Ice Dragon Art WIP's
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Distressed Leather texture; no displacement:
Distressed Leather with displacement:
I think this looks amazing for as little as I know..or thought I knew, and how easily and quickly the changes were able to be made.
Can't wait to see what you did! I've had a 4 day migraine which had made it very difficult to focus very much on anything and meds make me very groggy. I was greatful to make it through my work week lol. Seems to have gone for now though so I should be able to sleep off the residue tonight and be back in good form tomorrow
I guess I know more than I thought I did. I knew enough to think about the tiling from DG's tutorials even though I didn't make any changes to it. I had to blend the texture in Photoshop so it was seamless. I knew enough to add displacement. I didn't have a displacement map, so I just used the same texture map and put it in the displacement channel and adjusted the values (+ and -).
I'm going to try to make some adjustments to the shirt.
Back soon!
Oh, and I'm sorry to hear about your 4 day migraine!
Sounds miserable. Rest up and get well soon! There will always be time to mess with this stuff.
Ok..that was fast!
I simply added the same texture file to the bump and displacement channels, set them both to 100%, and adjusted the value of the min and max displacement. Looks much better!
I'm going to be really bummed if someone says "Oh, of course. I've known that forever." I'm just figuring it out now!!
Grrr!
Original shirt texture:
Shirt with bump and displacement:
You can see where the mesh has sleeves separate from the main body of the shirt. I didn't make any adjustments on the sleeves.
I'm still amazed that this is so easy!
Ok..here is the original shirt and corset; followed by the distressed shirt and corset:
It obviously needs work, because the texture isn't seamless between the sleeve and the shirt body. I think I know how to fix that without messing with it in post. This is a new texture file which I can load in place of the original. I wanted similar but faded colors. Looking at it again, I think the bump and displacement on the corset may be overdone a bit, and need to be toned down some.
Overall, I am quite happy with my progress so far. This was done in Photoshop, but could probably be easily adapted in Gimp.
I would be happy to explain how this was achieved in more detail if anyone is interested.
G'night all!
Looks fantastic! And yes, please post a quick how to if you don't mind. I understnad the basics but I'm not sure how to make something seamless and its been driving me nuts for a long time lol. I will say though that the shoulder seams don't look off because I think its natural for that to be not perfect since that's usually where things are sewn together.
Realized I did this one last weekend and forgot to post it. I'm really happy with how it turned out and think the water dragon is the cutest thing ever lol.
Yep, sharp teeth, gruesome smile. Very cute! ;) Nice render!
Lol what? You don't see that goofy grin?
And thank you it turned out far better than I had expected since I really just wanted to see how well he would render given his age.
Oh, sure, I can see {{shakes head no}} plain as day right there in the picture! I think you did a great job on him. The water turned out good and his scales look nice and healthy. ;)
LOL! Well I rendered him out of the box so to speak, and the water is a prop (which I am now in love with as well). It will only render in 3Delight though which was a tiny bit of disappointment but not enough for me not to use it.
Hi Sonja,
Here’s a quick run through on how I adjusted the materials/textures.
I’m using a PC desktop computer, Windows Explorer, and Photoshop CC 2017. I don’t have or know much about Gimp, and I’ve never used a Mac. The hardest part of this whole process is making the changes in Photoshop. A good working knowledge of Photoshop techniques will help a lot.
First, I decided to work on the corset. The default material is a plain brown leather with not much in the way of actual texture. I wanted to rough it up, and make it look worn, so I Googled “worn leather images” and found one I liked. Actually, it was the first one in the list; “distressed leather” and it was a .jpg about 750 x 750. (It’s amazing what will work for this!)
You wouldn’t want to do this if you were planning to create a material or texture set to sell somewhere, or to use for any commercial work. (copyright laws) But for personal use and for test purposes, it should be fine.
I saved the “distressed leather” image, and loaded a G2F figure in Studio. I put the Shieldmaiden for Genesis 2 Female outfit on her. I selected the corset in the scene tab, and opened the surfaces tab. I selected the corset, and twirled down the arrow to see all of the material zones.
There are 3 material zones: CorsetBody, CorsetEyelets and CorsetLaces. I selected CorsetBody and looked at the diffuse parameter in the list. There is a tiny icon of a picture. First I mouse over that picture so the tooltip helper comes up, and I can see which file is being used. (Remember the filename. This is the one we will need to open in Photoshop or Gimp.) Then I click on it. It opens, and I select “browse” at the top.
