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V4 to G3F skin converter released by Blacksmith 3D

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  • Frank__Frank__ Posts: 302

    As I have only B3D V.4 I had to buy the Prime membership to get the Texture Converter program at a low price; okay same price at all, but you save a little on the V4 to GF3 add-on and maybe someday on other products.

    My goal was to transfer ArtCollabs Anime textures to G3F. Did it work? Yes. Perfect, as far as I've seen. But: it's better to save the CR2 into a runtime-structure; I did not, so I got some questions from the utility program where the textures and the geometry reside. Answered corretcly, no problem.

    After conversion I loaded G3F Base and imported the newly generated pz2-file on G3F. This left a lot of surfaces with the standard G3F-materials, because they aren't simply there on a V4. So I merged a V4 into the scene, applied the anime textures, and going forth and back, copying surfaces and paste them on the corresponding ones on G3F. (I left out eyes and mouth, because there's only so much variation, and it was the skin textures I longed for). After copy/paste I changed the diffuse- and bump-maps to the Texture Converted-converted "transformed-xxx"-maps and voila! V4 maps on G3F, no seams seen at the moment.

    (This approach sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't. All one needs to know is how to switch diffuse/bump maps, save a cr2 and your done. Most of the time I spent was adjusting the maps to a geocraft, what worked fine after some experiments, too.)

     

     

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    Silver Dolphin said:

    I just bought it. It works there are some issues. 1 Fingernails need to be fixed in Photoshop. 2 Eyelashes also need to be done in Photoshop. 3 Nose cavity needs work. 4 Eye whites need to be redone by hand. The great thing is this is fixable. It is better than starting from scratch. The other thing is if you own Blacksmith program you can do all of these things in the main program in 3D on Genesis 3. Just export the Genesis 3 female in obj form with these new textures applied and edit them.

    Pretty much the same things that may need to be fixed up after doing it manually in Blender.

    Frank__ said:

    As I have only B3D V.4 I had to buy the Prime membership to get the Texture Converter program at a low price; okay same price at all, but you save a little on the V4 to GF3 add-on and maybe someday on other products.

    My goal was to transfer ArtCollabs Anime textures to G3F. Did it work? Yes. Perfect, as far as I've seen. But: it's better to save the CR2 into a runtime-structure; I did not, so I got some questions from the utility program where the textures and the geometry reside. Answered corretcly, no problem.

    After conversion I loaded G3F Base and imported the newly generated pz2-file on G3F. This left a lot of surfaces with the standard G3F-materials, because they aren't simply there on a V4. So I merged a V4 into the scene, applied the anime textures, and going forth and back, copying surfaces and paste them on the corresponding ones on G3F. (I left out eyes and mouth, because there's only so much variation, and it was the skin textures I longed for). After copy/paste I changed the diffuse- and bump-maps to the Texture Converted-converted "transformed-xxx"-maps and voila! V4 maps on G3F, no seams seen at the moment.

    (This approach sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't. All one needs to know is how to switch diffuse/bump maps, save a cr2 and your done. Most of the time I spent was adjusting the maps to a geocraft, what worked fine after some experiments, too.)

     

     

    The 'after' work is going to be the same no matter what method you use, because as with any new texture, settings will need to be tweaked/set/optimized for that set.  Sometimes you can get away with just replacing the diffuse color maps, but more often than not, you need to do the full set and then tweak the settings.  It's no different than setting up a new preset from raw maps...

  • Frank__Frank__ Posts: 302
    edited December 2015
    mjc1016 said:
    Silver Dolphin said:

    I just bought it. It works there are some issues. 1 Fingernails need to be fixed in Photoshop. 2 Eyelashes also need to be done in Photoshop. 3 Nose cavity needs work. 4 Eye whites need to be redone by hand. The great thing is this is fixable. It is better than starting from scratch. The other thing is if you own Blacksmith program you can do all of these things in the main program in 3D on Genesis 3. Just export the Genesis 3 female in obj form with these new textures applied and edit them.

    Pretty much the same things that may need to be fixed up after doing it manually in Blender.

    Frank__ said:

    As I have only B3D V.4 I had to buy the Prime membership to get the Texture Converter program at a low price; okay same price at all, but you save a little on the V4 to GF3 add-on and maybe someday on other products.

    My goal was to transfer ArtCollabs Anime textures to G3F. Did it work? Yes. Perfect, as far as I've seen. But: it's better to save the CR2 into a runtime-structure; I did not, so I got some questions from the utility program where the textures and the geometry reside. Answered corretcly, no problem.

