ISO skin cracks
Cricket
Posts: 487
in The Commons
I'm looking for a product that will let me show cracks in a characters skin, particulary the arms and hands, that I can add an emissive shader to. Does anyone know of a product that will allow me to do this? It would need to be for G8.1F.

Comments
Would this one be of any use? SY Fire Within Genesis 8 and 8.1 | Daz 3D
There's also a similar product that just affects the lower arms and hands but isn't cracks as such, Power Blast Props for Victoria 7 and 8 and Michael 7 and 8 | Daz 3D
No, unfortunately, I just want it to affect the hands and arms. Thank you though
No arms, but this one has materials for hands:
https://www.daz3d.com/muelsfell-storm-of-magic-iray-fx
(Only visible in one promo. There are a few different materials too.)
https://www.daz3d.com/garrick-for-genesis-9
and
https://www.daz3d.com/merrick-for-genesis-9
Both have interesting effects for the arms
Is it something like this?
Quickly done with 2 masks on a geoshell.
Yes, I think that would work. Thank you.
Those look cool, but not quite what I'm after. Plus, I'm using 8.1.
Yes, but I have no idea how to make masks. I'm pretty much limited to pre-made products.
Are you interested in learning how to do it?
It is not hard.
It is a similar way if you want to add a tattoo to your character.
I tried to find a video, that showed it, but wasn't succesfull in that.
I'm always interested in learing how to do new things, but all I have is GIMP and that gives me headaches. But if you know an easy way to do it, please share.
Here is a short guide. Hopefully it is understandable. Ask if questions.
First you need the UV map for the relevant character. They can be downloaded from your product library, as part of the character essentials, called templates.
UV maps shows how image textures are applied to the surfaces.
Then take the relevant UV map (I used G8F) into your image editor (I am using Krita, and you have GIMP. The only criteria is that is has layers, but I think all normal image editors has that).
Here I have zoomed in on the lower right arm. Create a new layer and paint a "crack" with white.
Select the white "crack", and shrink the selection (I did shrink it with 10 pixels) for the emission mask). Create a new layer and fill the selection with white.
Now you have the needed for the 2 masks. Add a black layer below the 2 layers with white, and you can save the 2 masks as black and white images.
Then in Daz create a geoshell on your character. Set all surfaces in the geoshell, except the arms, to Cutout Oppacity = 0 (invisible).
On the arms set Cutout Oppacity to 1 and add the "crack" image in the texture slot (everything but the white painted area will be invisible). Set Base Color to something dark (or you can add a texture). You should now have a dark crack on the arm in viewport.
Then go to Emission and add the emission mask to the image slot and set the color to the wanted emission color. And then set luminance to something like 200-2000 kcd/m2 (I think I used 600)
Render...
The limitations with doing this in an ordinary image editing program is you can't paint over seams (or at least it is very hard to get it to line up correctly. For that it is better to use an 3D image painting. But as long as you avoid seams you're good.
Great tutorial, @felis
Thanks for sharing it.
This pack is really nice: https://www.daz3d.com/muelsfell-storm-of-magic-iray-fx
Below is its example usage on: https://www.daz3d.com/noska-81