Genesis 2 and 3 UVs all on one layer in Photoshop/Substance
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,785
I'm finding that Photoshop's 3D painting tools are actually easier to use than any dedicated 3D painting program, but I ran into a problem immediately that I can't figure out how to solve. When I export a figure from Studio to OBJ and load the OBJ in Photoshop for 3D painting, a couple of things happen:
* All of the UVs are piled on one layer called "legs" except for the eyelashes, tear, and eyereflection (which have their own layers for some reason).
* The figure's quads are split into triangles even if subdivision is turned off when exporting (see image below)
I've tried a number of exporting options, including turning Collapse UV Tiles on and off, Triangulate N-Gons, and Write UV Coordinates, and nothing seems to give the expected result. The UV problem also occurs in Substance Painter, which I thought would be much better at handling that than Photoshop. If anyone has some advice on how to get the figure exported in a way where it can be properly used in these programs, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks in advance.

Comments
Hi SnowSultan,
Few days ago I tried to use Substance Painter to make modifications to a model's skin, like adding tattoos and scar marks.
This model was based on Genesis3, so once imported into Substance Painter I could only paint onto the face, all other parts were not detected in terms of UV mapping.
It turns out that other parts show up on the ..OBJ file as having ranges different than 0-1, so they were not supported by Substance Painter.
To fix the issue I have used Notepad++ and changed every occurrence of "vt n." to "vt 0.", this way all the parts of the object were now detected correctly in terms of UV.
Oce that was done, I ws then able to load textures onto the parts and paint onto them directly.
After I made all my changes, I then exported my new textures from Substance and loaded onto the model. Now everything worked correctly.
Not sure if I was clear on my explanation, feel free to ask questions.
Cheers,
Marcelo.
you can just tell daz to collapse UV tiles when you export the OBJ @Mockba which will save you from going into notepad.
Sorry, I know this is an old thread, but I have had this same issue. If I try to export any figure (G2/G3 etc) as obj and bring into Photoshop, there doesn't seem to be a way to separate out the UVs. They are all stacked and the only selectable layer is Legs. I have tried selecting "Collapse UV tiles" in the export options and that didn't work. I don't seem to have this issue with exporting clothing though.
Does anyone know a way for me to extract the UVs for all figures? I did see this product but it isn't available for Mac. https://www.daz3d.com/uv-tailor
I really wish DAZ would make it easier to export UVs.
You extract the UVs by exporting as OBJ - an image file, as output by UV Tailor, is just a guide for painting. If you want to edit teh UVs you need a modeller that has UV editing tools or a dedicated UV editor. For soemthing like this, where the solution is probably to scale each island down adn move it to occupy only a segment of the unit square Hexagon should work - you paint your maps on that, then chop the output up into the original tiles for use with the regular UV set.
Hi. I have exported the G2 character as OBJ, but when you open in Photoshop 3D space all the UVs are stack on top of each other. This doesn't happen with clothing or other items. It also seems like G3 charactes work fine with this method as well, but G2 doesn't. I even tried installed a utility that someone created for DAZ to use a different Base Model UDIM, but that didn't work either.
OK, so Photoshop is handling UDIMs. In that case you just need to use a UV editing tool to drag each of the groups of surfaces to their own UV tile and Photoshop should work. The clothes you are using presumably don't have UDIM/overlapping mapping.
So here are screen shots of a few UV templates. This is a very simple method I found to get UVs out of .obj files in Photoshop. It also works with most .obj I have tested including clothing, props, etc. but it won't work with G2M at all. In the attached examples I simply exported .obj from DAZ and imported into Photoshop (3D workspace). Then I selected the corresponding texture and create Painting Overlay Wireframe. Very simple.
I have tried selecting collapse UV tiles on export setting for the .obj and I have also tried using this converter by Vaskania:
https://www.sharecg.com/v/88140/view/21/DAZ-Studio/UDIM-Conversions-for-Genesis-Genesis-2
Sorry for double posts (I originally posted about this issue over at Vaskania's thread for the UDIM converter as well). This thread is probably more appropriate since the OPs issue is the same that I am having with Photoshop/DAZ.
Thanks.
If you just need the UVmap, go into your genesis 2 starter essentials and there is a GM2 UV template with all the texture templates for you.
What are you wanting to do with these - are you planning to paint new textures, or is this related to your queries in another thread on using a set of Freak 4 maps?
Wow. Face meet palm. I never thought to look in my product library. Yup. There it was. Downloadable UV templates for G2M/G2F. Thanks!
Yeah, I am trying to figure out how to paint new textures for G2M/G2F characters in Photoshop. I normally have to do a lot of trial and error when I do this for clothing items cause I don't have Zbrush or other apps. So I just do it on the flat files in photoshop. Having these UV templates has been a big help so I can overlay them as png and see where the textures are not lining up.
As for my other post about Freak 4. I recently started experimenting with GenX2 to convert older character morphs to use on G1/2/3 so I have now slid way down the rabbit hole with some of this stuff. I downloaded a UV setter utlity and was experimenting with that too. But something not working on that and can't figure it out.
If I had the money and time to learn Zbrush or other tools it would be cool to start making my own custom character morphs and clothing, but it seems pretty daunting.
I've never tried it but I believe Blender has 3D painting that should be able to cope with the daz figures' UV set up. 3D Coat is cheaper than ZBrush and probably a better choice for painting. Mudbox has a rental version.
I just can't seem to wrap my head around Blender. Heck I am still struggling to learn Carrara. It looks like 3D Coat is only available for Windows and I am on Mac.
3DCoat does have a Mac version.o.O Mac, Windows AND Linux matter of fact. Wish they all did that ;)
To see if it works for you, there's also a 30 day trial version. Mac too ;) Lion or above.
Laurie
Oh. I must have hit the wrong link when I search cause it brought up on Steam and Windows only. Thanks for sharing that.
In your experience what would you say the learning curve is? I have been wanting to find a tool to easily unwrap UVs and get more into custom texturing.