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Is there a program where you can paint a stroke or texture seamlessly across both figure and geograft though? As far as I know, you still have to paint each one separately. The collision issue is legitimate though, that could be a big problem. Conforming items still give you complete control over the transition with opacity maps however, and I still think we should be using them for any item that requires that sort of soft transition.
ZBrush or 3D Coat, though in ZBrush you then have to fiddle to turn the polygon paint into separate maps. Mari and Mudbox too, I think.
Probably a Geometry Shell wih a special set of UVS
Zbrush
you can then hide polygroups to export overlapping UV's, it's not as easy as working with UDIMs but it can be done
Please keep the discussion civil, and address comments to the topic rather than at other posters.
SnowSultan: Sure, you can do it in Substance Painter (which would be my #1 choice) or Mudbox (#2 choice).
You just export the model with a geograft and you basically get an 'updated' figure. It's not hard at all.
(I love Zbrush, but it's flippin WEIRD with painting and UV and such; I don't recommend it for painting)
I didn't know that you could do it in Substance Painter, thanks. That actually might affect what future creatures I buy here, as like Gordig, I am a bit hesitant to purchase things that require that the included skin textures be used with it. I kitbash everything, and will often buy products for a specific part or two.
Note that if you want to paint across material zones, you're probably better off with Mudbox. Substance Painter is due to have cross-material painting... at some point soonish.
However, SP has a LOT of very very very nifty procedural elements that can quickly create a half decent skin across everything you want, and then you can use all sorts of masks and adjustments to enhance it.
That's why even after getting ZBrush, I continue to use Mudbox for any tattoos, etc that I need to paint onto a mesh. Just load it in and paint right over seams, etc and it's so easy to export it out as a .psd to add to whatever skin you want. I could never figure out how to do it in ZBrush without pulling my hair out in the process.
in Zbrush I click one polygroup at a time holding ctl alt and hide the others then create texture from polypaint and export that
its a right pain but at least with a geograft you only need do it twice as the G3 or 8 figure has a UDIM map
you can go bonkers doing it on things with lots of overlapping UV's I keep clicking the wrong bodyparts
Oh yeah, I love Substance Painter, it's amazing how you can improve or even create new textures in just a few minutes. We're supposed to be getting limited beta access to painting across surfaces soon, maybe for everyone in April (thought I heard that somewhere?). To be honest though, I'd rather it be able to export with all of the same materials (base color, roughness, normals, etc) of each surface assembled into one map each so we don't get 12 roughness maps when exporting a figure's textures. I do it with actions in Photoshop afterwards, but it sure would be a handy feature.
I've never been able to find a definite answer to this, but I'd be grateful for any PA insight: what's the polite, no-stepping-on-toes process for doing addons (textures, poses, morphs) for existing work? It seems like texture sets for clothing are commonly done by anyone and it's hard to imagine a lot of the texure creators at Rendo, etc. working in direct partnership with all the vendors they make products for, but creature textures are very rare and typically only made by the original figure creator. If I wanted to do something that required the original product to work, but radically changed the look of that product for people who wanted something different, would it be considered a nice boost to potential sales or kind of insulting to the original design vision?
Well, at the very least you could ask the creator.
You also have to be sure you aren't making modified textures of a PA's work. That is, if you take the PA's texture and add or modify parts of it, that's 'derivative work' and a no-no. It has to be entirely original.
Personally, with the proviso that it has to be original work, I have no problem with people making texture addons for my creations.
I would imagine it's okay since it could potentially boost the sales of the required item. But perhaps contacting the PA to ask if that would be okay would be the polite way to go about it.
Reasons why a PA might not feel comfortable with people doing texture addons:
It might compete with things the PA is doing
PA might feel the other person's work doesn't do them justice, or otherwise intrudes on the identity/integrity of the work
If a PA makes something similar for their own work, it can open them up to accusations of 'stealing' ideas from people who did addons to their work (not super likely, but in another sphere this happened to Anne Mccaffrey and lead to her being very draconian about fan work)
Thanks! I figured asking would be a given, but I wasn't sure if it would be considered presumptuous for someone who didn't already know the PA and have a body of work. I think I'm better off leaving it to people with more experience.
Personally I'm not opposed to anyone making add ons for my stuff, I think its a great way to get experience and I enjoy seeing different interpretations on my ideas :) No need to ask me for permission.
As I'm partial to fauns/satyrs/minotaurs and the like, which don't usually need a geograft-seam at the waist, I've found the grayscale Bump or Specular maps can be denatured in IrfanView to a black-&-white mask for ILE overlays, but one also has to hope that the creature map is UV-compatible, or at least comparable, to the skin desired.