This opens up the location on my hard drive where the material files are located. There are 8-10 material files in this folder. Find the material file that is being used on the corset, and confirm the filename.
I use a really helpful shortcut at this point to find this location again in Photoshop. I click on the location in the address bar (so it’s highlighted), and copy it using ctrl c (control c). Then I open Photoshop, and when I click on “open” to load the material file, I paste the location into the address bar using ctrl v. This jumps to the exact location where the material file for the corset is saved. Click on the material file, and open it in Photoshop. Press ctrl 0 (control zero) to enlarge the image to the size of your screen. Press ctrl j (control J) to make a copy of the materials so you don’t accidentally overwrite them.
Then, click “open” again, and load the “distressed leather” image. Again, press ctrl 0. Now you should have 2 images open in Photoshop, and they have to be merged.
With the leather image active and on top, press “v” to make sure the “move tool” is active. Click in the middle of the leather image and drag it up to the bar with the name of the material image for the corset. Hold it there a second and the corset image will open. With the button still held down, drag to somewhere in the middle of the corset image, and release the button. A new layer will be created and the leather image will be on top of the materials. Change its name from “layer 1” to “leather” or something you can remember. If you need to see what’s below the leather image, you can temporarily click the eyeball of that layer to make it invisible. Another useful trick is to lower the opacity of the leather layer to 25-30% so you can see through it.
You should be able to figure out which picture is the corset material. Click on the leather layer to make it active, and press “ctrl T” to transform the size of the layer. Resize the leather layer until it completely covers the corset material. Alternately, you can duplicate the leather image and place them side by side. I didn’t even worry about staying inside the lines. Nothing outside the lines shows in the render anyway. (This is sloppy work and bad practice, but hey!, I was testing!)
Now you need to pick a blending mode so the 2 images blend together. It’s set to “normal” by default. I set mine to “color burn”. Experiment with several until you find one you like. If they don’t blend well, try lowering the opacity of the leather layer, then adjust the blending mode.
correction: I did not use blending modes for the corset. I used blending modes later whan I made adjustments to the shirt. sorry...
Save the image (in the same folder as the original material file) as a .jpg by changing the filename slightly. The original filename of the corset is SMCorsetBeltTx.jpg; I named the new one SMCorsetBeltTxEDIT.jpg; name it something you can remember.
When you close Photoshop, do NOT save changes to the original file, or you will have to download the model from DAZ again.
Now back in Studio, go to the surfaces tab again, and load your new material file to the corset diffuse parameter. SMCorsetBeltTxEDIT.jpg
Some changes have to be made here if you want the textures to appear 3D. I went to the bump and displacement parameters, and loaded the new material file in both. SMCorsetBeltTxEDIT.jpg
Then I changed the min and max values for bump to -0.2 for min, +0.35 for max. I did the exact same thing to the displacement. I made the displacement strength 50% and the bump strength 100%. Experiment with these values to see what works best. I think I concluded mine needs to be toned down some, so I will either lower the bump and displacement strengths, or lower the min and max values.
I also keep an eye on the lighting model parameter. It’s usually set to “plastic” by default. I set it to “matte” or something appropriate.
eep! I guess this was anything but short. And I didn't even get to doing seamless textures...
Awesome thank you! That's very similar to the way I do it, I was just looking up the textures a bit differently. Your way works better.
Dawww Ahhhhhh Cute AND scary ...how'd you do that? lol
I really like this render! Underwater scenes are so hard! Well done! :)
Thank you! All the credit goes to the beastie I just took his picture. Apparently he takes smiling for the camera very seriously!
I need to go back and edit my explanation. I used the blending modes for making changes to the shirt, not the corset. The corset was a straight swap of textures with changes to bump and displacement only.
sorry...
No problem I got the gist of it lol.
Okay this is the blood and dirt. I am working on texture right now, This is going to be very useful, I have edging brushes etc that will work really well for trim on clothing as well. And jewelry brushes as well. This is going to be a lot of fun
Okay and here it is with different texture applied. I did it a little differently though, I picked the texture and made it black and white. I upped the contrast between the dark and light and saved, just as a texture its a square block. I added that to the diffuse and bump.I remember seeing other diffuse and bump maps and they all seem to be black and white so I thought I would give it a try. It seems to have worked okay. The knit texture I used on the shirt didn't work very well although it did change the collar line on the shirt a bit.
That looks great, Sonja! So many possibilities!