    After conversion I loaded G3F Base and imported the newly generated pz2-file on G3F. This left a lot of surfaces with the standard G3F-materials, because they aren't simply there on a V4. So I merged a V4 into the scene, applied the anime textures, and going forth and back, copying surfaces and paste them on the corresponding ones on G3F. (I left out eyes and mouth, because there's only so much variation, and it was the skin textures I longed for). After copy/paste I changed the diffuse- and bump-maps to the Texture Converted-converted "transformed-xxx"-maps and voila! V4 maps on G3F, no seams seen at the moment.

    (This approach sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't. All one needs to know is how to switch diffuse/bump maps, save a cr2 and your done. Most of the time I spent was adjusting the maps to a geocraft, what worked fine after some experiments, too.)

     

     

    The 'after' work is going to be the same no matter what method you use, because as with any new texture, settings will need to be tweaked/set/optimized for that set.  Sometimes you can get away with just replacing the diffuse color maps, but more often than not, you need to do the full set and then tweak the settings.  It's no different than setting up a new preset from raw maps...

    Yes and no. Fingernails, eyes, mouth, I left as they were, because how much differences you need?

    And this time I got away with just replacing diffuse and bump maps.

    I will try some V4-elite maps I want to have on G3F and see how much tweaking needs to be done. (As I'm mostly a Carrara-user I am already used to tweak every shader, but it's some other thing to have a texture map working on some new UV than just to fiddle with shader settings. And for me this Texture Converter makes it easy to use V4 textures on G3F; it's only some steps which the intermediate user can follow.)

    PS: I didn't tried the Blender-version, because I feel lost in Blender. I use Blender to fix the normals on dynamic clothing objs imported into Carrara, but I do not want to go the baked maps route with Blender, because it would take too much time to adjust to this ui. More time than the 50$ and some ten minutes in DAZ Studio, where I also have no shader-knowledge, are worth.

     

     

    Post edited by Frank__ on
  • JOdelJOdel Posts: 6,322
    RAMWolff said:
    Hellboy said:

    Actually, yes. The eyes get a white border, they look pretty weird in the viewport. Seems like they render fine do far, maybe its an opacity issue. But yes, there is somethinh weird about them.

    it asks me where do I want everything, I just select the desired place.

    Thanks for confirming that Hellboy.  Glad the program asks now where you want the files to go.  That's an improvement.  laugh

    Has there been an update to the Texture Transformer program then? Should that be re-downloaded?

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 2015

    I did the two conversions...the V4 to G3F direct and the one using the V4 baked to V6, first.  Unfortunately I don't have any renders to post (maybe I'll run some with clothes on in a couple of days...).  One of the things I did find out, though, is that the manual bake process through Blender is a very clean conversion.  Of course G2F can have the V4 UV set and use the textures natively, but converting them to V6 does have some advantages.

    In the end, they came out about the same, both the main textures were fine (limbs/arms & legs, face, torso).  There were problem areas in each, but small ones and different ones.  But in each case the actual conversion runs in about 5 to 20 minutes, depending on the size of the maps, mostly.  Some ran in under 5, but they were mostly bump/greyscale maps. 

    If the TT add-on can do it faster then it could very well be a viable method for those who don't want to spend the set up time/don't know Blender.  It is definitely easier/better if you already have Blacksmith3D or were using it, instead of Blender.  But, the end results posted about and images I've seen, there seems to be about the same amount of clean up/post conversion fixing needed by both methods.

    It's not a simple click and use solution...and the end results (no matter which is used) will need manual set up as materials to look best. 

    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • SotoSoto Posts: 1,450
    JOdel said:
    RAMWolff said:
    Hellboy said:

    Actually, yes. The eyes get a white border, they look pretty weird in the viewport. Seems like they render fine do far, maybe its an opacity issue. But yes, there is somethinh weird about them.

    it asks me where do I want everything, I just select the desired place.

    Thanks for confirming that Hellboy.  Glad the program asks now where you want the files to go.  That's an improvement.  laugh

    Has there been an update to the Texture Transformer program then? Should that be re-downloaded?

    I assume the options are part of the addon and not Texture Transformer, because I have Blacksmith 5 Pro (current is 6).

