Changing Surfaces of an Existing Model
LosingSignal
Posts: 409
This is probably way beyond my abilities or even worth the trouble, but let's suppose I picked up an old model and wanted to use it. Unfortunately, the textures are old enough that putting an Iray Uber shader on them is not going to fix things. But when I go to alter the textures, I find that multiple surfaces use the same texture jpeg, subdivided by area. Okay, I could work with that, but I was wondering if it's possible to basically add surfaces or change the surfaces to use new single, high-res textures.
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Yes, what you do is:
1) Menu: Windows - Tabs - Tools Settings
2) Menu: Tools - Geometry Editor
3) Then using the Geometry Editor you select polygons you want in a particular Surfaces group and once all those polygons are selected you assigned them in the Tools Settings to the target group by creating a new Surface (or you can move them for one existing Surface to a new Surface).
Careful, sometimes, after creating a new Surface group & assigning the selected polygons to a it, the prior selected polygons you assigned to prior created new Surfaces groups will also get assigned to your newly created Surfaces group so make sure to unselect those prior selected polygons and surfaces.
Ideally I'd just link to to a manual page, or a tutorial video or tell you what page of a PDF manual to look at. but there isn't a comprehensive PDF and the DAZ 3D online manual is very incomplete and not so easy to follow alot of times when the topic is available. If you don't understand I'd suggest searching YouTube for DAZ Studio, Geometry Editor, Surfaces and see if that brings up a tutorial you can watch.
You can just replace the old textures with the new one; and you can make the new textures in programs like Photoshop or even Gimp (which is free). Also if you are talking about human models you can often use textures from the other human models providing they are of the same generation (actually from what I read some textures can even be interchanged between different generations). But if certain textures are fot example "subdivided" in 5 parts (in Blender they are called islands) and you want to redeifine those parts or increase/decrease their numbers then it is more complicated as nonesuch00 wrote.
PS. In 3D "subdivision" means another thing so using it may cause confusions. I presumed as "subdivided by area" you mean body, head, legs etc.
Yeah, that's more or less what I'm talking about. For example, an old sword model may have surfaces for the handle, cross guard, blade and pommel, but the texture for it is a single jpeg with the different elements in different positions. Sort of like the teeth and mouth or the arms on Genesis 8. I would be looking to redefine those surfaces as individual images so i can get a higher resolution texture for it. Or suppose the sword had the handle, pommel, and cross guard all as one surface. I would want to refine each section as a new individual surface, assuming the geometry works out for me.
I am a Blender guy and don't know the specifics of re-drawing textures as nonesuch00 said and besides it is not just the textures itself, you also have to show to the program where to "look" for the correct textures. Also for every model usually there are more then one texture. The main texture is called "diffuse" and it shows the basic color of the surface, but usually the models have several more type of textures - like giving the reflective view of the metal, the roughness of the surfaces etc. All those textures have own special names and how many types of textures are for certain model depends on the material (metal, cloth etc) of the model and from the artist itself. Therefore the easiest way is if the sword have 4 zones (for example) and as they are from different materials there probably are 4 different diffuse textures, as well as 4 sets of every other type of texture created by the artist. So with even with basic understanding of Photoshop (or Gimp) and the persistance to watch the needed tutorials on youtube create your onw textures and to replace the original textures with your textures, renaming them to match the orignal textures and voila. The drawbacks of this - you are limited to the number and the type of the orignal textures; and there come the matter of shaders (roughly said the "shaders" tell to the computer how to look at the models as if they are seen through a human eye. You probably will be OK with the existing shaders (so just don't touch them at all), but you may want to make own adjustments so you will need to save your combo of shaders (Daz calls such combos "presets") because if left alone the program everytime will try to load the defalt shaders. Of course all those problem can be solved at much more professional level if you have the knowledge and the time, but as I said this is the way requiring the min possible knowledge. Probably:-)
Edit: If the sword has all the surface (textures) on a single jpg it is even easier because you will need only 1 set of maps.Just replace every single surface (texture) with your own texture on the same jpg. Change nothing else. Then replace the original jpg with your own jpg, renaming it exactly as is the name of the original jpg. But still you may decide to adjust the shaders. BUT - in the case of the sword I think the surfaces (textures) of each part probably are made on different jpgs, because in this case the artist can setup different shaders for each surface (texture).
Using the Geometry Tool and creating new surfaces is in my signature, if anyone is interested.
Also most DAZ 3D models come with what is knows as template images which are usually based on the UV normals for a model. What you do with those templates is make a copy of them & color them in as a texture like a coloring book. You could also do the same which the original already colored texture ad just recolor it as want but it is more difficult to see the boundary lines of the UV map done that way, not that that matters too much - you color a texture for a sword using a copy of the original texture for a sword and use that as your coloring book guide line.
What the OP wants to do would require changing the UV mapping which would require another program, either a modeler with UV mapping or dedicated UV mapper.
I was wondering if this might be the case, I was just hoping Studio could get me there without the second program. Nonesuch00's first solution got me pretty close though.
This is what I'm looking at. It's worth mentioning that my original project was a lot bigger than this, namely retexturing an entire spaceship interior. This sword/dagger issue is just a proof of concept:
The dagger is from DM Anardhaus. The leftmost dagger is the original out of the box, with 3dlight shaders and original textures. To my eye, there should be four materials: the blade, the crosspiece, the hilt, and the pommel. The Surfaces tab shows only two surfaces, though, the blade and the handle, as shown by the second dagger (which I applied Iray Uber shader to). The third dagger is the result after I used Geometry Editor to select all the polygons in the areas I thought should be seperate materials and saved them as new surfaces. Slight learning curve there, but its done. I could then apply shaders to each new area to produce a new look, as with the fourth.
