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A bit late maybe, but what you could try to semi-automate the texture projection is to morph the Genesis model into the game figure's shape. Retopology is the key term. Can be done manually in a 3D program or using an automated tool. After that you might be able to bake / project the textures of the game figure onto the Genesis model in Substance or another texturing tool.
This should work because morphing the Genesis mesh doesn't change the UV maps, which define where pixels on the mesh surface are mapped in texture space. So the color baker can match geometry, and transfer the pixels to the right place according to the Genesis models' UV map.
@Ladyburger Very nice WIP 🙂
I checked my textures folder and it's just a really sad state of affairs ^^ The best ones were Hannah and Alifi by Freja, Rylee by Mousso, Jonesy by Exnem and Laurana by Second-Circle. None are perfect though and none have fine hairs (they are not that easy to do right).
When looking for textures that specifically have good areola details (most don't) usually a dead giveaway for a bad texture is when the areola/nipples in the bump map are darker than their surroundings and don't have clear elevations (lighter areas). I found that many textures have this issue and could probably be a lot better with some modifications.
Those are actually two different texture sets, and the hairs are only above the belly button. 😉 I just quickly enhanced a mediocre texture set with hair to show it's possible.
There probably are a few texture sets that have that level of detail, but I haven't really been doing much close-up rendering in DAZ Studio as of yet, so I never looked that closely either.
I can check my resources folder if I have any that are somewhat decent. But my guess would be that 99% are just very basic customizations of merchant resource kits.
I had some time and hadn't played with skins myself for a while, so I made some examples of how the "other" maps many people neglect change the way the skin looks, without touching the color map: Mega.nz folder
I used FWSA Charis textures for the examples. As with many skins you find out there, the creators were a bit sloppy and only customized the color texture. Bump, normal and specular maps are generic skin resource stuff. To get more (and actually matching) details on the areolas, I replaced the generic parts in the bump and specular maps with the greyscale of the blue channel in the color texture (with some level adjustments). I also used this greyscale map to generate the normal map details using the normal generate filter in Photoshop (located in Filters, 3D).
As you can see, matching maps actually help bring out details in the color map a lot. The source material I used wasn't ideal, with high quality shots and more time you can make even better maps.
You can also add subtle details like fine body hair. I included one example with mesh hair (which was actually for males, so it's a bit long) to show how it can add to overall realism. As long as you don't need body hair sticking out for extreme close ups, you can actually achieve a very similar effect using specular/glossiness maps. I made this very quickly and with semi-nice source materials, so again this can look a lot better.
Hope this helps a few people understand skin texturing a little more. 🙂
It kind of depends on what you want/need, right? There are a lot of decent and even high quality skin materials around, but they might not have the right look. Creating a high quality skin from scratch is a lot of work, at least if it has to look right in close-ups and certain lighting conditions. But you learn a lot too, so that's up to you if you want to invest that time.
Customizing good skins to your liking is of course faster, and might be enough. Many have ok-ish to good texture maps you can use and tweak. I just wouldn't invest 90% of my time into the color texture because the other maps are just as important, especially for details. Even just tweaking a few shader parameters like the bump value might get you closer to the look you want.
Oh, also you might want to give Substance Painter a try. It's quite easy to get into if you already know Photoshop. Doing all this in PS is a pain because you don't have immediate feedback on how stuff looks on the model. And getting the projection from photo reference to UV space right is hard, because you have to keep distortions in mind all the time.
In Painter (or similar software) you can paint and project directly onto the model.
As a realism workflow tip, you could try starting with normal/bump/specular maps before doing any color work and only adding color after the skin surface looks right. Most of the skin details we can see aren't mainly defined by surface color changes but by the way light interacts with it. So if your other maps look right, it's a lot easier to get a good looking result when adding color.
Good skin textures aren't only about a good albedo/base color texture. A lot of detail comes from normal, bump and specular maps as well. As an example, you can see there is quite a lot of color detail on the areolas and nipples, yet they still look as smooth as the skin around it. In reality, the skin on these areas is a little bumpier, especially around the edges. There are a lot of subtle details around the body that you can't reproduce with just a color map.
If you want to improve your textures you should look into how professional character texturing is done. There are a ton of tutorials on YouTube on how to create the different maps you need.