Thank you. Just so I'm clear, would that be used instead of a geograft, or in addition to one? My understanding was that any object that covered up part of a figure, like how a centaur body makes the figure's human legs disappear, was a geograft. Is that not correct?
The GeoGraft would dd the new parts, then a Geometry Shell wrapping around the whole assembly would handle blending the edge textures.
This is exactly the method used in the Genesis2 Creature Creator splices.
Interesting. I noticed that centaurs load as the centaur body and a separate geoshell, but the snake tails don’t appear to. Is there some way to accomplish the same effect as a geograft without the geograft itself? Or, from the opposite direction, is it possible to use a geoshell without creating a separate object in the scene view?
Some items have additonal aeas that act like regular fitted garments, so the Geograft can hide bones and weld to the edges and then there can be overlapping mesh - but it's tricky to do that close to the skin (it tends to be done, when it is dne at all, for elements that can be further off the skin. I don't think it's possible to have an invisible GeoGraft
Well, one other way that might make some of these tail grafts or extra-limb grafts leave more option open might be if the original maker of that graft provided some sort of template that identifies what part of the doner body's texturemaps join up to the graft, so that you could then take that into Painstshop or GIMP or Paint.net (or any other image editting software that does layers) and adjust accordingly. There is a scripted product on Renderotica that does that for male genitals, for figures that don't come with anatomical element mats. It locates the torso textures of the character you have selected in scene, and spits out a template that copies out the part of the torso textures where they meet the male anatomical graft, having rejiggered/repositioned it to be where they should be in the genmat texture layout, but you still have to go into some image editting program to apply those over the top of your genmats of choice (say, the ones for Michael 8) and then adjust the color balance and whatnot on those to match the doner skin-patch. It seems likely something similar could be done with, say, one of those animal-tail grafts.
Looking at the new adult geografts on Renderotica, they use a script to convert the skins to their grafts. They're completely seamless and except for a very few exceptions, you cannot tell the difference. So, for your tentacles for example, why couldn't you get a script that would match the head to your tentacle head, copy the skin onto the geograft say from the arm or leg texture and then utilize a LIE for the patterns? I would think using the non-elbow/knee portion of the appendage would be the best for copying onto the tentacles.
For other body parts, like the medusa/mermaid tail, having the script copy the torso and then layering it with the scales would eliminate the need for the hard line transition.
Depending on the base human skin, you can kind of kludge the Head tails on the Lekkulians.
Artists who have fewer surface details (i.e. you want someone who starts with a photo base, but then does an artistic interpretation on top... Jessaii comes to mind), you can do enough to get the Head tail seam looking close enough to where heal brush or smudging is minimal in post-render work.
PLUS, Twi'leks use a lot of Head gear. Drop a headband or some kind of object over the seam, and you're good to go. It's authentic to the Twi'lek, and it hides the seam very easily. For instance, Sammi hair works pretty well for that (Turn Hair opacity to 0%, only use the cloth band)...
https://www.daz3d.com/sammi-hair
If you're taking a base skin that has a LOT of surface details and uneven skin tones, then that edge interface becomes much harder to deal with.
Another trick/idea is to use RawArt's skins as a base, and then layer other skins on top (especially those skins as described above), using GIMP to reduce opacity over top of the base Lekkulian skin.
In any case, there are ways around the skins of a product even if you don't have tools other than free stuff. Is it ever going to be perfect? Of course not, but everyone needs to have some GIMP/PS skill, IMO, to make this hobby work well.
...
Yeah, a script to execute a perfect seam would be fine, but you can Mark-1 eyeball it pretty well when you look at how the geograft sits on the head. Just copy that region onto the Diffuse texture of the head tails, smoothing as you go. With the right kind of skins, it shouldn't be horrible.
Anyway, a clever Daz artist could create headgear that fits the Star Wars universe and hides the seam for us. As it is, I just go with headbands... look for hair with headscarfs or such, and then just drop the scarfs over top.
Example...
It's not complex work. You just have to have the rudimentary skill level in GIMP plus the kind of skins to make it work. Like I said, Jessaii is one artist who has the skins that work because her artistic vision of the skins fits well. Other artists, who work from a more hyper-realistic point of view, are much more problematic. Familiarity with the artists and their work is helpful in this regard.
Whatever I'm given, I work with.
(Post work... ran denoiser, added background in GIMP. Changed the Brightness/Contrast, added Soft Focus effect. Didn't use a heal brush or smoothing on any seams.)
Here's Octiana being used with custom maps and a geoshell, on my deviantart (deviantart.com/tigerste)
With all due respect, since you don't see the transition, and the tentacles originate under water, this image could have been created with tentacle props unconnected to the body.
Yes, but the point is it wasn't, because it uses Octiana. Just showing an example of what can be done, irrespective of whether certain parts are being covered.