New Method to add a Tattoo across Seams
Melissa Conway
Posts: 590
As anyone who’s ever tried to place a tattoo in the center of a figure’s back knows, it’s not a simple process. This new method I developed isn’t a one-click solution by far, but I thought I’d share it because for me at least, it solves the problem nicely. It involves creating a new UV map for a DAZ Studio figure and applying it to a geoshell.
In addition to DAZ Studio, you’ll need ZBrush – or software that can produce UV maps in a controlled manner (in which you can dictate where the seams are placed), and an image editing program like Photoshop. You will also need an image for your tattoo, which should be a .png file with a transparent background.
Step-by-step:
Open Studio and load a figure.
In the Parameters pane, change the figure’s Resolution Level to Base and Subdivision Level to 0.
If the figure loads with eyelashes or facial hair, turn that visibility off in the Scene tab by clicking the little eye symbol next to it. You want nothing visible in your scene other than the base figure.
With the figure selected in the scene tab, choose File, Export, and navigate to where you’d like to save this project’s files.
Name the file BaseFigure or something similar and click Save.
The Object Export Options box will pop up.
Under “Convert from DAZ Studio” click on the To dropdown and choose DAZ Studio (1 unit = 1 cm). The other options should be left as default. Click Accept.
Open ZBrush. Under Tool, click Import. Navigate to your saved BaseFigure .obj file and open it. Click and drag in the workspace to create your figure.
Click the Edit button, and the Frame button (tip: ZB can be squirrelly. If your figure ever disappears out of the workspace, the Frame button will find it for you!)
Click to open the ZPlugin toolbar. Grab the little symbol in the top left corner and drag to the right to dock it.
Click to open UV Master.
Click Work on Clone. A white “clone” of your figure will appear.
Click Check Seams. You will see orange lines indicating the current UV map’s seams.
Click Enable Control Painting, and then click Protect.
Click in the workspace and drag to rotate your figure, and then, ensuring that Protect is still activated (in my experience it kept shutting itself off), click on your figure to paint a red area that the program will “protect” from a seam being created in the new UV. In our case, we are protecting the figure’s back, so we’ll want to paint the entire back red.
Click Unwrap. You will see your new seams appear (if you don’t, be sure Check Seams is still selected).
Click Copy UVs.
Since we’ve been working on a clone, we’ll need to go back to our original figure. Under Tool, you’ll see some thumbnails of your figure. The one with CL in front of the name is the clone. Click on the original.
Under UV Master, click Paste UVs.
Under Tool, click Export. Name your .obj and click Save.
Under UV Map, choose 4096 as your map size.
Under Texture Map, click in the blank thumbnail to open the flyout, and then choose a texture. It doesn’t matter what you choose because this won’t show in the final.
Click New from UV Check, and then Clone Txtr.
You will see a grey UV map appear in the left-hand toolbar under Texture. Click the Texture thumbnail to open a flyout. At the bottom, click Export. Navigate to your project files. Name the file NewUV or something similar and choose the .png file format. Click Save. In the Export Image box, click OK.
Open the saved UV map in an image editing program like Photoshop. Chances are, it’ll be a mess, but that doesn’t matter because our only goal was to create a map that spans the figure’s back.
In Photoshop under Layers, right click on the Background and choose Layer from Background. Click OK.
Open the .png image file for the tattoo you plan on using and drag and drop that layer over onto your UV map file. Note: although the color white *can* be used in tattoos, it isn’t standard because it tends to fade from skin. If your image has white in it, or gradient/white colors, or gradient grey, it won’t look realistic. See * below for my method of producing a black and white dragon tattoo from a Studio render using Filter Forge if you own that software.
Size and position the tattoo over the area that represents your figure’s back.
Hide the UV map layer.
Click to create a new layer, and then drag it behind your tattoo image. Using Paint Bucket, fill the layer with pure black.
Choose File, Save As, name it TattooDiffuse or similar, and save as a .jpg.
