Do you know where to find really good skin textures for V4?
I know the merchant resources here in the market place already. And I know the turbulence node of  VSS.
Are there more?
Especially:

• Real bump maps (not just the SkinMap.jpg renamed to SkinMap_B.jpg etc.)
• Photoshop layers (especially the eyebrows as an extra layer)
• No baked in specular (or at least specular as an extra layer in Photoshop)
• Frekles and skin imperfections also not baked in but as an extra layer
• Resolution at least 3000 x 3000
• If possible with a license to alter the maps and redistribute them

Maybe there is a site specialized in selling textures?

If there a no ones for V4, are there general ones then? I don't know how to fit textures to a character but in that case I need to learn it.

Could also be high priced ones if only the quality is good.

Thanks alot for your help.

If you want really good raw material, go to 3d.sk

They have a full commercial license to distribute textures.  It's all raw photos though, so you have to do the work from scratch. :) But the material rocks. I've got plenty of their stuff for cloth textures.  It's nice because you pay a monthly fee and you can download like 250 photos per day. Highly recommended. :)

Quote - Do you know where to find really good skin textures for V4?
...

• Photoshop layers (especially the eyebrows as an extra layer)

I've taken to drawing my own eyebrows... they are really quite easy to do, and you can get 3D eyebrows that are much superior to the ones painted on to the face jpg. Plus, you can colour them to suit your hair colour.

Good luck finding skin without burnt-in specular: that's a really hard one. Bagginsbill has a solution to that here on the forums... can't remember which one, but if you do a search on 'specular' with his name, I'm sure you'll find it.

Quote - If there a no ones for V4, are there general ones then? I don't know how to fit textures to a character but in that case I need to learn it.

I don't think i've ever seen any poser texture (V4 or otherwise) that fits even half your criteria. What you're asking is more along the lines of textures for high end apps, and people usually don't sell those. Which means your only option in poser is to make it yourself from photos. Like Grappo2000, I would also recommend 3d.sk for good photo source. I've been a member for a few years and have gotten something like 20GB of texture refs from them, all of it high quality.

But yes, making raw photos into textures is not exactly easy, which is why we have so much dreck in the markets. You'll need to map  stuff to match your UVs, then remove specular/shadows/SSS, then create specular and bump maps using the photos and manual painting. Finally you'll have to paint any auxillary maps like for SSS, makeup, hair or whatever. If you dont have access to a 3D painter, you'll also have to spend a lot of time getting rid of seams and stretching.

If money is not an issue, maybe you should consider just contracting out for a texture set ? It will be expensive, esp if you want exclusive rights, but any professional texture artist can make this for you to your exact specs.

Quote - - Real bump maps (not just the SkinMap.jpg renamed to SkinMap_B.jpg etc.)

• If possible with a license to alter the maps and redistribute them

These two things are not compatible.  Since the bump map is almost always done as a manipulation of the color map, if you change the color map, the bump map is no longer valid - although it is normal for merchant resource texture packs to include both, if you substantially modify the color map then the bump map becomes junk (assuming it made any sense in the first place)

Quote - - Photoshop layers (especially the eyebrows as an extra layer)

• No baked in specular (or at least specular as an extra layer in Photoshop)
• Frekles and skin imperfections also not baked in but as an extra layer

Never seen any of those three features in a texture merchant resource kit that I can recall (meaning, all have eyebrows painted in; none attempt very much to remove specularity from the photo original; freckles are always part of the base texture).

Actually, bump mapping should not really be an emulation of the texture map.  It should be independently created and should include the detailed, subtle textures of wrinkles, folds and veins. 

There are some eyebrow textures floating around although they are predominantly transmaps and color maps.  Robyn's solution sounds much better but work intensive.

Well there is "what should be" and "what is".  Practically all Poser skin textures and bump/specular maps are done by a manipulation of the color map.  If you've ever tried to paint such a thing by hand for the entire body (the only real way you're going to get a good separation of wrinkles/height and specularity from color information) you'll know why you don't see this kind of thing in the marketplaces for $15.

