Passion Eye

Passion Eye

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Material Customizer, and updating Textures.
By zhunterpl
ZHunter's quick guide to editing material textures.
   
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1. Editing an Item
The first step is to chose an item that you are editing. In this case we'll be using the generic White Bra. Plain, simple, in need of snazzing up.

Select the Bra in the Items Section, and click 'Edit'
2. Opening the Material Customizer
Next you will want to open the Material Customizer Menu, which by default lives at the top of your screen, I have moved it to the side so as not to obstruct the subject we are editing.

Next you will want to click on the 'Selected Material' Drop Down Menu, and select the item you which to edit. For the Bra this is simple, only a single Material, more advanced models and items may have several materials you can edit governing different parts of the object, but the same rules we will discuss apply.
3. Material Textures, what gives things their default colors.
A Material has a number of fields, but the main thing we care about to make this simple bra more interesting is the Main Color(RGB) Texture. Unfortunately for us, it's a plain white box, part of what is making this bra so tame in the first place, it won't be telling us it's secrets so easily.

All is not lost however, there is another Texture immediately below it called the 'Normal Map' while not always a 1:1 mapping with the Main Color Texture, it tells light in the scene how to interact with the object, and as such can give us clues as to how to color the item. So we're going to click the 'Export' button, and stash it away for our later use.
4. Choosing an Image Editor
Next we'll need to leave Passion Eye for a minute, and switch to an image editor. There are any number of good editors out there, I will be using Clip Studio in my screenshots however GIMP is free and also an excellent option for editing your textures.

First thing we need to do is create a new image that we'll be working from, Normal Maps and Textures in Passion Eye are often (though not always) 2048x2048 square. Create a new image of the appropriate size based on the normal map you exported earlier.
5. Import and Prepare the Normal Map


With your new Image Created you will want to import the Normal Map you exported earlier, go to the file menu and import the your Normal Map. This may vary depending on what Editor you're using, again i'm using Clip Studio for this example.

Once you've imported your Normal Map you'll notice it's may be VERY hard to figure out what's what on your image, you'll want to make it more readable. I used the Reverse Gradient to make to make it easier for me to read the Bra Normal Map.
6. Selecting the Area you want to modify, and applying any initial color changes.
Having made the the Bra Normal Map much more readable, we're able to select areas of interest in the bra's pattern, and quickly create some selection areas that we want to work with.

For my own edification, I chose to mark these areas in White as a base color so I know where I'm working. White will assume whatever color is assigned the item's main color, making it a great base color, however you can make it anything you want, maybe you'd like to add a panel of black to your Bra regardless of color, or maybe you want to change the bra strap colors, you have the blueprint with this Normal Map, experiment, try things out, sometimes the Normal Map doesn't line up and you need to experiment with just zones of color to track things down. *glares at the generic Panty Normal Map*
7. Detail Work and Exporting
Some playing around with my different brushes, stamps and editor tools later, we have a brand new Bra texture pattern. All that's left to do is clean out unused layers, save our Editor Project, and Export our brand new texture to PNG format.
8. Finale, Importing your new Texture
Having finished all our messing around in the Image Editor, it's time to return to Passion Eye and examine our work, re-opening the Material Customize for the Bra, we click on that empty white box texture in the Main Color (RGB), and load our new Texture.

Examine how the item has changed with your new Texture, do you need to change anything? Add some more detail? Fix a mistaken or something that doesn't look quite right? Or are you done, have completed a texture that you're satisfied with.

Whatever the case, you've loaded a texture you made yourself onto the item! You've created a Texture, you know have the basic tools you need to experiment with things and change the appearance of items, from simple white bra to a bra with Floral Highlights in my case.

Good luck, hope you've learned something useful, and I look forward to seeing what everyone else creates as they learn their way around Textures and the Material Editor.