First of all, hope everyone had a good x-mas. secondly, Just a small question to ask all of those that paint hair/fur in postwork. Ok, this is my FIRST attempt at painting anything like fur/hair in postwork so bear with me. And ignore everything else in the pic..ie background etc..just wanted to kill the white Ok...The question.. When I paint the fur at the rendered image size(twice that of posting size), it seems to look fine, it flows etc, but when I reduce the image, I seem to lose all the detail, and the fur becomes...lifeless! short lengths etc (see image) I was wondering is there a better way to paint it... ie do I use a larger brush when working in twice the size, make my strokes longer, so when I reduce the image the flow of the fur doesn't seem to be lost..? Is there a certain amount of pressure I should use for the smudge brush..? At the mo I'm working in anything from 5%-25% I've seem some fantastic images posted on here where the fur looks superb, it flows.. Any help/advice from you guys/gals would be great, so thanks in advance :) And if anyones interested, the character is made up from Elown/Maia+Morgaine textures..Morph is Elowen all by Blackhearted (RMP)

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Attached Link: http://www.lynescreations.com/photosho.htm

Try this it show you how to brush out the fur. Hugz Joan

Thanks Joan... I'll take a look at it :)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=299401&Start=1&Sectionid=0&Form.Search=Kinouk&Form.C

This is what it looks like. Can't help ya the hair, not very good at it;( Hugz

V.Nice image Joan :) I'll give that tutorial a go and see what I come up with. Thanks for the link. Should be fun when I try and do Hair for the first time LOL

I'll watch for your image! Good luck on the hair! Elowen is my favorite texture. Right now I'm trying to get brave enough to convert her to V3 with uvmaper. Not good at this technical stuff. Joan

Hehe..Good Luck with that Joan.. I picked up Vic3 the other day, not tried her yet. Hopefully my comp will be able to run her ok, just the lack of textures for her that stop me from using her right away. I love Elowen myself, along with Maia+Morgaine..I look forward to seeing if you pull the UV mapping off, I haven't got a clue where to start with doing that Anyway good luck, and hope you have a great new year :)

Spectre3's Rose texture in free stuff is really gorgeous and it works so well with the platinum makeup pak at Daz. Here's a thread with an image. http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1021188

OK this one is a bit of a challange...I can see that there is a nice fur look to the 2d texture map, I downloaded the picture to try out a few ideas, but one that comes to mind is to use the clone tool in photoshop, the heal tool and to select a fur brush I think I got originally from 3d menagerie....that way instead of smearing the original texture map you could actualy paint it out and away without destroying the nice fur look....

If you have Painter 6 and above, you can capture a selection of the fur bit as a gradient, then use that gradient as your color variability setting with the camel hair brush. Use varying levels of opacity and size to get the strokes you want and you can paint in your fuzziness. Also, do this on a seperate layer so you can put a shadow layer in between your hair/fur and the skin. Another brush that works well for furriness is "Hairspray", or the "furry" brush.

Thanks Lululee :) Going to go get it. Joan

Thanks Lorraine..The thing is..the fur on the pic is all painted..Started with Render>Clouds...then Noise..and then smeared to give fur effect...I guess one way of using what you said is, to paint one patch of fur, and then use the clone/heal brush and paint it that way...worth a go I guess

Ok Tried again..Looking a little better I feel..? I followed the tutorial a little (Thanks for the link Joan) Used a different brush, and higher pressure, and painted it at posted size instead of twice..

Ok here is my attempt, I left it a bit rough so you can tell where I am going and what I did....I normally use my tablet so it would be a bit smoother..but hopefully you will find some use for this....

Ah..cool.thanks Lorraine..I'll give that a shot tonight/tomos..see what I can come up with..I see what you mean now about cloning patches..with a bit more work, it would look very realistic So I guess I do it the way I did before, the just keep building up the layers and working on them with smudge/clone etc Yeah, I got a tablet for x-mas..noticed the difference right away..never go back to mouse squeak squeak..and I love the little freckles you put on her face..nice lil touch :D

yes you pick up the fur texture on a variety of brushes, fur is a variation of hair but there is a difficulty getting the impression of the different types of fur...some have deep fluffy fur at the base then longer bigger hairs that are shiny and then long guard hairs...light hits the different hairs differently...so layers is the key. I liked the original pattern on the fur, it was nice...

well the freckles were probably left over from a layer, I did a multiply layer of the whole thing then erased away a lot of it with a large furry type brush...

Looking at them both now I must say I do prefer the orginal pattern, even more so now I've seen your version. It looks a lot more realistic..and losing the back of the hood is something I didn't notice until you posted your version, it looks a lot cleaner and fits better.. The brushes you used..were they all furry types..ie..like hair..I some I picked up, but making them shouldn't be a problem I guess..any advice there? What sort of sizes did you use..and pressures? And thanks for helping me out..this is my first real attempt at serious postwork, you kinda run out of options using the clothes/hair made for poser figures..you can never get them how you ideally vision them.

also I think if you used an eraser and had your number one picture and your number two picture as layers you could get a lot of texture by duplicating layers, using lighting and erasing you would be surprised at how the image starts to build from simpler starts...they begin to transform between the layers...if you dont' like it just delete and redo until you do...:-) have fun...

Normally I don't comment on anything, but lorraine I really like what you have done with the original image.
OK it's not finished yet (and its not your pic) but the fur is starting to live. MikoO this MUST be the answer to you question.

I used some standard brushes that look like a bunch of dots, they come with photoshop, there are different sizes 14, 30 40 etc....they also have some different textures and such...you can vary the brushes in photoshop7; I like painter too which has lots of cool pen things which when reduced down tiny will make some very nice hair variations... I think i have learned that it is not so much the exact realism but to bring the eye to a point where it fills in the blanks...so with fur the edges and the patterns tend to get the old mind headed to the right conclusion....also light will help, when you get your image to a point try using the omni light it really will lighten up the fur around the face and darken the fur toward the back...it tricks the eye into thinking there is more depth to the brush lines....

I agree totally peter..It does look like it's alive! Certainly looks better, my pic or not..BIG thanks lorraine for the help :) hugs

I am certainly glad you find this useful, I learned from others in this community and I hope that I can in some way help out others. It should really only give you some ideas, the best part is what you create!...have fun and I hope you post your progress...

Just got back in, been out all day, so not had chance to try out your advice yet Lorraine, but I will defo post my progress for you to see etc..And thanks again for the help