Quote -

I know I should learn Blender one of those days, but I keep putting it off. I had a look at it a long time ago and even ordered the manual on Amazon. But years and years went by and the manual never happened. Maybe things are better now instruction-wise.

It''s fairly easy to use. When I first tryed blender the interface was scary as hell ( So many buttons ) Which turned me off to it until I finally put some effort into learning it a little. I felt the same way about wings 3d when I first used it but now I think you probably couldn't find an easier to learn modeller than wings3d. There's a few good video tutorials on the main Blender page. In particular the one on the interface helped me alot. Theres also a uv mapping tutorial by greybeard which is a little outdated but quite good and still useful to get the basics down. Im still a noob at uvmapping myself but from what I hear on various forums blenders uvmapping is the envy of the industy. If you can find the time give it a try. The sculpt mode is awesome. It's no z-brush but it's really simple and fun :)

Well, I'll have a look at it then.

i'm not sure i understand what good and bad UV mapping tools even are.  i certainly haven't gone beyond trying to map stuff.   but the things i appreciate so far about Blender UV mapping (at least as far as i can tell) are that it seems pretty easy to mark and set seams, subdividing to add more polys doesn't seem to change the mapping, and the options for types of mapping seem pretty good.  i think i've also read that Blender has mesh painting tools.

Mike let me have a sneak peek at the rig, so here's another little render to show her off:

www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1793841

Wow.
That -is- Impressive.......
Me wants.....! 

outfrigging standing!

Awesome!!!

She is looking great, And the changes you made to the geometry are perfect, I like........

Quote - I finally started to work on the UV maps. How's this for seams so far?

I think that you would do better to go for V3 texture compatibility, rather than strive to make another new figure that needs customizes textures, or that cant be textured at all.  If you would like I'd be willing to map her to the V3 configuration, since I've already built up a certain expertise in that field.
DPH

I vote for DPH's solution.  It'd give a second life to all those V3 textures, and Antonia will have a huge instant backlog of available skin textures!

I add my vote and will contribute some V3 textures. Send me an IM if you need them.
cheerio  lululee

That has to be one of the best ideas I've heard recently (Other than the whole Phntom3d doing the rigging thing).  This IS turning into a real community project! If this goes down right, Antonia will be a HUGE butt-kicker of a character! I'd say do it, just so you'd have two different UV mapped choices to pick from.  The V3 UVs is HUGE right now because there is a BIG swell against the V4 UV mapping.  People REALLY liked how the Mil3 maps split up, at least after the V4 maps bludgeoned them into irritation,IMO.  My gosh, that's how I felt after V4 maps attacked my sensibilities!:laugh:

I definitely vote for V3 mapping. The V4 map works OK for straight-up skin (I guess). But the bizarre transformation in the thighs and upper arms is a nightmare for good bump maps or any sort of second-skin application. The # of pixels dedicated to the upper thigh is really small compared to the lower thigh. This means you have to squeeze your pattern into a tiny space for that part. It makes bump maps have a tremendous variation of density and orientation between upper and lower thigh.

I didn't mean to say I want V3 over what I see already. The last demo with the number grid odf showed looks better to me than the V3 mapping.

I'm just saying if you were to target some Vicky UV layout, I'd prefer the V3 one.

But I like odf's layout better.

For example, it would be really easy to make second-skin stocking patterns for the odf layout.

If Antonia could take V3 textures, that would be wonderful. I'm sure many people would appreciate that. On the other hand, I played with UVLayout for a few hours and came up with something that already bagginsbill sees potential improvements in over the V3 mapping. So it seems that V3 is not perfect and we might be able to come up with something better. Why not try?

I'm doing all this for three main reasons: because it's fun, to learn how it's done and to make a figure that I would like to use. I appreciate the attention, and I'm happy to share the results, but my motivation has never been to maximize the number of downloads or the number of gallery images using her. So, I'll finish the mapping I'm currently working on and make it as good as I can. If  someone wants to make an alternative mapping, they're very welcome to. Antonia will come with an open licence, so there are no legal obstacles to making and distributing modified versions - free or for cash. I'd say we try to come up with ways to make it easy for the user to switch between mappings. Plugging a modified geometry into the cr2 shouldn't be too hard, but maybe there's even some way to directly inject a .uvs file into a figure within Poser. Python magicks, anyone?