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,594
    Hellboy said:
    JOdel said:
    RAMWolff said:
    Hellboy said:

    Actually, yes. The eyes get a white border, they look pretty weird in the viewport. Seems like they render fine do far, maybe its an opacity issue. But yes, there is somethinh weird about them.

    it asks me where do I want everything, I just select the desired place.

    Thanks for confirming that Hellboy.  Glad the program asks now where you want the files to go.  That's an improvement.  laugh

    Has there been an update to the Texture Transformer program then? Should that be re-downloaded?

    I assume the options are part of the addon and not Texture Transformer, because I have Blacksmith 5 Pro (current is 6).

    I have Blacksmith 6 Standard, which I upgraded from Blacksmith 5 Standard which included Texture Transformer. When they released 6, Texture Transformer was removed from the standard version. In theory I could reinstall version 5 of Blacksmith, and thus get Texture Transformer back, but I do not know if this older version of TT would work with the G3F plug in. When I upgraded to 6 Standard I did not care much that TT was lost, as I had never used it, and with the figures it then supported, I doubted I would ever use it.

  • ModernWizardModernWizard Posts: 904

    Wow, the development of a V4 > G3F texture converter almost gives me an incentive to purchase TT and this add-on, except that I don't really use V4 UVs anymore. Thus I'd have to convert any G2F texture back to V4 and then to G3F, so there would be two options for degradation. I wonder if the vendor plans a V5 or G2F base > G3F converter? Now THAT I would buy in a heartbeat.

     

    --MW

  • aspinaspin Posts: 219
    Havos said:
    Hellboy said:
    JOdel said:
    RAMWolff said:
    Hellboy said:

    Actually, yes. The eyes get a white border, they look pretty weird in the viewport. Seems like they render fine do far, maybe its an opacity issue. But yes, there is somethinh weird about them.

    it asks me where do I want everything, I just select the desired place.

    Thanks for confirming that Hellboy.  Glad the program asks now where you want the files to go.  That's an improvement.  laugh

    Has there been an update to the Texture Transformer program then? Should that be re-downloaded?

    I assume the options are part of the addon and not Texture Transformer, because I have Blacksmith 5 Pro (current is 6).

    I have Blacksmith 6 Standard, which I upgraded from Blacksmith 5 Standard which included Texture Transformer. When they released 6, Texture Transformer was removed from the standard version. In theory I could reinstall version 5 of Blacksmith, and thus get Texture Transformer back, but I do not know if this older version of TT would work with the G3F plug in. When I upgraded to 6 Standard I did not care much that TT was lost, as I had never used it, and with the figures it then supported, I doubted I would ever use it.

    Somewhere I read it would not work, but I just tried and could convert the textures with Blacksmith 5 Pro to G3F and it looks mostly fine. The lashes are white, but maybe this can be fixed with some adjustments.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    aspin said:
     

    Somewhere I read it would not work, but I just tried and could convert the textures with Blacksmith 5 Pro to G3F and it looks mostly fine. The lashes are white, but maybe this can be fixed with some adjustments.

    Lashes are mostly a transparency map and a diffuse color...so there may not have been anything other than the transparency map to begin with, which would end up with a white diffuse map, if the color wasn't known.

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,594
    aspin said:
    Havos said:
    Hellboy said:
    JOdel said:
    RAMWolff said:
    Hellboy said:

    Actually, yes. The eyes get a white border, they look pretty weird in the viewport. Seems like they render fine do far, maybe its an opacity issue. But yes, there is somethinh weird about them.

    it asks me where do I want everything, I just select the desired place.

    Thanks for confirming that Hellboy.  Glad the program asks now where you want the files to go.  That's an improvement.  laugh

    Has there been an update to the Texture Transformer program then? Should that be re-downloaded?

    I assume the options are part of the addon and not Texture Transformer, because I have Blacksmith 5 Pro (current is 6).

    I have Blacksmith 6 Standard, which I upgraded from Blacksmith 5 Standard which included Texture Transformer. When they released 6, Texture Transformer was removed from the standard version. In theory I could reinstall version 5 of Blacksmith, and thus get Texture Transformer back, but I do not know if this older version of TT would work with the G3F plug in. When I upgraded to 6 Standard I did not care much that TT was lost, as I had never used it, and with the figures it then supported, I doubted I would ever use it.

    Somewhere I read it would not work, but I just tried and could convert the textures with Blacksmith 5 Pro to G3F and it looks mostly fine. The lashes are white, but maybe this can be fixed with some adjustments.

