Creating detail on a texture map...
Kev914
Posts: 1,126
in The Commons
How do YOU do it? Add the stitching where a the sleeves join a shirt? Or the hem of a skirt? Or a waist band?
Do you hand paint it?
Clone it from a photograph?
Maybe you could make the stitching in a program like CorelDraw and then wrap it on a curve? Does photoshop let you do that?
Or are there other ways that I am not thinking of?
Thanks
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
There are also programs like Filter Forge and Genetica that will procedurally generate textures... But you still need to photoshop them onto the texture map.
There is also a suite of tools by Quixel that will allow you to add details to a map without leaving photoshop... But since they can't be bothered to explain much more than "it's the best thing you ever used" and "become a texture God" their flashy video means little to me, since it still does not explain much more than showing cool stuff happening, and I really don't know what exactly I'm looking at... But aside from my annoyance with their viral style of advertisement, they seem to be the new best thing in texturing since bread was sliced...
But one way or another, whatever you come up with will need some sort of image editor to apply it to the map, if it's just a detail.
Actually... iRay does decals... So maybe there is that too.
There are some Photoship brushes and patterns for adding stitching. And denim effects and lace borders and everything else you can think of. Try the 3rd party vendor sites like Graphicriver.
To do this well, you'll need either the UV template for the product (if available), or else use an existing texture as a guide when creating your own. Place it on a layer, and adjust opacities so you can see it while working on your new texture.
It's going to depend on whether you want the details just baked into the texture or for the details to have more definition (and 3d appearance) with normals and/or displacement. Quixel should provide a way to do the normals and displacement, most of the photoshop addons for stitching, etc. while good, won't provide the needed materials for 3D.
Other's have covered it.. I haven't yet gotten stiching down so it looks good, but I tool around with it a bit.
I've found, though, that http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/ is really good for turning bump maps (which are easy to make in photoshop) into normal maps (which make things look much better in iray).
WOW....these clowns make Daz look like a profressionally run software company with compentent documentation!
Do you know one of the most important thing ANY software company should make sure is on their website? Far more imporatnat than a wiki, or a forum, or twitter links, or fancy pictures...
Information about the compatability of their program. What OS does it run on? Mac? Windows? Linux? How about which version of windows..7? 8? 10?. What versions of Photoshop it needs would be good info right up front. A quick look at the forum and there's a big thread question if it works with the lastet version of that....THAT's kind of important information that a company selling a photoshop plug in should provide right upfront.
I do my stiching by drawing a path with the pen tool, stroking it with a stiching brush (I have a whole bunch of different ones) and then adding a slight bevel and very light drop shadow (not offset).. then I duplicate that layer and make it white for the bump map, usually also put it on the specular map in black or at least different than the background so it shows up a little better. All in Photoshop. For drawing in seams where there aren't any modeled in I use the pencil and draw a one pixel wide line where I want it, give it drop shadow and outer glow set to black/multiply if I need to get it more defined. (also not offset) I set the opacity of that level very low on the texture map, almost not visible, but very strong on the bump map.
Thanks for the great information!
Wow, thanks for the Normals converter link!!
Thank you!
Sometimes I feel like I'm a bit too cynical or picky, because that does not seem to bother other folks... They get all excited by the videos and are happy to peice together relevant information on multiple websites and forums.
Thats fine for free software... But slappin' down cash based on a flashy video isn't my idea of good salesmanship or management.
Sadly too many new software companies buy into this useless lazy form of product promotion.
Re bumps and normals ... What Fisty and others said. You can do bumps in Photososhop just with the diffuse texture. Stictching is mostly raised, so it's a one-direction bump. There's always Shader Map for making normals, and the online tools discussed. Not sure you need to invest a hundred bucks when it's pretty easy to cobble together basic tools. Most brushes work in Gimp, as well, and you can do vector textures with Inkscape. It's possible to do this for very little money, which you can save for something that's much harder to make yourself.
On edit: Sorry about the typos, but I wanted to leave them in as a badge of honor. I'm doing an Iray render, and Chrome stutters a bit!
Yeah, pretty much anything you can do in photoshop for texturing you can do in gimp.. not 100% sure about dynamic brushes though, that's almost required to do stiching without losing your hair.
The latest versions of GIMP have much better dynamics...but the big 'leap' is going to be version 2.10 (which is not due out for a while yet).
Here's a tutorial for adding stitches using GIMP
http://wiki.tesnexus.com/index.php/Basic_textures_in_GIMP:_Stitches
I'm always afraid to install freeware or shareware. There are some programs I would like to have like GIMP, Blender and Audacity (sound program). But I'm always afraid. Do they contain any extras that I don't want? Since some of you use some of these programs, do any of them contain things you need to watch out for when you install?
I should add that I need another program to learn like I need a hole in the head.
Gimp is a very clean easy installl, there is just Gimp ......it's all I can afford but I think it works great.
Being nosey I do gotta ask what are you afraid of??If they contained extras...get rid of them. Ahhh the hole in the head thingy ....learning another whatever fills that hole for ya ........at least until the next hole opens up ,then you gotta find something else to fill it ......
..I've been using Gimp since I got started in this over seven years ago. Also have an older version of PaintShopPro (X4 which sadly does not handle .abr brushes, fortunately Gimp does and I have quite a few of Ron's sets loaded). I prefer PSP's text tool as it is simpler to access different fonts and manipulate text When I need to apply text to a surface both tools are part of the workflow as Gimp handles layering and transparency better.
