keppel's character skin texture edge blur trick (to kill seams)

[SpookieLilOne]

Copied and pasted from Rendo Vendors workshop with permission from keppel

Here is the link for people who are vendors at RMP, scroll down to keppel's post
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3740977&ebot_calc_page#message_3740977

This is a technique that I learned sometime ago that I am still using today.
Here is how I do it in Photoshop.

Starting with the uv map exported from the modeling program:

1. Duplicate your uv map layer.
2. On the first (bottom) layer use the magic wand with a low tolerance and contiguous checked to select all the white area of the uv map.  This leaves the active marquee "hugging" the black border lines on the uv islands on the uv map.
3. Invert the selection (shift+ctrl+I) followed by Select>Modify>Expand.  Choose the number of pixels that you want to expand your selection by.  This will expand the marquee by the number of pixels you selected, so that when you paint your texture you will be "overpainting" the uv map lines.  This is what prevents the seam.
4. Create a new layer and on this layer use the 'Paint Bucket Tool' to fill with a light colour.  Because of your marquee you will only be bucket filling your uv islands.
5. Set the blending mode of your duplicated uv map layer to 'Multiply'.  This layer should be at the top of your layer stack.

Now you should have a painted "Flats"  layer with the uv map lines visible because of the blending mode of the top duplicated layer.  Do all of your texture painting on new layers in between the flats layer and the overlay layer.

The advantage to following this method is that you can always see where the uv map lines are during your texture painting AND you can instantly select and mask off the uv island you want to work on by making the flats layer active and using the magic wand to select the uv island and if you have followed the steps above your flats selection will now have the overpainting compensated for so you don't get seams.

It takes less than 1 minute to complete the steps above but I have found that this method can save a huge amount of time when it comes to your ability to select and isolate the areas you want to paint and to prevent seams. 

[Deni]

 

[sanbie]

 
For putting it here 

[Amigo968]

 :thy: for your tutoprial. I've also sometimes problems with the seams and correcting them. Very difficult for me are also to integrate lips into the skin and fit them without transitions.