Skin Builder Pro

Novica

I've never understood this thing. I haven't used the Layer Image Editor, so be patient please. How does this work? For instance, my main thing I'd like to do is change eyebrows. I hate thin, ultra penciled ones. So if you like a skin, aren't the eyebrows already done on it- is the term baked in?  If I want to keep the materials of a character but change the brows, how is that done? Totally lost, sorry!

Oso3D

Skin Builder has several components, each of which creates layers.

The regular skin builder generates a skin by combining four maps, depending on your weight, adding some color, maybe recoloring the nipples as requested. This skin map lacks eyebrows.

You can THEN add eyebrows, makeup, generate different eyes, eyelashes, and so on.

Among other things, this lets you use something else for eyebrows, not have eyebrows, or have eyebrows of a particular color.

Each of these things is handled by layers. Once you've generated a skin, you can go into LIE and adjust details. For example, I had a skin with Medium + Dark skin. I didn't like the initial balance, so I changed the opacity of each map to something more of my liking.

 

Novica

Okay, so I am not using a pre-existing skin for a character and adding to it, it's starting from scratch with this? (Thanks btw, for the explanation) Want to be sure I am understanding this right.

Tobor

As noted, Skin Builder uses the LIE to overlay various images from its library to make a temporary composite texture. You don't need to interact with the LIE in order to make use of the product.

If you already have a texture you like, and want to replacewith eyebrows, the better approach would be to remove the eyebrows in Photoshop, and apply your own from some other resource. The better merchant resource packages here and on other sites sometimes provide a variety of eyebrows. Position them as a separate layer in Photoshop, and use the vairous adjustment layers to change colors.

You may know this already, but I'll include it for the sake of completeness: If you go the merchant resource route, find one where they also provide complementary bump or displacement maps for the brows. Otherwise, the brows won't have a raised texture when rendered. They'll look like brows from the 1940's drawn in with a grease pencil.

 

Novica

And this looks like fun to use with it, once I get the gist of it.

Tobor

I've seen the "recipe cards" on one site, and I think was a Daz affiliate. I guess it's a good thing if you have others to share it with.

One of the downsides of this product, or anything that creates LIE scripts, is that every time you load the texture in it, LIE must rebuild the image. It can be very slow. If you know how to sift through D|S's brickyard, you can find the temporary composite files LIE creates for use with the shader. Save those and manually apply them to your character. That way your scene will load much faster and will no longer use LIE each time to build the image. The downside: you can't share these textures with others, like you can a LIE script.

My beef with Skin Builder is that they don't include the simple utility that saves the temporary LIE files. They have such a utility available, but they want you to buy it separately, which I think is half-outrageous. Fully outrageous is that D|S doesn't have this feature built-in. It's nonsense not include it as a feature, because it's obvious the program already does it.

Novica

Well, I'm not getting either because Daz changed the flash sale a minute or two ago, in the middle of the day. Inconsistency in doing the Flash Sales is costing them business- I had a full cart, and even though the poses are still on sale, if they don't put the other back on Flash Sale, I'm not getting anything.   

Periastron

My beef with Skin Builder is that they don't include the simple utility that saves the temporary LIE files. They have such a utility available, but they want you to buy it separately, which I think is half-outrageous.

I assume you're talking about DraagonStorm's LIE Baker.  http://www.daz3d.com/lie-baker

I have gone through the exercise of digging out those temporary composite textures and manually making a materials preset for them... once.  After that, I bit the bullet and bought the LIE baker.  I agree with you, though, that this is something that really ought to be part of DAZ Studio itself.

Tobor

Ack. Don't get me started with these stupid flash sales. Sales shouldn't make you feel bad or angry, but Daz is very good at about doing both.

If you're halfway good with Photoshop or Gimp you might not need this product. Sure, it simplifies some things, but it complicates others. With existing textures, plus some from *good* merchant resources, you can make your own skins quite easily.

I do have Skin builder Pro, but after initially trying it, I now only use the resource files in Photoshop. For me it's just easier. The included tan lines are handy, as I didn't have any of those for Genesis. Everything I had was for V4, and I'm moving away from that figure.

