Skin, tattoos, 3D and the seek of knowledge.
(image by Paolo Soro, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ilpaolino/)
As someone who has been involved with tattoos for over thirty years, a 3D generalist and a curious person by nature, to me, the simple explanations for the 'color' of our skin has always been a mystery worth unraveling.
Many conflicts happened throughout history where the color of our skins was used as an excuse to justify some terrible actions, it sickens me, so here is my two cents on the subject.
You are probably aware that the skin is our largest organ, quite complex and divided into layers.
The American Academy of Dermatology says in they website:
⦁ Epidermis is the top layer of the skin, the part of the skin you see.
⦁ Dermis is the second layer of skin. It's much thicker and does a lot for your body.
⦁ Subcutaneous fat is the bottom layer.
I already see a big problem with the first statement ... 'the part of the skin that you see', that is not true at all, we can see all the way through to the subcutaneous fat layer, the hypodermis.
If the Epidermis was the 'only' layer of skin we were able to see, developing a skin shader for a game character would be trivial, a simple painted texture would do, also, if that was the case, tattoos simply would not work, for they would have to sit on this layer to be seen, that is what happens to a henna tattoo though, and they come off after just a few days, not the forever lasting tattoos that we love, those are 'inside' our skin, so how and why we actually 'see' them, takes some thinking.
When developing a skin shader for a 3D character, we usually employ a technique called Subsurface Scattering, or SSS for short (backlit ears turn red for example).
A translucent material is one that allows light to pass through it, but it also diffuses it along the way. A good SSS shader should simulate the light bouncing inside the material, other examples of translucent materials are milk or wax, but these are not layered like our skin, so a more realistic representation should take the different layers into consideration, as well as the translucency and thickness of each layer in the material.
Did you ever scrape your knee deep enough to see the white of your skin? That's the Hypodermis, and guess what, we all have it, black, white and everything in between. That deep of a bruise would ruin a tattoo, but a more superficial wound should not.
So, it goes a bit like this:
The epidermis is the 'dead' top layer, made from the migrated dermis cells without the blood supply, under that is the dermis, a very complex layer, but visually it goes from completely transparent to a more opaque layer, depending on the concentration of various pigments present in it, like melanin, carotene and hemoglobin, these pigments are dark brown, orange and red respectively, with some variation.
The bottom layer is the hypodermis, the fat layer, it is more of an opaque white, it's the tattoo artists living 'paper', a good tattoo artist will not put ink in this layer, if they do, the ink will spread in this fat tissue, causing what's known as a 'blow out', a thin outline may spread and become half an inch thick, yuck!
So, the only reason why tattoos can be seen is because the epidermis and dermis are transparent, more so in 'white' people then in 'black' people. That is also why realistic looking 3D human skin for video games was so hard to replicate.
The so called 'white' people actually have a very translucid dermis, so we clearly see the white hypodermis layer underneath, and a brightly colored tattoo will pop. On the other hand, 'black' people have a more opaque dermis, already full of our natural pigments, making it hard to see the hypodermis, as well as any other colored tattoo ink that we might put in, thats why bold, black designs work better in this case. Kind of like the frosted glass in our bathroom windows. Translucency is a superset of transparency.
Me, for instance, can go from a very 'white' skin to a skin so dark, that you can hardly see any of my tattoos (except in that area that never sees the sun!). If I skip a summer, you could mistake me for a 'white' european person, on the other hand, if I enjoy a few summer days at the beach (I do get tanned very fast, probably thanks to some moorish in my genes) then my skin color looks more like a native american or a latin, sometimes even darker then that.
I was not born in europe, but my parents are portuguese, depending on the amount of sun exposure I get, I might be labeled caucasian or latin, I never know which box to tick.
Try searching for transparent or translucent skin on google...weird huh?!
There is an old evolutionist vs. non evolutionist argument about the eye:
- If such a specialized organ could ever have evolved. Well, there is another very old (maybe the oldest) organ in our body that is sensitive to light, able to synthesize both white and transparent tissue and can also handle our natural pigments ... you guessed, the skin! Maybe seen in that light, the evolution of the eye could be more easily explained, or simply opened to better argumentations.
I believe that if people want to differentiate (sub)races, inside our big human race, they will have to find better arguments then simply the color of one's skin, it can vary so much in a single person, we can even color it ourselves :)
Think about it, make your own conclusions, verify my arguments, criticise if you must, but always remember not to be a sheep, be curious and search for the truth, don't let the interest of a few individuals manipulate you with simple superficial explanations, don't be fooled.
Cheers!
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