Shadows and Highlights

As part of my tutorial, I want to demonstrate how various techniques in Photoshop can be applied to a UV Map.  I have decided that I want to use a map with a photorealistic texture, as I demonstrated in a recent post, and also a map with a handmade texture.  This will demonstrate to a beginner at Maya how much artistic freedom is possible once they have undergone UV Mapping, and how this one technical ability can enable artistic freedom.

After looking around, I came across this tutorial on creating skin texture in Photoshop, using the Shadows and Highlights; as well as the use of Multiply layers.  I decided to apply this concept to my UV map, and here is the outcome.

This exercise did not work particularly well on a 3D figure, because it looks odd and unrealistic.  This is largely because shading in Maya is usually created from external directional lighting as opposed to texturing.   I decided to experiment further, and using a softer brush, I applied blushes to my UV map and the outcome looks better.

From this, I have learnt to be more subtle when applying marks, such as hair or blemishes to a model and to use softer brushes.  I have also learnt to make better use of Layer Modes (Multiply, Dissolve, Overlay, etc.) to make textures blend more naturally.  When creating a texture for my UV map as part of the tutorial, I shall aim to produce something like the image pictured above.