TattooArtist for DAZ Studio

Put any image on your figure by clicking where you want it.

Load a PNG, arm Place, click the skin in the viewport, and the tattoo is there
— on the shoulder, on the ribs, on the back of the hand. No UV coordinates to
type, no skin map to open in Photoshop, no texture to overwrite. Slide it,
turn it, resize it, change its blend, or delete it: your figure's own skin
files are never touched, and one button puts everything back the way it was.


KEY FEATURES ------------------

- Place It Where You Click
Arm "Place" and click the figure's skin. The decal lands centred on the spot
you clicked, following the surface. That is the whole point of the plugin:
Daz Studio's own Layered Image Editor can composite a tattoo, but only at
pixel offsets you type into a dialog, with no way to see where that lands
until you look.

- Seams and UDIM Tiles Are Not a Wall
A tattoo is projected onto the geometry, not pasted into a single texture. It
follows the figure's real unwrap across UV seams, and when the spot you pick
straddles two of Genesis' skin surfaces — hip to thigh, shoulder to arm, back
to hip — the artwork is split across both maps, each in its own UDIM tile, and
reads as one continuous piece on the mesh. Nothing to line up by hand, nothing
clipped at the border.

- Wrap Around a Limb, 360 Degrees
A second mode, "Wrap (360)", takes an arm, a forearm, a thigh or a calf and
runs the image the whole way around it — armband, sleeve label, wrapped
ribbon. It maps onto the figure's own UV island, so it follows the model's
real unwrap and hides its joint on the inner side of the limb, where a
tattooist would put a seam. "Turn" slides the artwork around the limb (and
moves that joint with it), "Vertical position" walks the band up and down,
and "Length" sets how much of the limb it covers.

- Adjust It After the Fact, Live
Every decal keeps its own row of controls: Scale, Rotate, Opacity, Blend
(Normal, Multiply, Overlay, Screen, Soft Light, Darken, Lighten on Daz
Studio 6 — see the note below for Daz Studio 4), Flip horizontal / Flip
vertical, and Projection (Flat, or Follow surface for rounded areas such as
a shoulder). Wrapped decals swap Rotate and Position for
Turn, Vertical position and Length, and have no Projection. Change your mind
about the spot and hit "Replace": the next click on the skin moves that
decal, keeping its image, opacity, blend and flips.

- Nothing Is Ever Written Over Your Skin Textures
A decal is a layer stacked on top of your figure's existing maps, both on
Base Color and on Translucency, so a tattoo reads correctly under Iray's
skin shading instead of glowing through it. Your skin files on disk are read
and never modified. "Restore original skin" hands the figure back exactly as
it came, whatever you did to it.

- As Many Decals as You Want
Stack them, reorder them, remove them one at a time. Each row can be renamed
by double-clicking it, so ten decals from the same source file are still
telling each other apart on a busy figure.

- Duplicate, With Symmetry
One button copies a decal, with a choice of where the copy goes: right on
top of the original, mirrored left/right, or mirrored top/bottom. Two
optional checkboxes flip the artwork itself. The copy inherits the size,
rotation, opacity and blend of the original — the usual way to get a
matching pair of sleeves or shoulders without aiming at the mirror point by
eye.

- It Survives Save and Reload
Decals are stored on the figure itself and come back with the scene. On
save, each source image is copied into a decal assets folder of your
choosing, so a scene you reopen next year does not depend on the PNG still
sitting in your Downloads folder. Change that folder later and the plugin
offers to move what is already there.

- One Undo, the Normal One
Placing, moving, adjusting and deleting are ordinary Daz Studio undo
entries. Ctrl+Z once and the last thing you did is gone.

- Fast While You Work, Full Resolution When It Counts
Editing bakes at a working resolution so the sliders stay responsive. Press
"HD preview" to reload the tattooed surfaces at their full texture size and
see exactly what will render — and when you actually hit Render, the plugin
promotes them to native resolution on its own, without being asked.

- Flatten When You Are Done
"Flatten" merges the decals and the skin into new flat textures — one PNG
per affected surface, written to your assets folder and assigned there. The
result is an ordinary textured figure you can hand to anyone. The
untattooed textures are still remembered, so "Restore original skin" undoes
even that.

