Albino Elf Viking

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REflective Post

As you complete your project, you need to think about the learning and creative decision-making that has taken place over the project. You should start by reflecting on what happened (read back through your blog or look through your sketchbook – where were you acquiring new skills and where were you making creative decisions? How effectively were these processes managed? What have you learnt about yourself as a practitioner?

You should aim for substantial reflective posts (500 words) on both your creative decision-making and on your new learning over the project – although these may be split into several shorter posts. If you have worked as a part of a group, you will also need to write a substantial post evaluating this aspect of your work as well.

You should follow good academic practice in your blog or other written work including use of Harvard referencing where required. When you link to external sources (images , web pages etc., make sure that you also give the link of the original).

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Week

Freckls

Veins around eyes

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Week

Lips

Texturing the lips represents another primary application for cavity maps, helping us capture all the fine crevices and texture lines. While matching the original concept still requires more time and attention to detail, I have successfully established a solid base for the lips. I am quite pleased with the current result, but I have plans to push the fidelity even further in the future.

Examining the initial reference image—derived from a 3D scan—reveals a wealth of information for artists to study. One critical element that significantly enhances lip realism is the addition of micro-details to break up light and create varied specular highlights. I will search online to investigate the best techniques for achieving this. While I am considering utilizing a cavity map for this purpose, I need to research further to confirm the optimal workflow.

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Week 9 _ Day 2,3

I added multiple color layers for the vascular system—incorporating green, blue, and red veins—to achieve natural chromatic variation. By refining the skin's cavity maps, adding micro-details inside the crevices, and introducing subtle specular highlights, I significantly improved the overall appearance and realism of the skin texture.

Here is an overview example showcasing the skin before adding these details:

And here is the example of the skin after adding those details:

The result is much better, but the skin still appears somewhat raw. Additionally, the vascular layer is currently too prominent beneath the surface, meaning I need to add an extra top-layer of skin to properly soften and control the vein visibility.

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Week 9 _ Day 1

After learning skin detail techniques and configuring the material shaders inside the engine, I achieved the skin texture result shown below:

I have updated the model inside the engine, and this is how she currently looks in the viewport:

The skin currently lacks organic warmth and resembles clay. To fix this, I updated the material parameters in the engine to achieve a more convincing and lifelike skin shader:

The character is looking much better, and I am ready to delve deeper into the skin details. I need to incorporate subsurface vein patterns and freckling to push the skin toward a higher level of realism. Although the current eyes look terrible, I identified the source of the texture error and will resolve it in the next phase. In the interim, I have decided to utilize the updated MetaHuman eyes available in Unreal Engine. While I have already sculpted custom eyes and intend to dedicate more time to refining them later, using the engine's built-in solution allows me to bypass the current visual issues and maintain progress for now.

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Week 8 _ Day 6,7

Skin details and shaders:

Achieving realistic skin details requires good reference materials to understand the underlying science and biology behind human skin features. We separate various data types into dedicated maps to achieve the illusion of realism in the engine. Every element must be accurately placed and balanced to capture the narrative and visual realism we aim for. Fortunately, JHill produced an exceptional video tutorial on skin texturing, which served as my primary learning resource for this stage.

among this video one other video also capture a good amount of information. combining thiese two video help me to achieve a good skin texture. base on my references.

Regarding my skin reference and the story that I tried to capture I bring some of my references below to help the imagination of things that I want to reach.

In the video, JHill also references the topic of RBX photography, explaining how understanding subsurface melanin and hemoglobin distribution helps artists accurately paint skin tones and scattering channels for real-time game characters.

Canfield Scientific's RBX® Technology is a proprietary imaging system utilized in advanced dermatology platforms like the VISIA Complexion Analysis System. Unlike standard RGB photography, RBX transforms capture data into a specialized color-space that isolates melanin (brown) and hemoglobin (red) signatures. This allows practitioners to visualize subsurface skin conditions—such as hyperpigmentation, sun damage, vascular anomalies, and inflammation—providing critical reference data for skin analysis and texturing workflows.

These dermatological references also help us, as artists, access detailed variation data on human skin, allowing us to build more convincing, biologically accurate textures.

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Week 8 _ Day 2,3,4,5

Setting up an effective presentation level is mandatory when texturing a real-time, game-ready character. Thanks to JHill, I learned how to configure the lighting environment and import my character into Unreal Engine. By exporting the textures from Substance Painter directly into the correct directory within the Unreal Engine project folder, the textures update automatically. This provides real-time access to the model inside the engine, allowing me to evaluate material behavior simultaneously while working.

Below is the first look at my character in the engine. I performed a quick color and material blockout; while still raw, it establishes the foundational forms and allows me to refine the asset to match my original concept.

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Week 8 _ Day 1

Once I cleared all artifacts and achieved a clean bake, it was time to jump into texturing. As with any stage of creating artwork, breaking down complexity into manageable steps prevents confusion and keeps you from becoming overwhelmed by fine details. For my workflow, the most effective approach was blocking out the texture sets, organizing clean folder structures for each prop, and properly separating the various components. This established a preliminary color blockout and provided a first look at the character's overall palette. Having completed the bake and texture blockout, the next step tomorrow will be importing and setting up our character inside Unreal Engine.

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Week 7 _ Day 7

This technique proved to be the most essential method for controlling skin texture details. To bake the cavity map correctly, we must set the generation method to Generate from Normal Map within Substance Painter. This ensures we capture high-quality micro-details directly from the normal map into the cavity map. During the skin texturing process, having access to this map is vital across multiple channels to precisely mask and control those fine surface details.