    Thanks for the info. I am tempted to buy the new TT anyway since then I would get any updates in the future, but your post has given me some options.

  • JOdelJOdel Posts: 6,322
    edited December 2015
    ModernWizard said:

    Wow, the development of a V4 > G3F texture converter almost gives me an incentive to purchase TT and this add-on, except that I don't really use V4 UVs anymore. Thus I'd have to convert any G2F texture back to V4 and then to G3F, so there would be two options for degradation. I wonder if the vendor plans a V5 or G2F base > G3F converter? Now THAT I would buy in a heartbeat.

     

    --MW

    It would certainly be welcome for the users here. But I don't know if they'll do it. With DAZ's 2-year development cycle, there hasn't been anything like the time for Genesis or G2 to build up anything like the humongous stock of V4 skins that are out there. And since both are now older tech the number of skins made for them are tapering off. G2 is still getting new skins, but it's been a while since I saw anything new for Genesis.

    It would certainly be useful to know what kind of a backlog of textures the developer wants to know are available before they'll consider building a converter for them. 

    For one thing, there are a number of K4 skins that I'd like to be able to use on kid morphs. But there never were all *that* many skins developed for K4, which only came out in what? 2010? Whereas people are still producing new V4 and M4 skins that any number of people would like to be able to use on different figures.

    And it would be even more helpful if the converters went both ways, But I don't think they do. There are a couple of things for Dawn that I'd like to use on G2, but it doesn't seem to work that way. I'd happily pay for the additional modules if it did.

    Post edited by JOdel on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 2015
    JOdel said:
     

    For one thing, there are a number of K4 skins that I'd like to be able to use on kid morphs. But there never were all *that* many skins developed for K4, which only came out in what? 2010? Whereas people are still producing new V4 and M4 skins that any number of people would like to be able to use on different figures.

    Which Genesis generation for kids?  Genesis already has them.

    There is a path to G2, if you have last year's Christmas gift.

    For G3, you are in the same boat as all the rest...

     

    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • DkgooseDkgoose Posts: 1,451

    Looks interesting sadly I don't use blacksmith, is it fairly easy to use? 

  • DkgooseDkgoose Posts: 1,451

    Forgive me moderators for me asking this here not sure if it's allowed, the site that sells  blacksmith3d, did they lower their membership price, I thought it was much more expensive?

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,088
    This just might convince me to migrate to G3. Might. :)
  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401

    Greetings,

    dkgoose said:

    Forgive me moderators for me asking this here not sure if it's allowed, the site that sells  blacksmith3d, did they lower their membership price, I thought it was much more expensive?

    They did, but they also gutted it, BADLY, so it's not worth much...  It might be worth it just to get TT+V4->3G3F at a significant discount (that, when combined with the membership, is no real discount) and hope you get some other value from it over the next year if you HAVE to have the converter, but...look, just don't use your credit card there. sad  I had to replace my card multiple times this year because their security was crap, and if I buy from there EVER now, I use Paypal because I know they keep my info safe.  I'm sure they're being more careful now, but...yeah, several times burned...  angry

    --  Morgan

     

  • DkgooseDkgoose Posts: 1,451

    It's not a must have, the price for the program seemed nice, I've never even used it before so sadly it'd probably strictly hey users for the converter 

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,088
    For someone with no interest in Blender, how good is Blacksmith as a painter/basic model tweaker? It SOUNDS like it could be up my alley.
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    Not sure about how much/efficient it is as a model tweaker...as a painter, it is a good one.  There are several PAs that use it...look at Phoenix1966's catalog.

    http://www.daz3d.com/phoenix1966

    That's one PA that uses it.

  • ModernWizardModernWizard Posts: 904
    JOdel said:
    ModernWizard said:

    Wow, the development of a V4 > G3F texture converter almost gives me an incentive to purchase TT and this add-on, except that I don't really use V4 UVs anymore. Thus I'd have to convert any G2F texture back to V4 and then to G3F, so there would be two options for degradation. I wonder if the vendor plans a V5 or G2F base > G3F converter? Now THAT I would buy in a heartbeat.

     

    --MW

    It would certainly be welcome for the users here. But I don't know if they'll do it. With DAZ's 2-year development cycle, there hasn't been anything like the time for Genesis or G2 to build up anything like the humongous stock of V4 skins that are out there. And since both are now older tech the number of skins made for them are tapering off. G2 is still getting new skins, but it's been a while since I saw anything new for Genesis.

