Human skin texture

hello, ive made a human head, and am now at the stage where i wish to add a skin texture. I was just wondering what the best method for doing this is. I would like to render a realistic looking skin tone, which doesnt look too cartooney…also can you add a different texture for different parts of a model, e.g. lips?
thanks

You would first need to UV-map the head, then add textures. For realism I’d suggest you use real photos, which you can find here. Or you can simply use your own. Regarding the shading, there’s a good tutorial on BlenderArt called ‘Articles/Tutorials on Skin Shading using multi-layered SSS’, issue 16. It’s old but still applies to the new Blender.

I made a UV model, but it obviously wasnt very good…i got a reference image from google and mappe it onto the saved UV image…but when i went and tested it…

  1. i couldnt get it to fit the face
  2. it was very shiney…like plastic

Is there a way to do it without using this technique, e.g. Vertex Paint?

I wouldn’t advise using Vertex Paint, since it requires a very high-resolution mesh to look good. There is however Projection Painting which lets your paint a texture directly on a mesh. Check out the tutorial:

Your links doesn’t work, unfortunatelly.