Tattoo Editing in 3D

[pingbi146]

I have been making my own tattoos for a while but I have just been using paint.net, the problem is making them wrap around body parts always looks Like shit Real bad, is there a way to edit/draw the tattoos onto a rendered 3D model?

Thanks

[Dorabella]

1) Use more appropriate editor programs (Photoshop/Gimp)

2) Download image , convert to PNG , or download to PNG

3) Convert Body Textures (Body,Hands,Head) to PNG.

4) Open images in the editor(Photoshop/Gimp)

5) Place/size images for tattoos , on the parts of the body where they are to be applied

6) Save and rename Tattoos in PNG

7) Convert tattoo to DDS with paint.net

 

Spoiler

 

If it is to be a Slavetats  https://www.loverslab.com/topic/192874-tutorial-create-your-slavetats/ see here for compiling the file 

 

Or more simply, put here the images that are to become tattoos

[H Bof]

I've been learning and using Substance Painter combined with Illustrator and Photoshop since I'm already (unfortunately) deep in the Adobe ecosystem. TRX_Trixter provided this super handy base CBBE project I was pointed to by FutaNemesislol since I had no idea how to set one up myself. bringing your tats into SP and exporting them from there will ensure they do not get distorted by the contours of the body. Since all of my tats as of now are monocolor my process is:

1. Make the tat/design in Adobe Illustrator. Set up the project resolution to your desired resolution for the tat (2k/4k most likely). You can make all the tats in the same Illustrator file and just hide all the previous designs when you export a new one.
2. Export the tat as a png at the desired resolution.
3. Drag the png into your Substance Painter project, this is why monocolor is important, as it will be imported as a light grey color no matter what the png color is. Make sure to drag it onto the actual body window, and not the UV tiles on the right side.
4. Resize and position the tat on the body where you want it to be.
5. Right click on the tat's layer in SP and "export mask." Make sure to export it as ONLY a png or you might end up with a ton of random files you don't want.
6. You will now have the exported mask as an all black background with your grey design on top as a png.
7. Open this new png in Photoshop.
8. Add a "threshold" layer and adjust it to the point where your design matches as much as possible to be all white, with the background remaining all black. You want to do this to ensure that when you remove the black background there will be no artifacts.
9. Combine your threshold layer with the original png layer once you have a desired result, you will now only have one layer again that looks like your threshold layer.
10. At the top of Photoshop, click "Select" and then "Color Range." In the window that pops up, use the "Selected Color" option in the drop down menu and move the "Fuzziness" slider to 0. Then when you move your mouse outside of the window, there will be an eyedropper icon instead of your mouse that you need to use to select the black color of the background. After this, select "Ok" in the window and it will make a selection of all the black in the entire image (the background) and you simply press delete to remove it. 
11. You will now be left with a transparent background and a white design, Ctrl + click on your layer's thumbnail to select everything in the layer which will now just be your white design.
12. Use the "Pencil" tool (submenu of the "Brush" tool) to paint inside of your selection with whatever color(s) you want it to be. The pencil tool is ideal because it is fully opaque where the brush tool has transparency on the edges that can be hard to catch and slavetats don't often like transparency to my knowledge.
13. Save the png in case you need it later, or if you need to load it with a different program to make it a .dds.
14. Either use the NVIDIA extension to allow Photoshop to save images as .dds or use a free software like paint.net to open the final png and save it as a .dds

 

If your tats go over a seam on the body, you may have gaps in your tats over those seams in your final product. If you do, you need to use the Pencil tool in PS again to very slightly extend those parts of the design that end at the seam by a few pixels.

 

Let me know if you have other questions, or I can try to record a quick little video going through the process too!

 

Substance Painter is annoyingly expensive especially as a subscription, so if you don't want to be stuck with that forever, especially just for hobby/personal use like me, you can also buy it for around $200 on Steam. I think it's the 2022 version. Also annoyingly expensive, but much cheaper than subscribing in the long run.

Edited April 6, 2025 by H Bof

[pingbi146]

12 hours ago, Dorabella said:

1) Use more appropriate editor programs (Photoshop/Gimp)

2) Download image , convert to PNG , or download to PNG

3) Convert Body Textures (Body,Hands,Head) to PNG.