Not looking to get yelled at but - just because everyone here does it, doesn't make it the right thing to do. It just makes it the easiest thing to do.  That said, you can get good results using the easier method, so...whatever.

Dosch Designs has some nice - minimal specular burn - images to use as texture resource but they do not allow redistribution of any kind, including textures created from their sources. 

Why not make a color map and let the bump map do all your work for you in terms of detailing/catching light? That way, you don't need to really worry about things like burnt in specular. I don't know what paint apps you have but it's easy to do this in apps like ZBrush - take a classic airbrush approach to the color map and then create your bump map using ZBrush. You can do your fine wrinkles and pores there pretty darn quick.

I would love to work with somebody who can make good control maps - not detailed feature by feature images, but rather large-scale variation in a type of feature.

Then I would use those control maps (and possibly some pattern maps) to produce a shader that is mostly procedural.

Here's an example - I made a large scale color map, with no detail, just broad strokes of different skin tones. I also made a vein pattern map. This was 15 minutes work in Photoshop starting from nothing - no brushes or anything.

Then using procedurals, I apply various forms of diffuse color variations. The freckles are from a Spots node that could easily be controlled for size and intensity using gray-scale control maps.

The overall bump is just Turbulence.

Individual medium-scale bump features like wrinkles should be drawn as independent bump maps, which I'd combine in the shader.

Small scale bump features besides the turbulence (such as pores) would be handled by a pore pattern map and a control map to show where to apply it.

These maps could be many times smaller (less pixels) than how most Poser artists do things, resulting in a net decrease of memory use.

I think this is a pretty credible skin texture. Somebody with the right tools (ZBrush, DeepPaint, Sculptris, etc.) could make seamless control and pattern maps in very little time. These are the resources you really want. Then they can be combined in lots of interesting ways in a shader.

(Click for full size)

Quote - Not looking to get yelled at but - just because everyone here does it, doesn't make it the right thing to do. It just makes it the easiest thing to do. 

When you look at it in terms of time/profit, it's pretty obvious why this is normal.  You can have two of (fast, cheap, good).

Bagginsbill:

Quote - I think this is a pretty credible skin texture. Somebody with the right tools (ZBrush, DeepPaint, Sculptris, etc.) could make seamless control and pattern maps in very little time.

They could paint one map in very little time, sure.  Then they send it to you, you review it, and offer corrections, then they redo it, send it again, you offer corrections again, and they redo it again.  Repeat for each type of map that you want, because YOU know how each map is supposed to work, but nobody else will.  This is why the many talented texture artists who read this forum (of whom I am not one) do not jump forward to offer this, the various times you've asked for it.  Don't interpret this as being harsh, it's not, I'm just pretty sure this is why you're not getting volunteers.

I often wish Poser had a more  modo like material setup. Don't get me wrong, nodes are the future of 3d (everyone's making the switch it seems), I just find things easier to navigate when stuff is laid out and labeled in a way the average user can interpret.  Makes it way easier to get layered skin effects, which would probably give more folks incentive to try different methods of texturing, since setup wouldn't require a degree. Right now, you have to be a node whiz to really get a handle on what you need to do to get a good pic and it seems to take way more nodes than it should in my opinion (not that that's worth much).

I'm doing lots of research on texturing and modeling methods right now for future characters and I find that I really like the layered skin approach, where it's broken up to color, wrinkles, veins, bumps, specular and sub surface scatter.  I just need more practice with it. Maybe this will be the norm in far distant versions of Poser instead of the popular method used now but you're right PJZ99, most folks don't want to bother and thus the advancement of texturing for Poser gets a little stifled.

