I've seen many an artist create them, but HOW do they do it??? Never seen a tutorial on painting a hi-res texture for Poser characters. Is cloning bits and pieces of photographs into a default texture any way to do it? Does one need a special application to work with templates? I'm completely new to the subject. Any experts, please respond, would be very curious to get tips and guidance.

It depends on who is doing it. You can use pictures, you can use photoshop. A template is good and very useful. Just had to use it to fix the eye texture I did. I think a lot of it is in the bump and coordinating the bump and texture. Not saying this is the best but it is something I did. It is a combination of bump and texture maps. Normally don't do the closeups and all but figured I would try.

Wow Ghost, he's yummy! Nice work.

Wow, that's an awesome texture, Ghostofmacbeth, and with that lighting it positively glows. Great job. Don't be shy, any techniques you can share are appreciated.

Lunaseas .. there is a full body shot int he gallery S And thanks And it mostly a bump thing. What I did witht his one was had a photo that was pretty good to start with. It wasn't symetrical so I flipped it to make sure that it had even lighting versus one side that always was dark even if the light was there. I then added that in a layer to the exhisting Michael map. it was simply easier that way and he had the right skin tone and all. I then resized it and erase certain areas. Continued that a few times. Then I drew on top of it. For the bump I copied the finished thing over in greyscale and built a medium grey background. I pushed a versin of the map to get the whites and didd a lighten touch to the grey. Repeated witht he dark and played with it some. the stronger white the higher the bump. then I painted on that that to give a more razor bump andmessed up appearance S Haope that helps some

Great work...

a1000, IMO photographs are your best bet. I know that Syyd photographs the whole human body piece by piece and then it is all blended together. The whole process can take weeks. Here's a tip...:) It doesn't matter how good your textures are realisticly, you have to have eye's that look great. If you are looking for realism to the point where your model looks human that is. If you are doing monsters and stuff, different rules apply. You need to get Steve Cox's UV Mappper to make templates. If you are real serious about making textures and have the money to spend then 'Deep paint 3D' by 'Right Hemisphere' is the best investment. It will let you paint your model as if it is in your hand. The seams are one of the hardest things to get past with realistic textures. Most textures that are available here, the free ones anyway, just have a skin coloured base. In this case the seams are automatically sealed. Take a look at 'Stalle's' textures for posette. They are the best 'Free' textures available for her. For Victoria and Michael, to get examples of great texturing you may have to buy some. For Victoria, I would recomend the new 'High res' texture at DAZ. For Michael, I would recomend Syyd's 'Adam' available here at the market place. Hope this helps.. Colm...

Thank you, guys, I might just give it a try after all. But if you see me back here soon pulling my hair out and cursing loudly, you'll know it's your fault ;)