Hi all, Does anyone use this product ? What is your opinion on it ... good, bad, indifferent ?? What can it REALLY do ? .... DAZ's feature list is a bit inadequate and leaves me asking many questions .... As an extreme example, does it mean you can (for whatever reason I can't imagine) convert a Michael 2 texture to fit Koshini ? Look forward to your feedback. thanks, Andrew

at the moment it converts V2 textures to V3 (also v3 to v2 textures), its a very excellent product.. I would highly recommend it. It has the potential for plug ins for other figures. Like converting Mike textures to V3, or steph textures to V2 & V3... As i said it currently converts V2 textures to V3 and the reverse. and it has many settings of quality, It converts with little or no loss of quality.. I would say if you have a lot of V2 textures, but you know prefer V3 its a must have program. Incredibly versitile, i personally can't wait for the plug ins.. I was also involved in Beta testing it, so this product was throughly tested before it went on sale. hope that has cleared things up. -SimderZ- xXx

I own it. At present, it converts V2 body/head textures to V3 and vice-versa. It works very well and I use it a lot. Minimal retouch may be needed for some textures. More figure conversions are to be added as plugins.

oh and BTW... its made by 3D Universe.. its just sold at DAZ

The UTC isn't a DAZ product; they are brokering it for DarkWhisper. At the moment, all the UTC can do is convert Victoria 1-2 maps to Victoria 3, and vice-versa. It does this =very= well. My favorite evil texture to throw at things is Steffy ZZ's Gaia with the Photoshop Irezumi tattoo layer kit applied. Gaia is a memory eater, and the tats are so detailed that any misregister is very easy to spot. So far, I haven't found one error. The thing about the UTC is that it has a base that permits plugins. Steve and his brother create them, and at the moment he is taking a survey at his website www.3duniverse.co.za , and what gets done will depend on the interest level shown. If enough people were interested in a Koshini to Mike option, he'd do it. That said, it is worth it just being able to use -all- your Vickie textures on whatever iteration of Vickie you have.

I'm hoping for a Steph/Mike to either flavour of Victoria.

Maybe they will have a Michael 2 to Michael 3 plug in available eventually too-you know, sometime after he's released.

with Daz's big sale going on UTC is on sale right now for $19.99 just incase someone cares. I hadn't bought it yet, kept waitin it out and thinking. guess the thinking is over now. BWwaahahaahaha. err cough (walks away sheepishly)

In the 3duniverse forum, Dark Whisper hinted that when M3 is released there will be multiple UTC plug-ins released also. I bought the original texture convertor and it had some limitations, but when the Universal texture convertor came out, DW offered it is a limited time free upgrade to buyers of the old version. Having used both, I'd say the UTC is a big improvement. I'd say that if you've accumulated a lot of v1/v2 textures over the past few years, the UTC is well worth the price because it's gonna at least double the useability of your skins :D

Would be nice to have : Stephanie <-> V3 textures Mike <-> V3 male textures ....maybe even MayaDoll could get involved ....

It works really well! Even without V3, I can still convert her textures for V2. I don't feel so left out that way. V3 is way too big, even without the morphs. And the textures are larger files. Add hair, and clothes? That's more than vicky & mike fully ready to go. My pc would choke. The convertor was worth it to me to be able to have a bit of a v3 look.

and for texture makers it helps with some trouble spots to convert them, fix seams and then unconvert them

UTC is, and shall remain PC ONLY program!! when it first came out several Mac users, me among them wondered about a Mac version and the answers indicated the chances were somewhere between slim and none since the creators seem to be members of the BG fan club :-(

...V3 is way too big, even without the morphs...

Sorry to take this off-subject for a minute, but I don't think you've looked into this thoroughly ;)...

blMilWom_v3.obj -> 8,617,333 bytes
blMilWom.obj (V2) -> 3,150,215 bytes

...ok, so the .obj file is bigger, but you also have to have the .cr2 loaded for each...

