Mapping Craziness
DarkSpartan
Posts: 1,096
Here we go again!
I have just one issue left on Rumiko, and this one's had me stumped for a couple of days now. Since I'd like very much to clear this issue and move on, it's time to call in the troops. The last issue I have can be illustrated in a single image(see attached)-
Yes, I understand that the image is grainy, but the problem is clear from it still-- Her hands and feet are fading to very pale compared to the rest of the texture, and I'm not sure how to fix it. I did some changes to the base texture (darkening it), which produced reasonable results, but when one looks at the texture maps, on can see where it was done, and all the details wind up getting obliterated in the process. This isn't desirable either, for reasons that should be obvious. Suggestions?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Just an idea: Did you apply any IRay shader presets? I had a strange issue yesterday when applying the Base of the new G3 Skin Shaders to Arianna. On the arms only, it completely messed up the maps - there was a torso map instead of the arm map, glossy was messed up as well. Result was, that the arms only looked "wet", where the rest looked perfect. Took me a while to figure out why...
I think I can recall that this is a DAZ problem, not a problem with the shaders itself ( I applied the shader preset w/o maps ).
TL;DR: Check your maps on the arm surface, maybe it's the same for you.
It could be a problem with the character texture itself.
1. Does the original texture without your darkening / editing also show lighter limbs?
2. Are there seams between the limbs and the torso map?
3. Did you check the surface pane and made shure the maps are loaded from the same folder / library - sometimes the relative path entry can direct daz studio to the wrong library especialy if the folders and the image file of the textures are saved in and named the same as the original.
I dakened and lightened some character textures by myself because it turns out that the two characters in my render - even that I used the same shader on both had somehow to much diffrerence in skin tone and hue. I used photoshop for that but the problems I then run into will appear in any other image editor I think.
I opened the torso texture map and set up an overlay filter to darken / lighten the texture and also used a photoshop method called "color match". With this you can choose a referece image - I choosed a cut out patch of the other torso map (only skin area no backround) - so the "color match" method tries to make the overall color tint to look more like the referece image but you need to turn back the "fade" slider a bit in the dialog box so the color tint effect is not that extreme.
If you are familiar to photoshop you may know this method - I used "record custom action" while working on the torso map until I was happy with the skin tone then I applied the changes I made on the torso map to the limbs and head textures. With this I get noticable seams - the maps dont match and I found out this was caused by the method "color match" that produces diffrent results while applied to the maps seperately.
My workaround for this - I resized my image canvas from original 4096x4096 pixes to 8192x8192 and rearrange all 3 maps torso, head and limbs (still on separate layers) with the help of guidelines and snapping - side by side to this canvas so the filters and the "color match" method did apply the same way on every map. Then I resized the canvas back to 4096x4096 pixes and moved the 3 maps / layers back to this canvas area and finaly I saved out the results as JPG image maps.
No more seams but the skin tone of the legs didnt match the rest of the body - they where darker. I realised that the original texture was painted this way. Is this realistic?
Ok in real life at summer time - if I want to check if my skin allready got sun tanned I look at my forearms and compare one upper side withe the other underside. But are the legs so much darker than the arms? I dont think so.
To fix this - I mean the textures
- I have two suggestions in mind.
The first - use a image editor and its masking abilities with blured transisions at the edges to isolate the areas that are to dark / light and use an overlay filter to adjust the skin tone / hue. In photoshop I fist use something simple like box select to define an area and setup the overlay filter to a realy noticable skin tone change. Then I start painting the mask-channel with black and white with a smooth brush and low pressure to define the area that needs to be adjusted with blured edge transisions and then I fine tune the color adjustments with the overlay filters. You can go back and forth between mask-channel painting and filter adjustment or even adding more filters with the same mask-channel untill the skin color matches the unmasked area.
If you want to prevent seams between the torso and limbs this task could be a bit difficult since you need to make shure to unmask the limbs with some transition to the torso map which should be on the same canvas / image editor project file.
The second - use the free multifunctional blender program - I recomment blender to everyone at least give it a try - once you know how to handle this program it can be very handy in one or the other task. I had to change some of the keyboard / mouse / hotkey - mapping first and some other prefereces to prevent me from getting mad while simply trying to navigate in the 3D view - the default settings are not how I used to work - so for less confusion while switching between programs I try to setup at least the 3D navigation pretty much the same in every program I work with.
I have very little practical expirience in blender but as I focused on texture painting and watched some youtube tutorials I realised that it is capable of painting textures seamlessly directly on the mesh within the 3D-view.
Actualy for my texture fixing project I first used the photoshop method as descriped to adjust the mismatching skin tone - so the overall tone and hue and also the limbs skin tone looked how I wanted. After that I checked the texture results on the character in daz studio. Then I saw some slightly noticeable seams I couldnt prevent with 2D editing so I imported my character into blender and used the clone texture brush to slightly paint over the seams and finaly got the character texture done.
Maybe I have done this a bit to complicated. I think blender has an option to use half transparent texture layers as an overlay on existing textures. If so you can skip messing around in a 2D image editor and use blender in first place.
I hope this will give you and others some ideas how to start texture adjustments.
Does anyone know of a way to split eye textures for heterochromia perchance? Prefereably one that doesn't require image editing?
Image editing is best for this.
Otherwise you have to make two different surfaces, one for each eye. I don't suggest that method at all.
It can done with LIE in Studio. You will need to make black (blocks) and white (allows through) masks for left and right eyes (you may need to make several for the different UV map layouts). In LIE add the other eye map as a layer, add mask to that layer and load apropriate mask, press Accept.
It does save out the composited maps...in the temp folder with an odd-ball name...you just need to retrive them, discard the mipmaps and save as png/jpg...or do about as much work saving them as doing the edits to the base image, in an image editor, in the first place. There's also a script that will do it...but I haven't checked to see if it still works in 4.8.