How to use Paint.net to edit facesets.

[Luz 1]

I'm not quite sure where to put this so if this is in the wrong place, please move it.

 

Anyway, since I haven't been able to use RMXP I've been making some characters. As for facesets, I'm usually fine with using face maker but for main characters I like to edit the face sets using paint.net (which can be downloaded for free from here: http://www.getpaint.net/download.html ) to give them more personality and set them apart from the NPC's. The way I edit them doesn't take much skill either.

 

So, I thought I'd give a tutorial on how I go about editing a character with paint.net.

 

How to edit eyes:

 

For this tutorial I'm going to start off with a premade eye and just do some editing. I got my eye here: http://maydonghae.de...-eyes-258173845 If you're going to use this in your game, be sure to ask permission.

 

The first thing you do is of course, open up paint.net. At the bottom right you'll notice a box that looks like this:

This is the layers menu. Layers are used to control whether apart of your picture is on top of the rest or not. For example, if you drew a picture on clear paper, each piece of clear paper had a different part of the drawing on it. One layer had the face, skin color and background of the picture, another had the facial features and clothes and another had the hair. In this case, you would of course want the skin and face to be on the bottom because if it were on top it would cover everything else up, following that would be the face and then the hair. In short, the top layer should always be what's closest to you and the bottom layer should be what's farthest from you. It's similar to the layers you use when building a map on RMXP.

 

The first thing you want to do is create a new layer by clicking the button to the far left of the layers menu. On this new layer, paste the eye that you're going to be working with. Then, create another layer and paste the eye again on this layer. At the top of the screen is a series of drop down menus. Go to the layers menu and click "flip horizontal". Then move the eyes around so that they're placed an eye length apart from eachother. It should look something like this

Then click the fourth button from the left to merge the two layers together. (note that this will merge with the layer below it so in order to marge it to the correct layer you have to have the uppermost layer selected)

 

Now you want to create a new layer above the eye layer. Double click on the new layer in the layers menu and it will open up a new menu.

Click the drop down menu next to where it says "Blending Mode" and choose "Multiply" then change the name of the layer to "Pupil Base Color" and press OK.

 

Now choose a base color for your eye. This color should be a middle ground for the color you want your eyes to be but be aware that there will be points darker and points lighter than this. Don't make it too light though because then the highlights wont show up. With this color, color in the entire iris and pupil of the eye with the paint brush tool, select it from the menu to the right of the screen. If you find that the brush is too small, note that you can increase or decrease the size of the brush with the + and - buttons located at the top right of the screen beside the words "Brush Width"

After you're finished coloring the eye, it should look like this:

Now create a new layer and name this one "Pupil Highlights". Then, on the color mixer to the bottom right click the button that says "More" and it will expand to reveal more options. Next to where it says S you'll see a bar. Drag it to the right side closer to the light. Leave it a bit before absolute white but not too much. (With some colors if you use only the S bar it'll come out grayish, you may also have to drag the V bar below it to the right a bit as well) With this, color in all the highlights of the eyes (the white bubbles). Then, make the color very nearly white and put a cirblurscle in the middle of the biggest highlights. Then go to Effets>Blurs>Gaussian Blur and move the bar to blur the highlights to your liking. Your eyes should look something like this:

 

If you want to leave your eyes like this, that's fine but if you want to give them more depth follow these next steps:

 

Create another layer. If you zoom in on the eye (CTRL+scroll forward) you will see that there are little dark lines in the eye (depending on the picture you are using), Trace over these with either a dark version of the base color or black. Depending on how small the lines are in your picture, you may want to use a pencil. If so, select it from the menu to the left. After this, go back to Effects>Gaussian Blur and blur it to your liking. If your picture doesn't have these lines you can create your own lines. I either do them straight and facing toward the pupil around the bottom half of the eye or zig zag around the bottom of the eye. After this, create another layer, go back to your highlight color and make a a U shaped line below the pupil of the eye. Blur it once again to your liking.

 

With Pre-lined eyes, no U blur:

With lines pointing toward pupil and U blur:

With zig zag:

 

If you aren't 100% happy, try going to Adjustments and playing around with some of the settings. Or double click on some of the layers and play around with the opacity and blending mode.

 

 

 

How to edit eyes onto a face set:

 

Forward Facing Face:

The first thing you want to do is go to Image>Flatten. This will compress all of your layers into 1. This will create a big disadvantage for editing so if there's anything else you want to do with your eyes, be sure to do it now. Don't be afraid to experiment! After flattening your image, create another layer and paste your characters face onto the new layer. After this, resize your eye to fit naturally on your characters face. With the eraser tool, erase the eyes from the face.

