Creating full body scars/wounds?

kirbawirba

Is there a good tutorial on how to create full body scars or wounds on a character, as in down the front or back? I've been using a plugin to apply some decals from a wound pack from the store, but have no idea how to make them appear raised/indented with bump maps, or make them appear glossy/dull with the LIE editor, which is used to apply them.

 

 

There are some items in the store that look appeaking but are for G2 models, and don't seem to have options for positioning/resizing/texturing, and I'm lost when it comes to geoshells.

 

Appreciate any help!

rames44

You’ve obviously found that the LIE can apply one image over another.  Most people do this with the diffuse channel, but it will work with others as well. So, to make part of your “wound” shine, for example, you can use the LIE to overlay on the glossy channel and increase the glossiness in certain areas.  Doing the same on the normal map can create the illusion of texture without having to actually alter the underlying mesh. (Although this has its limitations - if you look at the area at a shallow angle, it will be obvious it’s nit actually raised.)

As to the development of the art itself for the LIE overlays, I’m the wrong guy - I use DS because I have zero ability to draw... 

kirbawirba

rames44 said:

You’ve obviously found that the LIE can apply one image over another.  Most people do this with the diffuse channel, but it will work with others as well. So, to make part of your “wound” shine, for example, you can use the LIE to overlay on the glossy channel and increase the glossiness in certain areas.  Doing the same on the normal map can create the illusion of texture without having to actually alter the underlying mesh. (Although this has its limitations - if you look at the area at a shallow angle, it will be obvious it’s nit actually raised.)

As to the development of the art itself for the LIE overlays, I’m the wrong guy - I use DS because I have zero ability to draw... 

Thanks for the reply!

 

Don't quite understand the diffuse channel thingy for making it shiny, but I discovered that whatever I use in the LIE, I can just take that, use gimp or PS, and just use the grayscale (or not, apparently daz can use the color version for displacements too) image of the wound to make a bump and/or displacement map. Not sure how I'd use it for the normals. Don't they have to be color coded a certain way?

 

Anyhow, I tested just importing the area I wanted to apply the scar or wound in and making just a simple black/white cutout, inverting the colors so the black was the wound, whited out the rest, and applied it in the diffuse map option. It made a nice, if albeit flat, little cutout in the model's skin. For fun i tried to jack up the diffuse strength and the model blew up like a balloon, so I reenabled limits, and kept it simple.

 

So, I'm thinking I can just export the skin part I want, apply the scar graphic and save it. Then I can make a grayscale of the wound, black out the rest and use it for the bump/displacement map, as sort of a poor man's way of creating a scar or wound that would serve for a reasonably believable still render.

 

I have been looking for HD or hires pics I can use to do the same thing from, because adding details is difficult for me in a paint program, as I am a total novice, or just using the png's (as supplied by the vendor) that came with the wound pack.

 

Can you explain what you mean by using the lie overlay in the glossy channel? I'm not really sure what you mean by that.

 

Thanks!

JonnyRay

For bump and displacement maps, neutral is the middle gray color (RGB values of [128, 128, 128] or [0.5, 0.5, 0.5] depending on your software). Anything darker than that is processed as if it's lower than the surface, lighter than that is higher. So you don't want to "black out" any parts that you want to move, you want to "gray" them out. The way I do this in Gimp is to create a layer that is mid-gray then put my grayscale bump image over it and use a blending option like Multiply or Hard Light or Soft Light until I get the look that I wanted.

You're correct that Normal maps aren't grayscale. For them they use the Red, Green, and Blue channels to tell the rendering engine how to move the normal in X, Y, and Z axes. They are most useful when they are generated by having a high and low poly copy of the same model. While there are tools like XNormal that can convert a bump/displacement map to a normal map, you typically won't get "better" results that way. Normal maps aren't intrinsicly "better" than bump maps other than they render faster because the engine doesn't have to compute a new normal, it just applies the changes from the normal map. I talk a little about this in a couple of the tutorials in my signature. The one on Studio Displacement in Carrara 8 shows results using Carrara's rendering engine.

