Drunkendragon wrote:
Glad you asked, Star!
I was tryin' new stuff for a week or so, and started messin' with the Layered Image Editor (LIE) in DAZ...Then I got an idea. Why not mix new stuff, with old stuff?
So I used photomanipulation techniques on layers above the actual jpegs for the item's original texture. That way, I didn't alter the creator's work.
E.G. for Croc, I frankensteined in actual bandages over the limbs jpeg, actual fish scale photos over the torso jpeg, and cloth over his pants. Then I manipped those to fit, added some layer styles for shadows and light, dodged and burned for drama, and applied a few filters for blending.
Then, I left visible only my stuff, and saved as png files. Then I copied those, desaturated, adjusted levels to increase contrast, and saved as more pngs.
I added the color pngs via LIE to the diffuse maps, and the desaturated to the bump, and in a couple cases, the displacement maps in the same way. Playing around with the settings on these then gave the textures that I liked. (ie, the wraps actually looked more like clothing items than drawn on.)
The same was done for Bane's veins and Solomon's "Grundiness."
As for the structures and props, well, I had to go back and re-UV map all of those props so they would better accept LIE additions. Which wasn't that tough, since I still had the original files from when I built them, and have learned quicker ways to UV map with practice.
Hopefully that answered your question, but if not, ignore me, 'cuz I tend to ramble like a kid on Christmas getting new toys whenever I teach myself something new...Well, new to me anyway. (I know there are a LOT of artists who already knew that stuff, and more...but that's what makes it fun!)