# Skin The Skin folder on the lookdev controller fine-tunes how your character's skin reads. The tool already builds physically-based skin with subsurface scattering, normal detail, and proper roughness — these controls push it toward your taste or your shot's lighting. ![](../static/skin-folder.png) ## Skin Normal Strength Controls the intensity of the skin's normal map — the pore-level surface detail and fine wrinkles baked into the texture. **Defaults to 1** (as authored). Lower values smooth the skin out; higher values exaggerate the surface detail. Raise it if a character's skin looks too smooth, lower it if it looks noisy or harsh under your lighting. ## Skin Roughness A multiplier on the skin's roughness. * **Below 1** makes skin glossier and more reflective — often more lifelike, since real skin has a subtle sheen, especially on the forehead, nose, and cheekbones. * **Above 1** makes skin more matte and dry. Small adjustments go a long way. Try 0.9 or 1.1 before reaching for extremes. ## Diffuse Contrast Adjusts the contrast of the skin color texture around mid-grey. * **Above 1** makes freckles, blemishes, and color variation read more strongly — more character and detail. * **Below 1** flattens and evens out the skin tone. !!!warning This control is **very sensitive**. The useful range is roughly **1.0 to 1.1** — even small moves have a strong effect. Nudge it gently. !!! ## Skin Re-tint sub-folder A quick way to shift the **overall skin tone** — warmer or cooler, more tan, paler — without going back to Character Creator. It tints the skin **diffuse** toward a color (the subsurface color is left alone), live, across all skin materials: head, body, arms, legs, and nails. * **Skin Re-tint Color** — the color the skin is tinted toward. The skin diffuse is multiplied by this. **White (the default) does nothing.** * **Skin Re-tint Amount** — how strongly the tint is applied. **0 (default)** leaves the skin untouched; **1** fully multiplies the skin by the re-tint color. The slider caps at 3 but accepts higher typed values — above 1 overdrives the tint for a stronger push. * **Skip Nails** — exclude the fingernail/toenail material from the re-tint, so the nails keep their original color while the rest tints. Off by default. ## Respect Metallic Maps Off by default. Character Creator sometimes exports metallic maps on teeth and inner-mouth materials that aren't meant to be truly metallic, which can make those areas look wrong. The tool ignores them by default for a correct look. Turn this **on** only for a stylized character with genuinely metallic inner-mouth materials (rare). ## Teeth sub-folder Character Creator exports teeth close to white and quite glossy, which can blow out under Karma's lighting. This sub-folder (below Skin Re-tint, above Subsurface) tames the teeth and tongue without re-exporting. * **Teeth Brightness** — overall brightness of the teeth/tongue diffuse. **1 is as exported;** pull it below 1 for more natural, slightly darker teeth. Affects the diffuse only. * **Teeth Roughness** — a multiplier on teeth/tongue roughness. Teeth are wet, so a sharp specular highlight can clip to white; **raise above 1** to spread and soften that highlight — the main fix for glary, blown-out teeth — or lower for a wetter, glossier look. 1 is as authored. * **Teeth Specular** — strength of the wet specular reflection. **1 is full;** lower it to reduce the glossy catchlight that can read as blown-out white on close-ups. * **Teeth SSS Amount** — subsurface scattering on teeth and tongue only, separate from the skin's SSS Amount. The warm scatter lifts the teeth's midtones and adds to the over-bright look; **lower it to make teeth read more solid/opaque.** 1 is the default. Disabled when Remove SSS is on. ## Subsurface sub-folder The subsurface controls — **SSS Color**, **SSS Amount**, **SSS Radius**, and **SSS Quality** — live together in a **Subsurface** sub-folder inside Skin. All are disabled when **Remove SSS** is on (including the Preview preset). ## SSS Color The color light picks up as it scatters through the skin — the warm, fleshy glow you see where light passes through thin areas (ears, nostrils, the edge of the nose). **Defaults to a warm skin tone (255, 200, 170).** Push it cooler (bluer/greener) or warmer (more orange/red) to shift the character of the scatter. Applies to both skin and teeth. Most characters look right on the default; reach for it only if the scatter reads too warm or too pink under your lighting. ## SSS Amount How much subsurface scattering the skin (and teeth) receive. Subsurface scattering gives skin its soft, lifelike translucency, but at full strength it can wash out fine surface detail. * **1** _(default)_ — full lifelike scatter, softest and most translucent. * **Lower values** — recover fine surface detail, at the cost of a slightly waxier look. * **0** — effectively no scatter. ## SSS Radius How deep light scatters through the skin. The detail-recovery companion to SSS Amount: * **Higher** — softer, more translucent, but washes out fine detail. * **Lower** — keeps more surface detail but looks firmer. Use it together with SSS Amount to dial in the balance between lifelike scatter and skin detail. Default 0.75. ## SSS Quality Controls the subsurface scattering ray limit on skin and teeth. Higher values give cleaner, less noisy subsurface at the cost of render time. The default (3) is a good balance; raise it for final hero renders if you see noise in the soft, light-penetrating areas — ears, nostrils, lips. !!!info SSS Quality needs a render restart This is a Karma render property, which Karma reads only when a render begins. Restart your Karma render to see a change take effect. !!!