I have a couple of characters in my project which are played by black actors (and vice versa). The characters are being made to resemble the actors, but in this instance, what's the best way to go about changing the skin color so he still looks like the actor but the skin itself is lightened or darkened naturally?


Ibis Fernandez   |   (available for hire)
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Professional Animator, Filmmaker | Creator of the highest quality (modular) G2 rigs for cartoon animator and developer of Toon Titan and Puppet Producer 
Author of Flash Animation and Cartooning: A Creative Guide
>>> be sure to check out http://toontitan.com for professional grade assets, templates, and custom tools for Cartoon Animator and more.

Hi Ibis,
If you want to get the natural skin color adjust , you can try the "Adjust Color" in Modify/Material/Texture Setting.
Here is the workflow
1.Use Headshot to get your Character
2.Select Character and Switch Modify panel to Material
3.Select meshes in material list which are affecting the Skin(ex. Std_Skin_Head  Std_Skin_Body Std_Skin_Arm Std_Skin_Leg)
4.Click the Button to Open the Adjust Color(Look at picture)

Then you can get it
Hope this can help you

I am a little late to this thread, but in case it helps anyone else I have a video where I show how to use my free site and modify skin color.

This video creates a character using the Headshot Plug-in.

The parts for skin editing starts about 2:50



The reason I prefer my site to do this over the built in IClone tools, or Paint.Net which is the graphics program I use because I am too cheap to purchase Photoshop, is because I can change the levels of individual or group color channels easily.

PixelDatabase.Net - https://pixeldatabase.Net
A Free Online Text Based Image Editor

I was bored so I tried this on a black headshot photo I have.

So to change the skin color I ran three queries on each of the 4 parts that make up the skin: Head, Legs, Arms and Body.

Query 1: Red

Update
Set Adjust Red 54

Query 2: Green

Update
Set Adjust Green 20

Query 3: Blue
Update
Set Adjust Blue 48

I downloaded and applied each skin texture, gave the character blonde hair and blue eyes and I still think he doesn't look white.

I may have to adjust the values up even more, but a lot of appearance is not just skin color.

Other characters might turn out better:








Creator of the free website:
PixelDatabase.Net
A Free Online Text Based Image Editor