I'm just starting to experiment with skins/textures in photoshop. Would anyone have any suggestions about applying tattoos over areas where the seams would come together? I smell trouble unless I know what I am doing. This is something I would like to try next.

As long as you have the front a back joining line identified then it is easy, it's the finding the right lines to reference off of.

Somewhere in the free stuff there are texture templates for dork, posette, mike & vic that have color-coded areas to show you exactly where parts line up. I downloaded them a long time ago. If you overlay the appropriate one on a texture you're working on, as a non-editable layer (in Photoshop or whatever), you can line things up pretty easily. Just remember to delete that layer after you have things lined up, & before you do the final save on the file.

Do a Freestuff search on "snowsultan." These things are indispensible!

I found the texture templates with color codes and I think I get the idea! Next I will try them out. Thanks very much for your help.

I think you may find that designs that cross the seams will still appear distorted, even when properly aligned, because of the way the skin UV layouts are unwrapped.

A while back (6mo - 1yr?), someone here, also working with tattoos, suggested using the grouping tool to create a new material specifically for the region of the tattoo when it crossed a seam.

If you searched "tattoo", the thread & how-to might still pop up.

Nance, do you mean this one by penguinisto?http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=540583 A complex way to make them? If so, it looks like something I would have to study and work up to, but thanks! Pause. Actually, though, in a quick reread its seems that Penguinisto suggests that one make a body part and then parent it to the body like an overlayed patch of skin. Maybe I should look again tomorrow.