UDIMs on props?
EC3D
Posts: 131
Hi!
I've figured out the basics of working with UDIMs in a texturing program as well as Blender, in working with Gen 8 figures. Basically all I would like to know is are there any limitations to using UDIMs for rendering in IRAY within Daz Studio for wearables and props? Are merchants already doing this? If so are there any caveats or reasons why it would be better to work with a basic 0-1 UV space? In my upcoming projects it would be nice to eke out as much texel density as I can.
Just in thinking about it in terms of how I bake my textures in blender on other projects in the past, using cycles nodes to apply them, I cannot help wondering if there would be something additional I would have to do with the actual shader in Daz to have it apply maps on the correct uv region (0-1, 1-2 etc.). I can do this manually if need be, doing the math in my 3d program and translating the uvs (i.e. in a 256x256 uv space I select my UVs for that object and translate x-positive by 256, now those islands are on UDIM 1002)
As long as my UVs are consistent throughtout the texturing and modelling process then I should be fine?
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Comments
DS will handle UDIMs transparently, I think the main reason they are rarely used is that some popular texturing tools do a poor job of painting across multiple maps and soem add-ons (such as the strand hair plug-ins) don't support them - also they are not that often needed.
Thank you for responding to my question.
So basically if I understood correctly, the main pitfall of using UDIMs on something like this is a question of user-friendliness for those intending on retexturing the product. I supposed I could do the extra work and provide a "hi-res" UV's and a "low-res" UV option, the latter having condensed islands, or separated objects/subtools...
Even before UDIMs the Daz people used overlapping UVs (the effect you get by collapsing all the UDIM tiles onto the base UV square). I would suggest keeping things which people might want to paint across in a single operation on the same tile, but there's certainly nothing wrong with using UDIMs.
Thank you for the advice. You make a good point. What stops me from using overlapping UV's is that I always seem to have a problem creating my normal map assets with them. I'm sure its just that I've not had the time and luck to discover where I'm going wrong, I've been at 3d modelling only a year and change, in my spare time. But excuses aside, I guess I'll just have to experiment.
Depending on what you're making, sometimes you can put all the pieces of the UV on a single tile. It's a little tricky to do, but that's often easier than trying to get them to stack.
Organizing my UV islands on the standard 0-1 tile usually isn't an issue, once I've unwrapped and adjusted orientation and relative texel density. I have some nifty add-ons for blender that give fine control over island packing, rotation, distance, mirroring etc if the object doesn't require a more personal touch. That's fine. I should mention that I'm using substance painter, and I love the program but those stacked uvs cause the world space normal baking process to hemmorhage.
A workaround I've used in the past for this is to take any repeat geometry (where the uv islands are stacked) and cull that for the painting process, paint, bring it back into the 3d program, blender in my case, and bake the texture. I moved away from that because I feel it creates an unnaturally uniform result, and to go in and add grunge layers in blender after the fact is too laborious for the amount of benefit gained.
Of course, my methods are not set in stone and I am trying to keep and open mind.
Metacreations' Painter3D used to spit out individual maps every time you clicked the left mouse button to paint on a mesh. I never did get that figured out.
While it's nice to offer a blank texture template with a product that end-users can manipulate themselves, I don't know if it's a mandate. Daz figures already use up to 3 separate texture maps (body, head, genitals) but backinnaday I've seen head, torso, and limbs, on separate maps, and teeth and nails on a 4th.
Trying match those edges up was a PITA.
Perhaps if you had a guide layer so end-users could have some sense of what's what?
A guide layer makes sense, much in the same way as the UV seam guides that are circulating for the genesis figures, back when the newer UV maps first came about. I think they were discussed by either SnowSultan , or SickleYield. Copying that method could be one option, but TBH I'm looking into overlapping UVs again. I think the minblock I'm having with those is because I've been gearing my learning process towards Unity and UE4, which have limitations that objects for simply rendering do not ,of course. :P I wonder if I can work around the normals issue in Substance. I know there are other ways to achieve some of my goals, but I'm trying to create seamless texturing workflow. For example.. I want to use overlapping UVs, a UDIM setup to the same effect , or both for all the screws on a piece of furniture, so that the end-user can use it as a "hero prop" if they like, at high resolution being able to zoom all the way in and see surface scratches. I could bake my maps at 16k and it wouldnt make a difference if those UV's are packing tiny, to my understanding. Sure, I could unwrap them in such a way that a user could simply apply a planar shader tiled way up, which would be far less trouble. But if it's easy I generally don't want to do it. :P