BB,
  I do believe what you are working on is the future. I have wondered why you had not done this earlier. With your expertise and technique I believe we could achieve amazing realism.
  I am not sure if I have the skills, but if I knew what you needed maybe i could help.
I do have ZBrush.
cheerio
lululee

Ok I understand, there is more or less nothing ready made available for poser and V4, not for 15$ and also not for more. But what BB wrote seams to be very interesting. Even though pjz99 thinks it might not happen I stayed tuned and hope. After all VSS was also something nobody ever thought would be available.

Oh I'm not saying it won't happen.  I'm saying you aren't likely to get that for free, and you're VERY unlikely to get it for $15 - actually I think the odds of someone doing it for free are better than someone doing it for cheap, and the free item would probably be of higher quality than a cheap one because it'd be someone spending months on it (fast/cheap/good, pick two).

Not months. I think you're making this seem more complicated than it is.

Look - I added three measly nodes to my VSS skin shader. One is a Freckle Map. Two is a Spots. Three is a Blender to connect the two. Plug those into Tint.

I made the shader already - here it is. Now somebody else with actual drawing skills and good tools should be able to make a freckle mask for a figure in 15 minutes. And since they have the shader to test with, I don't need to go back and forth.

I drew the mask in Sculptris in 5 minutes.

Click it so you can see the freckles. They are only where the mask says they should be.

I understand the theory of what you're saying completely, it's not that it's complicated.  It's that you know where you want these maps to go from zero to one (in grayscale) and the texture artist does not.  The texture artist has the technique to paint the maps and you do not (you said it yourself).  Getting those two sets of information coordinated into a finished product will either be slow, or expensive, or bad (unless you're really, really lucky),

Using desaturated color maps is the easy way out and you get what effort you put into it...which is none, it's a sloppy and poor technique.
Game texture artists will often create the final normal map and then add a custom skin pore/texture to the normal map...it's better control.

Quote - I understand the theory of what you're saying completely, it's not that it's complicated.  It's that you know where you want these maps to go from zero to one (in grayscale) and the texture artist does not.  The texture artist has the technique to paint the maps and you do not (you said it yourself).  Getting those two sets of information coordinated into a finished product will either be slow, or expensive, or bad (unless you're really, really lucky),

You must mean that the artist doesn't know what shade of gray to use, not that they don't know where the freckles should be stronger versus weaker or non-existant, right?

And my point is here is the shader. Build a mask, and try it. If it looks too weak, make the mask brighter. If it looks too strong, make the mask darker.

Also, the Blender.Blending value controls the overall strength. I myself did not do a good job with the map intensity, but who cares? I simply increased the strength to 1.5 and it works. The absolute level of the map is not important, as the shader parameters can easily deal with maps of differing maximum luminance. What is important is the overall pattern, and that is something that I expect an "artist" (i.e. somebody who can look at real life and then see the pattern and mimic it in a drawing) should be able to do.

Nobody needs to send me their map for testing. You test it. When you're done and it's perfect, then by definition it's perfect. I'm not involved.

Quote - You must mean that the artist doesn't know what shade of gray to use, not that they don't know where the freckles should be stronger versus weaker or non-existant, right?

Actually I think your idea of this and the texture artist's are not going to match for the first tries at any of these maps, but I am pessimistic - thus, rarely disappointed.  Maybe you should just formally ask for this in a new thread and state exactly what your requirements are, with some blatant title like "Some texture artist help me with some grayscale maps for a new skin shader" and see who steps forward, I'd be very happy to be wrong :)

i have to agree with pjz99.  but i'm also generally pessimistic, too. 

this is what you're basically saying: an artist will paint in distribution and you'll provide a brush that will then fill in according to that distribution and show them the effects of painting from minutes to hours after painting.  can you imagine Photoshop working that way?  my guess is that it will take a good deal of trial and error before the effect is what the artist intended.

