M4/Genesis/G2M UV's for G3M [Solved - With new solution 07Feb16]
bshugs1525871
Posts: 184
I've been going through the for the last few days looking for a thread on this topic, but couldn't find one. If I missed it, please post a link and I'll update the thread title.
I have many characters for earlier Daz characters such as M4, Genesis and G2M. Some of them are quite distinct and I've spent time tweaking the textures with custom tattoo, scars and other features. I know I'm not alone in this. So, my question is: Are there any products (or plans for products) that will allow us to use our older textures on Genesis 3 Male? A set of UVs like we had with Michael 4 for Genesis 2 Male?
Thanks for any info.
Update:
Thanks to Sorel and Leana for the quick and concise replies! Turns out there is no easy way. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. Backwards compatability only lasts so long. Still there are some tutorials starting with the one Leana listed below. j cade, who wrote the tutorial below, also mentioned a second tutorial for those of us who are unfamilar with Blender. I'm going to list them below for the next noob who wonders the same thing as I did. If anyone has any futher information, send me a message and I'll update the post.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/59665/tutorial-converting-textures-from-gen2-to-gen3/p1
http://the-freehold.com/2015/09/03/texture-conversion-using-daz-studio-and-blender/
UPDATE (07Feb2016)
For those reading this for the first time, this is a quick rehash of a post below. There's a 3D paint program called BlackSmith 3D which can include a Texture Transformer utility. It does a good job of transfering M4 (not Genesis or G2M) to G3M.
For more read my post here:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1007770#Comment_1007770
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Comments
It is not possible to provide M4/Genesis/G2M UV's for G3M, just as it isn't possible to provide them for G3F:
The material zones are different enough that you'd need to use parts of two different texture maps on some material zones, which isn't possible, and you can't create a version of G3 with the same material zones as previous generations as they don't have edge loops at the right places for that.
The only option is to convert the maps themselves. There's no conversion app to do that simply right now, but j cade has a tutorial on how to do this with Blender.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/59665/tutorial-converting-textures-from-gen2-to-gen3/p1
Thanks for the quick reply to Sorel and Leana. I'll be studying Blender now...
I'm hoping someone will either do a UV conversion to allow for M4/M5/M6 skins to be used on M7 or that a plug-in for 3D Universe's Texture Converter (or a new similar product) will be made available.
There is not, will not and cannot be a UV conversion...they are the same reasons that have been given for G3F. Nothing has changed. TC is also a dead product. Anything that comes out will need to be new...and frankly I don't see a rush to create a product, from scratch, that is going to need the baking functions of a full fledged modelling app (Blender is not the only program that can do the baking...it's just the cheapest). There's just too much that needs manual intervention to make an easy to use 'click converter' type thing.
Blacksmith3D has a "texture transformer" utility to move V4 and M4 textures to a number of figures (I bought it for Dawn and Dusk), maybe they'll add Genesis 3 as target figures one day.
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/blacksmith3ds-texture-transformer/101170
Won't take my word for it...the how about the word of the guy who did it?
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/845208/#Comment_845208
I didn't find mjc's post as terse or negative, but more informative about what has already been said quite a lot. If something like this was possible, I'm pretty sure a PA would have jumped on it by now, or at least mentioned they would be working on it.
Me either. It's been information that's been said many times before. 3DUniverse stated that they weren't working on TC anymore in another thread. The textures need to be projected, not adjusted with UVs, so it will take someone with programming skill to do it, and very few PAs are programmers. Right now the best bet is to use something like blender to project the textures then clean that up.
Something like that would be great.
It's a shame 3DUniverse isn't working with Texture Converter anymore. That was a great product and would really help G3M users, since male skins and characters don't get made as much as female ones.
I believe you're confusing what was written about geometry modifications (morphs and HD) with texture modifications. It is possible to map any manifold (including figures) to any other, provided you can either generate a few keypoints automatically or tag the figure. I'm currently working on both approaches. The second has applications in mapping live action to textures, morphs, and poses.