Victoria 3.cr2 -> 1,828,179 bytes (w/no morphs)
Victoria 2.cr2 -> 21,872,465 bytes

So V3 =
. 8,617,333
. + 1,828,179
. -----------
. 10,445,512

And V2 =

. 3,150,215
. + 21,872,465
. ------------
. 25,022,680

...ie. V2 uses almost 2 and a half times as much memory as V3 (with no morphs). Of course it's not really a one-to-one relationship between disk-footprint and memory-footprint, but I'm fairly certain that V2 still uses more.

Cheers,

• Keith

The amount of resources used by a texture is directly related to the resolution and dimensions of the texture bitmap. It's quite possible for V2 to use a larger texture than V3, but that has nothing to do with morphs. While it's true that V3 blank is lighter than V2, Victoria 3, injected with only facial expression morphs, has a larger memory print than Victoria 2.

Having worked almost exclusively with the Steph mesh for the past year, I hadn't tried to make a morph for V3 until just a couple weeks ago. I was stunned. I knew V3 was a big gal, but I had no idea how big. Her head has more vertices than Steph. Not more vertices than Steph's head: V3's head, minus the eyeballs, is a denser mesh than Steph's entire body, head and eyeballs. The space of a virtual crumb on the corner of V3's lip would occupy more polygons than Steph's entire hip and both buttock actors, combined. V3's head is to point clouds as a hurricane is to tea pot steam. V3, fully injected with head and body morphs (base, not male or monster) is roughly 120 megabytes. In RAM, she is more than five times the size of V2. A V2 texture would have to be over 100 megabytes to make V2 the size of V3 with no textures. Ahh... But, we have morph injection, thank goodness.

Really, V3 is so advanced when compared to previous Mil humans, it really is apples and oranges. Between the new actor cut, the denser mesh and the JCM, she drastically reduces postwork. And she's not the first female with a ram stick fetish. I've always thought of the Mil Dragon as female. ;-)

True enough Migal - good points. I've been spoiled by V3's improved joint params and denser mesh... I haven't even used V2 in a while. I was only addressing the comment about a no-morph V3 being bigger than a stock V2 (which it's not).

Didn't mean to sound like I was correcting, Keith. Sorry 'bout that. I think I'm still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor from my first experience with V3's head in a modeler. Your new character looks like she's coming along nicely, btw. Charlie Tuna, BG fan club?

Migal, BG fan club =Bill Gates fan club. ;) I personally feel the same like Chalie Tuna. I'd love to get the texture converter, but since I'm on a Mac as well I can't use this very helpful tool. :P Phil

Attached Link: Universal Texture Convertor

Hi mathman (and everyone else here), UTC is a newer version of V2-V3 Texture Convertor and was developed by myself under my company 3D Universe. The previous version was developed by myself and my brother. Currently there are only two plugins available (V1/2 and V3). I am currently developing a Stephanie and Mike plugin, and I'm hoping to release it at about the same time that Mike 3 is released. Because of the amount of time that goes into a plugin, I will develop them based on demand. I judge this demand by monitoring threads like this one and my own forums on 3D Universe. I have some more product info and screenshots available at the link attached. Hope this helps... cheers, Steve

Steve, UTC is what I was originally enquiring about .... When you say "Stephanie to Mike" .... don't they already share textures ? Andrew

When you say "Stephanie to Mike" .... don't they already share textures ? Their textures are very similar, but not identical... cheers, Steve

When you say Stephanie and Mike, do you mean just between the two, or Stephanie/Mike to V and Steph/Mike to V3?

With each plugin that is developed, you would be able to convert cross plugin. i.e. When the Stephanie and Mike plugins come out you could to the following conversions: Steph-Mike Mike-Steph V1-Steph V3-Steph V1-Mike V3-Mike Mike-V3 Mike-V1 Steph-V3 Steph-V1 ... etc. cheers, S

Wowsers!

Sounds good .... Wish I could use it but I am on a Mac (not complaining)

Well bring it on, Steve !!