If it's really that impressively difficult, then perhaps I should do it and make a lot of money, eh?

well, it's only impressively difficult if you really care.  you wouldn't mind not having that kind of control because, by your own account, you're not an artist.  painting blind when you're not a stickler for an exact look isn't difficult.  and it's not hard, it's just time consuming. 

it's kind of like you saying because someone's painting with a brush on scatter, they don't really need to see what they're doing real time.  or specifically control hue, size, shape, etc.  well, some people won't care at all, some people would go nuts, and most people will fall in the middle. 

edited to add: and whether or not people would like the result is also very personal.  there's a lot of people who would, and a lot of people who'd find the look too automated.  there's a reason people like Stonemason get lots of jobs in the game industry.  and why programs like Zbrush are so popular.

Hmm. Well I was heading towards buying a Cintiq tablet and ZBrush or similar, but I went and but a 46" Sony television last weekend, instead. Heheh.

bagginsbill tell me what kind of mask i should paint and give me some tips what areas should be white.

i will try it out.

Quote - I would love to work with somebody who can make good control maps - not detailed feature by feature images, but rather large-scale variation in a type of feature.

Then I would use those control maps (and possibly some pattern maps) to produce a shader that is mostly procedural.

Here's an example - I made a large scale color map, with no detail, just broad strokes of different skin tones. I also made a vein pattern map. This was 15 minutes work in Photoshop starting from nothing - no brushes or anything.

Then using procedurals, I apply various forms of diffuse color variations. The freckles are from a Spots node that could easily be controlled for size and intensity using gray-scale control maps.

The overall bump is just Turbulence.

Individual medium-scale bump features like wrinkles should be drawn as independent bump maps, which I'd combine in the shader.

Small scale bump features besides the turbulence (such as pores) would be handled by a pore pattern map and a control map to show where to apply it.

These maps could be many times smaller (less pixels) than how most Poser artists do things, resulting in a net decrease of memory use.

I think this is a pretty credible skin texture. Somebody with the right tools (ZBrush, DeepPaint, Sculptris, etc.) could make seamless control and pattern maps in very little time. These are the resources you really want. Then they can be combined in lots of interesting ways in a shader.

(Click for full size)

I've been contemplating this very thing for a long time.  To have a base procedural skin material that you can add details to with various maps.  The skin material would control the skin color etc.  Could you post this material bagginsbill?  I'd love to do tests with freckle maps etc....

zbrush has a lot of B/W alphas for reference. you can use them in zbrush. but you can also use them in photoshop. some are very good for skin and even clothes.
www.pixologic.com/zbrush/downloadcenter/alpha/

they even have textures.
www.pixologic.com/zbrush/downloadcenter/texture/

Vestmann - The shader you see in the skin ball above is one I built in a couple minutes, rendered, and then deleted. When you make shaders every day for 5 years, there isn't any point in keeping them.

However, it was built up using the 3-node building block you see above, where I used the Freckle Mask.

You build a node (or nodes) that produces some effect. You plug that into a Blender, second value. The first value should be what to use when the effect is off.

Then you connect the mask or control map or whatever to the blending value of the Blender.

For two effects, you run them in series. Take the output of the first effect as the base input of the next effect. That's how I made the skin ball. There was the base color going into the first effect. That effect was a small Spots node with some pink spots. The next effect was some veins made with a vein map. The next effect was freckles, which are larger Spots that are orange-yellow.

Quote - > Quote - I understand the theory of what you're saying completely, it's not that it's complicated.  It's that you know where you want these maps to go from zero to one (in grayscale) and the texture artist does not.  The texture artist has the technique to paint the maps and you do not (you said it yourself).  Getting those two sets of information coordinated into a finished product will either be slow, or expensive, or bad (unless you're really, really lucky),

You must mean that the artist doesn't know what shade of gray to use, not that they don't know where the freckles should be stronger versus weaker or non-existant, right?

And my point is here is the shader. Build a mask, and try it. If it looks too weak, make the mask brighter. If it looks too strong, make the mask darker.

