UNIVERSAL HUMAN
FACE TEXTURES DOCUMENTATION
Assembly
Note: Switching the Render Engine from EEVEE to Cycles may prevent Blender from intermittently hanging for several minutes during this process.
Open the Head material in the Shader Editor.
Load the Face Albedo image into the Image Texture node that's connected to the Skin node's Albedo Image input socket.
Load the Face Subsurface, Roughness and Displacement images into their respective Image Texture nodes, and set their Color Space to Non-Color (see image on right).
Adding Wrinkles Textures to the Wrinkles Node (Face Rig and Body & Face Rig only)
Load the Face Wrinkles A and Wrinkles B images into their respective Image Texture nodes.
Set their Color Space to Non-Color.
The complete node setup should appear as shown at the top of the Skin Shader documentation.
If you have insufficient RAM you may need to resize some of the image maps. See the section on Rendering below for guidelines.
Skin Shader Tones
The following example settings can be applied using the Skin Shader, however similar tones can also be achieved in image editing software by layering the Albedo over the Base colour image and adjusting the HSV of both layers. Tip: for lighter tones, try reducing the Saturation instead of increasing Value (which tends to also increase the saturation).
Layers
Individual layers for the Albedo, Displacement and Wrinkle maps are included, so they can be treated independently in image editing software. This makes it easier to edit the wrinkles without affecting the pores, for example.
The Albedo layers should be stacked in the following order:
Bumps, Veins & Wrinkles
Mottling
Shading
Base
The Displacement layers should be stacked in the following order, with the blend modes and opacities indicated:
Wrinkles (opacity 20%, blend mode: Overlay)
Bumps & Pits (opacity 20%, blend mode: Overlay)
Pores (opacity 20%, blend mode: Overlay)
Sculpt (opacity 100%, blend mode: Normal)
The Wrinkles layers should be stacked in the following order, with the blend modes and opacities indicated:
Pores (opacity 10%, blend mode: Overlay)
Sculpt (opacity 100%, blend mode: Normal)
Rendering
Texture Resolution
You may find it necessary to resize some of the images to preserve memory, especially with 8GB of RAM or less. To retain the highest quality, prioritise the resolution of the displacement, followed by Albedo and Roughness, with Subsurface being at the lowest resolution.
Object Subdivisions
To achieve the highest quality results, make sure Displacement & Bump is selected in Material Properties > Settings > Surface > Displacement, and set the object's subdivision level as high as your hardware permits. This allows the finer bumps to displace the geometry and cast shadows, as well as interacting with the SSS more realistically. Deleting geometry that is outside the view can provide more headroom for further subdivisions (if you're only rendering the head, see the tip in step 1 of the Sculpting section on the Creating Textures page).
Keep a close eye on your memory usage while testing subdivision levels, as overdoing it can quickly exceed the available RAM and cause the computer to hang. For reference, a subdivision level of 4 is about the threshold for the full-body Universal Human base mesh plus all textures on an 8GB system. Also note that if EEVEE is enabled instead of Cycles, even merely selecting a shader node or material may cause the memory usage to massively surge.
Samples
In a similar vein, the higher the sample level, the less noise - but also the greater the apparent realism. And while denoising produces smoother results, it tends to smear away the fine details and also contributes to less convincing renders at lower sample levels.