Learning to Daz: Matching a models' skin to Lekku (twi'leks)

epicureanpoetry

Hiyoo. I am learning to daz recently, and am still very, very new. I have been playing with V4, 5, 6, and 7 and various genesis models,  and attempting to create some of my favorite things: Twi'leks. I found and am using RadiantCG's lekku package (found here: http://www.radiantcg.com/gallery/details.php?image_id=201 ) 

The issue which I am running into as a complete beginner is this: the provided lekku skin doesn't match the skins of any of the models. It's passable if I do some hue/saturation fiddling and layer adjustments in photoshop, but I can see that the skin texture of the lekku do not at all, match the models I use. 

I am wondering how in the world do I: sample a piece of skin from the model to make it fit the lekku? What I need to do in photoshop/any pointers or tips or ANYTHING at all, at this point, would be great. I know it can be done, I've seen some amazing twi'leks rendered: I just cannot find any tutorials on the subject, specifically featuring lekku. So I've come here to give all of you puppy eyes and ask for halp! 

SixDs

Hey, welcome. Sorry for the delayed reply, but I needed to to some playing around with the Lekku first.

There are several issues that affect the ability to match the Lekku surfaces to the surfaces of the model that you are using. The important thing is to remember that matching, once successfully achieved will only work with that specific figure texture. Change the model and texture, and the matching process must be redone. Having said that, and bearing in mind that there are always different ways to address a problem, here is what I would do, using a V4 texture as an example (V4 default character with PDesign's Christa texture). To begin, we'll stick with DAZ Studio, and see what we can do without resorting to Photoshop or similar.

Fig. 1 shows V4 with the Lekku prop fitted and using the default Lekku "skin tone" map and settings - not a good match. I then, changed the Diffuse map in the surfaces tab for the Lekku "skin" material by simply substituting one of the Christa diffuse maps. I didn't really expect this to work, as you certainly don't want the Lekku "hair" showing up with eyes or fingernails, etc., but in this case it actually worked, serendipitously. Fig. 2 shows the result. Under normal circumstances you might want to create a new diffuse map by modifying the original map using the character's texture, but we can come back to that later. The Lekku now matches the skin tone, although you would want to check the other surface settings against the V4 Christa settings to get a perfect match. (Note: you should use the spot render tool when working in the preview window to check the results of any changes, since there are often differences between the preview and a rendered image).

At this point I would recommend not concerning yourself with trying to match the various hues the Lekku has (Blue, etc.), but focus on matching the base skin. Once the latter is done, you can then experimant with diffuse colours and other settings that you will want to apply to both the Lekku and the the base model's textures. Those can then be saved as material presets for later use.

Back to our skin. Although we have a good match, the Lekku surface is originally not the same as the model's skin - it has a distinctly different surface. If you wish to preserve or reproduce this, more work is required. I started by opening the Lekku diffuse map, LekkuC1.jpg, in Photoshop and converting it to grayscale, then saved that as LekkuB2.jpg. I then opened the Christa Diffuse map for the face and selected the largest area of the face that was uniform, the forehead area, and cropped a large square using the rectangular marquee tool. I saved this, then created a layer in the LekkuB2 image which i had converted back to RGB, using tiling of the cropped forehead area. I then adjusted the opacity of the new layer o allow the patterned base layer to show through. This action lightened the skin tone, but I focused on getting a good balance of the skin tone and the underlying surface pattern. When satisfied, I saved the result as LekkuChristaC1.jpg to combine the layers. Next, with a copy of the original cropped forehead open, I adjusted the saturation and contrast levels to best approximate the original skin texture, and saved it. I could now replace the Christa texture in the diffuse channel for Lekku in DAZ Studio with my new LekkuChristaC1.jpg. It wasn't a bad match for a quick-and-dirty attempt, and I probably would be tempted to do a little more fine tuning in photoshop if I had wanted to do this for my own use. I didn't think the surface result was distict enough, so I plugged the grayscale LekkuB2.jpg into the displacement channel and used the displacement strength slider to accentuate the surface to taste. The result is shown in Fig. 3. (You may be able to achieve similar results using the built-in Layered Image Editor utility within DAZ Studio, although some prep work in Photoshop will still be required).

At this point you may play with the Diffuse colour, specular, etc. settings in DAZ Studio to get whatever variations you want and save them as a preset for later use. Fig. 4 shows a quick attempt at a green/blue variation.

There may be better ways of doing this in Photoshop, since I tend to be a little kludgy at times in my approach, and others may suggest better alternatives. You will, as I mentioned, need to repeat the process for each figure base texture you wish to use, so I recommend choosing carefully to begin with. Lastly, be careful, of course, to choose new filenames in saving your files so not to overwrite any of your original texture files.

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Very informative SixDs! Thank you for posting.

epicureanpoetry

SixDs, thank you, thank you! I have been clunking away at this, and you've given me several new angles to work through for a better match! 

SixDs

Happy to be of help/