Pre 90's tanlines

[Aminator]

Are there any tanlines out there that cover more in the thigh area? I'm looking for either 2 piece or 1 piece that have a more modest look from back when only sailors had tattoos and only strippers and prostitutes wore thongs.

I could only find one pack and the one piece bathing suit looks great but they go really high above the hip.

I opened it up in Photoshop but they look a bit more complicated then what I'm used to. My Photoshop skills aren't quite good enough to add in more coverage without making a mess of it.

 

[TToby]

Hi Aminator,
there are surprisingly only a few tanlines decals out there, given the fact that those are comparably easy to create. Maybe there are some more of them hidden in some look-files, I don't know. It seems, that the users are somewhat happy with what they have. VaM is a great playground for creative people. It is relatively simple to create your own stuff or editing stuff from other creators, if you have your own ideas or wishes.

If you have basic knowledge of Photoshop, I strongly suggest to try it for yourself.
The tanlines textures are comparably simple (to other body areas):
The problematic areas are only the seams.
With those tanlines this areas are the back seam, and the seam at the inside of the legs.
If you stay away from those seams, almost nothing can go wrong.
Especially the sides of the hips are somewhat unproblematic, and this is where your "pre '80th" tanlines would maybe have the biggest difference to modern swimwear.
It is only a matter of some try and error to find the right curves.

-I would suggest to use the one piece bathing suit tanlines in one Photoshop layer,
-the bikini tanlines in an other layer,
-and a body texture of your choice in the basic layer.
-Now compare the two tanlines while blending it over the body texture.
-Now delete any areas you don't need from the one piece bathing suit,
-or add areas from the one piece to the bikini bathing suit.
-Mix and match till you are somewhat content.
-Hide the other layers and save your own tanlines as png file, like the originals.
-If it doesn't work with only hiding the background layer (body texture), then rightclick on it and change the "background to layer".
-If you have the desktop version of VaM in the background, you can swap back and forth to Photoshop, to see the changes.

I guess, this will last maybe as long as I have needed to write this.
If you want to share your edited tanlines, make sure to give credit to the original creators.

 

[Aminator]

I tried that but the only tweak I need to make is to add in some white over each thigh so it's not so high cut.
The problem is the white is feathered or fades out perfectly along the edges. If I fill in the two sides using a brush I get heavy white streaks wherever there's overlap.
I'm sure there's a method to do it properly or a tool setting but I haven't found it yet.

I suppose I should just use it for a reference and make a new one but these old ones look like they're a finer quality then what I'm used to making.

Tanlines add so much realism to the scenes. I wish there was a plugin where you get a preview of your model and you can scroll through dozens of different variations
Or better yet maybe a plugin where we could just load in clothes that roughly match where we want our tanlines to be and then load a plugin that looks at the clothing and then generates a tanline map to match. Then we can delete the clothing and add whatever clothes we want.

 

[DJ]

I made the DJ.Tanlines var that comes with Vam. I found an old "workspace" directory i used when building it and found a textures that might help you.

Here's the file I used as the basis for the one piece bathing suit, before the "fuzzed edges" were added. There's a bit of a grey line just insidethe border that you'd need to white out.

I don't recall exactly how I softened the edges, but it was one of the standard photoshop tools. I think you just enter a number for the amount of softness to add and it does it. I'd never used photoshop before (and really haven't used it much since) so I can't offer much photoshop help, but I'm happy to give any other assistance I can.

The process I settled on was to make solid white tanline masks, then save them with differing degrees of opacity. I found that putting the mask over the nipples looked absolutely terrible, so i cut nipple holes in the mask. It does make the nipples darker than they should be, but it looks a hell of a lot better than when they were bleached out.

I don't know if you found them, but the 100% opacity masks I used are included in that var specifically for people to use as a resource for people who want to tweak them.

 

[DJ]

Here's the entire workspace directory i was talking about. I don't think there's anything else in there that would help, but who knows.

If you come up with a decent new tanline, I'd happily add it to the existing tanline pack and publish an update. All I'd ask is that you use the same folder structure I did to prevent confusion. But if you'd rather put out your own, I understand. The original tanline pack and these files I'm sharing are Licensed as "Free content", so you can do whatever you want with them.

 

[AQueenoftheNight]

will have a go at this also - it would be a welcome challenge I stopped paying for adobe a while ago - prices are too exorbitant for regular creators so I find gimp a 'healthy' second best

 

[DJ]

The more the merrier! If I had it to do all over again, I probably wouldn't have bothered with making the textures for all the UV sets in the game. The vast majority of skin sets out there use "base female", so I'd probably stick to that.

If someone came up with a workflow to turn any Vam clothing item into a tanline, it would be awesome!