4) Open images in the editor(Photoshop/Gimp)

5) Place/size images for tattoos , on the parts of the body where they are to be applied

6) Save and rename Tattoos in PNG

7) Convert tattoo to DDS with paint.net

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

If it is to be a Slavetats  https://www.loverslab.com/topic/192874-tutorial-create-your-slavetats/ see here for compiling the file 

 

Or more simply, put here the images that are to become tattoos

I might be missing something but I think you maybe missed the point of my question.
Paint,net works 100% fine, but is not a 3D environment, none of the programs you mentioned are either.
I'm looking for a 3D environment to edit the tattoos on, rather than a 2D one

[pingbi146]

1 hour ago, H Bof said:

I've been learning and using Substance Painter combined with Illustrator and Photoshop since I'm already (unfortunately) deep in the Adobe ecosystem. TRX_Trixter provided this super handy base CBBE project I was pointed to by FutaNemesislol since I had no idea how to set one up myself. bringing your tats into SP and exporting them from there will ensure they do not get distorted by the contours of the body. Since all of my tats as of now are monocolor my process is:

1. Make the tat/design in Adobe Illustrator. Set up the project resolution to your desired resolution for the tat (2k/4k most likely). You can make all the tats in the same Illustrator file and just hide all the previous designs when you export a new one.
2. Export the tat as a png at the desired resolution.
3. Drag the png into your Substance Painter project, this is why monocolor is important, as it will be imported as a light grey color no matter what the png color is. Make sure to drag it onto the actual body window, and not the UV tiles on the right side.
4. Resize and position the tat on the body where you want it to be.
5. Right click on the tat's layer in SP and "export mask." Make sure to export it as ONLY a png or you might end up with a ton of random files you don't want.
6. You will now have the exported mask as an all black background with your grey design on top as a png.
7. Open this new png in Photoshop.
8. Add a "threshold" layer and adjust it to the point where your design matches as much as possible to be all white, with the background remaining all black. You want to do this to ensure that when you remove the black background there will be no artifacts.
9. Combine your threshold layer with the original png layer once you have a desired result, you will now only have one layer again that looks like your threshold layer.
10. At the top of Photoshop, click "Select" and then "Color Range." In the window that pops up, use the "Selected Color" option in the drop down menu and move the "Fuzziness" slider to 0. Then when you move your mouse outside of the window, there will be an eyedropper icon instead of your mouse that you need to use to select the black color of the background. After this, select "Ok" in the window and it will make a selection of all the black in the entire image (the background) and you simply press delete to remove it. 
11. You will now be left with a transparent background and a white design, Ctrl + click on your layer's thumbnail to select everything in the layer which will now just be your white design.
12. Use the "Pencil" tool (submenu of the "Brush" tool) to paint inside of your selection with whatever color(s) you want it to be. The pencil tool is ideal because it is fully opaque where the brush tool has transparency on the edges that can be hard to catch and slavetats don't often like transparency to my knowledge.
13. Save the png in case you need it later, or if you need to load it with a different program to make it a .dds.
14. Either use the NVIDIA extension to allow Photoshop to save images as .dds or use a free software like paint.net to open the final png and save it as a .dds

 

If your tats go over a seam on the body, you may have gaps in your tats over those seams in your final product. If you do, you need to use the Pencil tool in PS again to very slightly extend those parts of the design that end at the seam by a few pixels.

 

Let me know if you have other questions, or I can try to record a quick little video going through the process too!

 

Substance Painter is annoyingly expensive especially as a subscription, so if you don't want to be stuck with that forever, especially just for hobby/personal use like me, you can also buy it for around $200 on Steam. I think it's the 2022 version. Also annoyingly expensive, but much cheaper than subscribing in the long run.

This is exactly what I am looking for, shame about the pricetag though

Thank you very much.

[H Bof]

38 minutes ago, pingbi146 said:

This is exactly what I am looking for, shame about the pricetag though

Thank you very much.

 

Totally understandable, I'm sure there's a cracked version out there somewhere that you could find otherwise or maybe a free program to use instead. Maybe Blender? But I know that's mostly for 3D proper. Idk you would also have to learn to set up the file as well then.

[apEna]

I made some tats while ago so I can't remember the exact process but maybe this will give you some pointers.

You only need Blender with .nif add-on and paint.net. Those all should be free and found from google.

 

Make the tats in paint.net as png files. No need to be to scale for the body. Also open the body texture and make it full white and save as png.

Import the body.nif in blender and here it becomes foggy how I did it as Blenders pretty complex and I'v no real memory how I did it.

Somehow change the base texture to the white body.png, under shading? at base box? Sorry you have to figure this one out yourself.

Make the tat.png to a stamp/stencil in texture paint? I followed some quick youtube guide for this.

Paint the stamp on the 3d body where you want it and then save the body.png.

Open the saved body.png in paint.net remove the white and fix what needs fixing and make in to tattoo the slavetats way. Save as .dds.

 

Can polly do it easier still but I'm not that clever.

 

 

[ghastley]

Blender does include a texture painter, where you use the brushes directly on the skin. The UV mapping has to exist before painting, so you would use the existing one for the standard diffuse texture. There may be gotchas about what you can see in the viewport at one time, so aligning the tat to features of the diffuse texture could be a problem, if you can only see one or the other.

 

I have not used it for this purpose, just for painting a crude first attempt at a diffuse, or even just putting markers at the seams to aid with the 2d work.