This is not a tutorial so much as a "this is what I did to fix my problem". Use it as a guide or cautionary tale as you wish. My goal was to create damage to the Drone Trooper by Moebius87 and StoneMason. I tried creating a morph target but no joy. Thanks to Ajax who pointed me in the direction of displacement maps. While the results were immediate I had some problems finding all the places I wanted to displace just by looking at the template. While there might be software on the market that facilitates this part of the process, I don't own it. And so, I painted the texture template some garish colors and threw some text on top to see where all the parts landed.

While it seemed fairly intuitive what the parts were it was often misleading. For example, the left "ear" needed damage in the 8 o'clock position but on the template that needed to be painted at the 11 o'clock position. This I found out by seeing where the text was falling on that part.

But some pieces continued to elude me and so I had to refine my garish color map by making smaller ideosynchratic markers. Only by painting and re-rendering until I could narrow down exactly where that piece was could I know where to paint the displacement.

the deatailed map

finally showed the part I was trying to hit

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2426946

Once the places were discovered, I painted the damage as I wanted it, using grey as no change, black as the deepest displace and light grey as a raised surface. This no longer is appropriate in Poser6 as I found out and so I point you to a thread that solved the problem. This is the result of the map and how it is seen in my web comic that can be seen here:

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2455733

This is another great thread recently posted on this subject. Oh, and of course, you can also check out my gallery to see the whole series! : )) Hope this helps someone. http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Yes&Artist=deci6el

Wow it looks really neat! Great effect! As for programs to paint on models directly, I would suggest you took a look at Blacksmith3D. The paint part of that program is meant for exactely that :o) It's not like Bodypaint3D of course, but then again it's much cheaper, too. People often think of Blacksmith as "just" a morphing program, but it's actually a lot more than that. And no, I'm not affiliated with them in any way. I just treated myself to the Suite and have had such a lot of fun with it :o)

Good tip, and what a lot of work; but worth it in the end. UVMapper Pro has a coloured chequer pattern built-in which is meant for this same task, although I admit that it probably wouldn't have been good enough for the level of detail you're looking at there.

Oh great, thanks. I was hoping someone would know what I was talking about. I haven't really looked for these things as I haven't had the ultimate demand but once purchased I'm sure I would love it. Do either of you know if Deep Paint is also part of that breed? thanks again for your info

Deep Paint is indeed one of that breed as well. And once I win the lotto, I'll... *GG* One of the cool things about Blacksmith is that it's fairly cheap, and for the price, it's a great piece of software. Easy to use as well. I've used it recently to make some textures seamless, it's GREAT for that purpose This texture is 100% made in Blacksmith

I should stress that the above pic is a WIP! So there are still some things that aren't perfect on the map...

Excellent, checked it out. You're right, quite reasonable. Thanks for the example. Sorry for the delayed response, I don't think I recieved a "reply to your message on Renderosity" email so I thought the thread had died. Making textures seamless. Yes, I guess it would be near to impossible without something like that. Thanks again.