You could also use the "bump" map in displacement. Since you're doing this on a Genesis 2 figure, they will have enough polygons to make it work. The advantage to a displacement map is that it actually moves the surface as opposed to faking the change by tweaking light and shadow. Again referencing my tutorials, "Displaced Bumps" talks about the difference.

kirbawirba

JonnyRay said:

For bump and displacement maps, neutral is the middle gray color (RGB values of [128, 128, 128] or [0.5, 0.5, 0.5] depending on your software). Anything darker than that is processed as if it's lower than the surface, lighter than that is higher. So you don't want to "black out" any parts that you want to move, you want to "gray" them out. The way I do this in Gimp is to create a layer that is mid-gray then put my grayscale bump image over it and use a blending option like Multiply or Hard Light or Soft Light until I get the look that I wanted.

You're correct that Normal maps aren't grayscale. For them they use the Red, Green, and Blue channels to tell the rendering engine how to move the normal in X, Y, and Z axes. They are most useful when they are generated by having a high and low poly copy of the same model. While there are tools like XNormal that can convert a bump/displacement map to a normal map, you typically won't get "better" results that way. Normal maps aren't intrinsicly "better" than bump maps other than they render faster because the engine doesn't have to compute a new normal, it just applies the changes from the normal map. I talk a little about this in a couple of the tutorials in my signature. The one on Studio Displacement in Carrara 8 shows results using Carrara's rendering engine.

You could also use the "bump" map in displacement. Since you're doing this on a Genesis 2 figure, they will have enough polygons to make it work. The advantage to a displacement map is that it actually moves the surface as opposed to faking the change by tweaking light and shadow. Again referencing my tutorials, "Displaced Bumps" talks about the difference.

Yup, that's how I understood it. You can use the bump map and displacement together to get a better result, and the original color/detail you added to whatever you're adding to the skin, all with the same image, if I'm guessing right.

 

I blacked out the part I wanted to deform on the skin and applied white by inverting in gimp, just to see the effect in rendering, and immediately recognized how it worked from when I made Myth 2 maps, almost 20 years ago! It basically mimiced terrain by applying a bump map in their editor for hills and roads :D. I'm using genesis 8 models, so I'm assuming their poly counts can handle a decent amount of displacement before I get the horror I was confronted with when I applied a massive amount of displacement strength, just to see how it worked... Lol it was pretty disturbing.

 

I watched some videos of programs that do all of the mapping, including normals, from materials and the like, too, and I'm intrigued. Also, it seems like just applying what I want in z brush doesn't seem to hefty a task, so I might try that. Was just trying to avoid having to learn 3 or 4 programs at a time.

 

I'll take a look at your tutorials, but, I think I know the difference between the 3 now.

 

Bumps simulate light application but its a static, one direction pattern.

 

Normals simulate from the three directions, but are still flat like bumps.

 

Displacements actually deform geometry. I'm also guessing that with displacements, you can do geometry editing/texturing within the displacement itself, in case you were doing something large, like battle damage on a dinosaur, or a bigger impact on a surface, too... I guess... :D

kirbawirba

So experimenting more, it seems that displacements only affect the final render when applied in the surfaces tab, but once I applied the color map, the bump map and displacement map, I got the result I expected. I made a very rudimentary open gash down the front of a model, like Sagat from Street Fighter, and just used 3 unblended colors to gauge the strength limits, and effect of the maps themselves. Using the map for the color map, i just used light, medium, and dark red from outside to inside, and it worked very nicely to produce colors, bumps, and actual rendered depth on the model... when rendered. I'm guessing if I want to see what I'm doing in the actual workspace, I can always just apply the color map, and use the dform tool to raise or lower it along the colored areas... I don't mind the deformer, its just that if I want to do something with sharp edges, or a fine taper, it seems imprecise, as either the brush, or my computer becomes non-responsive when you try to do smaller sizes than 4 or 5, in the weight painter. Small dimples past a certain size were not going to work!

 

Anyway, I really am enjoying learning how to use things, and exploring a new program... Its like Christmas! :D