- Any Image, Including Ones Without Transparency
A PNG with an alpha channel is the ideal case. A scanned flash sheet or an
ordinary JPEG works too: set Blend to Multiply and the white background
drops out while the black linework reads as ink. The plugin tells you when
the image you loaded has no transparency.


WHO IT IS FOR ------------------

Anyone who has wanted a tattoo, a logo, a brand, a sticker or a printed mark
on a character and stopped at the thought of editing the skin map by hand.
Character artists, comic and story renderers, anyone building a recurring
character who needs the same marks in every scene.


REQUIREMENTS ------------------

- Daz Studio 6 (Qt6-based release), or Daz Studio 4.20 or later.
- Windows 64-bit.
- Both plugin files are included in this package; install the one matching
your Daz Studio version, or both if you use both.
- Figures using Daz's Iray Uber skin materials. Developed and tested on
Genesis 3, Genesis 8 and Genesis 9.


SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS ------------------

Stated plainly, because knowing what a tool does not do is part of trusting
what it does.

- A decal stops at the edge of the figure's own skin. It crosses UV seams and
surface borders freely (see "Seams and UDIM Tiles Are Not a Wall" above), but
it does not jump across a break in the geometry: it will not carry over onto
clothing, a prop, or a second figure. Whatever the skin mesh reaches, the
decal reaches.

- Welded geometry is not paintable for now — under active exploration. This
covers both ends of the range: small grafted add-ons such as genitals, and
whole grafted bodies such as a centaur's horse half or a creature's lower
body. All of them are stitched into the figure's mesh but keep their own
surfaces and their own texture layout, so a tattoo currently has nowhere to
land on them. Clicking one is refused with a message naming what was clicked,
rather than quietly doing nothing, and the figure's own skin stays paintable
as normal right up to the weld. Lifting this is being worked on and a full
grafted body is the most promising case, since it carries a proper texture
layout of its own — but there is no promise on when, or that it will prove
possible.

- The first decal on a figure takes longer than the ones after it. That is by
design: the first one bakes the whole figure once, at full quality, and
every decal after it rebuilds only the surface it touches. The more tattoos
you place, the more that pays off.

- Mirroring follows the UV map, not the anatomy. On a torso, "Mirror left /
right" swaps sides of the body. On the arms it is "Mirror top / bottom" that
moves the copy to the other arm — Genesis stacks the two arms vertically in
its layout. Both mirrors move the decal only; the artwork itself is never
reversed unless you tick a Flip box.

- The 360 wrap covers arms, forearms, thighs and calves. It follows the
figure's own unwrap, so how evenly the band sits depends on that unwrap: on
the shared Genesis 8 / Genesis 3 calf island the band can drift by a
noticeable fraction of its height, while a forearm or a Genesis 9 limb sits
straight. Turn and Vertical position let you place it where you want it.

- Base Color and Translucency are the channels a decal writes to. Bump,
specular and normal maps are left alone, so a tattoo is ink on the skin, not
raised or glossy relief.

- Eyes, nails, mouth, teeth and hair surfaces are refused on purpose, by
surface name. An oddly named third-party clothing material can still accept
a decal — if that happens, undo and click the skin instead.

- Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, and non-Iray-Uber shaders such as 3Delight or
PBRSkin, are outside what has been tested.

- Blend modes on Daz Studio 4: Daz Studio 4's layered images offer four blend
modes where Daz Studio 6 offers twenty-odd, so the Daz Studio 4 build lists
Normal, Multiply, Add and Subtract. Multiply — the one that matters for an
image without transparency — is there on both. A scene authored on Daz
Studio 6 with, say, Overlay opens on Daz Studio 4 drawn with the closest
available mode, and the pane says so when it loads the figure. Everything
else in the plugin is identical on both versions.


FAQ ------------------

Q: Does this modify my figure's skin textures?

A: No. Your texture files on disk are read, never written. The plugin builds a
layered texture on top of them and assigns that to the surface. "Restore
original skin" puts the originals back on the figure.


Q: My tattoo shows as a white square. What happened?

A: The image has no transparency. Set that decal's Blend to Multiply: the
white drops out and the dark linework stays. The plugin says so in its
status line when you load an image without an alpha channel.


