[With some talk about nudity] Create human skin from clothing (with Smash Fighters)

Support Modeling
1

All models that will be discussed here originate from https://gitlab.com/Worldblender/smash-ultimate-models-exported

Background

Since the beginning of this year, when I first got the opportunity to analyze Super Smash Bros. Ultimate models, I noticed that hiding certain meshes led to nothing being shown in place. I was hoping that hiding the clothing meshes would reveal more skin, but that turned out to not be the case. I know why most models don’t have their skin fully modelled out: those characters never take off such clothing that would cover them at any time, so there is no need to model such skin in-game.

More explanation, with mentions of Rule 34 and my sexual fetishes

After discovering a vast amount of Rule 34 porn artwork at the end of last year, I started to see certain realistic video game men in a mild sexual light (please tell me if this is inherently bad or not!). I noticed that there were great quantities of 2D artwork, but little to no 3D artwork, naturally due to 3D usually being harder to work with. I decided that I may be able to build my skills to fill in this missing niche of gay Rule 34 porn, mainly to satisfy the following fetishes of mine or sexual practices that arouse me:

  • Male feet (also includes fetishes for healed shoes, specifically with dress shoes and cowboy boots, or similar)
  • Seeing semen get on skin or clothing
  • Male-male oral sex
  • Male-male footjobs (potentially the most powerful of all the fetishes I have

Rationale

I want to complete the bodies of some Smash fighters, which afterwards will enable the following opportunities:

  • Nude versions of the fighters
  • Give the fighters new clothing, and the ability to easily change them

Unfortunately, my current skill set is only enough to produce geometric shapes, and any attempts to recreate the missing skin will most likely result in it looking out-of-place, both shape-wise and texture-wise.

If I decide to use MakeHuman

I have considered using MakeHuman to have this skin created for me, but then these complications will arise:

  • I have to go through lots of trial-and-error to get the heights and dimensions of each body tailored to every fighter.
  • I have to transplant the heads onto the new bodies, and get each body to conform to the original armatures (not much of a problem if I have the weights calculated automatically)
  • Any animations I apply afterwards may cause the new body to deform incorrectly.
  • The skin texture for each body may not match the skin for the transplanted heads.

Eligible Smash fighters, plus five screenshots

I see that these Smash fighters are eligible for turning nude (via MakeHuman, or manually):

  • Bayonetta :female_sign:
  • Captain Falcon :male_sign:
  • Chrom :male_sign:
  • Cloud :male_sign:
  • Corrin :male_sign: :female_sign:
  • Daisy :female_sign:
  • Dark Pit :male_sign:
  • Ganondorf :male_sign:
  • Ike :male_sign:
  • Joker :male_sign:
  • Ken :male_sign:
  • Link :male_sign:
  • Little Mac :male_sign:
  • Lucina :female_sign:
  • Marth :male_sign:
  • Palutena :female_sign:
  • Peach :female_sign:
  • Pit :male_sign:
  • Pokémon Trainer :male_sign: :female_sign:
  • Richter :male_sign:
  • Robin :male_sign: :female_sign:
  • Rosalina :female_sign:
  • Roy :male_sign:
  • Ryu :male_sign:
  • Sheik :female_sign:
  • Shulk :male_sign:
  • Simon :male_sign:
  • Snake :male_sign:
  • Wii Fit Trainer :male_sign: :female_sign:
  • Zelda :female_sign:
  • Zero Suit Samus :female_sign:

I have screenshots of the following characters as examples (Marth, Ryu, Shulk (swimming trunks alt costume), Simon, Male Wii Fit Trainer, with Shulk and the Male Wii Fit Trainer the best examples to look at):

marth-c00
marth-c001366×722 274 KB
ryu-c00
ryu-c001366×722 272 KB
shulk-c07
shulk-c071366×722 240 KB
simon-c00
simon-c001366×722 280 KB
wiifit-c01
wiifit-c011366×722 219 KB

While I’m capable of working with characters of both genders, I will be focusing on the male :male_sign: characters (no offense against female :female_sign: characters, but I see them way too often). I myself am a gay/homosexual man, seeing that they are somewhat underrepresented (when by themselves or with other men, all without females) in a sea of heteronormativity.

However, if what I plan on doing is deemed to be too controversial/unsafe, I can abort this plan if needed. Nothing has actually been started yet, so I cannot show anything besides the safe screenshots and models. Any of this work I make will be placed in a separate git branch.

Summary/TL;DR

I want to create nude versions of some Smash fighters, but I lack the skills needed to create their missing skin using only their clothing to reverse-engineer from, and I don’t know the best method to achieve this goal.

2

I’m having trouble getting the models. I tried cloning through Git, and downloading straight from GitLab. The files are there, but they’re only about 130 bytes each, and none of them work. If you can tell me how you got them to work, I might be able to help. I just need to see the textures, and UVs.

3

I should mention that this repository (along with the textures one) uses Git Large File Storage (LFS), in order to keep the repository sizes more manageable. See https://git-lfs.github.com/ for more information and how to get the client.

4

Ahh, I see. Thanks. Never worked with it before, but I got it going now.

In the meantime, some more details.

