Stone Arms for V4 skins

[AlfaseeD]

Since we received several requests about the stone arms used in some of our promos we decided to make them available as Real Deal.

We're not selling a complete texture, only the stone texture to be overlayed over any textures you want, of course together with the displacement map and instructions to use these maps in Poser or Daz Studio.

If you're interested in the product please, read below and see if this product can fit your needs/skills and knowledge!

What you get
- 1) 4000x4000 .psd file with arms texture and bump maps to easily add to any texture you want!
- 2) 4000x4000 .jpg displacement map

What you need
- 1) Adobe Photoshop.
- 2) very basic knowledge of Poser material room (how to open and connect a node) or DAZ parameters window or a bit of willingness to follow through the process illustrated below.

Pro and Cons
- Pro) you can use this with any V4 texture you have/like
- Pro) easily customizable since you can tweak the colour/tone of the store arms textures
- Pro) Clear and easy explanation!
- Pro) If you like "playing" in Poser material room or with D|S parameters you can just save a .png map of the stone textures (diffuse and bump) alone and plug it through a math (add) Node in Poser or with the LIE plug-in in Daz Studio and just use those maps with any texture without further editing in photoshop (or other 2D tools)

- Cons) you have to manually setup the maps in Poser material room or DAZ surfaces tabs BUT, once you've done it you can easily save your shader for later use.

[AlfaseeD]

Adding the Stone texture diffuse & bump to your own texture

1- Open Photoshop and load the Stone Arms .psd file located in: runtime/textures/alfaseed/skinspecial

click on the image to enlarge

2- As you can see the bottom layer is marked as YOUR TEXTURE HERE, which is where you're actually going to put any skin texture you want; and another layer, the gray one, is where you're putting your bump texture), YOUR SKIN BUMP HERE:

click on the image to enlarge

3- Load the diffuse texture you want (in this example I'm loading Hanyma Skin texture.
I'm actually also already loading the bump map which I'll also put into the .psd (3rd image):

click on the images to enlarge

4- And now let's save our new textures, to make sure we don't overwrite the original one let's save them into the skinspecial texture folder, where you will also find the displacement map.
I called my textures Hanyma_StoneArms.jpg (diffuse) and Hanyma_StoneArmsB.jpg (bump) respectively:

click on the images to enlarge




The main tutorial ends here, if you want to go one step further you can read the:

ADDITIONAL TIPS (for later reading)

5- And for example purposes I also want to try DAZ3D's Marie textures for later use. In this case, since it's a darker skin, I'd rather fine-tune the rock colour to better match her skin tone, that said though you can also just leave it as it is to create an hard an eye-catching contrast.

In this case I'm using 2 photoshop adjustments to maker the stone colour darker and warmer (photo filter warm and brightness and contrast).
Note though that this is just one of multiple ways to achieve the look I'm after and that you don't need photoshop for such editing, any tool has different features that will allow you to get the same effect:

click on the images to enlarge

[AlfaseeD]

Loading up your maps into Poser material room

1- Now it's time to add your maps to your texture into the material room.
Load V4, apply the texture of your choice (in this case Hanyma skin) and enter the material room (Advanced view).
Since the texture you load will probably have some kind of skin shader (more or less complex) you may need to play with some nodes, however the displacement channel is usually "empty" which makes our plugging work easy enough.

So what we have to do is:
- replace the default diffuse and bump texture with the arms ones (these are usually fairly easy to spot and in case just follow the nodes that plug into the diffuse and bump channels.
Remember our textures are in runtime/textures/alfaseed/skinspecial/

click on the images to enlarge

- plug the displacement texture in the displacement channel through a math_color node (In Poser you cannot plug a gray-based displacement map directly into the channel) and put the right values on it, just as shown in the images below.
a- create the math color node
b- put the right parameters (subtract mode and 127 gray for value 2)
c- plug the map into the value 1
d- put the right parameters for the displacement channel (also check the bump value, you may need to change/increase that too as shown in the 4th image)

click on the images to enlarge

Important NOTE: as far as values are concerned you need to check which settings you're using for the Units, you find them under: Edit-> General Preferences -> interface -> Display Units, in my case I'm using the Poser Native Units:

Recap image with all the steps.
click on the image to enlarge

2- Once you've done all the replacing/plugging save your material into the library on the right so that you can add it with one click to the other body parts (instructions ON the image): we started on the forearm (3_SkinForearm) and now we're adding it to the rest of the arm (3_SkinArm) and hand (3_SkinHand).

click on the images to enlarge

And you're done!

3- And now I'm doing the same with Marie's texture, just to show a different skin shader setup as example.

A- Apply the texture to body (note, in most cases, like for Hanyma Skin, you apply a texture from the Poses section, Marie's texture, on the other hand, is applied through material poses in the material room).
And create the math_node:

click on the image to enlarge

B- Load the displacement map from the "usual" folder runtime/textures/alfaseed/skinspecial/), attach it to the math_color and set the proper parameters:

click on the images to enlarge

C- Load/replace the diffuse and bump maps and set the correct value for the bump:

click on the image to enlarge

D- Save the material in the library and then apply it to Arm and Hands as well:

click on the image to enlarge

.

Done again!

[AlfaseeD]

Loading up your maps into DAZ Studio surfaces tab

1- Now it's time to add your maps to your texture into the surfaces tab.
Load V4, apply the texture of your choice (in this case Hanyma skin) and open the Surfaces tab.
Select the Forearm material (3_SkinForearm) and check the advanced parameters.

What we have to do is:
- replace the default diffuse and bump texture with the arms ones (diffuse and bump channels) and load the displacement map in the displacement channel (image 1).

Note: To replace the diffuse and bump maps simply click on the texture name and a panel will open up, click on browse and navigate to the folder our textures are in runtime/textures/alfaseed/skinspecial/ (image 2).
Use the same method to load the displacement map.

click on the images to enlarge

2- Once you have all maps (diffuse, bump and displacement) loaded into the proper place you have to set their values so that you get the desired effect, just as shown in the below picture (rendered with the default light).

Note: you can decide to increase and decrease the displacement effect, just make sure you change both the Minimum and Maximum settings and that you use the same value for both.

click on the image to enlarge

3- Copy the settings just set using the bottom "copy" button (image 1).
Select both Arms and Hands materials (3_SkinArm and 3_SkinHand -press shift to select both) and Paste the material using the bottom "paste" button (image 2).

click on the images to enlarge


Done!
click on the image to enlarge

[romax]

Thank you so much for these tutorials on the stone arms! I'm hoping that even I can follow these, Thanks again!

[AlfaseeD]

Thank you so much for these tutorials on the stone arms! I'm hoping that even I can follow these, Thanks again!

I tried to be as much "step by step" as possible but in case something's not clear just ask .

[onus]

Thank you for this.