Q: Do the decals come back when I reopen the scene?

A: Yes. They are stored on the figure. On save, the plugin also copies each
source image into the decal assets folder set in its settings (gear icon),
so the scene no longer depends on where the original file was when you
picked it.


Q: Can I still edit the decals after flattening?

A: No — flattening is the point at which they stop being layers and become
pixels in a texture. The list is cleared and it is not an Edit-menu undo.
The untattooed textures are still remembered, so "Restore original skin"
takes the figure back to bare skin.


Q: Can I use it on clothing or props?

A: It is built and tested for skin. Any surface with a color map will take a
decal, so it may well work, but the placement maths and the 360 wrap
assume a Genesis-style body unwrap.


Q: Can I tattoo a centaur, a creature body, or a grafted add-on?

A: Not yet. The human half of a centaur is fully paintable, and so is any
conforming piece with its own mesh. What is refused is welded geometry —
the horse half, a creature's lower body, a grafted add-on — because it is
stitched into the figure's mesh while keeping its own texture layout, so
there is nowhere for the ink to land. Clicking one tells you so by name.
This is being actively explored, with grafted bodies the most promising
case, but it is not promised for any particular release.


Q: Something did not go the way I expected. Where do I look?

A: Open the Daz Studio log (Help > Troubleshooting > View Log File) and search
for the lines starting with "TattooArtist:". Every placement, rebuild,
flatten and file copy is written there, which is all a support request
needs.


CHANGELOG --------------------


1.3.2 - 2026-10-14

- Fixed: a large image on a chest broke up below the pectoral line, and the break moved
when Offset Y changed (most visible on Genesis 9).

- New: a Projection choice on each decal. "Flat", the default for new decals, projects
the image straight on like a projector and suits a chest or a back. "Follow surface"
lays it along the skin, for designs that wrap a rounded shape such as a shoulder.
Decals made with earlier versions keep their look.

- Improved: Offset X and Offset Y slide the decal along the skin, and Rotate turns it
around its own center.

- Improved: a decal no longer comes out larger or smaller depending on exactly where
you click.

- Changed: "Replace" resets Offset X, Offset Y, Rotate and Scale for the new spot.

- Improved: choosing an image opens the folder you used last.


1.3.1 - 2026-10-07

- Fixed: tattoos could render at preview resolution. After "HD preview", touching a
decal's slider without changing its value baked it at preview resolution again, and the
next render kept that texture. Renders now always use full-resolution tattoos.

- Fixed: only the character bound to the TattooArtist pane switched to full resolution
at render time. Every tattooed character in the scene now does, whatever is selected.

- Improved: a decal shrunk below its image size is now smoothed instead of decimated, so
fine lines no longer break into jagged dashes.


1.3.0 - 2026-09-28

- New: fail-safes for moved or missing files. TattooArtist now keeps working when decal
images, the character's skin textures or its own TattooArtist folder are moved, renamed
or deleted: nothing turns white any more, the status line tells you what is missing, and
one click points the plugin at the files' new location. In detail:

* Decal images: "Relink image…" on a decal whose image was moved or deleted. Any other
missing decal whose image sits in the same folder is relinked in the same step, and
the tattoos are rebuilt.

* Skin textures: when a character's own skin texture has been moved, editing or removing
a tattoo no longer turns that part of the figure white. The surface is left as it is,
the status names the missing file, and "Relink skin texture…" points TattooArtist at
its new location. Clear all, Flatten and Restore original skin wait until the skin is
found again.

* TattooArtist folder: the figure no longer loads white when this folder is moved,
renamed or emptied. The skin under each tattoo comes back from the character's own
textures and the tattoos are rebuilt from their original images. If the folder itself
is gone, "Locate folder…" points TattooArtist at its new place; if the folder is still
there but files left it, put them back and click "Check again". Flattened figures are
covered too.

- Fixed: changing a surface's skin texture by hand after tattooing it was ignored: the next
edit put the old skin back under the tattoos. The new skin is now kept.


