Where is my tattoo?

funwrestling

Hello,

1 - I drag and dropped a tattoo on my Genesis 2 character.
​2 - It appears on the character, no issue.
​3 - But my issue is that I don't know where to find it now. I have looked in the SCENE tab. Nothing there...

When I make the character's shoulder invisible in clicking on the Eye icon on the Scene tab, the shoulder (/arm) disappear and the tattoo disappears with it at the same time. So I assume there is an element/object called tattoo that should be listed in the SCENE tab but I find none.

Please see the attached screenshots and advise.

Thank you. 

nonesuch00

It's in the Surfaces tab and most likely as diffuse image for the section of the Surfaces tab labeled Arms - Base Color. eg Tab : Surfaces - Genesis 3 Male - Arms - Base Color and to the left of a color swatch that is probably pure white you will see a miniature representation of the Arms diffuse texture with a builtin tatto that you probably replaced from a Arms texture without a tatoo.

funwrestling

Thanks nonesuch00. I indeed found it on the Diffuse parameter of the Surface tab under:

- Forearms
- Shoulders

Now, I have two questions:

- Should I want to remove it from left arm, how can I do that?
​- Should I want to remove it from arm, what should I select instead of the tattoo to recover the initial plain skin of the character? If I select None, I get a weird metallic white-yellow color for skin.

nonesuch00

funwrestling said:

Thanks nonesuch00. I indeed found it on the Diffuse parameter of the Surface tab under:

- Forearms
- Shoulders

Now, I have two questions:

- Should I want to remove it from left arm, how can I do that?
​- Should I want to remove it from arm, what should I select instead of the tattoo to recover the initial plain skin of the character? If I select None, I get a weird metallic white-yellow color for skin.

Well the artist that created that tatoo added he Surfaces caled Shoulder & Forearm just so they can apply those tatoos with a preset. If you click on character that has the tattos in the Scene tab and in the Smart Content tab you should see only a list of content that is compatible with the character you have clicked on the the Scene tab.

Now in this Smart Content tab you should have a submenu item called Materials. Here is where you are going to have to know a little about what you've already done. I don't have the product you are using or even know what it is since you haven't mentioned it's name. In this Materials menu you should see a icon that is a picture of the character that supplied the tatoos you are using. Select that character and the list of Materials available will only be for that character so you can be sure the textures match.

Now once you are in the list of materials for the character you have selected in the scene if you scroll now through the materials for that character should be a picture icon or maybe two picture icons that tell you applying those preset to the character will remove the tatoo(s). You need to have both the character selected both in the Scene Tab and the Character selected in the Surfaces Tab or it won't apply the changes of the preset.

You'll also notice that there are presets to change the eyes, skin, the entire character, tatoos, no tatoos (it will usually just say skin & not mention the word tatoo), SSS, Transluncency, and so on. There is typically, but not always for Genesis 3 characters two presets for each 'character change'. By that I mean if a preset changes a character's eyes to a special shade of brown then there usually are two presets to change that eye color to brown - one preset changes the eye color to brown if you are using the 3DL shader and one preset changes the eye color to the iRay (aka PBR or PBS) shader. You want to for a scene use all 3DL shader or use all iRay shader. DAZ Studio can will acceptable results for must of us convert 3DL shaders to iRay shader but it cant acceptable convert iRay shader to 3DL shaders.

If you are doing an iRay render and you have a model that has a surface that is 3DL and has no iRay preset available to change that surface you may change that surface to iRay by selecting the model that surface is on in the Scene tab and then clicking the model's entry again but in the Surfaces tan and then applying the DAZ Uber Surface iRay Shader surface preset. E.g. it is not enough to click the Genesis 3 Male if you are changing the surface shader(s) for the clothing the model is wearing - you must click each clothing item in the Scene tab and then that clothing item again in the Surfaces tab and then click the iRay Uber Shader Preset to convert that item's surfaces to iRay. The iRay Uber Shader Preset can be found in the Content Library under  Shader Presets - Iray - DAZ Uber and I believe is is part of the DAZ Genesis 3 Starter Essentials.

IceDragonArt

There may be a remove tatoo button as part of the options in with the various tattoo options depending on what tattoo product you are using.  Or you can just re apply whatever texture you put on him/her before you added the tattoo

funwrestling

@nonesuch00: thank you for the very educational and detailed answer.

@Sonja: "Reapply whatever texture. That's what I have been trying to do ;-) But how do you do that? I'm using the standard Genesis 2 Female...

I am still kind of lost. I have found the tattoos again. They are located under CONTENT LIBRARY > Genesis 2 Female > Characters > TattooGirls. There are several tattoos in that folder. I think they come from cgshared, not so sure. I installed many things on the day I installed the soft and I was just a plain rookie not knowing what I was doing.

Now, if I select one of the tattoos in the folder, I got an error message saying:

"Some assets needed to load the file were missing. The content may not work as expected. The following files could not be found:
runtime/textures/silver/antheia/antheiatorso.jpg is missing (see screenshot too) 
​If I click OK, the tattoo appears on the character selected anyway. Again, my character is the standard G2F.

When I go to the SURFACES tab, I find them under Surfaces > The related body part (ex: Shoulders) > Diffuse. That's where I'm stuck. I don't know what other file/options to select for the Diffuse parameter to go back to a normal skin.

Also, is there a way I can suppress the tattoo on one arm only when it applies symmetrically on both arms? I know it comes from the textures, but is there a way in Daz3D to enable me to doing so easily?

Thanks again for your great help. I love this community.