Now, if I went to paint an entirely new texture for, say the crosspiece, I hit a snag. When I put the original image map from the first dagger's handle on to the fourth's crosspiece, it works flawlessly, showing just the metal and Celtic knotwork on the crosspiece while leaving the hilt and pommel alone. I assume that means the UV map is still in place and taking a given set of polygons's look from a particular area of the image map? And changing that means exporting to a UV mapper?
For an entire complex Spaceship I don't know that you wouldn't want to export to Blender as an obj and then create a new set of UV seams from that obj and unwrap the obj based on the new seams you created and then again, create the material islands based on that UV map you just created, export as obj again but from Blender, then import into DAZ and rerig.
Whether you painted the textures how you wanted in Blender or waited to use various iRay or other material presets based on the newly UVed spaceship you exported to DAZ you'll have to decide based on your goals but both are possible.
" I assume that means the UV map is still in place and taking a given set of polygons's look from a particular area of the image map? And changing that means exporting to a UV mapper?"
Correct. Adding new surfaces just gives you more options in what you can do with the material set up. It doesn't change how the item was flattened by the modeller. Each polygon on the model is still going to be assigned to the same relative space on the texture map.
Edit: sorry, I messed up trimming the quoted quoted parts. I can never seem to get that right.
@LosingSignal - good job on making the new material zones. So I took a look at the dagger and the UV map looks "OK" to me. Not ideal, but workable. If it was me, I wouldn't try to do a new UV map for it. So let's work with what we have. What part of the dagger are you not getting the desired detail on? What size map are you making for your new texture? The original looks like it's1024x1024 but you can make your map any size you want. A larger texture map means you can have more available pixels to cover the same space.
Another Edit: Re-reading, so the end goal is actually retexturing a spaceship interior, and this is just practice? Best of luck with that. You are very brave to attempt it. Hope it goes well.
You can now take the texture to photoshop or whatever you use, cut out the part you're interested in, and make a new template out of it.
For example, original texture = 1024x1024
You cut out the pommel, which is (just picking random numbers here) about 300x800 pixels. Paste that pommel into a blank 800x800 image (not necessary, but this makes your life sooo much easier!), resize it to 1024x1024, and adjust the texture as you see fit. Now you have a 1024x1024 template.
Ofcourse, this 1024 template won't look exactly right when you import it. You have to adjust how often the image gets repeated on the pommel There are settings for that somewhere in Daz, both for the x- and the y-axis. But, the key is, you have to either divide the amount in those setting by 1024/800=1.28, or multiply the amount by 1.28. Been a while since I did this, sorry.. There are also settings to "slide" the texture along the x and y axis, you may have to play around a bit with those too to get things in place.
The other option would be taking the dagger to something like Blender, and UV-unwrapping each surface again. It'd probably be a good way to experiment with exporting and importing between DS and Blender. Frustrating, but educative.
@Drip, I think you overcomplicated the heck out of that. If you are using a seamless tile there is no need to make a new template. You can can just apply the tile to the desired channels, and change the tiling in the surfaces tab. Horizonzal/vertical tiling to adjust how often the image repeats, and horizontal/vertical offset to slide the texture. I think what you are doing is cutting a rectangle out of a square, turning it back into a square, and then putting a square texture on it. Unless I missed something, which is completely possible.
I think the OP was trying for a more specific pattern in certain places that would not be suited to seamless tiles.
That's true. Keeping with the dagger, I would be looking to change the crosspiece into something more like iron, which I could do with a seamless tile, but with sigils or other markings, which isn't as easy. Like @Drip said, I could put the sigil in the center and tile it around until it looked about right, which would work. Or I could put the orignal image map into gimp, scale it up, and paint a new image over the top of the old one, which would also work. But my end goal, which is looking more and more complicated as this goes on, would be fiddling around with the interior look of a spaceship, Kibarreto's Shuttlestar, which for reference, looks like this:
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It's a Poser format only model with 3Delight shaders. What I really wanted to toy with was the screens and the lighting. The screens are great, don't get me wrong, but that entire center console is on one imagemap, except for the two large sidescreens next to the pilot seats. Each of those is attached to a mess of screens on their respective sides of the ship. And since its 3Delight, I can't use any of the existing surfaces as mesh lights without changing the shader. So I thought "Hey, I wonder if I can fiddle with the surfaces?" which has now turned into "Hey, I wonder if I can fiddle with the UV map?" and "I wonder if I can paint decent looking textures?"
Go big or go home, right?
That's true. Keeping with the dagger, I would be looking to change the crosspiece into something more like iron, which I could do with a seamless tile, but with sigils or other markings, which isn't as easy. Like @Drip said, I could put the sigil in the center and tile it around until it looked about right, which would work. Or I could put the orignal image map into gimp, scale it up, and paint a new image over the top of the old one, which would also work. But my end goal, which is looking more and more complicated as this goes on, would be fiddling around with the interior look of a spaceship, Kibarreto's Shuttlestar, which for reference, looks like this:
It's a Poser format only model with 3Delight shaders. What I really wanted to toy with was the screens and the lighting. The screens are great, don't get me wrong, but that entire center console is on one imagemap, except for the two large sidescreens next to the pilot seats. Each of those is attached to a mess of screens on their respective sides of the ship. And since its 3Delight, I can't use any of the existing surfaces as mesh lights without changing the shader. So I thought "Hey, I wonder if I can fiddle with the surfaces?" which has now turned into "Hey, I wonder if I can fiddle with the UV map?" and "I wonder if I can paint decent looking textures?"
Go big or go home, right?
Except if Daz supports layer rendering.
As for texture painting many ppl say Mari Foundry is the best program for this.
https://www.foundry.com/products/mari