Military Dress Uniform Question

roninwolf109

Hello, all! I had just gotten mal3Imagery's MI Military Dress Uniform Type C for Genesis 8 Male and I was curious if someone knows how to make custom name plates for it. There's a few different ones in the Materials section of the product, but I'd like to make some with my character's name on them.

Thanks for your help!

P.S. Here's the product I'm talking about:
https://www.daz3d.com/mi-military-dress-uniform-type-c-for-genesis-8-and-81-males

zombietaggerung

If the product doesn't come with templates, I would find where the texture files for the nameplate is on your computer, take one and make a copy of it, and in any photo editing program change the name on the text then save it as a new file in folder you can easiely access so that when you want to use it, you can just apply that texture map to the nameplate.

Escribano

I do that sort of thing all the time. How difficult it is depends on how the surfaces are set up. 

You will need a photo or image editing program, as zombietaggerung said. I use a free one called Paint.net for most simple editing. Needless to say, if you already have experience with such programs, it makes editing surface texture maps a lot easier :)

The first thing you want to do is select the name plate and go to the Surfaces tab to see how many texture maps it needs. It will look something like the first attached image If you are lucky, there will only be a Base Color image. However, there may be images for glossiness, roughness, etc. You might be ab content creator may have used Bump or Normal maps to raise/lower the letters. With a small object like that name plate, you can probably get away with ditching any Bump/Normal maps and just going with a base color map if you want to make the task easier.

Once you decide how many image maps you will need to customize, copy appropriate ones from the military uniform's Textures directory. You can find it by hovering your cursor over the image in the surfaces tab; the location of the file will appear in a pop up; see the second attached image for an example (it will probably be in your Runtime directory, perhaps in a subdirectory with the creator's name). Place the copies in another directory you can find easily later.

The base color image for the name plate looks like simple white text on a black background. Open your copy of the base color image in the editor. Find a font that matches the original closely enough for your purposes. Black out the original text and type in the new text in white, centered appropriately. Save it (make sure the image file uses a new name - not the one the content creator used for the image you copied). If there is a Bump map, you can make one easily enough by copying the base color image you just made and inverting the colors, so that it is black text on a white background.Save it with an appropriate name. If there is a Normal map... you are not going to be able to make a new one without special software, so just leave the Normal image blank. You can get away with using just a Bump map.

Once you have made the customized images, return to Daz. Go into the surfaces for the name plate. Left-click on the Base Color image for the name plate, then scroll up to the top of the list and select "Browse." Navigate to where you saved the customized Base Color image, and select it. Repeat for the Bump image map and any others, if you made them.

After you save the changes you made, Daz will now use your custom texture maps when rendering the image. Voila!

 

roninwolf109

Okay, thanks, but where do I find these textures or template files? 

I've never tried this before and have little to no computer experience, so I'm going to need this broken down Barney style here.

MelanieL

roninwolf109 said:

Okay, thanks, but where do I find these textures or template files? 

I've never tried this before and have little to no computer experience, so I'm going to need this broken down Barney style here.

If the product has templates, you will find a .zip file for them that you can download from the Product Library in your account HERE.

If not, then according to the ReadMe you can find the texture files for the name tags as shown in the attachment below. You would then copy one of them to a new name of your choice, amend it as explained above, then save it with that new name (be careful you don't accidentally overwrite one of Mal3imagery's originals). Then selecting the name tag in your scene, go to the Surfaces - Edit tab in Daz Studio and change the texture file there to your new one.

roninwolf109

Awesome, thanks!
It took some fiddling, but I've gotten it to work! :-)