Placing tattoos on a body texture.

[foreversleep]

I feel a bit stupid asking about this, but over three years ago I made the body textures for my personal risen undead mod and placed various tattoos onto the body texture.  This was for the old vanilla body meshes and now I'm in process of reviving my mod and I can't remember how I placed the tattoos onto the body texture.  A lot of life stuff happened, - including developing narcolepsy, - between then and now and I find myself looking at my old texture files and wondering how on earth I managed to do this stuff.  Fortunately I do still have all the original tattoo artwork images, - it's just that my stupid sleepy brain can't remember how I placed them on the body textures.

Any help and advice would be much appreciated.

 

The old body textures.

 

 

[noctalys]

Are you familiar with using GIMP - Photoshop for poor people?  If you use it, you can use the .DDS Plugin Extension for Gimp to be able to open up any of the texture files in the game - mostly.  There's a few, mainly files localized in china, that need fancier tactics.  But anyway, use all that.

 

* Then open your skin file - the diffuse texture, ie the skin, is the one you want. it's the one without a special tag after it so femalebody_1.dds is what you want. The body should look similar to this if you use UNP; CBBE looks slightly different.

 

*  Then shop around for tattoos or make your own!  what i like to do to make the tattoo look realistic, like it's actually in the skin, is make a second layer of the tat.  with the bottom layer, i change the color from black to a deep blue almost-black and change it to overlay at about 70% opacity.  sometimes i add about a .50 gaussian blur depending on how old i want the tattoo to look, to simulate ink spread in the skin over time.  for the top layer i'll change the color and set it to either normal or multiply, a couple of times i even went with grain merge, at around 40% opacity.  fiddle around until it looks right to you. It might look a little something like my current project here by the end.

 

Finally, i'll put a pores/body texture overlay over that so the tattoo looks like its properly embedded in to the skin instead of slapped on top like paint!  Then merge everything, export, and use!  You'll be making skins like this, or this, maybe this, and even this in no time!

 

I have some of the overlays and stuff i've collected/made myself over time uploaded somewhere, if you ever want them, let me know.  I hope this helps!  Feel free to ask if you have more questions.

[myuhinny]

You can use paint-net which is like photoshop. You can drop a file into it and then drop another one separate from the first file and then you can take stuff from the 2nd one and transfer it to the first file. Make sure to back up your file. Load a body file into nifskope and then overwrite the texture file and look at it in nifskope to see how it looks undo if it doesn't look right and try again.

 

https://www.getpaint.net/

[foreversleep]

Thanks very much the both of you for your replies and advice.  I have used Gimp a little, but mostly use Paint.NET these days.  I have feeling that I did the original body textures in Paint.NET, but I'm not certain about that now.

 

The tattoo images you posted links to are downright amazing noctalys.  Maybe one day I might be as good as that, but for now if I can place my old tattoo images on the HGEC body texture I'm using I'll be happy.

 

The tattoos are meant to be magical ones of protection as well as regeneration (essential for undead) so I spent a while looking on archeology and ancient history sites to find the designs I used.  Most of the tattoo mods on Nexus leave me cold because they don't have any meaning behind them and are mostly adapted generic modern tattoo designs of doubtful provenance.

[movomo]

Hey, I have this old abandoned lich body assets I ceased to make. It was supposed to be a transformable lichdom mod but I somehow did not continue it. But I'm a fanatical archiver and I still have all the assets and resources. The whole body is done, although I was too lazy to make a proper full ingame screenshot. It sounds like you could make use of them. I'll upload it, if you're interested. It's about 50 megs.

 

 

[foreversleep]

Wow! - yes please.  That would be really great if you could do that movomo.  UnDead mods seem to be my thing so your abandoned project would certainly be put to good use.

I have a fast unlimited broadband plan so a 50 meg file would be fine.

[movomo]

Here,

 

lich.7z

 

• The head is vanilla head-compatible and you should not use head06 texture for it.
• It seems like the head_prvw.nif file is a conveninence preview file made for myself when texturing. But it will not work for npcs in game.
• The eyes are animated so you'll want use the included eyes (the face normals are inside out for the cool glowing effect).

I guess other things are exchangeable.

Now, the textures may look very dark, but I remember the female version being quite bright when I set skin tone to usual pale female setup, almost as bright as to burn your eyes. So try them in game before making new textures.

I'm glad at least sombody can put it to a better use of it than me.

 

[foreversleep]

Thank you very much.  Certainly a very interesting collection of files and I look forward to having an experiment with them to see what I can come up with.

 

I note your warning about head06.  I've never used it since it always seems to cause an instant crash if I try to use it.

[fejeena]

If you need some tattoo layers see here:

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/18763

Body and head textures, many of the textures you will know from Textures with tattoos, many modders have used this tattoos.  ( psd layers )
head06_Tribal_Tattoos.7z
HGEC_Tribal_Tattoos.7z

 

And here pubic hair, nipple , pussy , eyebrows, lips,.. (  psd layers )

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/19021
Bonus pack.7z

 

--------------------------------------

I use paint.net, but an older version. I do not know if the newest versions can open psd files. I had to install a psd plugin.  But Paint.net can open dds and tga files.

