Before I put a hammer through my computer, can someone tell me the best way to place a patch on a shirt sleve. The front and back maps for poser dont match up that well and I cant seem to get anything that runs along the side of a character to look right. Please help, my computers health is in your hands ;)

Attached Link: http://poseworks.8m.com/tu-tmskguide.html

Have a look at this tutorial. Dunno if it will help, but it couldn't hurt. -JH.

Attached Link: http://members.tripod.co.uk/BuckRogers2/spatrl

That is why on my Poser characters' texture maps each arm is one piece, vertical, split along the underside only. That makes it a LOT easier to e.g. give him shoulder badges, as in some of the images that I made at this link.

Why don't you try creating a new group where you want to put the patch with the group editor, then assign a different texture to the group in the materials editor. I don't know if the original texture will still be applied to the new group, but it sound like something I'd try.

heyas; if it were me.... i'd first open the obj in uvmapper and slap everything into one group, then open that in the 3d painter thingy that comes with p4. create the patch in an empty area and select, copy, and paste. now the patch is a 'floater' (no, its not vulgar, it's like painter's layers.) you can scoot this around all over the map and see where it is on the figure. once you get the patch over one side of the arm, paste it again and move it over to the other bit of the arm, and adjust until it lines up with its other piece.

If you want shoulder badges like on some uniforms, sorry no luck, on the standard Poser figures. On those figures, the texture mapping of the area where the shoulder badge would go is split between the front and the back texture map areas, and also badly distorted due to the "projected along the Z axis" type texture mapping used in them. That is why in my figures (workman, wetsuitman, etc) I rearranged the texture mapping with each arm separate and one piece and used a package that I wrote that tries to anneal and flatten out the texture mapping into wraparound as if on a dressmaking pattern.

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Or make the badge as a small rectangular sheet of polygons with loose edges all round, and put it against the left shoulder of the figure, and ditto on the right side, and ditto for any other badges, and make them into a (very fragmentary) conforming garment? A shoulder badge should go a bit of a way down his arm, not right over the joint, else it will get badly distorted as his shoulder joint moves. - - - - - -

If you want him to have naval officer type "scrambled eggs" round his cuffs, again sorry no go, as it will get hopelessly distorted as his wrist joint moves. Until someone makes a model with the jacket sleeves cut back to 4 inches above the wrist, showing shirt sleeves, and adds the missing jacket sleeves back as a separate prop that won't be affected by wrist movements. Or if someone manages to tweak the wrist joint parameters including the "spherical falloff zones" so that wrist movements don't affect his cuffs.

Don't listen to the naysayers of Poserania - angola the novice leads the way... A hem! Actually it was rather simple, just do what I suggested in my first message. Hit create UV perspective just in case. To get a template you'll need the UV mapper. or load up a numbered grid and mark out the texture by after you've rendered - voila, a template (old trick before I knew UV mappers existed - just last week actually)

Hey thanks for all the advice, more importantly my computer thanks you ;) I tried the grouping tool idea long before I got overly frustrated, doesnt work. the grouping tool doesnt group in desired and specific shapes to make all patches fit, (at least as far as I know). I will give the other sugestions a shot and let you know what kind of results I get. Thanks again to all who responded.

Jeez, That pissed on my bonfire! That's it, I've got this sinking feeling I'm gonna spend my weekend doing patches just so as I can prove I'm right. Oh how I loathe being so touchy! angola

Please don't tell me this isn't an armpatch, I made it all nice and armpatchy because nobody seemed convinced with the last '3 minute proof of method'. The method is exactly the same as before. Step 1 Make a new group in the group editor. Apply material to the group. AND CREATE UV PESPECTIVE. if you don't your new text will be exactly the same as the old one, just seperate. Step 2 Export the whole figure as an obj Step 3 Open up the object in UV mapper and select by group. You should find your new group enlarged and milling around on top of the old texture. DO NOT MOVE IT. (You're not going to change the object file used for the figure so any changes in the template you are about to make will not be saved to the figure.) Simply change the colour of the group and save the template. Step 4. Use the template to create a nice little badge. The 'excess' around the badge needs to be the same texture as the figure to blend, so either keep it simple unicolur, or cut, enlarge, and past the relevant area of the original texture into the new badge texture. You should now have two textures, the original and the badge. Step 5 Assign the badge texture to the badge group you made earlier in the materials editor. render in a hot oven for 15 minutes and voila! I shall not of course stoop so low as to imply that I was right all along...