Help! LIE Tattoo removes skin detail around it.
MelonArts3D
Posts: 56
in The Commons
I have drawn this tattoo for my character but now the skin texture around it changes. Does somebody know why this happens?
I added it as a transparent png with LIE on the base texture and the translucency color.
Can someone help me please?
Tattoo 1.png
1500 x 1950 - 5M
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Comments
It looks like the alpha not 100% near the tattoo.
How did you create the alpha area?
You could try to select the tatoo by color, invert and delete everything, or probably better, create a mask instead of the alpha.
Thanks for the reply.
I'm not really shure what a alpha is. Or what you mean with creating a mask. Sorry I've just started to create my own LIE textures.
I have drawn this with sketchbook on an iPad and exported it as transparent png. Then I've positioned it in GIMP and changed the size of the png to fit the texture. Did i miss something or ist the quality of the png not good enough?
Yes, the mask is not quite black in those areas. Resizing can have an effect close to the transition, but I don't think it would be the issue here. I'm pretty sure GIMP will have a levels filter which you can use to make everything below a certain level black without disturbing the tone-distribution.
So you mean I should select everything to a specific level of black and delete every thing else?
A mask is an black and white image, where black means nothing is comming through and white means everything is coming through.
So you want an image where you tatoo is white and everything else is 100 % black, and then use that as mask for your tatoo.
In the layered image editor you can add a an image and a mask to that.
Thank you that was very well explained! Going to try this.
Problem also is that your tattoo is drawn. Pixels > bitmap > png > gradient transparency.
If you save it as GIF you'll get already less problems as transparency doesn't have gradients. It's 0 or 1. Invisible or visible (i'm not advising GIF for anything, but just saying you wouldn't have this issue with such an image format).
Better solution probably would be to NOT draw that by hand but with vector tools. Or at least vectorize your drawing (Photoshop, Illustrator, some free online webpages do that, etc.) This way you can export a clean pure black vector as PNG in a resolution big enough (4K) that will prevent that kind of alpha issue.
little additional trick, try setting the LIE map with the tattoo to about 80%, do the same on the tranparency colour map, this will give it a stronger impression to be in the skin instead of painted on the skin
I have tried the mask and changing the opacity but this didn't change sonething. Do you think it's the resolution?
I assume you made the mask after you had scaled your image up, so I can't see it being the resolution.
How did you create the mask? It is important that it is 100% black, and not just look black.
It is 100% black I checked it. I have also added the png to the specular and the bump but it's still there. Is this a problem LIE has?
So I have added the tattoo directly onto the skin texture in gimp an there is still the same problem.
I will still mean that it is your image/mask that has a problem.
I created as quick drawning, and added it with LIE and a mask, and I don't see any issues.
Are you willing to share your mask?
ok, hmm when I look closely at your picture I can see the problem there too..
I will draw something new with GIMP this time and try if this works.
What format did you use for the tattoo?
Both the tattoo and the mask is PNG.
I'm pretty sure these are compression artefacts from the IRAY render engine. I did some tests myself with different settings and the attached Test- "Tattoo" as LIE overlay using Blend Mode Multiplicative Blend in the LIE editor.
The first one is with IRAY default render settings in the Advanced tab for Texture compression for Studio 4.20:
Medium Threshold: 512
High Threshold: 1024
The second one is with settings so that for a G8 with textures having 4096x4096 pixels will not be compressed at all:
Medium Threshold: 4097
High Threshold: 8192
This is the difference between the two renders with increased contrast and brightness
This compression is not yet visible in the temporary file the LIE editor generates in the temp directory!
You are right, it is compression artifacts.
If I zoom more in, there start to come similar artifacts. It is probably the transient from light to dark the compression have a hard time with.
That made me think if you could avoid or at least reduce it, if you don't use LIE, but instead the diffuse overlay.
That is much better, there is still a bit, but that is only related to the tattoo and not the skin.
THANK YOU!! This saves me because I have drawn quite some tattoos and redrawing them would have been really annoying. :D
It looks very good with the chaged settings:
This will porbably increase render time of big scenes right?
No, higher image quality will not increase render time, but it will increase VRAM usage.
Consider your scene has 100 images, that now will double or more thier VRAM usage, can push the GPU over the limit so it can't render the scene.
Ah ok, I'll do some testing whats possible with my GPU.