So now whats left making the UV map and creating the morphs and getting it to conform to the figure.  

I found a tut for getting it to conform that looks like it will be pretty reasonably easy to follow. 

I know how to make morphs in Carrara but Im scared to put it back in there if the poly count is going to go up each time Carrara touches it. 

UV mapping is where I am really having an issue right now.  I managed to map something before (a loin cloth it was easy)  but this is crazy.  The crotch area stretches under the rest of the map no matter what program I use.  I've tried in Carrara - Hex and UV mapper.  All of them gave me results that made my soul hurt.  

Does anyone know of a tutorial for UV mapping in any of these programs?  FYI - I already RTFM - which is how they have the black and white checks on them now.  TFM didn't help much.

Thanks in advance:

p.s. that's BB's UCFS making his skin look absolutely gorgeous.

Why not make a separate map for the crotch area?  That way, any stretching can be accommodated easily.

Any idea is one I am willing to look into.  Do you by chance know of a tutorial that shows how to do that?

Not off the top, nope.  Does Steve Cox's site have any info?

Failing that, drop by the UVMapper forum.  Someone there is bound to be able to help.

First result for Steve Cox produced baseball results and other oddness = D
Second try Steve Cox 3D - BINGO

The UVmapper site itself go figure ; )

There is a tut there on how to do exactly what you mentioned - unfortunately it is for the pro version.

Off to the UVmapper forum.

Thanks for the advice!

Can't help you with the UV mapping - that stuff scares me.

I was about to post a little joke about how, gosh, that sure looks like a great skin shader, I wonder who did that. Then I read your second post. Thanks for the cred :) He looks good.

BTW, UVMapper Pro is well worth the money even if you only occasionally use it for mapping stuff.  It's packed with features.

What you need is a checker map. You load this as a texture onto your object. Then you can pull the points of your UV map around and try to make the checker texture on your object actually look like continuous checkers. Not fun, except the finishing part.

Hexagon has a very good UV mapper.... there are Tutorials at VTC.com on it.  problem is that you have to pay for the CD ($100) or do like I did and sign up for the "online classes" which allow you to pay $30  a month and watch anything they have... which by the way is just about anything you could ever want. cancel at any time.  the tut's there are really good. they are a LOT of small 5-6 min vids that are very spacific to what you may be looking for... easy to get the info you want with out having to seach a 1 hour vid.

anyway... there are a bunch of other tut's linked I posted over in the Hex forums

Looking really good JJ.  Wish I could help but UVMapping is way out of my league as well!! 

**thomllama:
**Thank you for the tip there about VTC.  I actually already had a sub that I had gotten for Carrara and forgot about it - So in 18 minutes I will be a UV mapping pro : p  (hahaha).  Hopefully I'll at least get the gist.

I've decided to go through and delete some of the 10,000 or so Polys that carrara decided it needed upon export - or was it hex that decided on import - not sure.  Anyway I decided to do this in the hopes of making the mapping easier on myself.  So individually going through with the little lightning bolt in Carrara -

Most likely I wont be around long - because Im sure at some point I'll find there would have been an easier way to do this and Ill then have to shoot myself...... : p

couple things that could be doing it...

one.. are you "smoothing" in Hex?  this causes the program (both Hex and carrara) to Add polys at export to make an item look like it does inside that program.  make since?

also.. when exporting and importing there are options... I believe there is some advanced ones in Hex... not positive but maybe look around there

When exporting from hex, make sure you turn the smoothing off - to zero, or down to 1, otherwise smoothing exports as extra polygons - exponentially. One polygon becomes four, and then those four become another four... smoothing level 1 multiplies polygons by 4. Smoothing level 2 multiplies original polygons by 16  level 3 multiplies them by 64.  You can quickly end up with a huge file if you don't keep an eye on your smoothing levels.

Think of UV mapping as reverse sewing. You want to tear things apart at the seams, and flatten them. 
When UV mapping in Hex, you can define along edges where the sams are, then Hex does the flattening for you (UV Unwrap)
There's a really good tut for Hex UV mapping in DAZ forums, and couple decent ones on 3d commune.

Come on guys, UV mapping isn't that scary!

Also, take a model of pants, almost any pants from your content library, load them into UV Mapper Classic (free program) and examine how it was pieced out and UV mapped.

You'll see that in most casers it's broken into a number of pieces, at somewhat logical breaks.

Grab a part of jeans or shorts (real ones, from your closet) and see where the seams are. Those will give you some general idea about how to piece the UV map out.

There is more then one way to UV map things. Really it's very much like creating sewing patterns for a piece of clothes.

**dvlenk6:
**Thank you for that tip!  I was having trouble figuring out whether I needed to put seams everywhere or what.

