Question About Ethnic Content

Hi, I'm Sundae. I genuinely love playing around with VAM, supporting creators, and have been for a few years now. It's a great sandbox for adult fun. But it seems like all the assets and anything I come across are only made for lighter skin. There's barely anything for people of color. Especially in makeup. I have only one persona that I use all the time and I can't doll her up because the makeup just looks ridiculous on her and it kills any motivation of playing. I cycle through the same 3 skins over and over because there's barely anything here that isn't paywalled. There's millions of straight hair in different styles, but very few curly or any braiding styles. A lot of plugins and assets that improve skin only work so much for my model, but they work beautifully for lighter models. I could be looking in the wrong places, but for right now it's very scarce. I don't want to come off like I'm complaining, but I've been holding my tongue for a long time.

It's sadly a reality that in entertainment/games, "caucasian content" is obviously more present and common than "ethnic content".

For two things you talk about, curly and braiding hairs, I can give you two reasons for that: curly is hard and does not look that great without a lot of work ( with VAM hair system ). And braids are even harder as it requires custom models, which pretty much nobody does. So on that space of content, it's definitely more a technical/artistic problem than an actual bias.

Now for the rest, your observation shows that there's a market to fill here. You could specialize yourself in producing ethnic content, I'm pretty sure people would enjoy it.

Also, please, name your threads properly.

hazmhox said:

It's sadly a reality that in entertainment/games, "caucasian content" is obviously more present and common than "ethnic content".

For two things you talk about, curly and braiding hairs, I can give you two reasons for that: curly is hard and does not look that great without a lot of work ( with VAM hair system ). And braids are even harder as it requires custom models, which pretty much nobody does. So on that space of content, it's definitely more a technical/artistic problem than an actual bias.

Now for the rest, your observation shows that there's a market to fill here. You could specialize yourself in producing ethnic content, I'm pretty sure people would enjoy it.

Also, please, name your threads properly.

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That's disappointing. I would create if I had the tools and the creativity to do so. But I can only support the very few creators who just so happen to include the things I'm seeking. Also, I'm not sure how to name the thread? Is that not a good title?

Well sorry that there's no people producing that type of content.
For the thread title, it should reflect the content. You "having a concern" is not what the thread talks about, it's about ethnic content. So maybe "Question about ethnic content" or something amongst these lines.

You could also have asked for recommendations about that type of content instead.

I agree about ethnic content. Actually, there's a lot of Asian content, but not so much for dark skin characters. You didn't say which assets you use a lot, but the Riddler 8 and 8C skins are excellent. For makeup, there are some options you can play with. For makeup that's applied as decals, you can use Decal Maker to make them more transparent, so the effect is reduced. For makeup that comes as clothing, you can dial the Alpha channel down. If you go to Search Resources, and put in "Afro" and select Free Hairstyles, there are a few options. Which assets do you use a lot, and which ones would you like to use, but they don't look right?

SlimerJSpud said:

I agree about ethnic content. Actually, there's a lot of Asian content, but not so much for dark skin characters. You didn't say which assets you use a lot, but the Riddler 8 and 8C skins are excellent. For makeup, there are some options you can play with. For makeup that's applied as decals, you can use Decal Maker to make them more transparent, so the effect is reduced. For makeup that comes as clothing, you can dial the Alpha channel down. If you go to Search Resources, and put in "Afro" and select Free Hairstyles, there are a few options. Which assets do you use a lot, and which ones would you like to use, but they don't look right?

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Ahh, I didn't know about Decal Maker. I can try that and see if that helps with what I'm trying to achieve. I want to use blushes and some lipsticks. i'm trying for a pinkie dolly look and there's not much available for darker skintones. Sorry that I can't provide any photos. But my current model I'm using some lip liners to get the two toned effect and I'd want it to be just a single option. Is that possible with Decal Maker?

