This Daz3D How to Create Custom Clothes Textures Tutorial explains how to export UV Textures of clothes, modify them and bring them back into Daz Studio. We already explained that you can find textures on the internet and easily apply them to any object that you want inside the Daz Studio., in our Daz3D Texture Tutorial: All about Textures, Materials and Shaders article. In this article we will look into a bit of a different thing. To be exact, it will be about how you can create your own custom textures using the images that you found online.
Daz3D Creating Custom Texture
Exporting and Importing the UV Map
First of all – open the Daz Studio and add an object that you want to create a texture for.
Now change to the UV View that can be found amongst other types of view at the top right corner of your viewport.
There you should be greeted with the plane white screen. It is okay. You need to select your object in the “Scene” tab and change the view mode to be “View by Node”. After that you should see your object’s UV map.
As you can see – the object comes already fully unwrapped. Almost any object should be already unwrapped in the Daz Studio. I can easily notice the two separate parts. They are the sleeves of a t-shirt.
With the unwrap ready, I need to export this as an image. Sadly, there is no way to extract this map as an image right from the Daz Studio, so I will export the whole object as .obj file and then use some another software to export an image.
Specified the path to where I want the file to be saved. In the appeared window set the Preset to the default Daz Studio one and left everything else untouched.
Now about the software that you need to use to extract the image of the UV map. I will use Blender, because it is free and easy to use. We also have a Blender Basics Tutorial and other tutorials on the theme. But you can use any other software. For example another free software – UVMapper.
After a quick and simple Import without changing any settings – i have my object in the Blender.
In the UV Editor, that can be found in the UV Editing workspace preset – I can find the same map that I have seen in the Daz Studio. This time I can also see the textures behind the UV map too.
Still in the UV Editor at the top you can find the “UV” drop-down list and there “Export UV Layout”.
In the appeared window you can choose the file save path, what exactly to export and how. What is important is the File Format and Size. We need a PNG image as the format. Size you can leave as is, but I have changed it to be 1024 to match the quality of the object better.
When the image is ready – time to use the Image Editor software. I will be using Photoshop, but I am sure that a lot of other software can be used here. Something like free GIMP or even the Paint 3D.
Daz3D Adding Texture to the UV Map
UV map is good and ready to be worked on. When I added an image that I wanted to make a texture with – it covered the whole UV Map. That is because they both match each other’s resolution.
It is fine and you can even save and use it. Though the result will be basically the same as if you applied the texture image right to the object in the Daz Studio without all these manipulations. Same as we did in the Daz3D Texture Tutorial: All about Textures, Materials and Shaders.
While this is not bad at all and you can leave it at that. We are here to create something custom. I want the sleeves to have another texture. And to do that I have scaled the image and moved to cover only the main part of the T-shirt.
But it still covers the part of the sleeve UVs, so I have used an Eraser Tool to erase the overlapping part and fix it.
Then I added another texture image, again scaled it and moved to a proper position and then used an eraser to erase overlapping parts.
(Opacity lowered for visibility)
It is time now to export this image. I have used the regular “Save as” method that is available practically in any software and saved in the PNG file format.
After that opened a Daz Studio, selected my T-Shirt object, opened the “Editor” of the “Surfaces” tab and changed my “Base Color” map to be the image that I have just made using the “Browse” button.
The result turned out to be exactly how I wanted it. The main part of the shirt has one texture image and the sleeves have completely separate one:
The advantage of using this method is that besides the basic Color Map you can create other maps yourself too. For example by simply adding a Black & White filter and boosting the Contrast to the max I have received a pretty good Roughness(Glossy) Map that can also be used as a Bump Map
Daz3D Texture Products
Here comes the big question. Do you really need to make your own custom textures? There are times when you can use what other people made. And these things can be found on the Daz3D Shop.
The quite new dForce CB Haze Alpha Clothing Set for Genesis 8 Females by Daz Originals & CynderBlue. It is a clothing product that aims to give you clothes such as boots, dress and so on. But also products like these often come with a bunch of textures. In this case it comes with 232 different texture maps.
Source – CB Haze Alpha Clothing Set for Genesis 8 Females by Daz Originals & CynderBlue
Another thing that you should note is that if you already have some clothing product. Let’s take as example the Summer Hill Outfit for Genesis 8 Female, then you should try to search for the additional textures that can be usually sold separately. Just like that I have found the Summer Hill Outfit Textures by Moonscape Graphics & sade with 5 new textures for the original dress.
Source Summer Hill Outfit Textures by Moonscape Graphics & sade
Alternatively to all this you can find the textures exclusive products. Meaning that they include only textures that you can apply to anything you want and you don’t need to have anything else to use them. The Marbled Textured Fabric Iray Shaders by Nelmi is exactly like that.
Source Marbled Textured Fabric Iray Shaders by Nelmi
Conclusion Daz3D How to Create Custom Clothes Textures
You now learned that you can create custom textures in Daz Studio for clothes. The same technique can be used to create texture for other objects, not only clothes. Besides this way of creating textures allows for you to combine different images, rotate the textures, scale them, which can lead to handmade seamless textures. Additionally you can create your own maps, such as Roughness map and Bump map based on the original.