Hello there,

Title says it all really ! Any link would be great, be it freebies or from merchants.

I'm supposing the vein maps, if they exist, must be added as a bump or displacement map ? Same thing for freckles on face or  body ?

Thanks for any help

Lunedust

Freckles are easy- in PS use the burn dodge on the paint brush. Just tap the mouse key as desired  :)

There are a few products that have vein maps. They usually have to be added to the bump or displacement area.

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=4413&cat=

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=3854&cat=

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=4218&cat=

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=1647&cat=

Attached Link: http://trekkiegrrrl.dk/tex3.htm

I thought there was a free vein pack... TrekkieGrrrl or ..... ? Yup, it's on page 3 of her freebie pages.  Link provided above.

12/10/07

Lunedust:

Here are three more products that have vein-bump maps.

HyperREAL© for M3
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=34986

Carlos Forte for Daz3D Michael3, Freak and David3
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=29297

Jan for David + Michael 3
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=31732

Vein maps for the male and female figures are sorely lacking. If anyone knows of more, I would appreciate hearing about them.

LMK

Shame on you Geoegress, this is the POSER forum :) And I'm lazy, trying to do all in Poser, no post-work heh. Actually I'm also relunctunt to load up a memory hog like PS, even if I close it afterwards, I'm never sure all the RAM is given back unless I reboot. 

Another reason is I save my renders as jpgs usually, and that means compression (75%) and loss of data. If I use the image in Photoshop and save it again as jpg, that's a second compression and loss. I'm a bit relunctant to do that also, I would need to planify more and save the pictures uncompressed I suppose. Bit of a hassle.

I read somewhere that there was a mathematical way to do random freckles in Poser but can't seem to find that info anymore.

Anyway thanks to everyone for the links, you're really all vey helpful, nice community here :)

Lunedust

Ya do it to the Texture map it self. THEN apply to the character,  It's still all done in poser. Not post work.

Indeed Geoegress, I made a few "second skins" using that method. 

The thing is I was hoping for a way to add freckles to any skin I choose to use, without having made "freckle versions" before, using random points. I think Baggins or BagginsBill or someone with a similar name made a script to do that sort of thing.

I suppose the problem for me really is that there are so many possible ways to do things, and I'm not organised enough, so I try to find the easiest road without having to plan ahead too much. The moment I think, hmm I'd like to add some freckles to the skin of this character I rendered, all the rest is done and it would take a while to load up PS, find the skin file and open it, add the freckles to skin texture I was using, save with new name, return to Poser, select in material room the new skin, re-render again, notice the freckles don't come out the way I wanted, so go back to PS again etc etc. (and using most RAM memory, slowing everything down ...)

But the method you propose is sound, no doubt there, especially if you plan well in advance. I just wish for magic buttons I suppose :)

Lunedust

AtlantiStyle's latest character release, Andre 2.0/Basile for M3 has a really nice vien displacement map. You turn on displacement when rendering and it looks great.
It's a bit of an expensive character set though.

http://derektseng.net/atlantistyle/atlantistyle_store/index.htm

Hi folks. Lunedust, I got your PM. Sorry I took so long to answer - I have a lot going on at the moment.

So I've put together a little demonstration for freckles. I'll be posting a number of images. No questions, please, until I say I'm done. I have quite a bit of writing to do.

Under "3D Textures" we have quite a few nodes that create interesting patterns, based on various mathematical models of noise. The one that interests us for this problem is the Spots node.

I find it best to learn how these nodes work by attaching them to a one-sided square, or a sphere, and messing with the parameters and doing test renders. Try that now yourself. Load a one-sided square, open the material, and add a Spots node, connected to the Diffuse_Color.

The spots node has two color parameters - the Base_Color and the Spot_Color. Change those to different colors and examine the results. Basically the math creates an interesting-shaped gradient, which is then used to blend between the two colors.

While it is possible to do freckles directly in the Spots node, I prefer to work with a separate Blender node, driven by the Spots. You'll see why later. So you want Base_Color = BLACK (RGB 0,0,0) and Spot_Color = WHITE (RGB 255, 255, 255).

The next parameter is the Spot_Size. This is the overall scale of the pattern, and is quite predictably. Vary the Spot_Size and do test renders. Try setting it really small. When the value gets small enough, the spots devolve to speckles and look like pure noise. Also, the preview in the node pretty much disappears. Don't worry, the spots are still there. Do renders to see the final outcome.

Go back to a bigger Spot_Size, now, so you can easily see the details changed by the remaining parameters.

The Softness causes the spots to have fuzzy edges. The Threshold adjusts the balance between how much is mapped to Base_Color versus Spot_Color. In practice, when you change one, you generally have to change the other to keep the ratio in the same balance. This is unfortunate, but we have to live with it.

The next parameter is the Global_Coordinates parameter. What this does is very simple. The underlying math is evolving the pattern based on the local coordinates of the geometry. In other words, regardless of how you scale or rotate the geometry, the pattern will cover the geometry in the same way. If you enable Global_Coordinates, then Poser will use coordinates from the geometry after it has been scaled, rotated, and translated. We don't want to use this here, so leave it off.

The last parameter is Noise_Type - Original or Improved. Somewhere along the development of Poser, they added improved "noise" functions. The original suffers from some drawbacks resulting in visible repeating patterns. We usually don't want the original method except for backward compatibility with old shaders, so you should generally set this to Improved. However, experiment as you like, and sometimes you might just like the original patterns better.

Because the Softness and Threshold parameters are tricky, I'll give you a chart that you can use to visualize what they do and help pick a starting point for your work.

