Recommendations for young G8 male textures?
frankrblow
Posts: 2,052
Do you have any recommendations for skin textures/characters for young looking G8 males (teens to 20's)? Preferably with little or no facial/body hair, as I already have fibermesh options I can use.
Top of my list at the moment are https://www.daz3d.com/lucas-8 and https://www.daz3d.com/fwsa-seth-hd-for-elijah-7
I do have G3M characters I can convert, but sometimes I just can't be bothered with extra effort, and there's the variety of "new" characters, too.
Thanks in advance (Frank) 
Post edited by frankrblow on

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I have the Lucas 8 Pro Bundle & they are all good. Lucas 8 is the best of the lot in that pro bundle though although overall the quality difference is more personal preference than actual quality (to me as amateur hobbyist with few skills)
Off the wall but works extremely well, UV Swap and natural-looking female skins.
Brodie 6 + Map Transfer + Legacy UV
Thanks for all the suggestions, folks
It can indeed work very well—in fact it seems to me to be working better than quite a few dedicated younger male textures. The last five renders in my gallery use female skins on male characters: Uchenna, Celestia and Iseul, all using UV Swap. Lucas 8 does seem like a possibility: I have the character but haven't used it yet, so I don't know for sure.
Edit: I have to mention a caveat, as quite a lot of female textures have under-boob burnt-in shadows, so if you male characters are bare chested you have to edit the textures—it's doable, but takes a fair amount of time and a bit of skill with the old Photoshop.
Fiore by saiyaness is a more realistic option with unique skins.
The main problem of UV swap is... the face may be feminine, a beard could be required to mitigate it
Tara 2 textures and Male figure
Well yeah, you picked a character with groomed brows and airbrushed totally smooth skin. Until testosterone kicks in hard, male skin is actually pretty close to female skin.
If a skin I am gender swapping has boob shadows (or boob highlights) I tend to use the patch tool to swap out the shadowed areas with other torso skin and then touch up with the clone or healing brush. It only takes a couple minutes. A lot of the latest DAZ flagship characters are actually extremely good about not having this too badly, but unfortunately many skins still do.
I think about the lipstick and the other makeup effects include in the textures.
Brodie 6 and Tween Ryan 7 textures are less feminine.
This is why I said one has to use natural female textures.
That's true in many cases and I'd forgotten about it. It's usually only the eyebrows, though, as the natural lip texture is usually OK. The male facial structure usually takes care of the rest. I've pasted in male eyebrows in one or two of the conversions I've done. As it happens, though, I really enjoy doing that sort of work, and the result is something unique.
I'm curious see how it looks. Let's compare some of them !
Note: These female textures get glossy lips.
Victoria 8 / Tara 2 / Brodie 6 / Tween Ryan 7 / Growing Up
Basically no difference except the groomed eyebrows. You're going to want to copy the face material settings over the lips surface if you don't want glossy lips, I do this with females too all the time because always shiny is weird.
EDIT: Actually, there's one more notable difference. Tween Ryan had forehead wrinkles. What on earth did that kid go through?
It's very interesting all these possibilities. I need to do more tests and explore this new way.
This would be my recommendation, too. Zev0's Molly should work well, as should ThePhilosopher's Princess Leila. Both have more natural looking, youth brows.
Some of the female characters have default materials with light makeup or too much color on the lips. I find that annoying as I tend to render females without makeup. However, most of those I have, G3 or G8 have a decent no-makeup option. As for the plucked and shaped brows, Zev0 and DraagonStrom created a great script for removing the brows from just about any character, (and at the moment, it's in a Flash Sale and is only $7.98!) Many of the latest characters are coming out with no-brow options as well. Between the two, you should be able to use the fiber brows on any skin to get the look you want.
The availability of brow models with real geometry has been spoiling me so much.
Another script from Zev0 (DraagonStorm and Dogz) is Skin Builder 3. It's for creating your own G3 Base Female materials. It includes the base skin in the first step, or you can skip that step and apply the various options to the skin your G3F is wearing. You have to have the materials on a G3F while using the script, but after you save the materials you create, you can apply them to your boys using the UV Swap. There are also merchant resources available with female skin from G3F that you can use alone, or with Skin Builder 3. It is also 60% off, probably up to Daz Midnight tonight, which brings it down to $19.98. (I paid the intro price, only 30% off, and it was worth every penny.)