Attached Link: Composite Texture

For years I've had a hard time, keeping the head and body texture, color brightness and contrast consistent when I modify or create a new one.

I often have to go back and work to not have a line where the head and body join.

It finally dawned on my that there is an easy way to avoid this.

This describes the process in Photoshop.

My body texture is 4000 pixels wide, so I resized my head texture to the same width.

I increased the Canvas size of my body texture to allow space at the top of the canvas.

Now I copied the head texture and paste it in at the top of he body texture.

I leave a small white separation between the two.

Crop off any excess canvas at the top.

Now any change I make in skin tone brightness or contrast applies to both.

If I make the skin tone warmer it applies to both etc.

When I'm done and want to try it out I save the master as Composite Texture XXX.

Now I crop the artwork to just the head, (that's what the separation is for, select the white separation, select inverse, deselect the lower box) and save the head.

Then I use undo to the crop, so I see the full composite again, and crop to just the body and save the body texture.

Apply them in Poser see how they look and then go back and make changes to the composite again.

Repeat until done.

Any changes I make later I do on the composite artwork.

This has worked great for me, and saved a lot of fooling around.

And it makes one convenient file that has both your head and matching body texture together.

Mike

Why not just record a photoshop action on one of the textures? Just record and click play on the individual textures and it will do the exact same thing in half the time.

thinking the same thing... I'm not a "professional" texture artist but I've been using photoshop and actions for quite a while to automate such tasks. Actions are particularly handy for consitency when applying filters or image: adjustments to layers as/into frames for short animations and gifs.

Maybe there is some less obvious reason for the process above?

Iguess if you are just testing and playing around, you dont want to record the thousands of changes and undo.  this method allows you to play around and make mistakes and undo them, redo them etc until you get a final image that you want.

that being said, Ive never used photoshop actions before LOL

I've almost never used Photoshop Actions either and I've been using it since version 2.

About the only place I've used it was to size a bunch of images to the same size.

But that was years ago.

I seldom do things that I need to match, each image is usually unique.

So I just never bothered, but I'll check it out.

When I do this I usually have Poser and Photoshop open side by side and work back and forth.

I do like the idea of having a matching head and body on the same file though.

It makes them easy to keep track of.

Mike

Another option in Photoshop is to use your largest texture, drop the other textures in as seperate layers, and then make colour/levels/exposure changes via 'adjustment layers' (Top menu/Layer/NewAdjustmentLayer etc). These sit on the top level of whatever layers you have in the document. Save as a PSD.

You can continue making changes for as long as you like.

You can also use adjustment layers in combination with layer masks for more control.

When you're happy with the adjustments you can save out each texture layer by layer, making the last one invisible in turn (always leaving the adjustment layers on the top of the stack).

wow, some really great ideas came out of this post!

Quote - ... make colour/levels/exposure changes via 'adjustment layers' (Top menu/Layer/NewAdjustmentLayer etc). These sit on the top level of whatever layers you have in the document. Save as a PSD.

You can continue making changes for as long as you like.

You can also use adjustment layers in combination with layer masks for more control.

Yup, I'm a big fan of this method because of its 'non destructive' nature (ie: the original image isn't permanently altered, it just looks different because of the adjustment layers above it) and its flexibility - the fact that you can go back and re-tweak the settings (including opacity) in any adjustment layer at any time.

You can also drag a stack of adjustment layers from one image file to another (like from a torso tex to a head tex, for example) and they'll have the same effect on the new file.

A useful tip: if you make a selection before you create the adjustment layer, the adjustment will be automatically masked to include/exclude your selection (alt key determines which - I can never remember). So you can have an adjustment layer which gives vicky a tan but doesn't include bikini-line areas or fingernails because you selected those areas first.

An adjustment layer usually affects all layers below it, but it can be made to affect only the first layer below it by alt-clicking on the line between the adjustment layer name and the next layer name down (in the layer name list). This feature can be really handy.

I used to go this way.

These days I put a HSV node in the material room to adjust
Hue
Saturation
Value
of the textures inside Poser.

But when using the trick to assemble the textures, I put them side by side.
A screen is wider then it is high.