1.2.1 - 2026-09-14

- Fixed: on a posed figure, deleting or editing one tattoo could move others or make them
disappear, most visibly on a character reopened from a saved scene. A flat decal
remembered where it sat in the scene rather than where it sat on the skin, so whenever
the plugin rebuilt it after the figure had moved, it looked for its spot in the wrong
place: it drifted onto a neighbouring area, or found no skin at all and was flagged as
missing. Decals are now anchored to the skin itself and stay put whatever the pose.
Tattoos in scenes saved with an earlier version are converted automatically when you
open the scene, and the log reports each figure it converts.

- Fixed: after reopening a scene, adjusting a single decal with its sliders (opacity,
scale, rotation…) could make the other decals on the figure vanish.

- Fixed: after reopening a scene, deleting the last decal on a surface could leave it
visible on the figure and in the render, even though its row was gone.


1.2.0 - 2026-09-12

- Fixed: the same tattoo came out at different sizes on different figures. The decal was
sized from the polygon you clicked on the figure's *displayed* mesh, so a character set to
SubDivision Level 1 got a half-size tattoo and one set to level 2 a quarter-size one, with
nothing on screen to explain why — and plenty of store characters ship with that setting
already raised. Mesh Resolution is a display setting and had no business deciding how big
a tattoo is. Sizing is now done on the figure's base mesh, so the same image at the same
Scale comes out the same size on every figure. Tattoos already placed in a saved scene
keep the size they were given.

- Fixed: changing a figure's Mesh Resolution after placing a tattoo could take the tattoo
off the figure for good. A tattoo is anchored to a polygon, and changing the subdivision
level replaces every polygon on the figure, so the anchor pointed somewhere else entirely
— the tattoo vanished, was flagged as missing, and raising the resolution again did not
bring it back. Tattoos now re-anchor themselves to the spot they were placed on whenever
the mesh changes underneath them, so they survive a resolution change in either direction.
The same fix covers undo, which can swap the mesh the same way.

- Fixed: a tattoo placed near the boundary between two surfaces was flagged as a problem
even though it rendered perfectly, with a red outline on its row and a message saying it
had been left off the last bake. Its footprint simply reached a little onto the
neighbouring surface without putting any ink there, which is normal. That is no longer
reported as an anomaly, and those surfaces are no longer needlessly re-baked on every
edit.

- New: Offset X and Offset Y sliders on flat decals. Clicking places a tattoo roughly where
you want it, but there is no guide under the cursor while you click, so being exact meant
re-clicking with Replace until it looked right. These two nudge the tattoo across the
surface, as a percentage of its own size, in the direction you see on screen. Wrapped
decals already had their own position controls and are unchanged.

- The Scale slider on flat decals now runs from 5% to 400%, instead of stopping at 200%
below what the plugin itself would accept.


1.1.0 - 2026-09-03

- Fixed: on a figure carrying grafted geometry, a decal could be written into the wrong
surface. Daz builds the figure's working mesh from the surfaces that still have polygons,
so a graft that removes some of them shifts the whole list. On a centaur, for instance,
the human legs are gone from the mesh but still listed on the figure, and from that point
on every surface addressed the one before it — a decal placed on the face was written into
the legs' texture, where its UVs land nowhere, and reported as dropped. Surfaces are now
matched by name, so the list can shift freely without anything landing in the wrong place.
Figures without grafts are unaffected.

- Welded geometry now says no clearly. Grafted add-ons — genitals, and whole grafted bodies
such as a centaur's horse half — keep their own surfaces and their own texture layout,
separate from the figure they are welded into, so a tattoo has nowhere to land on them.
Clicking one used to do nothing at all, with no message; on Daz Studio 4 it wrongly
reported that there was no surface there. It is now refused on the spot in both builds,
naming the surface and what it belongs to. The figure's own skin remains fully paintable
right up to the weld. Painting welded geometry is being explored for a future release.

- Flattening now shows what it is doing. Merging decals into flat skin textures can take
anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes on a heavily tattooed figure, and until now
the panel simply stopped responding for the whole of it, with no sign that anything was
happening. Confirming "Flatten decals" now brings up a progress dialog with a spinner and
a running count of the surfaces being mapped, prepared and flattened, so the wait is
accounted for instead of looking like a freeze.


1.0.0 - 2026-08-29

- Initial release.