MAKING BLOOD SPLATTERED FLESH IN VUE

"Ron" is a well known Photoshop brush and image maker, he makes fantastic stuff which I can't recommend highly enough :)
I get his stuff from DAZ3D, but I believe he also sells on Rendo and on Content Paradise?

This is his catalogue on DAZ3D:

http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/artistlist?artist=486918&_m=d

Anyway, I'm working on a series of fantasy scenes, ultra-violent stuff: well when you have swords whacking away,
blood & gore are an unavoidable result you know! :p

So, since Vue lets you use layers on materials...it's relatively easy to add blood splatters to anything using layers over
the main material. There's several ways to do this, there are even a "default skin shader" and "bloodstains" materials that come withVue I believe, that you can combine ot make a sutable gory skin! ;)
I'll include details on this at end of this chapter, but I honestly can't recall where I got these mats, I have a huge colection of bought,
collected & given mats, so I hope it's ok with original creators :)


you start out with a default material, red plastic, which is good to work from for blood, then select your image, in this case,
one of Ron's "blood" photoshop files...but that's where the trouble starts!

1) Ron saved the files with the layer set as "Multiply", which is perfect when you want to apply it OVER an existing texture in
Photoshop itself...but Vue cannot use it at all because it's set to Multiply! Vue can only use images with normal layer attributes.

2) Because Ron added highlights to the blood images, when used as a layer in a 3D image you get ugly white lines etc around the blood.

took me a while to work out that these 2 issues were the cause of problems, lol!!
the images come with an Alpha channel to cut out transparency, and I initially thought that was the cause, but it wasn't, it's just
the red blood having whitish highlight shows up terribly in 3D when applied as a seperate layer. It works perfectly well though
when applied in Photoshop on top of an existing texture.

accompanying image shows this, note the white Outlines!

So what I had to do, was go into Photoshop,

1. Make a new layer under the "blood", give it a darkish red colour, RGB 79/1/6. This will get rid of the "white edging"
   The "blood" layer is still set to "multiply", so it blends into the dark red layer below, getting rid of the highlights!
   
   
2. You have to make a selection of the trannsparency of the blood layer, and save it as alpha channel when you do this as the size reduction etc will destroy the old one, you need the alpha channel for transparency
   
   
3. then flatten the image to get rid of layers
   
   
4. then reduced the size of the image, by 1/3rd, original is massive like 3600 x 1200 and thus too large really, so unless you're doing huge renders, it's a waste of resources.
   
   
5. finally saved out as a new .psd file, so it kept the transparency alpha selection.
   
   
6. Imported into the "blood/red plastic layer in Vue as main image.
   
   
7. it's too dark because of the dark red layer used ot get rid of the highlights, but that's easy to fix:
   in material editor, Color & alpha tab
   Select Color Blend and Color Mask
   Set Blend With Color to about 35%
   Set the Color Blend swatch to RGB 255/17/22

now when you render, it should be fine! :)

Please note, for thosed who do not have Ron's "Blood", you can make your own images in Photoshop of course, or use a procedural mat.

In Photoshop, if you use the original texture as a guide, you can get very specific about where you wish the blood to be.
Make a Greyscale image to do this, this you then use to drive the Alpha of the material layers.

For a procedural mat, you could use a fractalor noise function to drive the ALpha of a layer of "Red Plastic" to make blood stains, you want, usually, to increase the length of the Y axis of stain materials in some pat of the funciton or material editor main section, to make it look like the material is dripping. FOr mroe precise looking blood, you cna darken the "Red Plastic", even add bump or Transluency.

I came up with a blood spattered flesh mat using existing materials by the way, which may help folks who don't have Ron's Blood :)

Now, I do not know where I got "Default Skin Shader.mat" and "Bloodstains.mat", I don't recall if they are default mats, or I bought 'em or what as I have a HUGE amount of mats and if folk don't save them with personal info, or in neat, specific named collections, I have no clue where I got 'em from, sorry :/
(Hence I try and always save my own mats with my own info!
I hope the original creators don't mind me explaining this use of their creations :)
Been collecting mats since Vue5, lol, and many folk have been kind enough to give me experimental mats, too, often when helping 'em with their mats :)

Anyway, by using the "bloodstains" mat as a material layer, using the material's own color map to drive the alpha function, then use a filter to tweak the Alpha channel, you get nice gory blood spatters! ;)

I hope you find this of use! :)