rlToday Skin Builder: Top Features, Tricks, and Workflow

Boost Your Face: rlToday Skin Builder — Fast Tips & Best PracticesCreating realistic, flattering skin in 3D renders or character models can be one of the trickiest parts of a digital artist’s pipeline. rlToday Skin Builder is a powerful toolset designed to streamline that process, offering procedural controls, layered texturing, and physically based shading options. This article covers fast tips and best practices to get the most out of rlToday Skin Builder, whether you’re working on stylized characters, photoreal portraits, or game-ready assets.

Understanding the rlToday Skin Builder workflow

Before diving into tips, it helps to understand the typical workflow:

1. Base mesh and UVs — clean topology and well-laid UVs yield better texture distribution and fewer artifacts.
2. Base skin shader — set up the PBR skin shader provided by rlToday (or convert to your renderer’s equivalent).
3. Layered textures — build diffuse/albedo, roughness, subsurface, and specular layers.
4. Detail maps — add micro-detail using normal/height maps, pores, and fine wrinkles.
5. Lighting and render tests — iterate under neutral and character-specific lighting.
6. Post adjustments — color grading, subtle dodge/burn, and compositing tweaks.

Fast tips for better skin right away

• Start with good UVs: Use island packing that prioritizes the face and preserve texel density for facial features.
• Use a neutral albedo base: Avoid baked-in shadows in your albedo; rely on lighting and AO maps instead.
• Leverage subsurface scattering (SSS): Even a subtle SSS radius creates a softer, more life-like look. For human skin, set a small reddish SSS tint and keep the scale consistent with your model’s size.
• Separate roughness and specular control: Treat roughness as your main path to perceived oiliness; specular tint should be minimal for most human skin.
• Add micro-detail with a blended normal map: Combine a mid-frequency normal for pores and a higher-frequency normal for fine skin texture. Modulate intensity per-region (e.g., nose vs. cheek).
• Use masks to localize effects: Control oil, redness, and pore intensity with painted masks (T-zone oiliness, cheeks for blush, etc.).
• Work in linear color space: Ensure your textures and renderer are configured for linear workflow to maintain accurate lighting.
• Iterate under multiple light rigs: Test with neutral three-point, rim-lit, and outdoor HDRI to catch issues early.

Best practices for texture creation

• Resolution planning: For close-up portraits, 4K–8K maps for the face are common; for game characters, target a lower resolution but prioritize facial texel density.
• Procedural layering: Use rlToday’s procedural layers to add controlled variation like freckles, veins, and subtle color shifts without destructive edits.
• Color variation: Introduce slight hue and saturation variation in the albedo — cooler tones around cavities and warmer tones on cheeks and nose. Keep variations subtle.
• Porosity and roughness maps: Create a translated roughness map from your pore/normal detail so pores catch specular highlights differently than smoother skin.
• Use cavity and curvature maps: These can drive dirt, makeup edges, and subtle shadowing for realism.
• Blend makeup non-destructively: If you add makeup, keep it on separate layers and use mask-driven blending so you can dial it back or remove it easily.

Lighting and shader tuning

• Physically plausible lights: Start with realistic light intensities and color temps before stylizing.
• Specular/roughness balance: Increase specular intensity only after adjusting roughness — roughness has a larger perceived effect on shininess.
• SSS settings: Use a multi-layer SSS approach if available: a shallow layer for epidermis scattering and a deeper layer for sub-surface color bleed.
• Rim and fill lights: A soft rim light helps accentuate contours; a fill light prevents loss of detail in shadows.
• Tone mapping and exposure: Keep exposure consistent between test renders to accurately compare iterations.

Optimization for real-time engines

• Bake layered detail: Bake procedural detail into combined maps (albedo, normal, roughness, AO) when targeting real-time to reduce shader cost.
• Mipmaps and LODs: Generate mipmaps and consider multiple LODs for texture sets to maintain performance across distances.
• Channel packing: Pack roughness, metallic, and ambient occlusion into separate channels when the engine supports it.
• Normal map precision: Use signed or unsigned normals depending on engine needs and target quality vs. memory trade-offs.

Common pitfalls and fixes

• Waxiness (skin looks plastic): Increase roughness variation, reduce specular tint, and boost SSS subtlety.
• Flat albedo: Remove baked shadows, add micro hue shifts and freckles, and use subtle subsurface color.
• Over-contrasty normals: Reduce normal map strength and blend high-frequency detail so it doesn’t overpower lighting.
• Mismatched lighting during comparison: Always compare renders with consistent exposure, white balance, and HDRI.

Quick checklist before final render

• UVs checked and texel density consistent.
• Albedo free of baked lighting.
• SSS set and tuned to model scale.
• Roughness/specular maps localized with masks.
• Normal/detail maps blended and intensity checked.
• Test renders under multiple lighting setups.
• Optimizations (baking, channel packing) completed for target platform.

Example workflow snapshot (concise)

1. Base color (neutral, no shadows).
2. Subsurface map + tint (subtle red in cheeks/nose).
3. Roughness map (T-zone lower roughness).
4. Normal: mid + micro pores blended.
5. AO & cavity to darken creases.
6. Test HDRI renders, tweak SSS and roughness, export.

This set of tips and best practices should get you noticeably better skin results quickly with rlToday Skin Builder while keeping your workflow efficient. If you want, I can provide a step-by-step node graph example for a specific renderer (Cycles, Arnold, Unreal) or a downloadable starter mask set for facial regions.