A way or a good tutorial to color a specific area of body ?

Stan Marty

Hello,

 

I'm trying to color or being able to modify a surface applying to a specific part of the body. These kind of parts aren't isolated like ears, lips or nipples. I would like to add in my case some tooth in gold or reddish wine nose. I've seen things like creating a surface image, geoshell, or even geocrafting. Could someone direct me toward a DAZ functionnality that can do this ?

Thanks !

Richard Haseltine

GeoGraft, not Geocraft - a piece of geoemtry that is grafted onto the main model.

In most cases you would need to create a mask on the base UVs for the model, white where you want the effect fading to black where you want the standard textures. You could then use that with the Layered Image Editor to add extra details on top of the existing maps (the base colour, and perhaps some of the other properties) - that would perhaps be most apt for the nose - or you could use it to control the visibility of a Geometry Shell with its own material - that would probably be the ideal for the gold tooth.

Stan Marty

Thank you for your answer, I tried many thing and LIE is slow and the color kind of blend with the skin instead of superposing. So I gave a try on geoshells which seems to do the job but I still have some issues I don't undersant. Pictures shows more than explanations. I attached nose image and its cutout MAP both created on Gimp.

And with a geoshel with Iray Uber base preset and it's cutout map... tadaaaaa ! The results in the attached images (i'm sure you can find the one with geoshell applied). What am I doing wrong ? The map should show only the pixels of the nose image however they appear whitish and the border is full instead of gradient.

 

Richard Haseltine

What is the cutout opacity value? The maks is multiplied by the base opacity, so if it is light and the opacity is high youn will get a fairly opaque surface. Also don't forget the other surface properties, both here and with using Layered Images, as they can greatly affect the Base colour.

On speed, in Edit>Preferences>Interface (Daz Studio>Preferences>Inetrface for a Mac) there is a slider for Layered texture: Compression - you want it dragged across to favour Speed/Size over Compression (by default it is on the left, favouring compressing the baked version of the layered image over performance).

Stan Marty

I took my time to answer, I was learning other tutorials but didn't progressed on geoshells. Sorry for this, and moreover your advices didn't solved the problem.

The cutout opacity is 1.0, if I turn it toward 0, the white fades but also the red nose.

I tried your advice of changing preferences but it made things worse, nose is almost white / pink. I really don't understand why I can't have my image only applied and why there is this white layer I can get rid of. Here are the parameters of the geoshell.

This link told me to put an opacity map as I did : https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/559726/creating-a-transparent-geoshell-how

 

Again, thank you for the time you took for me !

Richard Haseltine

Does the opacity map match the extent of the overlay? Does it fade out at the edges? If it does, the colour should continue until it is beyond the fading area (so that the reduced opacity section is still the right colour). I would think you would want some skin to show through, so the net opacity (opacity map times value) should probably not be 100% (white)

Stan Marty

Thank you again for helping me despite I have no clue what is going on.
The opacity map is my red nose image but in grey levels, so it is is exactly the same size, the same pixels. What is strange is the geoshell is really brighter than the image of the surface, it should be transparent and only apply the image, not adding "pigments".

I would think you would want some skin to show through, so the net opacity (opacity map times value) should probably not be 100% (white)

I'm not sure I understand this sentence, you advise me to modify my cutout opacity map to make it less white and more grey ?

Stan Marty

After trying other geoshells I think there is a problem : the base color always seems to apply a bit, instead of letting entirely space to the image. there's always a bit pigments of base color applying to the surface instead of the image. If I put it in black or green, I see black or green on the surface. In the case of this thread, the color is white (default). But If I put an image on base color, doesn't RGB base color should completely vanish ?

Stan Marty

Ok I finally found out what's were wrong... As you told me, the cutout opacity wasn't well cut, and has to at least not cover exactly the image but be little bit smaller, to be sure there is no overlap.
Plus, I put transperency on my original image and it was what caused the whitish colors. As you explained it to me, the cutout is the layer that apply transparency, not the original image. So many thanks for putting me on the path to comprehension, and for the time you spent on my problem !

If this can help someone in the future : if you manipulate images on geoshells and want only a specific region to be colored, the opacity map do the job for gradient and transparency. Take a full colored image.

Richard Haseltine

Using the colour map as the opacity map is not going to work that well - you want the colour to spread across the area, then the opacity to fade the amount that is actually applied. I am still not sure why you are getting such strong white - if these are your own maps you could post them here.

Stan Marty

I don't understand what I did wrong but starting again from the beginning with a proper opacity map and colour map, I don't have the problem anymore. Thank you Richard, again.