Digital Art Zone

OK, so I have a Genesis skin loaded into photoshop and I want to create a tattoo across the upper back of the texture, but the seam splits down the center of the back. Is there some technique that I don’t know about to accurately split something like that?

What I’ve done, in the past is to make a series of ‘registration’ marks on a new layer, with a transparent background, over the skin texture image and temporarily merge the layers (saving it under a temporary name).  Then apply that texture to the model. to see where the marks fall.  Then split the overlay image (tattoo) and align it to those marks (again, a separate layer)...repeat the merge and test again.  When satisfied, I discard the registration layer and merge the overlay, saving it under a different file name something like ‘orginal_skin_tat.jpg’  (did this for a number of Morrowind skin textures…never did release that mod pack…)

Is that the easiest way?

Probably not, but with a bit of fiddling with placement, it works.

Investing in a projection painter will do the trick. There are lots of them out there, ranging in price from affordable to ghastly lol
A few: Bodypaint (part of cinema 4D), 3D Coat, and ZBrush. Some modellers have painters too (but it will differ between packages)

If you are going across the back, you must split design in half and and mirror it.
Then you can fine tune with registering