 

Oso3D

I really like having additional makeup options and adding eyebrows you like is HUGELY easier than trying to munge it yourself in Photoshop (get decent base AND bump or displacement... enh)

Oso3D

Though handling the resource files in Photoshop is probably easier, yeah.

Novica

Sorry- what are resource files?

Tobor

Resource files are the individual files that make up the package. In Skin Builder, for example, there are color texture files, masks for makeup and eyebrows, and other files that combine together to make the finished LIE texture. You can use these in Photoshop, too. A good merchant resource pack has similar resource files. Though intended for people who want to resell customized textures, anyone can use them to create their own.

Makeup is the easiest of all. You use a mask in Photoshop, and then apply a color. The mask can have feathered edges for a soft look, or hard edges for warpaint, or whatever. Skin Builder Pro has has these masks already defined, so that's half the work for you. I find myself making my own, which just takes using layer masks. This is actually how I use the content of this package. I don't run it as a LIE script.

Novica

Thanks to everyone for the explanations. Very thoughtful of you. 

Oso3D

I have been using it as a script, Tobor, but I'm finding it sluggish. I think I'll move to using it in Photoshop (well, Paint.net)

Being able to apply textures in a more intelligent way, and add in other stuff, would be really helpful.

 

Tobor

I'd recommend the $9.95/month Adobe Photography subscription, which includes Photoshop CC. All the best tutorials and freebies are for Photoshop.

Here's an example of using the resources in Skin Builder in Photoshop. The resources they include with the package are quite good, and because you have more control over editing, you can tweak as much as you'd like. For example, this makeup is a little heavy for me. It's easy to modify the mask to make it as conservative or outlandish as you want..

 

Oso3D

Paint.net and GIMP have a lot of features, and that's $10 more I can spend here. And, also, right now my monthly budget is zero, so I'd be boned if I were relying on it.

I can do pretty good layer manipulation in Paint.net. It doesn't have a decent feathering function (which is annoying), but with masks I can wing it with blur.

vwrangler

timmins.william said:

I have been using it as a script, Tobor, but I'm finding it sluggish. I think I'll move to using it in Photoshop (well, Paint.net)

Being able to apply textures in a more intelligent way, and add in other stuff, would be really helpful.

 

Not sure if this is what you mean, but ... For what it's worth, what I do with Skin Builder is to use it to build the texture -- and yes, that will be somewhat sluggish, but it's the most effective way to see things in action. Then once I get things looking the way I want, I go into the temp directory --WITHOUT closing the scene, because otherwise Studio may erase the textures as it doesn't need them any more at that point -- copy out the files I need and put them in a directory under /Runtime/Textures. I then swap out the LIE-referenced textures in the Surfaces pane for those copied textures. Otherwise, reopening a file that's used Skin Builder to make the textures takes an age, because it has to run in the background and rebuild from scratch.

Studio's default temp directory in Windows 7 is at /users/(YOUR USER NAME ON WINDOWS)/Appdata/Roaming/DAZ 3D/Studio4/temp -- sorry, but no idea on Mac or any other version of Windows. Also, when you go into the temp directory, you'll want it set to view as Large Icons; otherwise, you're not going to be able to see enough to tell which ones you want. The file names will effectively be gibberish -- something like d1729.png or some such. You'll need to rename them, if desired, AFTER moving them. (Renaming before moving may break your scene.)

Tobor

You can quickly find the folder containing the temporary files by clicking on a surface with the Shader Selection tool, then browsing for any of the material textures. The folder that pops up is your temporary folder. You can note the filename used in the Shader panel so that when you copy it over, you can rename it to something more descriptive -- torso.jpg, for the torso texture, for example.

A word of caution, for any lurkers: The Skin Builder scripts, and LIE, may not build the same baked textures for those material zones that frequently use shared textures. For example, most characters use the same texture for hip and torso. They may be separate after Skin Builder has run its scripts. This is most noticeable when adding things like tan lines. The torso  texture you use for the chest area may not have a tan line in the hip, and vice versa. You need to save both textures.