Skin Texture Seams

rob.glass.42_2b48d8746c

I have been working on my skin shaders for a good bit now (and I am pretty happy with where they are so this is not about creating the shaders themselves). My test renders have all used the Cailin for Victoria 7 by Raiya and I have been noticing that the seams between the various textures are very visible. I have attached a couple images of examples of the offending seams:

    

 

As you should be able to see, there is a dark line that is appearing between the two texture maps. The first images is the seam along the foot while the second is along the arm. I have also gotten the same seam along the thighs and the buttocks. It generally appears when I use a bump map on the top coat to help enhance the bumpy feel of the skin for close-up shots. If I use a normal map over a height map it also became readily apparent.

Is there a good way to remove this. Is it best done post in Photoshop or can I avoid it altogether in the renders.

Thanks for any help and/or advice.

mjc1016

rob.glass.42_2b48d8746c said:

I have been working on my skin shaders for a good bit now (and I am pretty happy with where they are so this is not about creating the shaders themselves). My test renders have all used the Cailin for Victoria 7 by Raiya and I have been noticing that the seams between the various textures are very visible. I have attached a couple images of examples of the offending seams:

    

 It generally appears when I use a bump map on the top coat to help enhance the bumpy feel of the skin for close-up shots. If I use a normal map over a height map it also became readily apparent.

Submit a customer service ticket...the problem is that the maps are not lining up correctly.  I'm guessing that if you opened the normal, diffuse and bump in an image editor and stacked them as layers that the edges won't quite be matching.

DarwinsMishap

I use Blacksmith 3D to fix seams on all of my textures; diffuse, spec, bump, etc.  At times it's needed simply because either the MR didn't have it corrected from jump or the person making the textures didn't notice the changes along the seams in the process of creating.

samurle

Yes, you can fixup seams in Photoshop, without any painting skills or knowledge.

It's best to have the image in a losseless format, like PNG.  If it's in a lossy format like JPG, then the seams may have white or black pixels mixed into them, from the background color.  If that's the case, then it's best to use a 3D painter to paint them away.

But, anyway it doesn't hurt trying.  Go here and download this free Photoshop plugin pack by Flaming Pear:
http://www.flamingpear.com/freebies.html

The plugin you want is called "Solidify B".  Unzip and install it into your Photoshop plugins folder.  Once installed, you should see it under "Filter -> Flaming Pear -> Solidify B".

Steps:
1. Load your texture into Photoshop.

2. Use the magic wand tool to select and delete the texture's background color (usually all black or white), so it's transparent.  
   This is an important step for the plugin to work correctly.

3. Click Filter -> Flaming Pear -> Solidify B.

What this does is fill in the transparent areas with pixels from the seam.  Basically, it expands your seam.  

Note that if your seam is mixed into the background color, this technique may not work as expected.
It's important to have a clean seam without any background color mixed into it.

Maybe you can use the eraser tool to clean up the seam, I don't know.

BTW, if you have the UV template, you can overlay the wireframe ontop of the texture, to see how much padding is between the texture seam and the UV seam.  A good artist should always paint past the UV seam with plenty of overlap.