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Taking Skin Textures from Good to Great in MARI

by Eddie Russell

For a number of reasons, many artists struggle to paint realistic skin textures for their characters. Software required: MARI 2.6v2, Maya 2015.

What you'll learn

For a number of reasons, many artists struggle to paint realistic skin textures for their characters. Often times, to save time and speed up the painting process, photographs are used to texture skin. On top of introducing quite a few addition problems, this process creates a dependency on finding just the right photo. Wouldn't you like to be able to paint realistic skin without having to rely on a photo? This MARI tutorial will begin with a very basic coloration for our skin texture in MARI. We'll render this out using Maya to see that while it could work, it could definitely be better. From here we'll go through the process of painting a number of different blemishes and details as well as additional maps for our asset. From here we'll move back to Maya and learn how to setup a subsurface scattering material for our textures that will give as a more realistic preview of their effectiveness. To wrap things up, we'll examine the rendered result and then make some modifications to our textures to push them even further. After completing this MARI training, you'll have a great understanding of how you can add that extra realism to the textures you render for your own characters. Software required: MARI 2.6v2, Maya 2015.

About the author

Eddie began teaching creative professionals over ten years ago for Digital Tutors. In 2014 Digital Tutors was acquired by Pluralsight and he continued his focus on creating high quality training for artists in both the film and games industries. With a background in graphic design and illustration Eddie has always been focused on visual appeal. This can be seen through his courses in which he shares secrets for achieving production level quality for concept art, illustrations, textures, mater... more

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