Geografts drive me nuts (help with texturing)

SnowSultan

I'm having trouble trying to paint a new opacity map for the wings from the Succubus Accessory set for Genesis 2 Female. Basically, I want to reduce the area where the wings meet the body; I think it's too large by default and doesn't blend with other textures very well. However, I cannot figure out WHAT to actually paint because of the "Succubus Shell" that is applied when the wings are loaded. Hiding any body parts only reveals holes in the mesh where the geograft has merged, and I also have no idea why hiding the wings themselves doesn't actually hide them in the viewport.

Could someone please explain how in the heck you do any sort of texture editing with a geograft? (edit: and if possible, to disable geografting completely and just make them conform?)

RawArt

You cannot do that.

If you add opacity there, it will leave a hole in the mesh. This is the same as if you were to put an opacity on a arm or leg of the figures...there is nothing beneath it. The geograft replaces the poligons beneath the graft, so that it becomes a continuous mesh with the base.

Richard Haseltine

You could use a morph to shrink the join area, I suppose.

Oso3D

Geoshell with -.01 offset?

SnowSultan

OK, if you cannot do it (and I understand why), can you disable geografting on a figure that uses it?

I'm not understanding what the shell is actually doing in a case like this. Why is an opacity map for the wings being used on the Torso and Shoulders of the figure's geoshell and why does the shell essentially duplicate the wings (because if you make the actual wings invisible, they still remain visible due to the shell)? Why are there duplicate wing surfaces mixed in with the figure's surfaces? Can I export the shell as an OBJ to combine the wings and figure onto one UV map and paint that? It's very confusing.

vwrangler

Well ... I'm not any kind of expert, but do you like the results that you get if you simply delete the geoshell -- it doesn't need to be there except for texture blending, judging by what happens when you turn the shell off with the eyeball -- unfit the wings and then parent them to her chest? They sort of stick out of her back, instead of blending, but given what you want, that doesn't seem like it's necessarily a worse result.

EDIT: You can delete the geoshell and fit them directly to her, but that leaves a jagged area around where the geoshell would have blended. You'd need to do ... something with the Shoulders and Torso surfaces of the wings themselves to get rid of the jagged edges, and since it's a geograft, I'm not sure what you could do. Parenting and doing a Z-Translate to push them forward inside her body produces a less awkward visual result, maybe.

SnowSultan

@vwrangler: Yeah, that's actually what I'm attempting now; painting opacity maps in Substance Painter on the Shoulders and Torso and then just parenting the wings to her back. I want to make a nice seamless blend specifically because I *do* want to show her from the back (for front views, I always just deleted the shell and confirmed them, the jagged areas weren't visible so it didn't matter. It won't be as convenient as having them conforming because they won't move with the arms (which may be a good thing for certain poses) and side angles might require some postwork to fix where it doesn't completely attach, but unless I turn them into individual props or someone knows a way to completely disable geografting, it's probably what I have to do.

Richard Haseltine

There's no on/off for grafting (or rather for AutoHiding) but it is fairly simple to reduce the size of the hidden area. On the base figure use the Geometry Editor tool to select one (or more) polygons you can afford to lose - an area that will be hidden by the wings anyway, or a polygon on the back of the tngue or one of the teeth for example - then with the wings fitted right-click in the Viewport and select Geometry Assignment>Set Auto Hide Group for Fitted figures (or something like that), then in the dialogue select the wings. If you now unfit and refit the wings that should show the formerly hidden polygons and hide the new polygon selection.

SnowSultan

Thanks for that information, it won't help though. The geograft/shell for the Succubus Wings is by far the most ridiculously confusing thing I have EVER tried working with in my 15 years of 3D. Logic semes to vanish into thin air when this thing is applied.

- You can hide the wings themselves and just have the shell visible? Why are textures even applied to the wings if the shell uses the same materials, not to mention it's the only way to use an opacity map that blends into the skin with them?

- How are the Shoulders and Torso of the shell able to use the Wings UV maps?

- And most confusing of all, why does an opacity map created using the wing UVs NOT work on the Shoulders and Torso of the shell when it loads by default using an opacity map with the wing's UVs? The UVs are the same, why is the one I made not working?

 

I dont think I will ever buy anything geografted again. Rendering twice and blending the two images together in Photoshop takes half the time and is ten times less confusing than this.

Lissa_xyz

I don't have the wings, so I tested with another geografted product I do own (parts of the bot armour for G2F). If you set Fit To to None, the piece remains, but the missing polygons are added back to the figure, allowing you to just parent in place.

SnowSultan

Right, but it's a little harder with these wings because the connecting pieces bend when geografted. They're static when parented, and because you can't translate each wing individually, there's some pokethrough. Doesn't matter, I'll postwork it rather than waste any more time trying to figure out how that shell works.