thank you Anton for your tutorial on adding skin textures without losing color sceme - ran across that a few days ago and it made all the difference! i've been using Photoshop for 5 years and never noticed Soft Light!

Comments welcome on how i can improve this head texture...

dreamer728 can you show a small version of your head texture ? Like 800 or so. Its hard to say from just your render if its the lighting or not. I am wondering about the pinkish color between the top of the lip and the bottom of the nose. Also the freckles are cute but i would blend them in a bit more or blur them a bit add less around the corner of the eyes and more down the cheeks. Its looking good though and coming right along.

Here's my ideas for improving your texture. I'm not a texture master, but I am working on a few of my own right now and I think I've got them looking pretty good ( you all can be the judge(s) when I post some pictures of them in the forum soon ).

Since it seems like you're going for a heavily freckled look I do think you should add some more around the whole face. Someone who has this many freckles is bound to have them all over. I've attached a photo of a heavily freckled redhead for reference.

Now she (picture) has allot and you don't need to go overboard but you get the idea. I agree with tasquah, the "offending area" between the nose and upper lip does stick out. I noticed it before in your earlier posts. Another thing that sticks out at me is the shine spots on the lower lip. I personally would paint over them and make the lower lip more the same color.

As I work on my textures I'm finding out that less is more. Meaning the less you do in terms of contrasting light and dark areas of the face, eyes, nose, and lips the more natural or "believable" the texture seems to be. Real photos of faces are very helpful in teaching yourself what looks right and what doesn't look as good. Doing good texture work is like learning how to draw. If you study real people your drawings or paintings look better than if you study someone elses drawings or paintings.

Since your planning on giving this texture away, obviously you don't want to spend weeks or months on it. But if you want to sell your textures sometime, producing a really nice freebie helps people remember you and may help your future sales if that's one of your goals. I think it's good that you're showing us your wip. It shows that you care about what you're doing and want to improve your work.

I hope I'm not seeming too preachy or coming off as a know it all. It always helps me to hear opinions. "Good job, or Nice work" is great to hear but it doesn't help me improve as much as someone's more critical commments. Keep showing us your development on this texture. If you want some ultra-nitpicky comments IM me and I'll be glad to talk with you further.

droyd

I wasn't really looking for an all over freckled face, more like a "i dont tan i freckle" kind of look, not exactly a true redhead...but thank you for the picture, i will use it in referance :-)

I will IM you for more comments
thanks
Brooke

BTW, heres the tex on default vicki 3, i updated a little.

Much better dreamer728, She look more real than your earlyer version does. Great freckle pict droyd.