Creating a Genesis skin texture set from scratch

nonesuch00

I have a question please.

I want to try my hand at more realistic texturing for Genesis 3 for example, but let's say any DAZ Studio Genesis character for this learning task. However, I don't want to convert photographs to textures sets but instead create the 'artificial skin' based on what DAZ supplies as professional examples with the Genesis characters as a 'genesis essential'. For example, if I load the Genesis 2 Male Default - the collections of images seem to be based on a character named Phillip. i don't remember buying Phillip so I guess they are Genesis 2 Male default.

I downloaded the YouTube videos DAZ 3D account but none a titled as pertaining to creating human skin textures.  I searched and that only brought up expensive painting tools like BlackSmith and Substances Suite (which won't run on my computer anyway). How to I create a texture set like the 'Phillip' texture set from scratch? I have Gimp, Photoshop Essentials 9, Fireworks 2005, or MS Paint to work with. Oh, and Sketchbook. Tutorials? seems to be many tutorials on making human morphs but few on creating on altering or creating human textures for DAZ characters.

Toyen

I would like to see the workflow for creating a skin texture from photo references. Cannot find a decent tutorial anywhere : (

nonesuch00

Toyen said:

I would like to see the workflow for creating a skin texture from photo references. Cannot find a decent tutorial anywhere : (

There are some bare-bone texturing work-flows on free3dtutorials.com but you need more expertise than I've got to follow them in their conciseness.

http://www.free3dtutorials.com/gunnery-sergeant-thomas-highway.php

And if you email that 3d.sk reference site if you ask them how to create head textures like they do maybe they can direct you to a tutorial. Although personally I'm guessing they use a HW/SW 3D scanner and those textures are created automatically and retouched afterwards. 

So actually I couldn't find one either to my liking for DAZ 3D or any other program either. I will use gimp & Blender & wing it. And basically I'll have no work flow - all I am doing is looking at the Surfaces Tab of DAZ Genesis 3 character and copying the various images and then going and looking up what those various types of images are and how to create them from scratch. Then there is all the various light and color settings in the surfaces tab that one most note and check how to modify those to the results you want.

Would it be nice if there was a well written tutorial on that surfaces tab and creating skin and the other images for it? Yes, but I can't find one. Basically every thing I know about that sort of thing is via learning to create UV and textures for models I created in Blender.

 

fred9803

I'd say almost all of today's skin textures are not "painted" but make from reference photos of real people. So if you want to start from scratch that would be the starting point.

I have only used real photos of scars etc. to merge with existing textures which is quite easy, but starting from scratch with a whole new head or body tecture would be quite challenging. But there is no reason why you can't clone parts of an existing texture onto another one with the same UV to make a new one for private use. Getting the bumps, dispalcements and/or normals right for those new textures is a bigger challenge in itself. I leave that stuff to the experts.

If nothing else the process could provide a non-standard opening line for the girls you meet. "Hi, I'm a 3D artist, would you mind if I took close-up photos of your entire body? It's only for my art." (Apologies in advance for that comment.)

nonesuch00

Thanks, I was looking ,considering the detail in for example the Philip Genesis Two character, and well that's have to have been completely automated to get it in the correct format and then touched up with post work. I see even a stray beard hear the razor missed.

I might buy a set of reference material to learn out to do that type of thing manually but I question the utility of me doing so personally as I'm more interested in a toon style. I think, a utility like the Skin Creator Pro when and if they extend to to G3F & G3M is probably a better use of my time. And for clothing realism is easier and that has more interest for me than creating a realistic character.

I did finally realize (or was rather nicely told in another thread by SickleYield) that in DAZ Studio to create my own handpainted textures I do not want the UVs but the products' 2D templates based off the products' 3D UVs. It's not like Blender in that sense. Sometimes there is so much alike to do between these programs but different I just get lost in a maze of, 'oh, now I remember'. 

Were I ever to use one of the 3D texture painting programs I would need the 3D UVs though. Or actually it doesn't matter - as they've told me (Algorithimic) I have to export in a format they can handle and paint it that way...

So I'm happy with what I've learned so far...thank to everybody.

cjmarsh

To use a 3D painter, like Substance or Blender, you need to have a model with UVs because what you're essentially doing is projecting the color onto the mesh and then transforming it into the UV coordinates of your textures. There isn't actually a difference for 2D and 3D when it comes to the UV set since it is the projection of 3D to 2D basically. It's just the outline of every poly unfolded and pasted onto a square and whatever is in the texture in that square gets mapped to those polys. To paint on the texture directly it helps to actually have those outlines drawn so people often render out a wireframe texture that highlights the edges of the UVs. It's not necessary to paint the textures though, especially if you already know what goes where as in the case of the Genesis base textures.

For the 3D route I recently started playing around with Substance Painter and it is by far the most powerful method of doing it in my opinion. Seeing what it looks like as you paint and the PBR rendering in real-time as well is pretty cool. There is a bit of a setup stage though because of the way Genesis has it's UVs set up. They're lined up in a row, UV 0-1 then 1-2, 2-3, etc. for each texture set. But to be able to work on them in Painter they have to all be in 0-1 so on an .obj of Genesis each of the UV areas have to be moved to the 0-1 space without any wiggle room in translation or they wont line up with the texture. Then optionally you can assign only one material for each UV set so Painter creates only a single texture set for each UV map.

