Skins in Deep Paint 3D

I couldn't afford 3DS Max or Maya or any of those nifty programs, but I could afford Deep Paint 3D. Now I'm trying to use it to make photosourced skins, and I'm... kind of confused. Is there anyone with experience who could meet me inworld and help me out a little? I'm reasonably skilled with PS, if that helps. Thanks!

Hi Ceres, I guess I'll answer this one. I won't be able to help you inside SL since my time is very limited, but these forums can in a lot of ways be better than the one to one approach because it is an open discussion with hundreds of people who are willing to listen and offer their own input/suggestions. Here's mine:

DP3D is not set up to work well with existing photos for projecting them in their entirety onto the avatar model. It works well as a paint program for painting brush sampled skin textures onto and across the seams of the avatar and you can get some really cool seamless texture results this way, but for the most part, it is simply a 3D painting program and will not be easy to work with for photo distortion and precision placement of musculature, shading, highlighting, etc. You might be able to build a rig in photoshop with avatar silhouettes and the liquefy filter to aid with work in DP3D, but I can't say for sure since I use DP3D mostly for painting textures onto the avatar, which is it's primary function.

ZBrush is slightly cheaper and will get you better results with photographs, but you have already invested $500-$600 in DP3D (I assume), so you might as well take advantage of what it has to offer.

BTW Z3 is due out on May 15th. See my other post on it here. So, save those $$'s !

Thank you, Namsor! I got DP3D pretty cheap, actually, as I'm a librarian at a university, so can legally get the academic versions. Hmm, I wonder how much Z3 would go for? I loved that preview.

Okay, my big question, which you may have already answered, is: is there a way to stretch or adjust an image in DP to cover the avatar? It sounds like there isn't. So I should paste the image into the templates and test it on the DP obj, and use the paint to heal the seams?

It looks like a commercial version will sell for $495 according to the web site. Not sure about academic versions?

Yes, that would be one good approach.

Ceres, buy zbrush 2 now for 495 and you get 3 for free it says.

Z3 is $395 with the student/teacher discount according to their website. I am seriosuly considering getting this, I would think the uses could be far and many.

- Sam

Unfortunately, I can't afford to spend that much on software that I'd only use for SL creations. DP3D was around $130, so I snapped it up. Oh well, guess I won't be using the cool new tools.

One thing I do wish is that I could zoom in higher than 300% on the DP3D mannequin. I like getting in to 500-600% to get all the tiny things right.

All right, so I've been using CS2 to make my skin. There are some things I'm very happy with (yay nose! yay collarbone! yay ribs!), and some I'm not. If someone could help me out, I would be a happy happy person.

I used a series of photo references for the skin. Unfortunately, the lighting seems to be a bit off in some of the pics. I tried to correct for it as best I could, but there are still major color differences in pieces of the skin. How can I correct this, when it looked okay in Photoshop? Just trial and error and going back and forth between programs? I'm worried about smudging and blurring so much that I lose the photosourced look altogether.

I pushed the toes to the very end of the foot, but on the avatar, they stretch back to the middle. Should I avoid toes altogether?

*shame* I can't figure out how to preview the skin in DP3D. (I used SLCP, but you can't paint on that...) Selecting "image" as one of the layers puts the middle of the image on the av, and I can't get it moved.

Ceres, you should be able to see your texture directly on the model while painting in DP. Make sure to give the manual a thorough read. Being able to see your work right on the model as you paint is the whole reason programs like DP exist

For your lighting problems, there's no simply solution for that. It's the most challenging aspect of creating skins from photos. There are several ways you can approach fixing those kinds of issues. Copying problem areas to a new layer, adjusting them with the levels tools, hue and saturation, and so on, and then blending that layer back into the underlying layers is one way. The clone tool with low opacity can help give you a better blend by sampling from an area that has the tonality you want to the area that's got mismatched lighting. I usually use a combination of those two techniques.