Click on the layer with your tattoo image. Right click and create a duplicate layer. Hide the original. With the duplicate layer selected, choose Image, Adjustments, Black & White. Then choose Image, Adjustments, Invert. Choose File, Save As, and name it TattooOpacity or similar. With the black background still visible, save as a .jpg.
In DAZ Studio, select your figure in the Surfaces tab. Right click on the tab and choose Load UV Set. Navigate to the NewUV .obj you exported out of ZBrush and choose Open. Name it NewUV or something similar and choose OK.
With your figure selected in the Scene tab, click on Create, New Geometry Shell. Name it and click Accept.
Select the Geometry Shell in the Surface tab, apply the Iray Uber Shader, and then change Glossy Reflectivity to zero. Scroll down to UV Set and click to open the dropdown. You will see your saved NewUV set. Choose it.
Still in the Surfaces tab, select Torso. Click the dropdown arrow next to Diffuse, browse to your saved TattooDiffuse file and apply it.
Note: if the result looks skewed or appears in the wrong place, you may have to go back into Photoshop and rotate your UV set. To do that, click Image, Image Rotation, Flip Canvas Vertical. Resave with a different name from the previous diffuse file (Studio doesn’t always recognize image files that have been changed under the same name), and don’t forget to rotate your opacity image as well.
Still in the Surfaces tab with Torso selected, click the dropdown arrow next to Cutout Opacity and browse to your saved TattooOpacity file and apply it. (In my example, I also applied the tattoo to the Geometry Shell’s arms.)
Select the remaining Geometry Shell surfaces and set Cutout Opacity to zero.
That’s it.
Hope this was helpful.
*Creating a black dragon Tattoo with Filter Forge:
In DAZ Studio, pose the DAZ Dragon III and render as a .png with no background. Open the .png in Photoshop. Click Image, Adjustments, Black and White, leave the defaults, click OK. Click to create a new layer, and then drag it behind the dragon image. Using Paint Bucket, fill the layer with pure white. Click Layer, Merge Visible. With the layer selected, click Filter, and choose Filter Forge. In Filter Forge, click on Filter Library: Download More Filters. Search for a filter called “Extract Transparency” (a brilliant filter by Jens Elstner) and open. Click Apply. In Photoshop, your dragon image has had all white/grey pixels removed. Click Image, Adjustments, Invert. Click to create another new layer, and again, drag it behind the dragon image. Using Paint Bucket, fill the layer with pure black. Click File, Save As, and save as a .jpg. This is an opacity map, which is all you will need. In the above method, instead of applying a diffuse map, you change the diffuse color to black, and simply apply the opacity file in Cutout Opacity.
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Comments
Or if you use photoshop with 3d (cs5 extended or higher i think?) you can import g8f/m, rotate it around to see the back make a new layer in your 3D view put your tattoo on it and merge down. I have been doing back tatts like that for years. There are alot of videos on youtube showing how to use the 3d features of photoshop. Its useful for painting makeups, tattoos, some textures for clolthing or other things.
Thank you @melissaconway and @silver for such great info. There’s so much I want to try now I’ve read this. I don’t have ZBrush or Filterforge but I do have Photoshop.
Speaking of seams and tattoos, is there a way to bake iray decals to the skin texture and save it for later use?
Didn't know about that. Definitely giving it a try.
I generally use Blacksmith 3D, myself. :)
can't you just paint the tattoo across the seam in Zbrush anyway?
import as a png with an alpha channel
subdivide your mesh load the textures and do polypaint from texture
load it the tatoo image on your polypaint brush and use the stroke with the box with an arrow in it to zoom and rotate it to size
then do texture from polypaint and export it
For those with Photoshop, this sounds like a great option. Out of all my searching the forums for information on how to make a back tattoo across seams, this is the first mention of using Photoshop 3D I've seen. Thanks.
I think you can, but I wanted to use an existing image, not paint freehand.
I don't know how others might do this, but I'd just layer the decal over the skin texture in Photoshop and save as.
