While browsing the whats new selection in the marketplace I came across a package of reference material (which is a bunch of up close photos of areas of the body) - and I wondered if anyone could explain exactly what you do with photo references. Are they the same thing as merchant resources?

Do you copy - or cut an paste it onto a blank V3 template? I'd like to start creating my own textures - but I just don't know where to start.

You generally create a new layer, and fill it with a nice skin color. You may add greater detail to this area if you need it. This provides a background for you to arrange the photographs about the uv map so the nose in the photograph covers the nose on your uv map. It involves using the use of layers, slpicing, and blending until it renders without error. You usually have poser and photoshop open so you can make frequent tests. You need to remove the shadow from areas like the chin, etc. After making a few you'll get the hang of it. I hope someone with a greater grasp stops by to explain.

One way is to start with a  baked normals map, and a map of the wire mesh. The baked normals map with the wire mesh map as an overlay provides a nice way of painting a color map, or merging several photographs as a color map, using skin resources and a painting application, etc. It better shows you where the areas you are texturing lie, which means fewer trips from photoshop, Z-brush, etc to the application you use to render your model. I like to create the displacement, or bump map first in Z-brush and photoshop, and use it in concert with the normal and wire mesh maps.
This is how I do it anyway, but be aware I'm no expert.

Robert Undi's method is a better, more difficult way, and may be found in 3D Artist issues 41-43. Essentially you create a turntable for your camera, place a chair for the model to sit on at its center, and take fifteen photographs from position 1 at 0 degrees (the front view) to position 15 at 90 degrees (the side view). You may do this with the model standing up too, add more frames until you have gone a full 360 degrees around the model.
In photoshop load your 3d models template, and the photographs; place the photographs so  that they overlap each other. After removing shadows in certain areas, and blending the photographs where their edges overlap/meet in photshop you achieve an end result, which looks as though you unwrapped a human. Now you can adjust the map using something like surface suite pro in 3ds max, or photoshop so that it fits your 3d models uv map properly.

The example of an unwrapped baked normals map is from a 3d.sk tutorial.

You can find some images in my gallery:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1262527&member

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1100639&member

On this images you can see how you do it.Hope it will be helpful for you

Ah, so you do take the photos and copy/paste 'em onto the template until they all match up & render perfectly. Seems so simple - yet so complicated.

Yes.That's the way

1. load the template for your character in a paintprogram.(for vic3 or vic4 you can get it for free from DAZ3D) 
2. make the  texture
3. load your texture in the Mat-room to your character

That's all.

It's not so complicated but you need a little bit practice.

May I suggest SnowSultan's templates? They're color coded and have little hints written on them that makes matching areas so much easier. You can find them all in the Free Stuff here.

This is a really interesting thread. Thanks for the info :)

Snow Sultan's templates are a must ... and my favorite tutorial is by btsculptor here in the MP.  The Volume 3 is for unimesh characters and gives a good, solid base to expand from.  I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to do photo-realistic skin textures.

You should also check this thread:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2685101

there is link in there to a terrific tutoturial how to make a skin without any pictures: I think it's a must-read for any skintexturemaker.

regards,

Thijs

What nobocdy has mentioned is that you need to intially save your work as a psd, so that you can make changes as you work, and then re-render in Poser to see how those changes appear on your figure. Anothe issue not addressed, is that photoreference doesn't need to be for ONLY Vic 3 & 4.  I used a cheap web cam to photo my face to make a texture for my dphoadley version of the P4 Male. DPH

Curious if anyone knows how many megapixals is necessary to get decent resolution on  digital photos for textures.  ATM I have access to a 5.0 and 8.0 I think - that enough or do we need to splurge for yet another camera?

Quote - Curious if anyone knows how many megapixals is necessary to get decent resolution on  digital photos for textures.  ATM I have access to a 5.0 and 8.0 I think - that enough or do we need to splurge for yet another camera?

 

Can I have the one you're not using? LOL

Hehe.  Not both mine - One is my daughters = )

"*Curious if anyone knows how many megapixals is necessary to get decent resolution on  digital photos for textures.  ATM I have access to a 5.0 and 8.0 I think - that enough or do we need to splurge for yet another camera?"

*That rather depends on just how detailed you want your resulting texture to be.
Consider:
A 1024x1024 image is just over 1 mega-pixels in size.
A 4000x4000 image takes up 16 Megs.

However, you're probably not going to need 4000x4000 unless you're going for extreme close-up, and anyway the result will be distorted as it gets stretched/squished when applied to the texture.

Use smaller photos, and clone bits over the texture instead (you can clone parts of the original texture in different places on the texture - no-one will ever notice..)

And if you're not doing extreme close-ups, then you don't really need to go down to "pore-level", the detail will be lost in the rendering/anti-aliasing.

The BIG thing to remember is: DON'T USE JPG if the camera has options to save in lossless format (tiff, png etc.). As soon as you save in jpg, detail is lost...

So even your 5.0-meg camera should be good for a few textures at 1000x1000...

Cheers,
Diolma