Also, the Blender.Blending value controls the overall strength. I myself did not do a good job with the map intensity, but who cares? I simply increased the strength to 1.5 and it works. The absolute level of the map is not important, as the shader parameters can easily deal with maps of differing maximum luminance. What is important is the overall pattern, and that is something that I expect an "artist" (i.e. somebody who can look at real life and then see the pattern and mimic it in a drawing) should be able to do.

Nobody needs to send me their map for testing. You test it. When you're done and it's perfect, then by definition it's perfect. I'm not involved.

If you'd supply a shader with support for various control maps I'd be happy to give it a try.  It's not something I've done but something I´m eager to learn.  I would use Photoshop and maybe Sculptris to paint the maps.

One thing to keep in mind is if you going to be importing your figures, props, etc. into other 3D applications besides Poser. Some of this works great in Poser, but once you import into another application, like say Vue or C4D, you may or may not have the same look since the shaders, nodes, etc. are different.

The best way I found if using another program is to do the tweaking of all the imported mat files and make sure your scene has proper lighting. Lighting is critical to how something looks and you can spend a lot of time on just that. Also, using VERY good high resolution textures is important for realism.

I have been working a LOT with ZBrush 3.5R3 and find that it a very powerful program. Everyone is waiting for version 4 which is due out by the end of September 2010 since that is Pixelogic's 10th anniversary. They are working hard on a fully revamped way of making textures. If you have seen "Mari" then you know what to expect, maybe even more. It will totally revolutionize texture creation.

Mari is not from zbrush.Mari is only a texturing painting program.

did Pixologic realesed any info about texturing in Z4?

> Quote - Vestmann - The shader you see in the skin ball above is one I built in a couple minutes, rendered, and then deleted. When you make shaders every day for 5 years, there isn't any point in keeping them. > > However, it was built up using the 3-node building block you see above, where I used the Freckle Mask. > > You build a node (or nodes) that produces some effect. You plug that into a Blender, second value. The first value should be what to use when the effect is off. > > Then you connect the mask or control map or whatever to the blending value of the Blender. > > For two effects, you run them in series. Take the output of the first effect as the base input of the next effect. That's how I made the skin ball. There was the base color going into the first effect. That effect was a small Spots node with some pink spots. The next effect was some veins made with a vein map. The next effect was freckles, which are larger Spots that are orange-yellow.

Sorry Baggins, I didn't see this post from you.  I've started experimenting with the VSS skin shader (don't know if that's a good idea or not).  

I switched the color map for a diffuse node that's set to a white color and I've started adding nodes to that as well as the PMC:Color Tint node but I'm assuming that is wrong.  I´ll take a better look at my blender nodes and how they are setup.

The problem for me that while I can make control maps I'm still a total newbie when comes to using Poser nodes for veins, freckles etc.

The image above only uses procedural nodes and control maps for the face and lips.  I know it's far from looking good but I´m just testing and learning at the same time.  When I have a better blender node setup it should get better.

Quote - Mari is not from zbrush.Mari is only a texturing painting program.

did Pixologic realesed any info about texturing in Z4?

Yes, I know that, as I was only referring to how ZB 4 will be re-doing their texturing process. No "official" details yet, but I am working with someone that is a master ZB artist and they work with Pixologic very closely. He was even offered a job of writing a detailed ZB learning book, such as the "Missing Manual" guides, which is BADLY needed for all 3D artists starting out. All I know is from the way the programmers have talked with some of their instructors is it will be one of, if not the best methods of texturing, including "layered texturing" processes.ZB knows full well about Mari and is going to come out with something truly great from what I am hearing, with their 10th anniversary.

In short, I can not say much, only that ZB 4 is going to be quite impressive. If you think Mari will be good wait until then and see how they stack up. I will be working with him learning this process in ZB 4 when it is finished.

3DNeo this is a huge tease.