Projection paint in Photoshop is what I've always used for doing things across any seam. ZBrush also allows projection painting of existing images, but you need to up the subD a lot to get a detailed transfer. Also Blacksmith can do projection painting... but...
This is really kind of an amazing solution. Even with projection painting, you have the possibility of seams and you have to go in and futz, and if your texture compression is higher in rendering (for speed or whatnot), you can get some wicked seams there. Using a geoshell like this is really a great solution. Once you've saved the UV you can use it over and over too. I'm really kind of loving this idea :D
Thanks so much for the encouragement! Maybe with this method, some enterprising PA could create a product of alternative UVs for all the DAZ figures, and sell them for people to apply their own tattoos/what-have-yous to geoshells. A lot of folks out there can't afford programs like ZBrush or Photoshop, etc.
I tried it in Photoshop but the tattoo isn't HD at the end the texture is blur, it requires more work in order to improve the quality.
I think the result is better with Decals in Daz Studio.
I agree that decals are great, but unless I'm wrong, they won't stay fixed in the same exact position if you need multiple renders of a figure in different poses. At least in my experiments they didn't...
You should be able to projection paint something like this in Blender too. It will paint across seams, and with a little bit of planning and setup you should even be able to paint across different surfaces. You could just stamp your tattoo image right on - no need to hand paint it.
You can do it in Carrara too, but AFAIK only with Genesis 2 and earlier figures.
@DarwinsMishap, are there any other good reasons to use Blacksmith 3D? I'm not trolling: I've looked at ads for the product several times, but so far I just can't grasp what advantages it would offer.
Exactly what Silver said, @Inkubo. It's very useful to me to projection paint skin textures from photos, I use it as well to make my black out tattoos as well as some of the make up and body paint layers I use in my LIE settings for products. The seam fixing, however, made it invaluable to me.
Yup. Seams. I use it to fix all the seams.
I recently read what you posted a couple of years ago "New Method to add a tattoo across seams." I was able to follow every step but i keep getting stuck at one spot. At one point you say the following:
"You will see a grey UV map appear in the left-hand toolbar under Texture. Click the Texture thumbnail to open a flyout. At the bottom, click Export. Navigate to your project files. Name the file NewUV or something similar and choose the .png file format. Click Save. In the Export Image box, click OK."
The part I'm stuck on is the very last part "In the Export Image box, click OK". After I follow theses instructions to save as NewUV.png there is no "Export Image" box for me to click ok. Can you explain this step or what I might possibly have missed in understanding.
Thanks so much!!!
I've tried Photoshop 3D, however I couldn't get the view to blow up large enough without distortion. Not sure if there's a way around that. I've been able to use Mudbox to do the same thing, and with that I'm able to zoom in as large as I want and the view holds up to be able to manipulate tiny detail.
*edit* I just realized this is a necro post. Oh well, haha.
Sorry about any confusion. It's been awhile since I made this tutorial, so I had to run through the steps to figure out what I meant. LOL Anyhoo, when you click Export to save your .png THAT BOX is the Export Image box. If you look at the upper left corner, you'll see its title. I didn't get an option to click OK when I did it this time, so ZBrush may have changed how it's done (or I may have made an error when I wrote the directions).
"I've tried Photoshop 3D, however I couldn't get the view to blow up large enough without distortion. Not sure if there's a way around that. I've been able to use Mudbox to do the same thing, and with that I'm able to zoom in as large as I want and the view holds up to be able to manipulate tiny detail.
*edit* I just realized this is a necro post. Oh well, haha. "
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a. With the 3d obj file open in Photoshop under the Window menu click to check 3D so it's added to the right panels.
b. Under obj mesh (3d materials) click on any one of the selections such as Torso to reveal editing features.
c, In the editing features section below that you'll see Diffuse. Click on the icon right next to it and then select to use New Texture to set the new size such as 4096 x 4096. That will ALSO change the 'loaded' torso layer when you opened the 3D file to rename as Torso - Diffuse.
d. Now when you merge the new texture layer down into the other open map layers the merged image will be 4096 x 4096 on the Torso map when you save out as a png.