I was watching a PS tutorial, and the guy went into channels and looked at the red, green and blue channels, and picked the one with the highest contrast. That's really the most important thing because dark values are indented and light values are extruded. Making a black and white, or grayscale image out of it seems to be best. I remember seeing that too.
I did it this way just as a test. Seemed to work, but I'm sure it could be improved.
I went back and looked at it again, and made some changes. I downloaded the templates and added the distressed leather image to it. Then I used the warp feature to resize and reshape the texture file so it fit exactly over the template. Looks ok.
I made a new folder inside of the original material folder and named it Texture Set 2. I've been putting my new creations in there. Now when I browse for materials in the diffuse channel, I will see the 2nd set.
Now I have to figure out how to make a product out of it so it appears in my Shieldmaden product listing.
This is cool!
I always get confused between what the black and the white do lol. so thanks for mentioning that, I need to put that in my notes. Unfortunately I now have so many notes I can't find anything there either lol.
I would love to know how to get my changes into the actual product. No idea how to do that but would love to know. I am going to do some more experimenting over the next couple of weeks with textures and stuff. Please feel free to post anything else you decide to do, I would love to see it. I will post notes on what I am doing as well.
The girl is a Gen2F randomizer character. The male is Cayman (Gen2M)
Knights Pavilion- I also used one of Kindred Arts ghost lights at the entrance to light the girl a bit better. Worked like a charm. I'm really happy with the lighting in this.
The only issue I have with this one is that the skirt on Cayman follows his leg where its bent up and well, that's not normal lol. I missed it last night and I'm not sure if I saved before I rendered. I had to let it render overnight and while I was able to save the finished render, Studio crashed as soon as I did, so I didn't get a chance to save it as a scene in Studio.
AND I just realized that all the floor covering are under the ground and poking through. The render screen was pretty dark and it was 1am lol. If I didn't save it I am going to redo it as I reallly like.
But there isn't any point in a work in progress thread if I don't show my mistakes as well lol.
I remember what the blacks and whites do by thinking about peaks and valleys. Shadows (blacks) are in the valleys and indent (like valleys); peaks of mountains are in bright sunlight (white) and extrude like mountain peaks.
Corny, I know, but it works for me!
Thinking about how to do this, I have an idea that I'm sure will work. I struggled for years, (literally years!), trying to figure out how to get freebies on my computer where I could find them, and then, how to get them listed in products. I finally managed it, with a lot of help from people like you, and KM, and Wilmap, and several others. I know you have a quite extensive catalog of freebies, and a system that works for you.
Well, last month during the HUGE sale, I saw a product that seemed too good to be true. It's called Content Package Assist. If you don't have it, check it out. All you do is load a zip file of whatever freebie you have found into the load window. It unzips it for you, and allows you to name it. Then you can use DIM, and it will create a product in your product list for you.
It's amazing!
It also does a lot of other things, like it allows you to create a package of stuff, and it will zip it up for you. Then you can use DIM to process whatever you have created and zipped up. If I named the package of texture files I created "Shieldmaiden Textures 1", it would end up in my product list right next to the Shieldmaiden product I have now.
I haven't actually used this feature. All I use it for is unzipping freebies, and using DIM to create a product in my Product list. But I'm pretty sure it will work.
Ohhh let me know if it works! I have seen it but wasn't sure if I really needed it because its super easy for me to just drop it in the folder and then track it down and categorize it. But if it can put my own stuff into zip files and put it where I want it? That woud be awesome.
And actually, that's a great way to remember things!
Nope..the Content Package Assist doesn't create zip files; it just unzips them, and then allows you to use DIM to install them and create a product.
Still it should be a simple matter to zip up a bunch of texture files, and add an image so you don't have to look at that little triangle with an exclamation point in it...
Well that's rather interesting. I have no idea how to do that but it doesn't sound like it would be too difficult.
dHandle, sounds cool... surprised I missed it. It's in my list now... catch it in future sale.
So I thought I would post my progress on my Carrara challenge entry. (no laughing!). It requires something to be modelled and also replication. So, I modelled the spear, textured it and replicated it. I also modelled the sphere and the cone and textured them and added a couple of special effects. This is far from done but I am pleased that I was able to get this far. (with lots of help from the Carrara forum peeps).
At least with those pikes you'll be safe from enemy warriors in tin bikinis - they'll all end up like that chap on the left, without ever getting close enough to swing their little swords . . .
That was exactly my thought! I mean, might as well take advantage of fashion even in war right? Especially skimp wear armour lol. Although if someone manages to get through the spears, one of them might be able to stab her to death with a spiked heel....