painter. This way, you’ll get a genuine and unique combination every single time.
And to ensure that we achieved the highest quality, we partnered with the ultimate specialist in micro skin capture – which is just another way of saying, “I scan naked people” – Texturing XYZ.
What is in a micro skin texture?
Every micro skin material in this release is tileable and delivered with a high-res displacement map. Both the grain and the color map are uniform, which means that there is no imperfection on the micro skins. Each material also has the following maps: roughness / specular level / scattering.
Now, let’s cut up a body into different locations. For each category, you’ll find a selection of micro grains captured on both men and women. Yes, we’re fully aware that these sentences are creepy.
Arm Micro Skin
Body Micro Skin
Back Micro Skin
Leg Micro Skin
Get ready for an intense body painting session in Substance Painter:
Skin Color Mode: An Easy Way to Create Variations
It would not be fair just to deliver textures! Yes, endless different skin grains are available – and yet the range of skin color provided is equally unlimited.
Hybrid assets for a complete make-up session.
The team took the skins a step further and created hybrid materials. These tweakable materials combine the accuracy of the grain with procedural filters, which in turn allow artists to customize each asset as required.
In addition to the roughness of the material, you’ll have the power to modify the pigmentation as well as the subtle color variations based on surface vascularization. Embedded preset values directly in the .sbsar let you customize colors, modifying details such as tan levels. And just to further remove any artistic constraints, we’ve updated all the facial micro skin assets on Substance Source with these hybridization templates.
One more thing…
Going beyond the micro skin grain variations, the uniqueness of any characters lies in the details. Some call them imperfections – but these details are what make the project more realistic and credible. Currently, the typical approach is to include these elements in the modeling, but this can be time-consuming and demanding in terms of resources, especially if you are looking to add micro details.
Wouldn’t it be fun to be able to add some of these details in the texturing instead? Well, that’s what our team has been working on for you.
Here’s a sneak peek of what is coming!
There’s no need to sculpt small details anymore. We’ve created procedural generators of moles, scars, pimples and more to let you add a boundless array of unique characteristics on top of the micro grains.
Just paint these details locally on your model into Substance Painter.
The detail generators become decals in Substance Painter – change the brush mode parameter to paint, and you’ll be able to blend the details with the skin. And you still keep absolute control over the attributes specific to the details, such as their size, shape, color, and so on.
Skin Mole Material in Substance Painter
Hypertrophic Wild Scar Material in Substance Painter
That’s all for today! Keep your eyes open, however, as this is only the beginning. A full collection of skin details will land very soon on Substance Source along with a few surprises. We’re preparing a selection of assets reproducing elements to combine with skin micro grains such as freckles, pimples, cuts, sutures, burns and other “interesting” elements that can be handy and fun. We really can’t wait to see what creations this will help you to come up with: realistic humans in a fluctuating state of health – or maybe fantasy creatures?
Want to go further? Take a look at Texturing XYZ’s behind the scene explanation of the skin pack processing.
Until then, stay hydrated!
And because the team is always looking into ways to make your life easier, you can browse the Substance Source micro skins materials in the new Substance Launcher.
