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These Material Zones are defined by the designer when the garment is UV mapped. So how do we know what is what here? One idea I had is to color each Material Zone a radically different color in DAZ Studio, so we can easily see which zone is which. We can see from the Surfaces pane that there are nine Material Zones defined in the MFD. So I went through each of them, and arbitrarily assigned colors, as follows:
Bodice = blue
Corset = red
CuffTrim = yellow
FabricTorso = green
HemlineTrim = brown
Neckline = orange
NecklineTrim = cyan
Skirt = purple
Sleeves = magenta
Here is what our lovely MFD looks like, when mapped as I have done:
Now, I think it is easy to see how the Black Widow Sexy material was done. The FabricTorso Material Zone was made to "magically" disappear. How?
With the Black Widow Sexy material loaded, take a look at the Surfaces tab, and specifically select the FabricTorso Material Zone. Scroll down to the Cutout Opacity channel, and notice that it is set to 0.00. This means completely transparent (opacity=0%). So, this Material Zone is invisible! Compare to the other Material Zones, where the Cutout Opacity channel is set to 1.00 (opacity = 100%). So, now we know how to "cut out" a material zone.
Let's test this. Suppose I want my model to have a bare midriff... I want to make the "Corset" material zone to disappear. Easy! With the MFD selected, I go to the Surfaces tab, select the Corset material zone, and set the Cutout Opacity to zero. Here is the Iray preview:
Yes POTS or PhOTS is Pharoa of the sun lol
You are an angel Russ this is perfect thank you! I just could not figure out how to get to the different materials zone. Wow, talk about a duh moment lol! Reverse engineering at its best!
I have always been surprised how that caught on from the first time I used it as short cut expression,
Its way easier that typing the whole thing out lol.
So I have another question and I think DestinysGarden may have answered it already, but if I want to make a certain part of the material to not be there (not the whole material zone, just say for instance, a keyhole or a some kind of cut out pattern,) how do I do that on the template? I think it involves black and white in some form or other? I have to go back through this thead, I'm pretty sure it was addressed when we talked about the morphing fantasy mask.
In my old texture tut I did show this. http://chohole.ovbi.org/texture_tutorial.htm
You create an opacity map. I believe black is transparent, white is opaque. You can also get some interesting effects with greys.
I was going to takle this next, in my baby-steps fashion. Yes, the information you need is covered earlier in this thread, in a slightly different context, and also in Chohole's texture tutorial.
The next step I wanted to take was to color-code the template to match the color coding I did previously on the MFD itself. (I should point out, this step is not necessary; I'm only doing it for my own education.) So I opened the template in Photoshop, and duplicated the background layer onto a new layer, just so I can feel at ease messing with it. Next, I opened the screen shot of the color-coded dress, so I can compare it with the template. It appears to me that the designer made the three "trim" zones with narrow polygons so they could be shaped more smoothly. So, for example, I think the CuffTrim consists of the two narrow rows of polygons at the end of each sleeve. So I will color those yellow. I am using the paint bucket tool, clicking inside each polygon to fill it. (Maybe someone has a faster way?) I zoomed in to 400% on the template to make it easier to not miss and color outside the lines... lol.
Next, I colored the HemlineTrim brown, in this case filling in the bottom four rows of skinny polygons, across the front and back of the dress. Then, I colored the NecklineTrim cyan. In this case, there are three rows of skinny polygons to color, on the front and back. Here's how my color-coded template looks, at this stage:
Next, I took a look at the Corset area of the template, and identified the almost straight section across the top, above and between the breasts, and following that line around, filled in with blue. The bottom of that zone was easy to identify since the creator provided a nice straight line around. I should have plugged in my Wacom tablet for this, as doing it with a mouse or trackpad is very tedious! In fact, I am going to do that right now... Back in a few minutes. :-)
Ah thank you I don't thing I've seen that one.
No idea why on earth I cannot seem to keep that straight...
Russ thank you! Your baby steps are awesome! I'm hoping that I will be able to try some of this in the coming week.
Back, after some wrestling with my system getting my Wacom Cintiq working with my system, after a hiatus of some months. Here is my color-coded template in Photoshop, with what I*think* is the Corset material zone filled in with blue:
Whew... I finally completed filling in all the Material zones with their color coding. That is an exercise I won't repeat again, in the near future! Assuming there is no licensing issues, I'm happy to share the .jpg and/or .png file, if anyone is interested. I'm attaching a screen capture. Next, I will attempt to use this to guide my effort in creating a cutout, as Sonja requested above. I will post my result soon.
Woot looking forward to it. That does look like a wee bit of a pain in the behind.
I would love to have copy of the png plz n ty RLSprouse.
Okay, now that we have a template that shows the various Material Zones defined for the garment, let's see how we can use that to customize the texture. We've already seen how to remove an entire zone, by making it transparent, but how do we make a cutout? So, for example, instead of meking the midriff bare, what if I just want to have a cutout that will show off my model's bellybutton?
Here's the principle: We need to make a "mask" which is simply a white image with a black shape where we want the cutout to be. Then we can use that mask image in the Cutout Opacity channel to make that shape transparent. So the first step is to find or create a shape for the cutout. I found a heart shape in my collection of art resources:
To create our mask image, we need to position that shape where we want the cutout to appear over our template. Recall that when I made the part of the dress invisible to reveal the model's midriff, it was the part of the dress which I color coded as red on my template. Here is how I positioned my heart shape to create the desired cutout:
First, I opened the color-coded template file in Photoshop. Next, I created a new layer at the top, and filled it with white. Then I adjusted the opacity of that layer down to 50% temporarily, so I could "see through it" while I position the heart cutout.
Next, I opened my heart-shaped image and moved it into my template file, over the white layer I just created. Very conveniently, the heart image has a transparent background, making it ideal for this purpose, but a white background would have worked just as well. Here is how my screen looks after bringing in the heart:
I included the Layers palette so you can see that the heard image is on its own layer above the white layer.
Now, the heart needs to be resized and moved into position over the midriff section of the template, So I use Free Transform to adjust the size, and drag it into position:
Once the cutout is in position, go back and make the white layer 100% opacity. At this point you should have a white image with a black cutout shape. Save this as a .png or .jpg file to be used in DAZ Studio. You can close Photoshop, and open DAZ Studio.
Open (or create) your scene with the MFD on your model. Select the MFD in the Scene tab, then move to the Surfaces tab and select the Editor pane if it isn't already open. Scroll down to the Cutout Opacity channel, and click the down arrow, then select Browse at the top of the list. Locate your cutout mask file and open it. Violá! Your cutout should be invisible now. Here is a render, which I cut off after 25% because it was taking so long...
That is exactly what I needed to know. thank you thank you thank you!
Glad to help! I learned a lot doing this.
I know this is a very old thread, but I came back to it to learn a bit more , and see there are alot of images gone of @DestinysGarden that were part of the lessons. Were these removed for a reason or do they eventually drop from older threads? I haven't noticed this before. thanks for any help
Yeah. My fault. I hosed it. I accidentally moved the one drive folder all the images were housed in and it broke all the image links. I have not had the time to go back in and reassign them. Now that I know that someone is interested, I'll bump it up the priority list. So sorry Kharma. Thanks for sticking with me.
Thanks @DestinysGarden that is great if you can get the links restored when you find some time. This thread was a fantastic learning project, i really enjoyed it and learned alot, too bad it fizzled out but it happens as we all end up busy with projects, real life etc. I am sure there are others who can also benefit from your wonderful instruction! Thanks so much for providing it for us.