I am growing exponentially frustrated when trying to change heads on avatars.
When crossing generations, the skin tone NEVER matches. I have several very nice custom heads that when applied to for instance, the PR 5 female, causes the body to change to an unrealistic deep tan color.

Case by case, the fix is simple, change the grey ambient to white, load into PS and lighten by 1, then load the face, use color picker on a dark tone of the upper, add a solid fill layer to the face, noise, blur, multiply, and opacity = 45!!!

The problem is, if you change the clothing, you have to go through the WHOLE PROCESS AGAIN.
If you change the head... You have to go through the WHOLE PROCESS AGAIN.

The same thing happens with G3 - G5 and vice versa.

Does anyone have a quick tip for saving a base material that will correctly adjust the skin tone across generations?

Swoop, I have a tremendous amount of respect for your knowledge and wish I could learn more from you. I simply can't understand your method of instruction.

Can you provide a little more detail?

Once this method is applied, can you simply switch the head and the color adjust correctly, just as it does with same-gen?

Just choose the Face(Skin) and when you change it, make sure you select/choose the "Affect All Materials" option to have the remaining skin change with your edits.

If the "Affect All Materials" is already checked when you apply the new head, turn it off and back on.

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@Cricky

It effects all the skin when you edit the "adjust color" attributes. Even with "affect all materials" unchecked, it still adjusts every map.


The problem is actually the opposite. When applying a G5 head to a PR5 body (or any other cross gen head) the skin color will not match the rest of the body. I want to try to create a "base" that will adjust properly when a different gen head is applied.

I have noticed too that there is a problem with skin matching in the current version of iClone. It used to be that as long as a 10x10 square in the upper left corner of the Face skin texture was used as the reference color (so basically you would have the top portion of the face texture with the reference color), this same color would be used at the seams of other skin textures to get seamless transitions.

Well, the color does still get picked up and has the same value as the reference color, but somehow the  head and the neck don't match. To complicate matters, the newer textures have a specularity map, which the face texture may not have. But even when I get rid of the specularity maps and make sure that all further settings are the same for all textures, the match is still off.

I think this is a recent issue, because in the past I never noticed it.

As to the problem with clothing changing the skin as well, what I have done once everything matches is save all skin textures and then reload them after the new clothes are applied.

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@Animagic,

Yeah, that's what I do as well. The problem is that I have to edit and save an iMtl file for each head I want to apply. I can fix the texture on the face fairly quickly, it's just irritating to have to do it for EVERY head, change the outfit, and have to reload the iMtl file for all other body parts again, rinse and repeat.

I looked at this a bit more with a grid and the problem is that the textures are larger than what is actually visible, so it's tricky to find the exact spot where the edges need to match. If you use the same monochrome texture for both head and upper, then you get a seamless transistion. It looks then that this need some work on RL's part.

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It works ok with same gen head/body combos.

My work around may be lengthy and might not match perfect, but its close enough that only someone looking for the problem would see it.

@Swooop, I am pretty fluent in PS. I don't know it all but I'm versed. I have used that method (increasing the canvass to 1024/1024) on bodysuit cloth to get a proper alignment and color.

I was hoping that a hue/sat/brightness/tone combination could be saved to the body, that could then be used as a base, that would match correctly when a new head was applied.

For instance:
Multiple adjustments to PR5 female to match G3 violet.
Save the character, save the upper/lower/hands/shoes skin iMtl.
New project - load the saved character, load G3 trinity head - Boom skin matches.
-or- load upper/lower/ hand/feet/ Boom, skin matches.

-without having to edit the texture EVERY TIME.


@Animagic,
The area around the neck (G5 characters at least) almost looks like road rash. It's not smooth at all.i thought that correcting the rough texture around the neck would help but it actually makes the line more defined and visible.

My fix for a G5 head -> PR5 body is
Remove grey ambient from the skin of the body.
Load each skin file into PS. Adjust color/lighten * 1
Load the G5 face texture
Use color picker on a dark tone of the upper skin
Add a solid color fill layer to the face (the one you picked)
Change the fill layer to multiply, use 45 opacity
Then add a significant noise filter and blur the solid layer.

I did notice that the "affect all materials" button would ever so slightly adjust the other textures. But it still doesn't match. When I use my method of matching the tone, if I use "affect all mats", the upper skin will match, but there will be a defined line where the upper and lower meet.

This has been an annoyance for some time.

As has been stated... I usually pick a common color from one of the maps that I bring into Photoshop, then use a soft "airbrush" to blend the edges of the maps so when they are butted together in iClone the edges are, in effect, the same color....even then it's not perfect, as far as I'm concerned... but it's closer to a seemless blend.. Of course you lose any nice textures that were on the original texture map...that's where your bump and blend (maybe seamless) maps come into play ;)


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Thanks for all your tips, guys! I don't have Photoshop, only Paintshop Pro (poor man's PS), but I'm sure I will be able to devise a comparable process.

No EZ button...:crying:

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