  1. You’re looking for meshes as well as textures, correct?
  2. If you are looking for meshes, are you satisfied with basic “barbie” geometry? Or will you need the schmeckles?
  3. If you do need them, are you capable of adding them to an existing mesh?
  4. Are you able to rig/pose/animate a completed mesh, or were you planning on using the existing rigs/poses/animations?
5
  1. I’ve been planning on reusing MakeHuman output and textures, but am aware that it will take significant alternations to get them to fit every character I work on. I also plan on putting male genitalia (usually it’s enough to add a penis), but I can skip this if it’s deemed too controversial/unsafe. My artistic skills outside of 3D space are very poor; they are only to create simple cartoonish textures that obviously won’t fit with these realistic characters that I’m working with.
  2. I don’t get what you mean by “schmeckle”, but I think that “barbie” geometry should be enough, as these models are optimized for game engines. Do take into consideration muscles, nipples, human bones that could be barely visible. However, none of the models are intended to be completely photorealistic.
  3. I know how to add onto existing meshes. Just that my way will make the resulting models look out-of-place: Everywhere else is all triangles and somewhat hi-polygon count, while my efforts may look low-polygon count and use more than just triangles. This becomes so much more challenging for characters that wear clothing that cover nearly their entire bodies. I really prefer that I build off of the existing skin meshes to save myself a great deal of effort.
  4. I hope to reuse the existing armatures, so that I can still apply animations to them. I am still unable to make characters perform walk cycles, so I just rely on existing animation files (although I will eventually have to learn more about animation if I want to put these characters in custom poses not defined by the existing files).

If I can master reverse-engineering skin, I can repeat this process for all other human characters (including those found as assist trophy fighters, bosses, and future DLC content)

From the README at https://gitlab.com/Worldblender/io_scene_numdlb (forum topic):

Where to obtain assets

The middle two bullet points give access to the original game assets, including the models and animations that are not in my repositories.

6

Thanks for the detail, it’s definitely helpful. So there’s some good news

  1. Don’t worry about making something controversial. If you plan to monetize it, I would recommend avoiding copyrighted characters. Otherwise, do whatever pleases you.

  2. Schmeckle is a term for penis, I was just being humorous about it. But you already answered that question.

  3. Blender has a feature for converting tris to quads, which makes them much more easy to work with. I’d also recommend getting familiar with the boolean modifier. It is a commonly used tool in character creation. If you use the “Union” setting, it will blend two meshes together, and with a subdivision modifier, it can be practically seamless.

  4. It’s certainly do-able. MakeHuman might complicate things a little, but it’s still a biped, so the conversion should be pretty simple.

Speaking of which, MakeHuman seems to be your best bet, from what I’ve seen. The models have a lot of missing geometry, so there’s not much that can be done. As for the skin, the textures appear to be very simple. I’d recommend starting a free trial of “Substance Designer” and “Substance Painter”. Watch a few short video tutorials, and you’ll be working in no time. Designer will allow you to create seamless textures, and Painter will let you customize details directly on the mesh. For instance, here are the legs of the male WiiFit trainer, with a skin texture that I made in designer. This texture only took about 20 minutes to make, and it’s much more detailed than most of the skin textures for the characters in the game. With just a few photoshop adjustment layers, it can fit any color or shade.
ezgif-2-bb8f0e85e098

untitled
untitled3840×2160 1.04 MB

Base
Base4096×4096 3.85 MB

7

Thankfully, all of what I want to do here, I should’ve implied that it’s all noncommercial, a pure fan-project. If this were to be a commercial project, I would’ve never bothered to ask about creating nude versions of some Smash fighters.
I saw the example texture that you posted. If possible, I want the new bodies to keep close to the original skins as possible. No need for extra detail besides what’s present in the original textures.
Yes, thank you for confirming that MakeHuman is the best method I should stick to. However, I might get stuck on how tall I should make each body, and how much muscle they should have. If possible, I want to reuse any skin meshes already existing in the models. I barely used any modifiers like the ones you’re telling me about; I’m gonna have to give them a try some other time. I know for sure that I have a great of chance of salvaging the heads as-is; it’s the rest of the bodies that aren’t always modelled out completely.
Hmm, where can i find more information about “Substance Designer” and “Substance Painter”? I prefer that I be able to stick almost completely to FOSS solutions whenever possible, so I don’t want to find out too late that I ran out of trial time.

8

Here’s a couple videos about Substance. Just a tip, if you change the date on your PC, you can cheat the trial dates and use it indefinitely. But I’d actually recommend subscribing to Substance. It’s only $20 a month, and it really is game-changing.

Substance Designer:


Substance Painter:

I couldn’t find any short videos demonstrating the boolean modifier, so I just made one. It also shows a bit of sculpting, which you can do to blend the final shapes and make them seamless:

9

I think that looks like a little too much for me to go through. Once I finish with my school semester in two weeks, I’ll ask you again for help. Again, thanks for pointing out some other things I should try out once I can start on this project.
However, I might get stuck on how tall I should make each body, and how much muscle they should have, which isn’t always straightforward to measure.

10

Yeah, musculature tends to be very unique to each individual body. That’s why Arnold Schwarzenegger hand-picked his body doubles for movies. He knew his fans would notice if the guy’s muscles were too different.

Okay, let me know when you need help. I’ll be glad to lend my input.