Sharing My Work - Hoping for Critiques

Hey everyone, I'm using this thread to share my work in progress. I'd love to hear your critiques and opinions if you have a minute to chat with your humble Luxe Muse.
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One thing that I do by default is to always set the pigmentation of the skin first. Dark skin demands quite different settings to light skin. So I set the main pigmentation using Base Colour first, and then (always) directly follow that up by setting the Translucency Weight second. I do this because in real life, the colour of the skin effects the amount of translucency you see. Dark skin supresses how much light gets to scatter beneath the surface, and therefore demands notably different settings to light skin.
The final major step is age, which again I set using Translucency Weight. You might wonder how it's possible to do that if it were already used to set scattering effect based on skin pigmentation, like, but won't that ruin my previous setting? The answer is no, because basically what you're doing is adding or subtracting from the result you arrived at previously, and the reason you needed to arrive at a result that you now need to change again, is because in doing so, those original settings you arrived at are what landed you with the correct pigmentation or Base Colour in the first place (or at the very least they landed you in a very good safe zone for getting the skin to look pretty good).
So in setting the age then, all you need to remember (in addition to the above) is that younger characters will need more translucency by default, than older characters. This is because skin is thinner when you're young, therefore more light enters, illuminates and scatters within the blood directly beneath the skin, and what you see is the result of that interaction with light.
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By the way, it's best to do all that under specular settngs that are a good common gound, not overly shiny, or dull. And always set Translucency Weight while the light source is not hitting it from the front. The only time you need light from the front (or side) is when you're setting specular.
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Luxe Muse
Karma: 4,366
Fri, Apr 18Thanks a ton, Comixiant! Yeah, the diffuse map for her is just my standard procedural base. I'll start tweaking it once I'm done with sculpting and morph corrections.
Right now, I'm generating normal and bump maps from the high-res mesh, plus procedural bumps for those tiny details. Unfortunately, I have to redo the high-res sculpt manually for G8 since skinwrapping from G9 to G8 causes more headaches than it's worth.
Right now, I'm generating normal and bump maps from the high-res mesh, plus procedural bumps for those tiny details. Unfortunately, I have to redo the high-res sculpt manually for G8 since skinwrapping from G9 to G8 causes more headaches than it's worth.
COMIXIANT
Can't critique or help on that one I'm afraid. I've never used that function.
Karma: 1,447
Fri, Apr 18Can't critique or help on that one I'm afraid. I've never used that function.
Skin, lips and teeth look very good. Nothing to complain here. The brows look also good, but I would still reduce their width a bit to make them to look more childish. They are too expanding at the outer sides.
And although the milk teeth look good, they are supernumerary. I count 24 teeth in Hanna's mouth. But that's an incorrect number. The milk dentition only counts 20 milk teeth in reality.
And although the milk teeth look good, they are supernumerary. I count 24 teeth in Hanna's mouth. But that's an incorrect number. The milk dentition only counts 20 milk teeth in reality.
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Luxe Muse
Karma: 4,366
Sun, May 04Good call! I was considering whether to remove that third molar, as the empty space already felt unnatural. To address it fully, I would need to adjust the depth of the mouth cavity entirely. Perhaps I should proceed now rather than waiting for a post-release enhancement.
Ghatanothoa
Karma: 7,385
Sun, May 04You are absolutely correct. If you want to make it right, you also need to reduce her mouth cavity's depth. And I would strongly recommend to do that.
I have manipulated the image. These are the correct proportions for a 6-year-old:


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Luxe Muse
Karma: 4,366
Sat, May 10I see your point. I took another photo (shared below) without shoes for a better view. The shoes are flat, but they still raised her by about half an inch.
Here's again a manipulated image of the 6-year-old version with the corrected, less womanly shape.


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