Using DAZ to create character sheets... help :P

chrisryder123

Hiya,
I am trying to use DAZ to create character sheets such as this one: http://musashi2011.deviantart.com/art/Male-Body-286210125
Can anyone recommend any models or skin textures that might help? I'm interested in keeping the anatomical definition as seen in the picture. I have tried rendering using pwSketch but that has little effect.
I want to be able to print out and draw over the finished result.

Thank you.

StratDragon

This video shows how to load the Michael 4 (male) model and apply the muscle maps

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0LbYE5R7_U

Maps here
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/michael-4-muscle-maps/

JasmineSkunk

I think I know what you are trying to do...

If PW sketch isn't working for you, you may want to try out the Visual Style shaders, here:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/visual-style-shaders/

Good luck with your project! :)

chrisryder123

Thanks guys for both your suggestions. I've thought about the muscle maps but it really isn't what I want. I'll try the VSS and see what happens....

What i really need is a white skin with outlines around the muscles. Sounds simple enough I think, and it would be so so useful!!

FSMCDesigns

chrisryder123 said:

Thanks guys for both your suggestions. I've thought about the muscle maps but it really isn't what I want. I'll try the VSS and see what happens....

What i really need is a white skin with outlines around the muscles. Sounds simple enough I think, and it would be so so useful!!

I can't possibly think why that would be useful, but your best bet might be making a normal render with the muscle maps and then using some sort of effect plugin to reduce the image down to a line drawing. I have seen a couple of plugins for PSD in the past that did that.

Other than that you could try doing a quick sketch over an image to reproduce it like the image you linked to.

Gusf1

What if you used something like the muscle maps as a starting point and created your own texture? I don't know if they offer a template for them, but I'm sure there must be some template for a skin somewhere that you can doctor that way.
Gus

Pendraia

chrisryder123 said:

Thanks guys for both your suggestions. I've thought about the muscle maps but it really isn't what I want. I'll try the VSS and see what happens....

What i really need is a white skin with outlines around the muscles. Sounds simple enough I think, and it would be so so useful!!

Have you tried morphing the body to how you want it to look and then applying the default DAZ shader? That would give you a white finish...you may want to change the light setting from glossy though.

Sonofbelmont

For something like this I would normally create a toon render with pwtoon or even just a normal render that uses the default grey material, then set the opacity of the rendered image down to something like 25% in Photoshop or a similar program, print it out, and draw over the top. Alternatively I sometimes skip changing the opacity and just draw over the image on tracing paper because it’s easier on the eyes. As far as I know not even higher end 3d programs can do exactly what you want although it would be damn great if they could.

Also
a bit off topic but how do the visual style shaders compare to pwtoon? Would it be worth picking them up if you already have pwtoon or do they do pretty much the same thing?

TheNathanParable

Son of Belmont said:

For something like this I would normally create a toon render with pwtoon or even just a normal render that uses the default grey material, then set the opacity of the rendered image down to something like 25% in Photoshop or a similar program, print it out, and draw over the top. Alternatively I sometimes skip changing the opacity and just draw over the image on tracing paper because it’s easier on the eyes. As far as I know not even higher end 3d programs can do exactly what you want although it would be damn great if they could.

Also
a bit off topic but how do the visual style shaders compare to pwtoon? Would it be worth picking them up if you already have pwtoon or do they do pretty much the same thing?

Hi there, i'm the creator of Visual Style. :)
There are a couple of big differences between pwToon and Visual Style.

pwToon is a mostly automated shader, with your shader colour being automatically multiplied over the base colour. This makes it harder to create zany colour combinations, as the shadow colour you set will always look different in the final render. Visual Style is more of a manual shader; it requires quite a bit of tweaking, but you get more control over the final look (the colours you set will look the exact same in the final render). On the other hand though, pwToon is the only toon shader out there with support for even-width lines (although they do take a long time to render), so that's exclusive to pwToon. Visual Style's only "exclusive" feature is the use of Ambient Occlusion for more detailed soft shading (it's heavily inspired by Visual Novels/Dating Sims).

EDIT: @Chris: Re-reading this topic, it sounds more like you'd benefit from an M4 with a custom texture that is literally just the outlines of the main muscle groups with no shading whatsoever. If you buy the muscle maps, you could trace over them in Photoshop to create the new 'guide' texture.