    It would certainly be useful to know what kind of a backlog of textures the developer wants to know are available before they'll consider building a converter for them. 

    For one thing, there are a number of K4 skins that I'd like to be able to use on kid morphs. But there never were all *that* many skins developed for K4, which only came out in what? 2010? Whereas people are still producing new V4 and M4 skins that any number of people would like to be able to use on different figures.

    And it would be even more helpful if the converters went both ways, But I don't think they do. There are a couple of things for Dawn that I'd like to use on G2, but it doesn't seem to work that way. I'd happily pay for the additional modules if it did.

    I see your points. V4 has scads of content, and new stuff is coming out all the time, whereas figures following her never achieved her popularity!

     

    --MW

  • alkenalken Posts: 270
    edited December 2015

    I just converted my first V4 skin to G3F using this transformer program and I really like the results. The only problem I had was it would not tranform the specular or displacement maps.  I had to create a new cr2 and place those maps in the difuse and bump sections in order for them to process.

    This is V4 Cyborg Ashanti skin by P3Design converted to G3F

    cy.jpg
    884 x 1080 - 479K
    cyface.jpg
    884 x 1080 - 671K
    Post edited by alken on
  • JOdelJOdel Posts: 6,322
    mjc1016 said:
    JOdel said:
     

    For one thing, there are a number of K4 skins that I'd like to be able to use on kid morphs. But there never were all *that* many skins developed for K4, which only came out in what? 2010? Whereas people are still producing new V4 and M4 skins that any number of people would like to be able to use on different figures.

    Which Genesis generation for kids?  Genesis already has them.

    There is a path to G2, if you have last year's Christmas gift.

    For G3, you are in the same boat as all the rest...

     

    Pretty sure I've got last year's freebie. But I was mainly concerned with the G3 migration.I have a fairly extensive library of established characters which I use for illustrations and at present they are Genesis 1 so they are using skins from all the gen4 and 5 UVs. V4 and M4 I'm *reasonably* confident will eventually make the transition. But the K4 skins are less certain.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    The only route, if not doing it manually, would be to convert the K4 to V4 (which can be done within Studio with the Map Transfer utility (Sickleyied's tutorial...http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-The-Map-Transfer-Utility-368686796) and then run those through this TT add-on. A double conversion...it's also possible to do them with the manual method in one step.

     

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,594
    edited December 2015
    JOdel said:
    mjc1016 said:
    JOdel said:
     

    For one thing, there are a number of K4 skins that I'd like to be able to use on kid morphs. But there never were all *that* many skins developed for K4, which only came out in what? 2010? Whereas people are still producing new V4 and M4 skins that any number of people would like to be able to use on different figures.

    Which Genesis generation for kids?  Genesis already has them.

    There is a path to G2, if you have last year's Christmas gift.

    For G3, you are in the same boat as all the rest...

     

    Pretty sure I've got last year's freebie. But I was mainly concerned with the G3 migration.I have a fairly extensive library of established characters which I use for illustrations and at present they are Genesis 1 so they are using skins from all the gen4 and 5 UVs. V4 and M4 I'm *reasonably* confident will eventually make the transition. But the K4 skins are less certain.

    Could you not use map transfer to convert the K4 skins into V4, and then use TT to move that to G3?

    Post edited by Havos on
  • Zev0Zev0 Posts: 7,122
    edited December 2015

    Yep. Would be a double conversion, but ultimately you can.

    Post edited by Zev0 on
  • DamselDamsel Posts: 391

    What does baked in mean in this contex?

  • dvitoladvitola Posts: 136

    I bought it a couple of days ago, and I'm giddy with the fact that I can transform my V4 textures to G3F. I have a bunch of them and now I can use them again since ever since seeing G3F, I never returned to V4. I didn't even realize there was a manual with the download. It was easy enough to figure out on my own. I don't fix anything in Photoshop. It all looks good. I do use G3F fingernails and eyes. I have a set that I particularly like. Works great. Denise

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,088
    edited December 2015

    I was getting excited until I reminded myself of all the geograft and such I have still in Genesis 1&2. Heh. Still, I could see myself moving to G3 at some point, now. (particularly whenever there's a GenX2 for Genesis 3)

     

     

    Post edited by Oso3D on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,088

    Actually, another question... Does Blacksmith 3D have something for converting V5/BF/M5/BM to G3?

     

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