By Steve Shanks
I know before I even start that I'm going to really enjoy writing this tutorial as it involves using 3 great program's. In fact if I had to choose my top ten program's these 3 would be fighting for the top places. For this Tutorial you'll need Poser™, Deep Paint 3D™ and UVmapper. If you don't have either of the latter 2 then head down to the bottom of the page to the links and download both (there worth it) Deep Paint 3D is available as a demo and UVmapper is free. Now I better explain why I chose Deep Paint 3D, well as the name suggests it allows you to paint in 3D and can be plugged into Max, Maya, SoftImage and Photoshop but works just as well on its own, which is how we will use it, this is a huge benefit with Poser figures as there are no problems matching seams up or lining up images and you can paint on the figure posed in any position and with as many morph targets as you want, but it will still generate a standard poser texture map.
What we'll do in this tutorial is create a Deep Paint 3D master file so we can go back and paint more textures later. So start up Poser and export your figure as an obj, I've used one of the Nude female characters but any will do.
Now the next stage is a bit of a cheat, here's why, If you open a Poser figure in Deep Paint 3D and paint it it will generate a new map for every material on a poser figure which is great if your doing a highly detailed figure, (in fact for close up face shots its highly recommended) but I just want to do a bit of touching up so we'll use UVmapper to generate one material for the complete figure. So start UVmapper and go File/Load model and open your exported figure, next go Edit/select all, and then go Edit/Assign to material and type in a new name UVmapper will give you a warning that this material doesn't exist just click yes to create it, now go file save model (leave all the boxes as they are) and save it over your original, we now have a material that covers the whole figure.
Now start up Deep Paint 3D, go File/Open and find your figure, once you open it you'll get this window.
I called my material "steves" so click on the one you named and then click "map" when the next window opens asking you what size map just click OK (we are going to use an image). In the next window,
you have to choose the type of maps you want so we need color C and bump B, click on the C and then click on "An image" and select a Poser texture (Warning the original textures that came with Poser are Mac Tiff's so if you want to use one of those you'll need to convert to bmp or jpg ect.) If the image is bigger than 512x512 you'll get a warning asking if you want to increase your map size to the image size, just click OK, the bigger the image the better. Next click on the B and then click on "Nothing" this will be our bump map. Now click OK and you should be back at the Material import window (see top image) now move to the top of the window and click on "object" then click on material and find the one you made in UVmapper, it will have a checkered square next to it, click on it then click OK then back in the Material import window click OK again, you'll now have a textured poser figure in Deep Paint 3D.
First thing to do is save this as a Deep Paint 3D file, this will be a master file which can be used again and again to save most of the above.
That's the technical bit over we'll now start painting so pick the selection tool. (Hold your mouse over an icon it will tell you its function) In the top right part of the work window you'll see "Selection Options", click on the random shaped mask and put a dot in "Both sides always".
now draw a mask on the figure of a keep fit shorts and top, don't worry about going over the edges of the figure and use the Alt and shift keys to add or remove sections of mask.
Now choose a color and fill with the paint bucket, Now lets take a look at it so far. Choose the "rotate" tool and in the "Rotate options make sure you have only the Y axis selected and rotate the view, see how the seams line up. Now rotate her back in line and go to the Command panel and click where it says Standard tools, then choose texture paints, then select the hessian one, we'll use this to add a bit of texture to our figure. We only want to add the bump section so click on the C in the tools bar this will blank out the color channel, and fill the selection with the paint bucket to give her outfit a bit of texture, now click on C again to bring it back and get rid of your selection (Selection/deselect al Ctrl Dl). Now go back to the Command panel and change from "Texture Paints" to "Variations" right down the bottom you'll see "Wet and Thick" choose this then hit the second tab (F6) on the command panel and change the brush to a small round one, change the color and paint on a belt.
That's it you've now created a new texture map for Poser. Now we'll save the texture maps so go File/Save all maps and when the box opens change the dots to read like the image below
Then click OK and Deep Paint 3D will save your texture and bump map, The best bit is Deep Paint 3D will create a brand new texture map combining your original poser map with the new additions you just made, but doesn't change your original file. Now just use these maps in Poser the same as any other Poser texture map. I recommend you experiment a lot in Deep Paint 3D as this tutorial has hardly scratched the surface of all the tools, tips and tricks available within the program, the best thing of all is its Fun!. Here is the texture and bump map rendered in Poser 4.
Deep Paint 3D is by Right Hemisphere
UVmapper is freeware by Steve Cox and is available here
Poser 3 and 4 are from CuriousLabs
Copyright (c) 2000, Steve Shanks, All Rights Reserved