Well it breaks my heart lol.

I was looking forward to designing second skin packs for La Femme, unfortunately her SkinTorso material goes all the way up the back of her head to the top. Unless someone has some idea of a workaround? it seems to me second skin bodysuits will not be possible with this figure, as I would want them to leave the user's character textures for face and head intact, like with V4.

You use a mask to define where the cloth covers the skin, and then you blend your shader based on that mask, combining a skin shader with a cloth shader.

In SuperFly this is easily done with a Layer.

The problem is then you can’t see the texture in preview, and I’d need it to work in Firefly

Tee hee - challenge accepted ...

<3

semidieus advanced shaders script used to do the job, but that doesn't seem to be available anymore, so while people with the script installed can still use 2nd skins created for this others can't. Pity, a really useful script.

The quick and easy second skin outfits I built for V4 don’t require a script, just plug n play. Was hoping I could build them the same way since the software hasn’t changed, but “SkinTorso” crawling up the neck and covering the back of the head prevents my strategy nicely =P

Seems like to encourage the most 3rd party content development for La Femme they might have stuck as closely as possible to V4’s material regions. I can change them manually to fix it of course, but then I’d have to include a modified .cr2 and that gets messy.

A modified .cr2 would have other problems I guess.

I think I could modify one of my material creation scripts so that it would add your second skins to an existing shader without breaking it. Such a script could be loaded from the library as a mat pose would. Would you be willing to test this, would you give this a try?

Absolutely. keep me posted!

I just took her torso texture map into GIMP, and in less than 20 minutes I had a workable template. You could do the same with taking her into a program like UV Mapper and exporting her UV map. Marking off the boundaries didn't take me long. Her map does go all the way to the back of her head, but it's fairly easy to mark off where that is on the texture map.

The boundary isn’t the issue it’s the shaders. I would use different shaders for the suit and not include a skin texture for my pack at all, allowing users to have whatever character they want loaded- like they can right now with V4.

I can't wait to see what you guys come up with! I could be happy with 2nd skins the rest of my life.

Anyway, I started dicking around with this as soon as I got her. I tried some stuff in Gimp that I couldn't make work, but I'll just share this render for kicks and giggles.

It's only material applied directly to her skin inside Poser. A solid material would look better because the back is screwed up, but it is what it is. It's also the only render I have saved.

And if you move her hair the back of her head is white hearts on red ?

I actually think the material zones for her are an improvement over V4, the shorts, the legs in one piece, the abs and chest make more sense. But including half her head in “SkinTorso” was an odd choice.

Yup. Hearts on the back of her head. That's when I also discovered that I didn't have the hair fit right to her head. LOL.

I never rendered her from behind before then, I guess. Heh heh. One other thing that occurred to me, though, is that the high neck would be good for a dominatrix outfit, but doing what I did is very plain. No details. Like having zippers or whatever.

I will see if I manage to get a first version of the script ready tomorrow. I know how to do it, I have a start, but I need to work on it a little bit.

I'm sorry, but family and job issues prevented me to put more time in this. I haven't forgotten, I will see when I get to it. Maybe I will post partials here.

So I was thinking I might have a workaround, but I can't seem to get Poser to do what I want. When you apply a MATERIAL that doesn't exist in the object, it's supposed to ask "This material collection contains materials that do not exist, would you like to create them?"

I created two NEW materials on the body of La Femme, and did my armor texture for them, naming them Armor, and ArmorLimbs. Then I saved the material. The problem is, despite the .mt5 having NO materials in common with LF, it is not asking me that question, it just asks "which material would you like to apply this to?"

I was thinking if I could get it to ask to create the NEW materials, since they are already correctly mapped to LF, it would apply the armor textures correctly.

EDIT: on further testing it looks like when poser asks if you would like to create the new material, it doesn't actually create a material at all... you can see it in the materials tab, but if you go to groups it does not exist. Looks like a completely useless feature, unless there is some way by Material collection or MAT pose to CREATE and texture a new material for your figure?

EDIT EDIT: so it looks like material groups are saved specifically to the OBJ, which requires creation of a cr2 every time you make a new material? if that's the case this method is a dud =/

IIRC, a you need a material collection for Poser to ask for the creation of the material.

If you save your material as a single shader, Poser will ask where to put it, no matter where it has been earlier. If you save your materials as a material collection, Poser will create the materials for you. I just checked with the Construct and a material collection from La Femme - the new materials are clearly visible in the material room.