SundaeCami said:

Hi, I'm Sundae. I genuinely love playing around with VAM, supporting creators, and have been for a few years now. It's a great sandbox for adult fun. But it seems like all the assets and anything I come across are only made for lighter skin. There's barely anything for people of color. Especially in makeup. I have only one persona that I use all the time and I can't doll her up because the makeup just looks ridiculous on her and it kills any motivation of playing. I cycle through the same 3 skins over and over because there's barely anything here that isn't paywalled. There's millions of straight hair in different styles, but very few curly or any braiding styles. A lot of plugins and assets that improve skin only work so much for my model, but they work beautifully for lighter models. I could be looking in the wrong places, but for right now it's very scarce. I don't want to come off like I'm complaining, but I've been holding my tongue for a long time.

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I love your style, going off the few recent screenshots you've shared in the media section!

I do eventually plan on working with darker skinned ladies when I have some spare time. It's something I'd love to explore, but since I haven't been exposed as much to their different styles and culture, I feel like it'd be very easy to miss the mark completely rather than do it justice (and probably other creators feel similar).

I suffer from a chronic lack of time , but I'd genuinely love to learn more and hopefully help out eventually, at least on the makeup side of things.

SundaeCami said:

Ahh, I didn't know about Decal Maker. I can try that and see if that helps with what I'm trying to achieve. I want to use blushes and some lipsticks. i'm trying for a pinkie dolly look and there's not much available for darker skintones. Sorry that I can't provide any photos. But my current model I'm using some lip liners to get the two toned effect and I'd want it to be just a single option. Is that possible with Decal Maker?

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I think so. You can have multiple decals layered, each with their own alpha, IIRC.

On the Skin Material 1 tab, you can adjust these slides to change skin color. There's 2 characters from the creator SplineVR that are very beautiful in my opinion. There's skins are also of the chart. Verytoxic, has wonderful hair and clothing to match. Hope this helps.

raminator361 said:

On the Skin Material 1 tab, you can adjust these slides to change skin color. There's 2 characters from the creator SplineVR that are very beautiful in my opinion. There's skins are also of the chart. Verytoxic, has wonderful hair and clothing to match. Hope this helps.

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Making a model darker by adjusting the Skin Color slider is not the best way to do that. Yes, I did that on some of my early models, but it loses detail in the skin. In the Daz world, this is called the Diffuse Tan. Adjusting the diffuse channel is OK within about the upper left quarter of that color square, but going beyond that lowers the quality, IMO. Of course, if you want a green dancer, or a red demon, color away!

Well I wouldn't recommend complete change of color if that's what your insinuating. No demons here, just beautiful Latinas

Vampix Collections said:

I love your style, going off the few recent screenshots you've shared in the media section!

I do eventually plan on working with darker skinned ladies when I have some spare time. It's something I'd love to explore, but since I haven't been exposed as much to their different styles and culture, I feel like it'd be very easy to miss the mark completely rather than do it justice (and probably other creators feel similar).

I suffer from a chronic lack of time , but I'd genuinely love to learn more and hopefully help out eventually, at least on the makeup side of things.

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Aww well thank you. And I'd love to help you with any questions you have.

Thank you for the replies. I'm gonna try out Decal Maker and see if that helps with the blush problem I've been having

Hi Sundae, yes decal maker is definitely the tool to use to adjust makeup decals (don't forget you can export the decals so you can use them on future looks without needing the plugin.)
As for hair styles you can modify an existing style with the "look" and "physics" tabs in the hairs menu. adjusting the curl frequency and scale/xyz sliders can give some fairly natural looking results depending on the hair style used. plus you can adjust the curve density and hair multiplier settings in the physics tab. a good scalp texture helps to blend the hair together too.
Here's an example I just made with scalp_v12 by VL_13 (toned to match in the scalp materials tab), and Ouyan Lala hairstyle by bamair1984. (I just chose this one at random, and adjusted the specular colour and settings a bit)



some hair styles will work better than others, as the hair system in vam can struggle with smooth curves and makes them zigzag with more pronounced settings.
As for braids and other similar styles, that's not really something vam's built in hair creator can do in my experience but is probably achievable with rigged assets imported through unity and parented to the model.