I'd love to see some V4 characters with tanlines, I can only find one in the MP right now.

Ideally, what I'd really, really like is a set of "Tan Line Brushes" for photoshop so I can make tanlined versions of my favorite V4 characters... I saw a product like this for V3, but, alas, no V4 version.

I can't ever figure out where the seams are, how things bend, etc. to make this sort of thing myself. 

I think the UV's to these lines were donated to this project, and may become part of a Beta.

:biggrin:

Thank you!  That's awesome!

If anybody else has any "V4 tanline templates" they'd like to share, I'd surely appreciate any.

One-pieces as well as two pieces, I'd like to have some variety, while I'm begging.  :)

Oops !!!

Someone forgot to check the ..."N" Flag so I did it fer ya.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Adamtwaithes a free V4-tan-line template in his free-stuff, It's on his 5th on 6th page of his freestuff area (he is very productive!)

Here's the link:

www.most-digital-creations.com/home.htm

 regards,

Bopperthijs

Thanks Doc.!

A Memeber IM'd me:

"I like the lighting in the image you posted in the poser forum demonstrating tan lines; if you don't mind me asking, what was the application and lighting settings you used?  Thanks."

My reply will be:

The image I posted is a Link, to an other Renderosity Thread.  If you click the image, you will be taken to a thread entitled V4UCFS(bagginsbill's Vicvtoria 4 Very Complicated Figure Shader thread.)  And you will see that bagginsbill rendered that image, to demonstrate a python script he's writting to add realism to V4 skin.

Hi folks.

My lights are free - get them here: Baggins LIghts

Just a note on the tan lines. The way I use them involves just one or two nodes in the material room. This means I can use tan lines, drawn linke a transmap, with any color map, dynamically. You should not be using a tan template to alter your color maps. That's way too much work and lacks flexibility. 

By altering the color of the color map in nodes, you can swap in new color maps or tan maps in any combination at will.

So how to use? It's very simple. Add a Blender node. Connect your color map to both inputs of the Blender. Connect your tan map to the Blending input. Now depending on which way your tan map goes (white on black or black on white) you darken one of the input channel colors on the Blender. You can also make it a bit more red if you want a coppery tan. Run the Blender to your Diffuse_Color or wherever the color map used to go.

Cool as heck on several fronts... I just woke up and saw a buncho replies!

Thanks for the pointer to Adam's template... I will wade once more into his website... he IS very productive!

Mr. Baggins, I truly appreciate your input on shaders... them things mystify me, but I'll give it a shot when I use Poser.... though I honestly use Daz|Studio more these days, so I suppose it's painting on the textures when I'm using that.

Mebbe your suggestion will get me back in the original program some more.

And thanks for adding the "N" flag geep, I've never made a thread that go "multiple advisories" before... makes it seem so edgy!

re: adding the "N" flag ...

No prob ... better safe than sorr ... er, tangling with the TOS police, right? (rhet)  ... ;=]

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Quote -
So how to use? It's very simple. Add a Blender node. Connect your color map to both inputs of the Blender. Connect your tan map to the Blending input. Now depending on which way your tan map goes (white on black or black on white) you darken one of the input channel colors on the Blender. You can also make it a bit more red if you want a coppery tan. Run the Blender to your Diffuse_Color or wherever the color map used to go.

Arg... I've been trying this, and running into complications.  I got it all set up like you said, and can sort of get the effect I'm looking for, BUT...

If I use a "black on white" tan map, then darkening Input 1 on the blender node darkens the whole image, and puts a black tanline on the texture.  No good.  Darkening input 2 leaves the bikini area alone, but darkens the rest of the skin... which is pretty close to what I want, BUT... then I'm gonna have to go and darken the rest of the material zones to match the darkened skin.

What I'd like to do is lighten the bikini area and leave the rest of the skin alone.

So I inverted the tan map, and gave that a shot... didn't work, either.  Darkening input 1 now does what darkening input 2 did when I had the original map, it leaves the bikini area alone, but darkens the rest of the skin.  Darkening input 2 now leaves the rest of the skin alone, but darkens the area I wish to lighten up.

Is there a way to invert this, so I can lighten just the areas covered by the map, instead of darkening them, or darkening the rest of the skin?

Sorry for noobish questions!

Yes there is. This the other approach - lightening instead of darkening.

Use the blender as before, but put white back on both input channels.

Now, for the input that is for the "untanned" skin, insert an HSV node between it and the color map. Connect the color map to that HSV node color input.

Adjust saturation, close to but less than one. Adjust lightness above one.

Voila - lighter, less red skin, where you want it.

That worked like a charm.  Thank you so much!

I'd still love more templates, all I have are the ones in that other thread!

geep - Regards!

bagginsbill - Hello!

Nice to see you both active still!

" I'd still love more templates, all I have are the ones in that other thread!"

As it happens I'm in the process of doing just that, not just for V4 but also for V3, V2 and Posette.
Also making masks for the soles and palms (and possibly other areas) for easier creation of black skins and/or the redder soles and palms that you sometimes get on white complexions. Not to mention the lighter "under the arms/chin" etc areas that don't get exposed so much when a body is tanned naturally.

My progress is very slow, mainly 'cos it's a back-burner project and only gets updated when I need these effects. I use Blacksmith to create a template of where the areas should be ('cos that way I "draw" directly onto the body and B'smith converts those lines to a correctly-mapped template for me) then import the template into PSP to get a more detailed and softer grey-scale mask.

If I ever get to the point (and it's a BIG IF) where I've got enough to make it worthwhile, I intend to make a freebie of them. But don't hold your breath...

I'm only posting this to give some slight encouragement to anyone else who might want to try the same approach - it works:-)

Cheers,
Diolma

I've never heard of this "Blacksmith" of which you speak... Is it a free program?  Is is somewhat similar to DeepPaint?  I've always wanted DeepPaint, but the price tag has always been out of my range.

Attached Link: http://www.blacksmith3d.com/

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Blacksmith 3D Paint is free and lets you paint directly on an OBJ. Your brush strokes go onto the UV mapped images, even as you draw across boundaries that span different color maps. So you NEVER have to deal with lining up seams.

But the free version only supports 1024x1024 maps. But that is still pretty good for many uses, and you can do as diolma said, taking the basic template into another program afterward.

I made the tan lines for my V4 that way, then did postwork to soften them in Photoshop.

This totally rocks! Thank you everybody.

So, I'm thinking I can probably use this "blend node" to apply tattoos to just about any V4 interchangably, if I plugged in what I would think of as an alpha map into the blend node of the blender, and the tattoo's image in one of the input nodes.... this is totally off the tanlines subject, but am I on the right track here?

EDIT: And hows about displacement?  What if I wanted the tat to stick out just a little bit above the rest of the skin?  Is there a way I can go about doing that?

Yup, you're on the right (non-tan) lines:-))
Suggest you try playing with the blender node to get a feel for it. Start with 2 distinct colours in the blender, a blending value of 1 and a totally BLACK and WHITE (no greyscale) image plugged into the blending value. Then plug different textures into the colour nodes. Play with varying the blending value. Try a greyscale image (all the above probably best done using a 1-sided square on a wet Sunday afternoon..)

You can use the same mask to create displacement. Just run a line from the mask to the disp. input. If the displacement goes the wrong way, negate the mask by running through a math node (subtract the mask from 1.0) before plugging into the displacement.

Cheers,
Diolma

Thank you for all the tips, I'll try this stuff out tonight.  These nodes are very cool, guess I'll be using Poser once more!