**Connie:**Thanks for that smoothing tip.  Pretty sure that is exactly what I did wrong.  Now like I said, I just wish there was an easier way to get rid of these other than going through and deleting some individually.

Funny thing is I do sew.  And not just a little mending here and there - I make elaborate dance costumes - beading the whole nine yards.  Because of this I assumed this UV mapping bit would be a piece of cake for me - and erm ... I was wrong!  

Now I've just been going in spurts with both.  I sew for a week or so until my fingers bleed (beading by hand QQ) - then when Im sick of that I take a week or so and spend it in the virtual clothing world.  Hopefully in the end my knowledge of that will pay off in trying to do this.  Not there by a long shot yet though.

There are a lot of ways to map the same object. That's just one way.
You could make several 'fabric panels', or front/back (cut the entire object in half, then unfold) w/ seams down either side. For that you would keep the crotch cut and run cuts along the outside edges on either side; but forget the back side cut. Other ways could work also. Much of it depends on your texture source.
The important thing is that there is as little distortion as possible in the map(s).
Less number of seams is usually easier to texture; but isn't always what you want.

So you know for next time, save a hex file of you model before export. Then you will not have to do what your doing now to get back the original size. Save often, so if you need to go back to a different starting point, you can just load a sved hex file. I somtimes have 10 or more saved file for a piece of cloth so if I don't like how something turned out I on't have to back track to far to start again.

dvlenk6 way is the proper way to do the mapping in Hex. There is a tutorial at PP that shows you how to work with the UVMapping in hex with the same type of unwrapping as what dvenk6 showed you.

JJ - Take a look at that tut. And also take a look at that section on Hexagon tuts at Pollyloop.

Hope it helps. :)

Look at how an actual pair of boxers are constructed and follow that.

Try taking it apart in UV mapper like real boxers are seamed.

You can rename, regroup or do whatever it takes on the working copy and just transfer the UVS file for uvs over to the final obj.

Use UV mapper to split it apart into various areas of the template and another app to relax/spread the UV's.

But work like a seamstress or tailor would.

It does matter. Resize map to fit the grid size. It won't hurt the mesh. All it does is tell the prgram, I want to use 'this much' of the image. The more of the grid you cover, the more of the image you use for the map - which is what you want most of the time.

If you dont resize it here, you could have, for example, a 2000x2000 texture, and using just one little corner of it to paint on.

In other words, you want to fill up the gridded square.  Later on in an image manipulation program you can decided that this gridded square will be 1000x1000 or 2000x2000 or 6000x6000 pixels - or whichever size you want.
The bigger the size, the finer the detail you can paint on, and it uses more memory.

How do I  "Resize map to fit the grid size."?

I'm a dolt.  I had hidden the manipulator so I couldn't tell that I could use it to move and scale in this room...

Thank you Connie.

's okay, you're not the first one that did that :)

Welp It didn't work scaled or not scaled - so basically I'm at a complete loss.  I have followed all the tuts, taken all the advice - and yeah... weee bit frustrated right now.

loaded boxers up in poser - went to just simply apply map to verify all parts are covering all parts.  Not even close.  idk what the heck Im doing wrong.

If you select the whole thing in the UV view - I think you need to use sub selection, but it doesn't matter if it's polygons, lines or points - then just size it up.

Or email me the file, and I'll look and see if something odd is happening.

I did send it connie.  It will be nice to just have someone else open up the file to see if something is completely fubar or I'm just a twit.  ( either or is likely)

I owe you big time for all your help.

Attached Link: http://www.uvmapper.com

OK...

1. with Hexagon if you unfolded in Hex... if you leave the image map where it was  on your drive/folders on your computer and don't rename it you don't need to import it.  It should open it just by opening the original model file (as long as you saved the model  file again after doing all the UV work. ... then hit the unfold  little head icon and poof.. there it is... same size and all set up just like you left it when you last closed the file.....

2. don't resize the file in anyway shape or form.  actually i believe when you hit the 500% you are increasing the "map" size but the UV point are staying the same... in that instance you are shrinking the UV points... gettting what you are showing....  but I could be wrong there.

If you don't mind I'd like a shot at the file also... just for fun

If you at your wits end over the mapping, send me the final obj zipped and I can whip it up for ya. No problem.

antonkisiel@verizon.net

With a hesitant breath I say I think I got the mapping problem solved.  Connie was kind enough to help me out, but then I had to go and change one little poly that I messed up.  I resaved the mapping and in poser it -seems- to have worked.

Gunna go through trying to bone it and conform it and what not in poser and then attempt a few textures.  if I manage to mess up the mapping again I may very well take you up on that Anton = D.

You don't want to make any mesh changes after it's been mapped, except for grouping. Adding, changing polys can destroy mapping.

If you run into trouble let me know. Hang in there.