Help with modifying texture files

[Sheila]

This possibly could be the dumbest question. I know I know. I am only getting to scratch the surface as I have been just laid off.
So I have this full sleeved shirt and I want to kinda cut the cloth all the way to elbow? How do I do it? I searched google and its all about import and export in blender and modifying the cloth there.
But I remember me doing some things similar playing with the texture file instead in photoshop. I tried that again, but somehow I cannot just edit the texture layer to part transparency and the edited part still shows up as "white" in daz. How do I erase the texture file to transparency?

Ok I hope I made some sense here..

[Frank21]

You can-
1. Depending on the polygon arrangement, you could use the Geometry Editor to select the sleeve below the elbow and either delete the polys or create a new surface and make it invisible.

2. You could use the shirt template to create a opacity mask for the sleeves see this.

The easiest way of course would be to just look for a short/er-sleeved shirt. There are plenty of them about.

[gladson1976]

That's a nice tip 🙂 can't wait to play with it.. there are a few dresses that I'd like to modify to fit my requirements.. 🙂

[Sheila]

@frank22
You have enlightened me big time. Today was the first time I tried the geometry tool. Its unbelievable how hiding some polygons solved almost everything.
I didn't try the grow option, rather I'm doing something wrong.
The opacity option you provided in the link is the best. But the shirt texture is only a texture file. I do not see any outline for the short and or the cuffs.
But I still went ahead and created a transparent mask and boy it worked. Although the hole ended up in the stomach side rather than cuff.. lol
Thank you so much for your help.
So I need to fugure out 2 things
1. how to smoothen the deleted or hidden polygons while in DAZ?
2. How do i find out the shirt map so transparency mask becomes easier and perfect?
Thanks
Sheila

[Kusalkin]

Not a DAZ expert, so asking for a friend... does deleting geometry affect morphs, or is the DAZ geometry tool intelligent enough to take care of this? I know it breaks thing in Poser because the vertex count is wrong.

On the other hand, if using opacity, make sure you apply the mask to specularity, reflection etc. otherwise you might get a ghost of the masked off part.

@sheilakatounis products from DAZ and Rendo usually come with templates, if you got them from the Zone most uploaders include them. Those are your maps for where everything is. You can make your own templates if they're not downloadable, but don't ask me, my workflow dates back to the previous millennium 😀

[Niala]

Beware that if you *delete* polygons, all the assets in the scene that rely on the same base mesh will have the polygons deteted. So deleting polygons from a Genesis char is a good way to hide poke-through, but all the char from the same family will be affected. Ditto for props. And this happens even if the prop is duplicated (not only for instances).
Hiding polygons is s bit better, but adding surfaces and changing surface names can break materials for similar assets in the scene.
Besides that, this is a good method, but you must be aware of the potential problems.

[Sheila]

@Kusalkin thank you. you were right about the templates. I found the templates that came with the download and then applied the technique described by @frank22
Everything works like a charm now.

@littlepleasures - you were right. i tried deleting polygons, nothing happened and I was able to recreate, load a new figure with no issues. But I prefer the opacity mask method for my problem.

So now that the cut our mask worked, I applied a different texture to the shirt using shader presets that can be used for any clothing item. The cut out mask I created doesnt work for any shaders I apply which are not a part of the shirt or its materials.
So any suggestions?
Thanks

[Sheila]

@littlepleasures
Yes I did that too, it didn't work.
What I realised that the shader preser material file is 900 x 900 and the cut out opacity mask is 4096 x 4096. Is that the reason for the problem? if so, then can I resize the shader preset texture to 4096x4096 and then apply the cut-out mask?
You know what I will try that now.
Sometimes I can be really stupid!!

[Sheila]

@littlepleasures - You are spot-ON. yes it is tiled. Maybe that's why it doesn't work? So how do I fix then?
Shall I create a new texture map and then create a new opacity mask just for that? or is there any quick workaround?
Sorry too many questions!

[Sheila]

@littlepleasures - Thanks for taking the time out to respond to my queries. My computer shut down on few ocassions coz of some work outside. I had time to do this yesterday and it took me a long time... lol. I mean I am still an amateur so maybe it was a bit hard for me to get a grasp of so many things.
But eventually I was able to apply the external textures I wanted.
Thank you so much

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