From left to right I'm varying the Softness. The far left is 0, the far right is 1. In between are .1, .2, .3, .4, .5, .6, .7, .8, and .9. So to read out a particular softness, count from the left 0, 1, 2, 3 and then divide by ten.

From bottom to op I'm varying the Threshold. The bottom is 0, the top is 1. In between are .1, .2, .3, .4, etc. So to read out a particular Threshold, count from the bottom, 0, 1, 2, 3, and then divide by ten.

This chart is using the Original Noise_Type.

I'll be using this type, so study this chart closely. (Click to see it full size.)

The chart sample I like best for freckles is the one that is in the 5th column from the left and the 7th row from the bottom. So counting across thats 0,1,2,3 ,4 and counting from the bottom that's 0,1,2,3,4,5, 6. So I want Softness = .4, Threshold = .6. Keep that in mind. Of course, you are free to try other values, and for different situations you may want to vary from that. 

Don't think they have to be multiples of .1 - I'm just using that as an example. The value can be .424 and .603 or whatever. In fact the values can be greater 1 - experiment to see what you get.

Well, there is a lot more to realistic skin than some freckles. But rather than complicate everything with a discussion of subsurface scattering and other effects, we'll keep things simple.

I'll start with this really basic skin shader. I would never use the color map directly in Diffuse_Color like this, because it is far too simplistic to be real. But let's work with this for now.

I've loaded up my V3 and set up the shader with color map, bump map, and a little bit of generic specular. Do the same with your figure. Doesn't have to be V3. Any figure will work.

It doesn't matter which color map you use either. Just pick one and use it for your experiments, learning how to do this by following along with me.

Connect Blending to your Spots.

Set the Input_2 color to RGB 235, 222, 173. (A pale yellow.) You can play with this color later, but try mine for now. What this is doing is multiplying the color map with that color. When you multiply a color map with a single color like this, it effectively stains it, just like a wood stain on wood. 

Now because the Blender is following instructions from the Spots, there are places where the color map is multiplied with white, and others multiplied (stained) with the pale yellow, and still others that are blended between the two. So we get a pattern of staining that follows the pattern of the Spots. FRECKLES!

The reason this works is because numerically white is the same as one (1.0) - and if you remember any math at all, you'll remember that x times 1 is just x. So staining white makes no change.

Try different colors to get used to what happens with different stains.

But we can decrease it overall quite easily. The number in the Blender.Blending input is multiplied with the Spots. If we lower it, the maximum staining will be lowered in proportion.

Here I changed the Blending value to .7 instead of 1. So the maximum stain factor is now 70% instead of 100%. I get more subtle freckles this way.

Any time you want to decrease the strength of the freckle staining effect, adjust that number. Pretty simple, eh?

We need to add one more thing to give us some variation in the amount of freckles.

One very easy way to do this is with another control map. I call this the freckle map. You're probably familiar with transparency maps (aka transmaps). This works the same way.

If you're using V3 like me, you can use my freckle map, attached to this posting. Save it to your hard drive and keep an eye on where you put it, so you can load it into Poser.

If you're not using V3, you'll have to make your own. This is pretty easy. Just open your head texture in Photoshop or whatever. Add a new layer and make it partially transparent so you can see through it. Fill with black. Then draw white where you want maximum freckles, such as forehead, nose, cheeks, and chin pad below the mouth. Blur it so the edges are smooth. Hide the color map and save your new freckle map.

Now, the Spot_Color is multiplied with the freckle map. Where the map is 0 (black) you get a 0 for spot color, i.e. no spot. Where the map is 1 (white) you get a full-on spot. In between (the gray areas) it will taper off.

Now render - look - freckles only where you want them!

Open your freckle map parameters and decrease the Texture_Strength. This parameter causes blacks to be less black. So the black becomes a shade of gray, which is a number between 0 and 1. I used .45 strength here.

Looking at the Spots preview, you can see that I have spots everywhere, but the strongest ones are still where the map is white. This render looks the most realistic to me.

So remember, Texture_Strength adjusts the minimum spot level, and the Blender.Blending adjusts the overall level. You now have really good control over the effect without having to ever again open Photoshop.

I'm done.

Questions or comments - go.

Insert another blender as I've done here. Put a dusty pink and a very pale blue in it.

I used RGB 221, 181, 164 for the pink. I used RGB 207, 224, 233 for the blue.

(You can try other nearby colors, of course.)

Connect it to a Specular node like mine. The Specular_Value may need adjustment given your lighting situation.

Bump up your Diffuse_Value to 1.1 or thereabouts.

Now render. Neat huh?

I only did it to the face. You can see the scalp and neck are different because I didn't apply this last bit to those zones, so you can see the difference. Of course you'd want to do this to all the skin zones.

This looks pretty good for only 7 nodes, don't you think?

Even me, not so very bright lol, managed to follow the steps and do one myself (even if I don't always understand exactly the implications of each manipulation, I grasp a lot more than before). Here's the result.

So many thanks again for taking the time to explain it all step by step with illustrations !

Yours gratefully

Lunedust

bagginsbill mentioned how you sometimes had to vary two numeric inputs to keep parts of a pattern in balance. Use math nodes. Math_function Add is where you can control the settings. The default inputs are 1 and 0, and you just change the 1 to whatever you wish. Put the output to the inputs you want to control, set the numerics on the inputs to whatever your starting point is, and away you go. The obvious demo is the Tile node. Vary the size without varying proportions. (This "duh!" moment was brought to you by Antonia T. Tiger. Gave a hoppy Christmas. While using math, don't drink and derive.)