Digital Art Zone

I can’t get the hang of the MLIE. While I have Inked from Renderosity with the DAZ fixes, my options are limited. I just want to tattoo the back of my lady’s calf. My vesion of DS (at time of posting) is 4.5.0.49 PRO.

How far are you getting? Is the problem launching the tool, or applying the texture, or getting the tattoo to line up? The latter may be very hard, if the site you want is cut by the texture seam.

It should be in the list when you click to pick a new texture in the Surfaces tab, from there it’s pretty easy. Just add a layer, bring in a .png (with transparency) and re-scale it fit over the other. It can be time-consuming to get the scale and placement, but the tools are right there.

Richard Haseltine - 20 July 2012 05:28 AM

How far are you getting? Is the problem launching the tool, or applying the texture, or getting the tattoo to line up? The latter may be very hard, if the site you want is cut by the texture seam.

That brings up a good followup question, Richard. How do you apply a full back tattoo to a character then without creating distortions or stretches in the tattoo along the spinal seam?

You would need to use a special tool, such as the one I can’t recall the name of (Decal master?) in the store, or a general 3D projection painting application (Body Paint, ZBrush etc.)  to create the image that you could then layer on with LIE. LIE on its own wouldn’t be enough.

Richard Haseltine - 20 July 2012 03:18 PM

You would need to use a special tool, such as the one I can’t recall the name of (Decal master?) in the store, or a general 3D projection painting application (Body Paint, ZBrush etc.)  to create the image that you could then layer on with LIE. LIE on its own wouldn’t be enough.

I’ve got Adobe Photoshop CS 4. That’s it.

I figured out how to open and even managed to get some work done, but nothing I was satisfied with. I would like to use something that I could load my skin ina 3d view and just place the tattoo where i needed it (even if on a seam) and then reload it in DAZ.

Thank you for answering my question.

Unfortunately for applying a tattoo to an arbitrary area of the skin you do need a full strength 3D paint or projection tool, I think. The good news is that I’m pretty sure Blender will do it, and that’s free. Or as I said in the previous post, Decal master appears to be able to do this (I wasn’t entirely clear that it could handle an arbitrary image), without having to learn parts of a whole new 3D application.

Sounds like Decal Master might be want you wish.  Basic steps are:
a) Load Figure
b) Load texture
c) Add ‘overlay’ image(s)
d) Save texture with new name
e) Back in DAZ, apply new texture

I tend to save the new texture (ensuring a new name) back into the original MATpose directory (easy to do with Decal Master).  You get an icon based on the original, with a Decal Master logo in one corner for the new .pz2 file.

Decal Master handles all the issues of cross seam boundaries and permits orientation, position and size manipulation.

Here’s a simple freebie solution using Wings3D and Sculptris. You have to import your mesh to wings3d, select the materials one at a time and make Groups from the ones on the same Map. then you can select the Group and export-selected to get a model of just what’s on the Map that you can paint in Sculptris. You can only paint one at a time, and your limited to 2048, but it’s still enough to get some decent detail. Watch this vid .  http://youtu.be/eWrJ3t10D28

Just a question of Decal Master. Does it matter if you pose the figure when loading into the program? I was thinking that you should basically just load V4 or M4 in default position and use it to create the materials for use in DAZ Studio without stretching.

Decal Master has no posing options.  ‘All’ it will do is allow you to alter (program made duplicates of) the underlying texture files.  Thus the texture will ‘stretch’ and ‘distort’ as the original texture would with morphing and/or posing of the figure (back in DAZ Studio).

Ahhh, thanks!