In P4 in materials, choose the body parts and on each one there should be a slider for bump strength. Just slide it down a ways and see how it looks in another test render. Make sure to make it even throughout, each slider down to say 50 percent, if not good enough, then to 25 so on so fourth for each of the body map parts in the pulldown.

I use jessi heavily. Granted, my limitations for her are the lack of add ons and different textures for her available. However, i've now started painting my own "over" her after she's rendered. I think of the myriad of female characters, shes about the best. You really have to play with her body to take away the "fantasy boris volejo" look to her. I think her best asset is the realistic shoulders and correctly proportionate arms, that vic3 is sorely lacking

For my poster prints (up to 24x36) I always use a base dpi of 300 when creating the image. Most print shops want psd format, jpg seems to give lesser results. You would have to check with the print house you are using. If using your own printer, check the manual.

Hair can be a difficult and frustrating thing to paint the first few tries, and if you are new to photoshop at all, some of the lingo can be confusing.

First thing, open your picture you want to paint hair on in photoshop. On the top bar, select layers, then new layer (not duplicate). This puts a transparent layer over your picture, and this way, if you mess up, you can delete that layer off and try again, without messing up your original painting.

Rule #2 save often! LOL I too have something i like but forget to save and keep going, mess it up and the undo doesnt go far enough back.

After that, there's a lot of ways to go about it. I can give you the basics and from there, play around until you find a way that works for you.

Use a brush in a size that you can work with, but not too large, and using the "midtone" of the hair color you want (for black, a dark grey, blonde a medium wheat color, red a medium red and so on) and paint the "shape" of the hair, making a base.

Once you have the shape, go to your top bar, filters, blur, and choose gaussian blur. Slide the bar to see the effects, it softens the edge of the "helmet hair" you just created. Once "softened" up, go to layers, create new layer, duplicate layer. (this way as you paint, if you dont like it you delete the duplicate, and still have your base there as you started with).

From there, use a 1 pixel brush, in a color a few shades lighter than the base, and start painting strands. It will take hundreds of strands, keep doing this, in various shades of your color, lighter, darker, and so on over the figure. If at any time it seems choppy, or too "fake" try the filters, blur , gaussian, and silde it just a touch to make it a bit smoother. After smoothing, paint more hair strands.

From there, you can play with different effects, such as using dodge and burn for highlights and shadows with different sized brushes, the eraser to soften or clean up the edges, and the smear function, to pull out ends, or smooth harsh looking strands.

I hope this helps! **forgot to add! If the hair isnt the right color you want, you dont need to repaint it. Use the adjustements on the top bar, and play with hue/saturation to change color, as well as darken it up, lighten it or change color!

Message edited on: 11/11/2005 13:38

Have you tried them at all in PS7? I've made brushes in CS and have been able to use them in either CS or PS7. I don't know of a program that would translate them if that doesnt work.

excellent, just what i was looking for!

if using a male, i go for the v3 male. M3, though there's clothes and textures for him, his shoulders just kill it for me. They are the most unnaturalistic rubber things i've ever seen. David's okay, more realistic, but not as flexible as the v3 male. To me the advantages of v3 male are the face injections, that the others just dont have! Nordic, celtic, french to name a few. No one really notices in a picture that the body under clothes is the same or not, but the face? LOL.... faces are very personal. The "dainty hands" which i can totally relate, i fix simply with ye ol dial of "scale", makes a big difference in scaling the hand and finger joints

You might try the v3 male pack. Those are generally the most realistic looking male hands (the v3 male texture even has some veins in it)

Wacom Tablet is the way to go. I use the cordless mouse though, for use in P6. The tablet pen is most useful for painting in photoshop and other programs. Once you get the hang of it, you'll never paint with a mouse again. Just easier to use the mouse in P6, IMHO. But you could use either, both work. Definately worth it

I have two friends, Renee and Russ... haven't heard from them. They live in Mississippi.. I don't know if they are still alive, no one has heard from them. This is terrible.

No problems with P6 from the word go, and still haven't dl/ed the SR1. Many of the problems i see are from conflicting program errors, or running P6 on a machine that seems awesome but wasn't intended for computer graphics of any kind, especially the 3D type. Just make sure P6 is the prodominant program running first off. It happens, where i got a thousand programs running while using P6, though i dont have problems, i did with P4, would lock up if i so much breathed on my old comp just to check the time LOL.

IMHO, I don't like the hair room, and now forget it is even there. Oddly, it was the promise of the hair room that prompted me to buy P6. I find i get better and less frustrating results hand painting hair.

chuckles Congradulations on over 1000 views. Clicking the link, I cant say i'm terribly suprized. You can quote me here, its probably my jealousy as my classical fully dressed images barely break 400 veiws and heaven forbid more than 12 comments (eghads!). Your work is lovely of course, regardless of the .... ahem... assets involved, but most likely that many views are from such assets. Makes me wanna take my classical paintings and have the chicks have their assets pop out of a corset or something to drum up interest LOL

Pronounced "Tea-Are-E"

Start with a pre-made pose closest to the finished pose you would like your character to have, and then tinker. Often, if too many poses are applied one after the other, or you pose with something different after tinkering around, often Vickie will look like a contortionist. If that happens go to joint editor and zero pose, that will undo all you've done for a fresh pose. Hope that helps