Zbrush always comes up with unique ideas. when you say that they will have the ebst methods of texturing i belive you.

now i need to whait ? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Mari is a new texturing program. but my post has nothing to do with Mari.

they have some models and textures for testing on the Foundry site. those are pro assets that are used for films. and they also have textures.

download and look at the skin textures. they are huge.  you will see what kind of textures they are using for blockbuster movies.  it looks fantastic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGvIL1S4GK4

beta.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari/demo-assets/

interesting, a thread about something I've been toying with for a few years now. Procedural skin that only uses maps for tiny details. It started out as a way to use less memory, necessity being the mother of invention after all. I've been back at it lately, especially after frying my brain on BB's posts here and there. I did create an acid burned zombie-like skin with only ONE map. I'd show you the pic but I'm in the middle of a server turnover so my images are offline right now.

I use and old clunky PC and photoshop btw, but I can still turn out exellent work. You try making dragon skin on V3 with procedurals only, talk about experimenting.

Sorry, rambling again. Asta for now, work calls.

Hey madno2... I'm working on your request, and don't worry it will be free :)

It's textures (3000x3000 each), Layer 1 is the skin (no freckles, or anything just the skin detail that is default for most skin tones)... Layer's 2-7 (or maybe more, don't know yet) have other details (non-baked) like nipples, pub-hair, freckles, zits, etc... And then the last couple layers will be a plain b/w bump layer with (non-baked) details for it. Also a spec map with (non-baked) details too. It may take a day or two to finish though... I'm also gonna add some makeup options and tattoo options...

Another thing, I'm assuming you want the eyes too? Please let me know so I can paint some eyes for ya, and also let me know of your preferences for the eyes, thanks!

Hello Icandy265,

thank you very much for your work. I really appreciate that. I hope a lot of other "posers" will also like it. And it's very generous of you to give it as a freebie. I would also be fine with paying for it, considiering the time you need to invest to make it.
Regarding the eyes. I have not thought about them in detail. But I feel that some of the eyes that come with the character products are ok but look somehow wrong the more realistic the skin/ face becomes. Please don't understand me wrong, alot of them (as well as the skins etc.) are really impressive. But somehow I always think I need to change something a bit. I read the discussion about the eye and shader Bagginsbill made for Antonia (sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/bbeye). I thougt I can try to get those into V4 in some way. Right now I don't know in detail how to do that, but ordered a book about the internals of poser files so that I will understand that later on. My idea is to use that eye. Baggingsbill uses a texture from SaintFox right now. Maybe SaintFox allows me to use and change that for personal use. But I am not really sure about the eye thing at the moment.
What do thing think about the eyes?

There is another part of my trials. It's the hair. And again I have the problem, the more "good" I get the skin (thanks to VSS and all the tips and tricks in this forum) the less "good" the hair looks (not to mention this incredible slow rendering if transparency and IDL is involved). So what I am doing right now is to learn lightwave with the first goal to make a skull cap from scratch (I know I could do it as group in Poser itself, but then I don't have the motivation to learn modeling ;-) That one I would like to use for dynamic hair (why? because of carodan showed it's possible make dynamic hair look good (www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php).

Oh boy,
sorry for this long post. But I had two days of from work and was going through the lighwave training videos all the time. I really had to write this down. Yes I know what you all think "go out and enjoy the sun". I'll do it, but first I want to get at least one render out of Poser that I really like :unsure:

Hmm, okay well let's see, I would feel odd not adding eyes to the pack, because for most Poser peeps out there, eyes are a pain, lol... although I'm not so sure if I should add eyes, because my eyes are good, but not as good as that Antonia one, lol.. so I could include eyes and if you like them you can use them, but if you don't like them then just use a different pair ;)...

And for the hair, I recently made some hair that looked great, but again, not as good as the the pic you showed of dynamic hair... I'm getting there, but not quite yet, lol... But I'm inspired by that picture, so I'm gonna start working on hair projects too, :D... I will finish the resource project first however. I will keep ya updated... and feel free to message me if you have more requests or so on... :D Peace