I've tried this method...and haven't gotten it working yet :/ last time, I seemed to keep getting stiches perpendicular to the path (though it's been a while)
I've been using GIMP (well, using a tiny percentage of it's features anyway) for quite a number of years now and it hasn't come with any unpleasant extras that I've encountered yet.
I have seen a few articles indicating that there have been problems with people downloading them from sites OTHER than the official gimp site (gimp.org and the downloads they link to currently as far as I know) and having them contain unexpected extras, although I've not personally encountered or verified it. This has nothing to do with GIMP, but rather with users picking a bad location from which to download. I'm sure you can find lots of "real" software packaged with other nasty things if you just randomly download any software from anywhere.
I did recently download the latest Windows version gimp-2.8.14, which unfortunately crashed on me twice, so I reverted to gimp-2.8.10 which I had been using previously with no problems, so I'd suggest avoiding 2.8.14 at the moment and going with an earlier version or waiting for the next version if you decide to try it out though.
GIMP, Blender and Audacity are very clean and very safe...if downloaded from the official sites.
All three are OpenSource projects and have rather strict standards. But that also means anyone can package them...and well, some who do aren't exactly altruistic in nature.
...I've had no crash issues using 2.8.14. Interesting.
Regarding "unwanted "bundled" software, Java updates are a great way to end up McAfee Security Scan Plus installed on your system.
Yeah...
As for 2.8.14...the Linux version has been extremely stable for me. More so than 2.8.10. On my daughter's Win8.1 laptop, 2.8.14 seems to be pretty stable, too.
Well, it hasn't happened to me yet, but I know some people download programs and there are PUBs (Potentially Unwanted Programs) that get installed with the program you want. Some times they take over your browsers, etc. I've heard very bad things about Download.net. I have the Nero Burning software and it used to include Nero wave editor. Now that is a free program but they direct you to Download.net. Just do a search and ask if Download.net (or maybe it's download.com) is safe and read what people say.
I also had a paid version of WinZip. One day it told me there was a free update. I went to install it, and I notice there there was a whole lot of veribage and I wondered why that was about. I stopped to scan the text and it said something about MySearchDial and that my home webpage would be changed....blah, blah, blah. I thought....What if I don't want my home page changed. I cancelled the install. I searched the web for MySearchDial and some people were calling it a virus. But it was a PUB at least, and some people were having trouble getting rid of it once it got on their system. I contacted Winzip support and asked them what this MySearchDial was and why were they trying to install it on my pc along with WinZip. They said that it was a free program (which I'm sure they were getting money to include). They said some people choose to install WinZip without it and I could go here to do that. I stopped Winzip from getting any new updates. And when I got a new computer, Winzip didn't go on it. Now I just use the built in program in windows. And WinZip lost a paying customer.
I may try some of the programs you mention though. Is GIMP like Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop? I have Photoshop. Or does it do something different than Photoshop.
GIMP is very much like Photoshop, in what it does, but not so much in layout and UI.
Ironically, it's the "big" software companies that are most guilty of this these days. Install Quicktime and Apple tries to sneak a pile of things like iTunes into your system, Microsoft shoves Bing onto your system every chance it gets and I've lost track of how many different programs have tried to slip McAffe Anti-Virus onto my computer. Lately Adobe keeps trying to give me a trial copy of Lightroom... never mind that I already subscribe to the full Adobe Creative Cloud. It used to be that the safest placeto install most smaller programs from were the CDs that came with some computer magazines, but sadly those are becoming a thing of the past..
GIMP has a cool plugin to create normal maps. It's one of the best I've seen (when it works... it can crash a lot). It's just called normalmap I think. There's also a free tool from nVidia that will create normal maps. This is the plugin for Photoshop.
http://www.tophattwaffle.com/downloads/nvidia-normal-map-plugin/
I thought there was also a standalone version, but I can't find it atm.
I once saw a really cool plugin for Lightwave where you create a high res model (based off a lower res one) and put it in a background layer. You select the low res version in the foreground layer. You then run the script and it will look at the high res version to create a normal map to apply onto the low res figure. What this does is make it so the light bounces off the low res figure as if it were high res. The only drawback is that the silhouette is still low res. But the interior of the figure looks great. You can create some super low res figures this way that look really good.
There is a sveva's tutorial en R store, Stitching Made Easy. It containsa 20 pages tutorial in stitching, and *.abr brushes. The store also have several Stitch Kits.
Also, Photoshop CC will take a standard bump and turn it into a Normal map for the asking.
Wow! Thanks for point that out Gigi. I'll check it out.
I went to Graphicriver and I see some stitching that I like, but all the items that I'm finding are actions. (I think that's what they were called. I know they are recorded scripts that you run in Photoshop.) Will the actions work?
I'm not sure why I'm not finding brushes. I have entered that word into my search on the site along with Photoshop.
Thanks to everyone for your responses.
Guess I'm not searching for the right thing because I'm not finding the tutorials or the stitch kits. I searched for various forms of stitch(ing). I searched for sveva and "Stitching Made Easy". But the only thing I'm finding is Stitch Witch. I have Stitch Witch, but I have lost the textures that came with it.
I bought Stitch Witch when it was originally sold over at PhilC. I checked with Phil to see if I could re-download it. Not the program. Just the textures. But he said he didn't have the authority to do that. I do have some other textures sets that I bough from Daz that have similar textures.