Skin Texture Path Help

[metally]

I'm wanting to mess around with skin textures a bit but am having a tough time figuring out what's what as far as paths and possibly load priority go. I guess the first question is where are the skins in the "Skin Select" tab stored? Second question is are these applied over the the textures selected in the "skin textures" tab, or is it the other way around?

Just as an example, I'm using an Epi remix of a Ren texture set. If I load a preset it applies one of Ren's skins from "skin select" but it also applies another set of diffuse (for the face and torso), normal, specular, and gloss textures in the "skin textures" tab. If I change the skin going through "skin select" then it removes all of the textures from the "textures" tab. I have a Rough foundation in texture modding so I'm at least familiar with diffuse, normal maps, etc. but I can't seem to get a handle on how VAM applies the different textures, nor where they're all stored. What am I missing?

 

[TToby]

Hi,
the build-in skins from the skin selector tab are copyright protected DAZ3d skins and therefore hidden deep in the games asset files and should/can not be touched.
The only build-in female skin set that is free is the Base Female skin.
You will find it in /custom/atom/person/textures/base female (or female base, don't know from memory).
You can use this skin as you want and share the results. It is made for ths purpose.
In the same folder you will find the normal maps, gloss maps and specular maps for this skin. A full set of texture maps are loaded for each skin when you change through the skins in the skin selector tab.

If you will use skins from an downloaded custom look, it is stored in the downloaded VAR file, and only unzipped on runtime while using it. If you want to edit that skin for private use or for using it in your own private looks, you have to open that VAR with a zip tool and copy those texture files to a folder ideally in the textures folder mentioned above. Mind the copyright of the creator.

If you load one of the skins from the skin tab, VaM will load the included set of normal, specular and gloss maps, too. Keep in mind, that some of the skins uses different DAZ3d UV-maps (named under the different skin entries).
If you change one the texture maps in the texture tab and keep the others empty, the other maps will be the default ones. In case you will use the Base Female skin and you will only change the diffuse textures for instance, the other texture sets will be still loaded from that folder mentioned above.

I hope this will answer your questions.

 

[metally]

Thanks! That all makes sense, and I hadn't thought about the different UV maps.