Now, copy the area of the face where the eyes will go along with the hair around the eyes. Create a new layer and paste this in it. On the layers menu, notice there is a check box next to each layers name. This check box toggles the visibility of that layer, as long as it's checked, that layer is visible, uncheck it and it becomes invisible. For now, uncheck the layer that you put your characters face on but leave the layer with the area around the eyes unchecked. Now, erase all the skin showing

and then toggle the visibility of the face layer back on. Make sure the eye layer is in between the face layer and the bangs layer. Then on the eyes layer, press S and drag your mouse cursor over the eyes to select them, then press M and click on the eyes to move them to the appropriate spot. You may have to resize them or do some additional editing at this point to make it suit the character better. If the eyes you picked are smaller than the eyes that were on the character before, you'll have some parts that are transparent. To fix this use the eye dropper tool on the face layer and pick up some of the color around the eyes and use this to fill in the empty spots. In the end, you should have something like this: (original can be found here: http://www.rmxpunlim...rl-expressions/ )

 

 

Face that's at an angle:

This is for face sets that aren't entirely side ways but aren't straight forward either. These are for the ones that are in between the two, like the ones you can make with face maker. If you want to edit a face set that is facing sideways completely, skip to the "Profile" section below.

 

The first thing you need to do is open up the face you want to edit on paint.net. Using the eraser tool, erase the eyes from the face. Now create a new layer. On this new layer, paste your eyes and select the select tool and highlight eye eyes, then select and move pixels tool and resize the eyes until they're about the appropriate size for the face.

 

 

If the face you're working with has hair that comes down close to the eyes then you'll want to follow this next step. If your face doesn't have hair that comes down near the eyes the skip straight to the next paragraph. If there is hair around the eyes you'll have to use the select tool to highlight around the eyes, be sure to include the hair as well. Then select the move pixels tool and press CTRL+C. Create a new layer above the eye layer and press CTRL+V to paste the area around the eyes into this new layer. Uncheck th check box beside the face layer to make it transparent, then with the eraser tool erase the skin, eye brows, white pieces, anything that isn't hair. Then turn the visibility back on.

 

With faces that are at an angle, there will be one eye (the eye that is meant to be closest to you) that will be larger than the other. On face maker it will be the right eye, (unless of course your mirror the image.) Take the eye that will go on the side of the face that is closest to the screen (if the left side of the face is meant to appear closer to the screen take the left eye and vice versa for right) and place it over the appropriate spot. Resize it until you're satisfied. Now, take the remaining eye and place it where it's supposed to go. The other eye should be slightly below the other eye, it should also be about 2/3 the height and 3/4 the width of the first eye you placed. Pay attention to the size of each of the eyes in relation to each other.

If you look closely you'll notice that the small white area to the right of the left eye was erased. If I didn't do that, it would look like she had a lazy eye and also to make it look like that part of the eye is covered by the bride of the nose. This technique will only work with eyes similar to the ones above. If you have smaller, more realistically shaped eyes you'll have to move the iris of the bigger eye slightly closer to the iris of the smaller eye.

 

After this, you may have some sports of transparency, or with the second technique for more realistic eyes, you may have some spots of white. Just fill this in with the appropriate color and it'll look fine.

 

Your end result should look something like this:

 

 

Face Profile:

There aren't many face sets in profile but when you come across one you like, it's best to be prepared! This section will be talking about how to edit your eyes in if your face is faced completely sideways, not an angle like the face maker faces. If you want to know how to edit faces that are at an angle, see the "Side Facing" section above.

 

The first thing you need to do is of course open up the face you want to edit in pain.net. Then, erase the eye using the eraser tool. Once that's done you should have something similar to this:

 

After that's done, create a new layer and paste the eyes you want to work with on that new layer. Resize them to the appropriate size and then click the check mark beside the layers name to turn the visibility of that layer off temporarily.

 

This next step is only needed if your face has hair around the eyes. If your face does not have hair around the eyes, skip this step and go straight to the following paragraph. If you do have hair near the eyes, select the select tool from the window to the left and highlight around the eyes. Then press CTRL+C. Now create a new layer above the eye layer. On this new layer press CTRL+V to paste what you just copied into this new layer. Turn the visibility of the face layer off by unchecking the check box beside the layer name. Now you have to erase all of the skin, eyebrows and white sections from this layer. Leave only the hair. Turn the visibility of the face and eye layer back on.

 

After that's done, Begin positioning the eye in the right spot. You may have to resize it and fiddle around with it a bit before it looks good. There may also be some transparent spots. Just fill these in with the appropriate color.

 

If your eye has a tiny bit of the other eye showing like mine does, paste the eye into the eye layer so there will be 2 separate eyes to work with. Select a small section of the eye, try to get some of the pupil and lashes but leave out the whites for now. Compress this until it's about the same size as the spot it needs to fill and put it in the appropriate area. You'll have to erase the part of the eye that will be covering parts of the nose as well as any extra that may be overlapping the other side. In the end it should look something like this:

 

 

I'll add a tutorial on editing hair and skin soon.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Luz

[Luz 1]

I added some details on how to edit eyes onto facesets that are facing different angles. I'll add a tutorial on hair, skin and recoloring soon.