Colorful tattoos and stockings, scars with bump maps, etc.

[robotized]

As we know Overlays are mostly used for tattoos. But most of them are black color, because they are done with BGEM files. They have perfect blending. Overlays with BGSM on other hand have horrible blending when it comes to transparency. So I did a few tests and here is what I found. I will not go into too much detail for the "how". Some result can be accomplished with help of Skin Override. For this purpose I created bodyslide with 2 bodies inside the nif. One of them is the main one. The other, for decals, has slightly increased mesh to cover the main, and added alpha property with flag 4333. For the decal body I change material to diffuse texture with full transparency, with ticked settings "Decal" and "Decal No Fade" and "Skin Tint" removed. This nif file will be armor addon for the body. Armor addons have options for skin texture and material swap. For skin texture I set the regular body textures. I create material swap with 2 material files - old one is with the full transparency texture, new one is the replacer with transparent tattoo texture. In game when I equip the new skin, the main body has the body textures, the decal body has the tattoo textures.

Limitations:
The body is replaced when equipping clothing, so for outfits showing skin, the tattoos will not be seen. This is valid even if I add the decal body to the bodyslide files of the outfit. Swapping materials with Skin Override won't work for the decal body when it's part of the outfit.
Since Skin Overrides are essentially body replacements, you can't get more than one tattoo, unless you merge them beforehand in one texture file. This is probably the biggest limitation, which requires a ton of work for making a variety of things to apply.
No skin color for any kind of markings, blemishes and scars.

Normal/bump map may not look good, perhaps because of transparency and because it is not part of the body's normal maps. <-Just needed right settings in gimp normal map plugin.

What else can this be used for and in which situations:
Will work mostly on naked body or when equipping something different than body slot 33. May have minor clipping issues, because of the increased mesh of the decal body.
Can be used(possibly with bump mapping) for scars, pubic hair, stockings, dirt and grime. For tattoos with color, anything texture related that you don't want taking up slots(or rather prefer it is part of the body). Anything with semi transparency, because that doesn't work for BGSM files with Alpha Test enabled. I have tested even tan lines. With reduced alpha % it can work, only for lighter skin colors, because of the turned off setting for skin tinting. There are no issues with regular tattoo overlays, these are applied to the main body.

What about the skin textures? Well you can set different ones in the armor addon for the Skin Override. I have also tested Overlays for switching body textures. Seems to work without conflicts with tattoos. I know Skin Overrides are supposed to be used for that, but this time they have different purpose. And with Overlays, the tattoos/markings can be combined with all kinds of body textures.

It's not your typical way of using LooksMenu tools. Just sharing some information and discoveries.

 

Edit: Possible solution for clothes showing skin is to make the decal body part of femalehands.nif. As I said before, minor clipping issues are expected. Would look weird for bodysuits/vault suits(full cover clothes that don't have a reference body underneath) - tattoos will pop out through the cloth.

 

In conclusion, this would have very specific usage, but it's not very practical. It was a fun experiment.