Sounds like a pain, and it can be, but the result is the ability to use things like the stencil brush where you can put up an image of a person's face (from 3DSK for example) and just paint it directly onto Genesis. It's definitely not as easy as that makes it sound but those tools help a lot for the less artistically inclined, such as myself.

nonesuch00

cjmarsh725_c38972a27a said:

To use a 3D painter, like Substance or Blender, you need to have a model with UVs because what you're essentially doing is projecting the color onto the mesh and then transforming it into the UV coordinates of your textures. There isn't actually a difference for 2D and 3D when it comes to the UV set since it is the projection of 3D to 2D basically. It's just the outline of every poly unfolded and pasted onto a square and whatever is in the texture in that square gets mapped to those polys. To paint on the texture directly it helps to actually have those outlines drawn so people often render out a wireframe texture that highlights the edges of the UVs. It's not necessary to paint the textures though, especially if you already know what goes where as in the case of the Genesis base textures.

For the 3D route I recently started playing around with Substance Painter and it is by far the most powerful method of doing it in my opinion. Seeing what it looks like as you paint and the PBR rendering in real-time as well is pretty cool. There is a bit of a setup stage though because of the way Genesis has it's UVs set up. They're lined up in a row, UV 0-1 then 1-2, 2-3, etc. for each texture set. But to be able to work on them in Painter they have to all be in 0-1 so on an .obj of Genesis each of the UV areas have to be moved to the 0-1 space without any wiggle room in translation or they wont line up with the texture. Then optionally you can assign only one material for each UV set so Painter creates only a single texture set for each UV map.

Sounds like a pain, and it can be, but the result is the ability to use things like the stencil brush where you can put up an image of a person's face (from 3DSK for example) and just paint it directly onto Genesis. It's definitely not as easy as that makes it sound but those tools help a lot for the less artistically inclined, such as myself.

Is Substance Painter easier than painting directly on the model in Blender, which is very hard for me?

Also, you say the Genesis UVs but where did you get them? I've looked and asked about them and apparently they are not freely available or did you generate new ones yourself from an exported obj or fbx file?

I have the color coded templates that are generated from the UVs now been given (thanks SnowSultan and SickleYield) but even those don't yet have Genesis 3 Male texture templates. Those texture templates used to be standard issue with every DAZ 3D texture or model.   

mjc1016

Blender has very basic 3D painting tools...yes, the road map includes updates to them, but it will be a while before they have the same toolset as a dedicated 3D paint application.

cjmarsh

I find Substance Painter to be a lot easier but it's really the tools it has that makes it so good: alpha masks, fill layers, smart materials, painting across all pbr channels at once to name a few. A specialized program like Painter, or I would imagine Mari or 3D coat, makes a big difference over a modeling package like Blender or Modo. It would help to have a pen and tablet, that makes painting, and scultping for that matter, a much more pleasant experience. I picked up the cheapest Wacom had to offer a while back and even that worked well, although I'm certainly no expert.

The Genesis UVs are a part of the mesh you can export from DAZ. If you were to open up the model in Blender you could see them there, for example. Since I gather you're just looking for the templates I exported the Male Genesis 3 into EPS (Vector) files here.

nonesuch00

cjmarsh725_c38972a27a said:

I find Substance Painter to be a lot easier but it's really the tools it has that makes it so good: alpha masks, fill layers, smart materials, painting across all pbr channels at once to name a few. A specialized program like Painter, or I would imagine Mari or 3D coat, makes a big difference over a modeling package like Blender or Modo. It would help to have a pen and tablet, that makes painting, and scultping for that matter, a much more pleasant experience. I picked up the cheapest Wacom had to offer a while back and even that worked well, although I'm certainly no expert.

The Genesis UVs are a part of the mesh you can export from DAZ. If you were to open up the model in Blender you could see them there, for example. Since I gather you're just looking for the templates I exported the Male Genesis 3 into EPS (Vector) files here.

Thanks. It's a bit more than I want to do currently to sculpt on DAZ characters so the UVs to create new textures will work fine. I have only ever exported Poser characers as FBX, obj, or dae. What format to you export Genesis to for Blender to get the set of UVs bundled with the mesh? Or are the UVs part of the mesh definition internally when exported as obj or dae?

Toyen

I'd pay for a tutorial that says how to create a skin texture based on photos form start to finish for a daz character in Photoshop : )

The head, body, make up options....I WOULD PAY! : )

cjmarsh

The UVs are a part of the mesh definition and are included along with vertex positions and such. Personally, I had problems exporting from DAZ with anything other than dae (Collada) and any time I tried obj or fbx I kept getting errors in Modo, so if you're getting the same in Blender you might try that.

nonesuch00

Toyen said:

 

cjmarsh - Thanks. I'll use DAE format to create morphs from DS exports too when I get to that point.

AndyGrimm

i still can recommend Mudbox.. for 10USD month it does it all - what you are looking for... and it does it well! 

Tons of tutorials in the net..
sculpting is ok - good..
GREAT layer system for blending morphs -> load all the used morphs from DAZ and blend them in and out -> same as you can do in DAZ.
Supports the rigging ( FBX import) you can move and pose your object while painting
Texturing is easy -> excellent RAM managment..!  (i can load a fully textured genesis with ALL textures /bump and so on and work on it with only 8GB ram! try that with another software.. NO WAY).
Paint also on Flat UV projection !
Support multi UV tiles... NO seems problems!
Grouping selection by UV faces and so on....
Works well together with photoshop (They copy photoshops layer blending modes as example.. see the video below).. if you know photoshop.. you start immediatly to love mudbox for texturing 

Easy to learn! fast results -> the only difficulty is to get a Genesis 2 or 3 100% correct imported.(Which is a problem in all other solutions too!)..  you do this once (tutorial in the forum here)... and you are set .. for 95% of the needed tasks for own characters and textures...   the only stuff which i do outside of mudbox is fibermesh or simple geometry base models...

@Toyen    there is no differenece between projecting phototextures on a Genesis model or any other mesh...  that's how it is done. 

nonesuch00

Wow, didn't realize Mudbox was cheaper than Maya LT. My laptop won't do Mudbox though, I'll have to wait to try it.