Digital Art Zone

Ok, I have the rudiments of loading a model, posing, dressing and such down.

What I’m looking for is a beginner’s guide to adjusting things like skin tones and colors.  I keep finding ones that are too brown, not red enough, not dark enough, etc.  I’ve tried adjusting the colors and tones myself, but terms like specular velvet bumping transparency morphicationality are gibberish to me.  So are there any tutorials that explain, using small and simple words, how to begin learning what all this stuff means?  In a take new users from “This is terrifying electron witchcraft” to a meaningful understanding of what these shader and surface texture components do and mean, how they interact, reproduce, care for their young?

I’ve tried googling, I get overloaded with results that don’t really take me to where I can learn the basics so I can tweak my character’s skin colors to make this character dusky, that character a touch more fair, etc.  And I don’t find a lot that says “This is what bump stuff does” or “you adjust x to make the skin look more y.”  The ones I’ve found assume some basic knowledge of what all these terms mean. “Simply de-speculuminate the transbumpety baker levels” just makes me want to bounce my cabbage off the keyboard. 

Yes.  In terms of textures and skins, I’m that monkey scratching his butt and looking fearfully at the big stone monolith that’s trying to teach him about how to use a spreadsheet.

BTW, I’m using 4.5, I’ve got V5/Genesis.

Thanks.

LOL Funny post, needed that today.

Anyways I take it you don’t know anything about the Surface Pane so please start small and work up. Learning the basics is key to understanding the more advanced shader and surfaces you will come upon. Example some of V5 skin surfaces have advanced surfaces properties which are more advanced than the tutorial below shows and many here are shouting out for a better tutorial on that side. I have promised to do one but time being what it is I haven’t started. It will take a while for me to compile everything I have learnt myself and to learn what I need, to complete it. Yes very complex.

I suggest starting here http://homepage.eircom.net/~neilvpose/ds-settings.htm yes it is for Daz Studio 3 but the info contained is still valid. neil did a good job here and has helped many in the past.

Oops I forgot you can take the skin texture maps in to an image manipulation program ie: Gimp, Photoshop etc and adjust the tone and colour that way. Save out as .jpg giving them a different name so not to overwrite the originals. Yes save in the same folder as the original, it will make things a lot easier to find them and when you make a backup of your content files you will save a backup of your adjusted textures at the same time. I have lost a lot of home made textures with not backing up properly in the past, not anymore.

Anyways once adjusted select the figure and in the Surfaces Pane under Diffuse change the texture maps. If you look hard enough you will find the “Browse” command. Just click on the small square beside the Diffuse colour bar.

A tip: With the original maps still loaded on to the figure, when you browse it will open that content texture folder automatically. This can help to find where the original is stored on you hard drive in the first place.

Hope that helps a little

Ah, thanks!  That’s the sort of thing I was looking for, a place to start.  “This is stick.  They come from ‘trees.’  You rub it on another stick…”  The more advanced tutorials I kept finding left me feeling like an Ewok trying to find the bathroom on the Death Star.

paynesgrey - 25 December 2012 01:44 PM

Ah, thanks!  That’s the sort of thing I was looking for, a place to start.  “This is stick.  They come from ‘trees.’  You rub it on another stick…”  The more advanced tutorials I kept finding left me feeling like an Ewok trying to find the bathroom on the Death Star.

It can be difficult when you first start and very confusing. Stark has given some great info! 

It may be worth your while to pick up one of the elite textures and have alook at how they are set up.  Also they come with a human surface shader preset. This can be used on any texture by holding down the Ctrl key while applying it. This will give you a dialogue box, you need to choose the do not replace texture option.

LOL! Wonderfull Thread, I love this. Let us know how you get along. We will gladly help as we can.

Szark - 25 December 2012 01:12 PM

...you can take the skin texture maps in to an image manipulation program ie: Gimp, Photoshop etc and adjust the tone and colour that way. Save out as .jpg giving them a different name so not to overwrite the originals…

Hi Szark,

I was searching the forums and came across this thread because I would like to adjust the skin texture files for Aiden for M5. When I opened the folder associated with this character, I was unable to locate anything that would be editable in Photoshop. The textureMAP file is in a .dsa file format which is unrecognizable by PS nor can I just change it to .jpg file format. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong location or choosing the wrong files.

Thank you in advance for any help you might provide.

The .DSA file isn’t the texture. Textures are often stored in a different location to the geometry, but you can easily locate them within Daz Studio. Load the figure with the textures you want and then go to the Surfaces tab. Find the “Diffuse Color” property (this is effectively the ‘paint job’ of the model) and click the icon beside the color as shown below.

If you choose Browse you’ll be taken to where the file is located so you can either choose an alternative or make a note of the file folder and load it into Photoshop to edit a texture or create your own.

if you need to tweak the color slightly, you can always tweak the diffuse, to add a bit more red, or make the color slightly darker, etc
its not going to work for major color shifts, but to slightly modify a skin tone a smidgen, it works.

HeraldOfFire thx for that.

I would like to add when using Browse and Windows you can use the Open With command by right clicking on the texture map…UAC will kick in and ask you to allow. Choose the program you want to open the texture map with.

Why becasue it saves you having to go looking for the maps again. I do a lot of texture map adjusting and this one little thing saves me so much time. Shame the Photoshop Brdige doesn’t work for my PSE6.

Thank you all for your quick responses! Happily editing away.