Quick Skin Smoothing tut for GIMP

Mon Aug 01, 2011 11:27 am

Hey Guys!! I know you all have your own ways of doing your skin, but you should ALWAYS start with smoothing it out to get rid of ll of that pixely nastiness and random specks before you start shading. There are so many ways to smooth skin, some are hard and work OK, some are easy and dont look too great. But THIS version is guranteed to make your sims smooth and beautiful!!

What youll need:
Quick Mask
Selective Gaussian blur
Medium circular brush and eraser

First off, open up Gimp, and get a picture of your simmie that is to be edited. Once you have that, click on the Quick Mask button in the bottom left corner of GIMP:
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After you click that everything will turn red, make sure your color in the color box is black before you click that button or this wont work ;) Here is what it should look like after you click that:
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Then you have to take the eraser, at your desired size, and erase the red from all of the stuff that you want smoothed, you obviously dont want they eyes, nostrils or mouth smoothed or else they will blend in, so any pieces you want to stand out, keep them in red ;) Its gonna look.... odd but dont worry.
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Then click the quick mask button again and this should happen:
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Then go to Filters>Blur>Selective Gaussian blur.
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In the dialogue box that pops up set the Blur radius to like 7=15 depending on how smooth you want it, and set the Max Delta to around 30 or 40 so that the edges blend in. Select OK and watch as Gimp smooths out your simmies skin!
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Then push Ctrl-A to get rid of those select lines and look at your smooth product!
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Its only a small improvement for me, but if your game has pretty bad graphics and your simmies face is always pixelated, this is a GREAT tut for you!!!

BEFORE:

AFTER:
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Click on the full size

Fri Aug 05, 2011 1:31 am

WOW I fell MUCH appreciated for making this tut

:roll:

Fri Aug 05, 2011 8:36 am

cool :D

I've never done it like this and didnt even know about the mask tool lol

Fri Aug 05, 2011 2:36 pm

jaicee521 wrote:WOW I fell MUCH appreciated for making this tut

:roll:

Uhh, you're making a tutorial so you can help people. Not to make people fish for compliments.

Fri Aug 05, 2011 9:52 pm

I always love feeedabck though..

Sat Aug 06, 2011 2:46 am

For feedback, I would say that using Gaussian Blur straight on the skin is very dangerous, especially when editing full size sims where the detail is smaller and more delicate. I would instead recommend using the smudge tool, which is also more precise.

Sat Aug 06, 2011 11:05 pm

Miss Harlequin wrote:For feedback, I would say that using Gaussian Blur straight on the skin is very dangerous, especially when editing full size sims where the detail is smaller and more delicate. I would instead recommend using the smudge tool, which is also more precise.

Actually it is selective gaussian blur, MUCH different ;)

Sun Aug 07, 2011 12:49 am

Then it's just a surface blur. You would still be better off using a smudge tool on the areas that need it, as the finished result makes the skin a little bit cloudy (:

The before skin actually looks really good, so I don't think that it'd need much smoothing anyway.

Sun Aug 07, 2011 12:58 am

There actually isn't any difference. It still blurs the same, the only thing is that you have a certain selected area. I do agree with Quinn, I find the smudge tool does a great job.

Sun Aug 07, 2011 2:33 am

Okay....

Sun Aug 07, 2011 3:07 am

I'm not saying that the pictures are the same Jaicee. I'm just saying that in response to "Actually it is selective gaussian blur, MUCH different", it that there isn't much of a difference since it's the same function.

I'm sure this will help someone.

Sun Aug 07, 2011 9:17 pm

Nahh I dont think it will help anyone I think I am going to delete it. Thanks for the advice though guys

Wed Aug 31, 2011 6:22 pm

thank you. i just did this =)

Thu Sep 01, 2011 12:22 am

No prob!! (:

Thu Sep 15, 2011 1:27 am

I love this :D

Tue Oct 11, 2011 11:06 pm

I use this editing style on my sims and i love it.. this was easy for me because I used it on a sim that had a background and the selective parts are the only parts that got the smoothing out. So thank you and don't delete it, because it helped me.. Quick Skin Smoothing tut for GIMP 650269930