The problem is that you can't define material zones boundaries on G3F that would match those of V4 or G2F because G3F doesn't have edge loops in the right place for some of them. And those boundaries are important because they correspond to places where the texture file used changes, so you need them to have something useable in DS.
I'm not confusing anything...
Here are his specific words...
I asked about this topic in rendo forum, and answer from vendor was Not-for-now. Not discarded, but not in current plans.
and in any even the boundaries between surfaces are not changed by UV sets - those affect only the layout within a surface.
In order to use textures with a V4 layout on G3F, or M4 on G3M etc., you would need new mapping (which implies a new geometry), converted textures via a tool in the style of Texture Converter, or some kind of special shader that could mix different textures and adjust UVs controlled by a mask (which might have been doable for third generation figures, where hardly any included DS-native maps, but would not be practical for V4 and later maps which use a variety of different shaders for DS-native materials all requiring their own new mixer shader). The most likely bet is the middle option - some kind of conversion utility. (Actually, it might be possible to use option three and Shader Mixer as a way to carry out option two - but since, as I recall, Shader Baker is not exposed to scripting it would require some manual clicking.)
Honestly, I'm finding that most of the textures that I have projected to G3F have obvious seam lines at the shoulders and thighs because of the way the old UVs were laid out, and they need to be tweaked in Photoshop. I'm not certain that an automatic conversion utility would actually do much good.
Two things I've found that help some with the seams...one is to make sure that the maps are the same size. If your original is 2k then make the 'blank' to bake to 2k also (or scale up the original...if it's good enough to handle it). The second don't try to convert things like heavy freckles, lots of blemishes, very hairy or the like. And lossless textures (or uncomptessed) convert better than jpg compressed ones.
I'm trying to understand your process and translate this to a shader builder field, but I don't achieve how topological differences can be driven by masks. Is it the role of the baking fuction? Shader builder have bake3d function that can be achieved, I believe, by scripts in render time.
Remap a surface that needs to take two inputs so that each old UV takes up half the space, then use a mask (or in this case just test the texture coordinate) to decide which map to use and adjust the UVs.
Take the arms as an example, which take bits of the limb map and bits of the torso map - remap them, but then scale the limb map area so that it is in the u=0 to u=.5 half of the template and scale the torso map area so that it is in the u=0.5 to u=1.0 area. Now create a mask, using that new template, that is black where the limb map should be used and white where the torso map should be used. Set up a shader network with bricks for both the limb map and the torso map, feeding the t value from a Tiler brick into both but feeding S*2 into the limb map and s*2-1 into the torso map. Now add the mask image taking raw S and T values. Add a Mix brick taking the mask as alpha, the limb map as base and torso map as layer. Feed that into the usual texture inputs.
That approach wpould still have problems with transition polygons, wheer a polygon straddled both maps - that might be handleable by using testing for specific S, t ranges and aplying local transforms, or it might be a roadblock.
Running through it, in my head, I think it would need those extra test conditions...because without them, I think that nothing will be assigned and you would end up with a black/blank spot where the split poly should be.
Well, well... https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/v4-to-g3f-add-on-pack-for-texture-transformer/112851/
Looks like it was OK for me to hope that a product would be made after all. Thanks
Looks like Timbales was right to hope. I found a fairly decent utility for transferring textures to G3M. I've been working with Blacksmith 3D as my 3D paint program ('cause I'm too cheap for Photoshop). Blacksmith 3D has a Texture Transformer utility which has been expanded recently. You don't need the base paint program to buy the utility, I only mention it in case your results differ. Not sure of the rules for linking to other stores, so just do a Google search.
There are a few catches:
Once there I launched the utility, followed step by step locating files and selecting folders. At then end it saved the transferred maps and a .pz2 file (which worked on G3M to my surprise).
Here's what I got doing a transfer with DTG Calum (also from another site). No post work, just applying the PZ2 File to G3M.
No, it doesn't work with the "toast!"