 

To place own tattoos right ( or change/move some downloaded tattoos ) you can use Nifskope to see the result.  Best you use a full-body mesh with all body parts you need ( upper, lower, hand, foot and head )

Change the textures path to the folder you use to create your tattoo ( I have a "Work" folder with should start with a textures folder. I have a "Work" folder with the test-body files and subfolder "Textures" with the textures. The Texture path I use in the test-bodies is only textures\name of the texture.dds.  Or use the race textures folder in your game folder to create the texture )

 

Or you can use a layer with the UV map of the body nif.

To get the UV grid use NifSkope

Spoiler

Yes that is a old NifSkope version ( it can not open Skyrim nif files)

 

Open the nif

 

 

Select the save folder and the size of the texture ( 128x128  to 4096x4096 )

 

 

Then you can open the tga files with paint.net

You can delete the background so that you have only the grid

Spoiler

 

 

 

Now you can use it as layer    ( of course you can use the full color files as layer and use transparency to see the body texture/tattoos )

 

 

 

 

 

And here one of my old full body tattoo characters:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[foreversleep]

Thank you very much fejeena.  I'm very much blown away by the helpful advice and detailed instructions that have been given to me in reply to my request for assistance.  Now it's up to me I guess to go away and experiment with putting everything I've learned into practice.

 

By the way the full body tattoo work on your character that you provided as an example is really stunning fejeena.  I'm not sure how good my own efforts will be, but at least I now know what is possible with the tools available.

[fejeena]

Here what I meant with NifSkope check and test-body. So you must not check every change in game.

 

Spoiler

 

It's better to use a full body nif with head. With single body parts you do not see the "overall effect"

 

NifSkope Screenshots:

 

 

 

I used a B cup and S lowerbody,  I know that's more the body you like..

And some parts that are used in this merged textures are from the HGEC_Tribal_Tattoos.7z  form Nexus.

 

Good luck and success with your texture.

 

[foreversleep]

Thank you that is very helpful.  Yes my Undead are thin and scrawny at 0.9 of standard height and 0.7 of standard weight so that is very much the kind of body I prefer.

[foreversleep]

On 6/27/2019 at 10:56 PM, movomo said:

Now, the textures may look very dark, but I remember the female version being quite bright when I set skin tone to usual pale female setup, almost as bright as to burn your eyes. So try them in game before making new textures.

I'm glad at least sombody can put it to a better use of it than me.

My test character is more than bright when I tried out your textures, - she looks like she's satin chrome plated!  I'm too stupid sleepy at present to have a proper look at the textures to figure out what is wrong.  I'm using the same HGEC AA/S body mesh I use for all my female characters so I at least know it's a texture issue and nothing to do with the body mesh.

[fejeena]

The texture gloss is the normal map.

Replace the  _n.dds with another _n.dds.  One that has no gloss,  . Maybe your  imperial footfemale_n.dds / handfemale_n.dds / headhuman_n.dds / ear_n.dds ( rename if necessary  )

 

-----------------

And the textures  ( not the _n.dds) shine less if you save them as DXT1 ( no DXT5 ). But the reduction of the glow is only very small.

But first change your _n.dds, that should fix your problem.

 

 

[foreversleep]

Thanks fejeena.  I halfway guessed it might be a normal map issue, but was feeling too sleepy to want to experiment.  And thanks too for the tip about saving as a DXT1 file, - that was something I didn't know.

[movomo]

Saving as DXT1 is certainly not a good idea if you want your body to reflect light properly.

 

The normal map for it isn't any special, you may replace it with any other regular hgec normal map. It's shiny because I had all my body/head meshes' gloss 500 at the time of making.

 

Either set your body mesh gloss to 100+ (anything below and she will look like coated in a satin chrome) or adjust specular maps' brightness. After that I suggest simply darkening the character's skin tone value. The 'brighter than you might imagine' part I mentioned was about charactergen, not the shining white specularity as you describe.

 

[foreversleep]

Ok I've downloaded Nifscope and I'm slowly teaching myself to use it again.  I've slept for hours and it hasn't made any difference to how sleepy and brain fogged I feel so this is going to be a very slow process.

 

Thanks for the explanation about the mesh settings you used movomo.  At least now I know which direction to take.

[fejeena]

I thought less shiny ?   With gloss 100 it looks like polished metal or latex or wet shiny skin.

Default shin gloss is 10. The whole SetBody meshes have gloss 10. Most modders use gloss 10 in armor, clothes and body meshes.

 

Spoiler

SetBody reloaded , here at LL.  More than 1000 meshes all with setting

 

 

most armor, clothes and body Mods use the same setting.

But some modders use gloss 100+  and/or  changed Ambient Color and Diffuse Color for a wet skin effect.

 

 

 

And you said you use the body meshes a long time and they are OK with other textures ?!  If yes,  you must only change the textures.

 

And DXT1 body textures. Vanilla textures are DTX1 and the textures in the "HGEC Body with BBB v1.12" Mod and many race Mods the textures are DXT1 and Normal maps DXT5.

Especially with bright textures DXT5 is almost unbearable in full sunlight...   you are blinded.  But with normal and dark skin DXT5 is ok for textures.

That's why I said first change the _n.dds, that should fix your problem.

 

[foreversleep]

I have to say I did hesitate over doing anything with the meshes.  The same body mesh is fine with the present Undead body texture I'm using and it looks fine in game.  So I'm going to confine my attention to the textures and leave the body mesh alone.

 

I still want to persist with learning how to use Nifskope (again) because it will be useful in the future.