How do you add skin details: Substance Painter, sculpting in Blender / Zbrush, Photoshop?

Dissendior

I am still learning with only some basic knowledge when it comes to 3D and all this. Now I want to create a custom character and give him some more skin details like wrinkles and pores. And I struggle to find a good way to do this:

• My first attempt was purely texturing with Substance Painter. I tried adding skin details with alphas with some okayish results for some basic level of very unsubtle wrinkles but at least I was not able to create really good (subtle) details in that way. I achieved good results for skin color details here but not for pores and wrinkles.
• My second attempt now was to sculpt the details in Blender:
  1. I exported the character from DAZ to Blender and added a multiresolution modifier
  2. In sculpt mode I played with alphas again. The problem: it seems to me that I need a really very high resolution of the character mesh for that. All the online tutorials about sculpting skin details usually only work with the head so I think this is not a really good approach for a whole body?!
  3. Additionally I guess Zbrush might be better for that level of sculpting as I've learnt (theoretically, not practically) that Zbrush works with levels which seems to be very handy for sculpting first, second and third level skin details. Also Zbrush seems to be able to handle more polygons than Blender?!
• I've never worked with Photoshop yet but I know that some people copy images of skin / skin parts into the texture map. Here I struggle with achieving a fitting color (gradient) for the texture map - my results would just look like some kind of weird patchwork skin 

So my question is: how do you create skins / skin details for Daz characters?

lilweep

You can just sculpt at any resolution you want and bake all the HD resolution details onto the low res model via a Normal or Displacement map. Obviously any big morphology changes should be put into a morph of the low res base mesh, and then only fine detail on the Normal/Displacement map...

For making a color map, I am going to start by saying: I have never seen a good merchant resource for skin. You will have to start with another Daz character or look at using assets like photo sets and scans. One problem stemming from this is you likely wont be able to get a license to distribute these maps for your Daz characters, even if modified, so often would have to be restricted to personal use if going that route.  Will depend on the store/assets being used.  The big 3D scan stores are not going to license you to distribute their maps, probably. 

Ideally for photo assets and scans, the color maps should have been photographed/scanned with polarized filter so only the subject's color info gets photographed i.e., doesnt have reflections and so forth. Any professional 3D scan store would have assets like that, but for photo reference sets, they will have baked reflections in the photos so cannot be used easily.

There are various ways to project the images to Daz UV, either by shrinkwrapping in something like Blender or R3DSWrap, or using manual projection in something like Substance Painter.Then you can edit the diffuse maps in software like Substance Painter/Blender/Photoshop for tweaking.  

There's also a bunch of maps you can get out of a HD Zbrush sculpt like cavity maps etc that you can use for tweaking the diffuse map too.

Dissendior

lilweep said:

You can just sculpt at any resolution you want and bake all the HD resolution details onto the low res model via a Normal or Displacement map. Obviously any big morphology changes should be put into a morph of the low res base mesh, and then only fine detail on the Normal/Displacement map...

I already understand how a normal map works. When it comes to displacement maps I am still very confused by your words. First I think to achieve very good details by sculpting I need a high resolution. Okay... and then I bake the displacement map from that onto the low res mesh, right? But I wonder how the displacment map helps here as I have learnt that displacment maps actually change the mesh when applied (where the normal maps just "fake" the changes / details on surfaces). But how can the displacement map then be used on a low res model when the displacements have details which are not possible with the lower resolution?

For making a color map, I am going to start by saying: I have never seen a good merchant resource for skin. You will have to start with another Daz character or look at using assets like photo sets and scans. One problem stemming from this is you likely wont be able to get a license to distribute these maps for your Daz characters, even if modified, so often would have to be restricted to personal use if going that route.  Will depend on the store/assets being used.  The big 3D scan stores are not going to license you to distribute their maps, probably. 

Thanks for this clarification... I already assumed something like this.

lilweep

Dissendior said:

 

I already understand how a normal map works. When it comes to displacement maps I am still very confused by your words. First I think to achieve very good details by sculpting I need a high resolution. Okay... and then I bake the displacement map from that onto the low res mesh, right? But I wonder how the displacment map helps here as I have learnt that displacment maps actually change the mesh when applied (where the normal maps just "fake" the changes / details on surfaces). But how can the displacement map then be used on a low res model when the displacements have details which are not possible with the lower resolution?

From your high res mesh, you can bake out both Displacement maps and Normal maps. 

The effect of a displacement map is just like a HD morph, even though i suppose they are functionally different.  You won't be able to see the details for either of a displacement map or HD morph unless you subdivide your low res mesh.

 

lilweep

To go back to your original question though, you can just use the products on the daz store to do most of what you are asking, no? Like add wrinkles and so on.

There are probably products that can do these things rather than doing them yourself?

Dissendior

 

The effect of a displacement map is just like a HD morph, even though i suppose they are functionally different.  You won't be able to see the details for either of a displacement map or HD morph unless you subdivide your low res mesh.

Okay, thank you so much... I've never used a HD morph so far. But it makes sense to me that you need to subdivide your mesh to see the HD morph or the displacement map.

You're right - during my search I have already found some products like Aging Morph and Aging Face details to add some of the things I'd like to add to my characters. But maybe one day in the near future I want to publish my own characters for free and/or sell them and for that I don't want to rely on the morphs and preparations of others (I really want to create unique characters) as well as I want to avoid licencing issue. Additionally for me these Daz characters are just a step to learn / become better in creating 3D characters in software like Blender or Zbrush. This also is a reason for me not just to buy products from Daz store to adjust a little bit my character.

lilweep

HD morphs are nice to use in Daz Studio because they are versatile; you can combine multiple different HD morphs with sliders.  Downside is, Daz limits their creation to official daz Published Artists (PAs), so normal users cannot make them.

Displacement maps are good because they are more industry-friendly and can be used in most other softwares, compared to HD morphs which are a Daz Studio-specific thing.  But downside is displacement maps are less versatile.

Dissendior

Thank you so much for your explanations