Ey there fellow Renderoticans!
If you ever bought official figures for Daz Studio you'll know that they're not shipped with any genitalia. Males don't have a penis, females don't have a vagina and if we then look at their b00bs... hmmm...
As you can see the boobies on Sukai 8 are nicely round and curvy, but if you look closer you'll see that they're also pretty flat! While the texture is there and indicates a nipple there's actually nothing to see!
Bummer, right? Well... we can fix that.
When it comes to these "naughty bits" we have 2 options... First we can check Renderotica's catalog and look for products which can fix this for us. I'm actually quite happy with the 'Golden palace' and the 'Headlights' products for the different Genesis figures.
But if we have a 3D editor like Blender, Hexagon or ZBrush then we can also add some buttons ourselves! The main thing to look out for is that you use an editor which is also supported by Daz Studio through a so called "bridge": this means that you can select a figure and the use the option "Send to xxx..." after which Daz Studio will export the figure, fire up the editor and tell it to load said figure so that you can do your editing.
Better yet: once you're finished editing you can then bring the figure back into Daz Studio after which it can detect the changes and save that as a so called morph. Trust me: it sounds more difficult than it actually is.
Now, because I'm using ZBrush I'll be demonstrating this but do keep in mind that any editor will do, as long as you can edit the figure and get it back into Daz Studio.
1. Identify the right texture
A figure in Daz Studio consists of several surfaces: these are individual areas of the figure which can all have their own texture map. You can see an example above: Sukai here has several: face, arms, legs but also ears, lips and teeth. And of course her torso. Now, sometimes a texture map can be shared by different surfaces, but that doesn't change a thing.
Why this is important you wonder? Because if we want to make sure that we "expand" the right part of her b00bs we'll need to know exactly where the intended nipple is. So we're going to need access to the texture map:
- In Daz Studio enable the "surfaces selection tool" on the toolbar, I've marked it in the screenshot above.
- Now click on your figures belly (or maybe secretly her b00bie? ;)) to select the "Torso" surface.
- Open the "Surfaces" pane to make sure that you got the right one.
- Now... expand the surfaces section for your figure and click on the small arrow icon below "Base color" and click browse in the pop up menu.
- Your OS file browser should now open and point to the folder where the torso texture map is located: copy this folder location to the clipboard.
- Also make sure that you remember the name of this 'torso texture'. In my example above this is "Sukai8TorsoD_1002.jpg".
2. Send your figure to a supported 3D editor
So here I loaded Sukai 8 into ZBrush using GoZ, if you use this option then be sure not to use the figures current resolution, only send all deformations.
ZBrush can only use 1 texture map for the current figure, however it has a specific feature called Polygroups which allows you to "separate" the figure into virtual sections after which you can select one of these sections which will then automatically hide everything else:
- Select the "Auto groups with UV" option in the Polygroups section.
- Optionally also use the "Merge similar groups" option (highly recommended).
- Then press Shift-F to highlight the polyframe (as shown above).
- Now press control+shift and while holding down those keys click on the figures belly.
Once you have hidden everything but the figures torso you can then expand the 'Texture Map' section in the tool palette, click on the texture selector and then use the "Import" option.
This will open your OS browser again, paste the folder location which you copied earlier (the one where the texture maps were located) and select the texture map for the torso.
At first you won't see much difference, at best you'll notice that the figure has become a bit darker. That's because ZBrush uses a red wax material setting by default, and that's not very useful for working on skin areas. So click on the Material selector on the left side of the screen (the "red ball" icon) and select "PolySkin", now you'll get the result as shown above.
3. Expand the figures b00bies
There are multiple ways of doing this but I prefer using the "Move" brush (press 'b' to select a brush and then 'm' followed by 'v'). Decrease the size of your brush (easiest is to press space and drag the slider), carefully look where the red dot is located and then slowly pull out the nipple one part at a time.
If you want both breasts to be fully the same you could use the 'x' key to enable symmetry editing but I'd recommend against that: there's no such thing as picture perfect breasts that are exactly the same. Just go with your gut feeling, but I do recommend not making the expansions too steep.
Of course personal preference always prevails!
4. Move the figure back into Daz Studio
Before you send the figure back make sure that you re-enable any hidden parts. So in ZBrush you'd press control+shift and then click anywhere outside the figure to show all the Polygroups again. Also make sure to unhide any "subtools" if you have done so; for example I prefer hiding the eyebrows (these are separate on Genesis 8) so that I don't get distracted by having some weird "eye like shapes" floating around all the time.
When everything is done correctly you should see a pop-up screen as shown above: Daz Studio has detected the change(s) in geometry and now presents you with the option to save these changes as a so called morph.
A morph is basically a slider which will gradually apply the change(s) which you made. In other words: in our example it will create a pair of nipples on our Sukai 8 figure.
5. Apply the morph
Make sure your figure is selected and then open the Parameters pane, you should see a Morphs section here which will contain the morph which we just created, by default this will be called "ZBrush morph" as shown above.
If you want to rename the morph then simpy select the "Parameters section" from the menu (the cogwheel icon shown on the morph sections titlebar).
Here you can change the morphs name, its path, the value range and even the author settings in case you want to export it later on.
6. Save your morph somewhere
Uh, oh... Sukai looks worried all of a sudden...
Finally you should save your morph so that you can re-use it later, you have several ways to do this:
- Save your project: If you save the current (sub)scene then this will include your morph as well. So every time you load this scene you'll get access to the morph as well. Of course if you start a new project and then drag in a new Sukai 8 figure you won't be able to use the morph.
- Save the morph (as shown above): Go to "File => Save as... => Support Asset => Morph asset(s)", this will open the dialog shown above. Then select the morph(s) which you want to save, and where.
Although I selected my Renderotica library above I'd actually advice against saving your morph in a library folder this way; instead just use your local Daz library where you'd also save your own scenes and other presets. It'll work either way but using your own library will make sure it gets included with backups, and it prevents cluttering your library too much.
If you save your morph like this then it will become automatically available every time you pull in a new figure, in my case Sukai 8.
And there you go!
I hope this was useful for some of you... as you can see it's really not that hard to put some "buttons on the b00bies".
Edited by user Wednesday, November 2, 2022 10:19:34 PM(UTC)
| Reason: Fixed a few small typoes.