Finally, I think that texture maps, particularly photo maps, are a bit overrated anyway. Look at my last render in the gallery. The only image maps I've used are the trans  maps for the lashes and brows. And I bet you a live-long free membership in the Antonia fan club that if we locked up bagginsbill in a cellar for a week with a computer, a water cooler and a stack of pizzas, he'd come up with procedural lash and brow maps that would beat anything ever made in pixels. Anyway, I'm not denying that a good texture would make that render look even better. But if I had to choose between the best texture possible on a default P4 style material and a really good material setup with no texture, I'd certainly pick the second.

odf,

I've never seriously tried to UV map, and it looks fricking hard IMO. But if there's a way you could do this, it would be astonishing.

Can you make the legs mapped so that where the seams join inside the leg, they have exactly the same V value? I don't care about U so much, just V. Here's why.

Suppose I want to make stockings with nodes. The awesome easiest scenario for where the stocking tops are is this: V = K where K is some constant. This way I have a simple switch from skin above K to stocking below K. But if the seams don't line up this way, this line forms a spiral and is nearly impossible to do procedurally.

Am I making sense?

Similarly, if this is consistent all the way up and down, I can make the welt (heavier cloth at the top of the stockings) by changing the cloth density below K2, with K2 being somewhat lower on the thigh. Or I can make pantyhose, where above K it's darker than below K. Or I can make socks by using K3, some other V value on the lower leg.

Extending the idea (I'm thinking of so many possibilities).

Suppose that you arrange consistent V values across seams, and also you design the contours of it so that:

1) There exists some value P1, which exactly follows the line of the join between thigh and buttock/groin.

1. There exists some value P2, which exactly follows the line of the join between hip/buttocks and the abdomen/back.

With these two numbers, I could make procedural panties. And assuming there was some consistency in traveling from P1 to P2, I could, using a couple numbers alone as parameters, control whether these panties are full covering, bikini, or G string. Am I making sense?

Same thing on the arms. Give me a consistent  U (I'm assuming arms are laid out horizontally on the UV map) and I can get sleeves going or gloves or whatever.

Oh and while you're at it, make toe caps (stocking/sock toes) with their own material zone. When not needed we make these transparent. When needed we can make them have an appropriate cloth material. Instant and perfectly conforming leg coverings of any kind become possible with a simple change of shader material.

I need a specific V value where they connect to the foot, so I can color the toes natural, where the toe cap takes over for the nylon.

Ooh I thought of something else.

I'd like to see the UV map for the eyelashes be totally different that it's always been done.

Don't embed them in a small curved area of some larger UV map. Give them a dedicated UV mapping, V from 0 (touch eye) to 1 (tip), straight across. Make the left half of U cover one eyelash, the right half the other eyelash.

Also, add additional polygons for eyebrows. Make two or three layers, also with a private UV map.

I'm saying all this because I can easily make hair fibers procedurally if I can get away with lining them up in the V direction. With multiple layers of eyebrow polygons, I can make them stand off from the head, and overlap and cross each other in 3D like real ones.

Don't bother making a separate material zone for lips. Any lipstick or gloss effect should be driven by a mask. When you assign the lips a different material and don't use a mask with soft anti-aliased edges, any lipstick effect looks fake. It's important to blend the lips with the face. So in my VSS shader, I design the face shader as one thing and I never put a different shader on the lips.

It is a good idea to make a material zone for fingernails, and another for toenails. Because there is, in real life, a sharp creased transition there, putting a diffferent material on the nails is fine and very convenient. Working with a mask there is not necessary.

bagginsbill:

I think for the arms, legs and toes that should be possible. I'm not completely sure if I can do it for the arms without introducing too much distortion at the shoulders or an extra seam there, but I'll try. I couldn't find a good way to attach the feet to the legs anyway, so I'm quite free in how to align them.

The thigh/groin line will be harder. I 'm pretty sure I won't be able to make it horizontal without excessive distortion, but I maybe I could get it close to a straight line. As I am using the free demo version of UVLayout, my tool set is a bit limited. But I'll see what I can do. Anyway, it's just the one line in that case, so maybe you could use some extra math to pick the border you want, even if it's not straight?

Anyway, I've just started that whole UV mapping thing a few days ago, so I'm hardly a pro. If I hadn't come across UVLayout, I'd probably given up. But that program makes it extremely easy to cut and paste pieces and optimize them for minimal distortion. Still, I'm quite happy for people more talented than me to come up with their own mappings eventually. It's just that I don't want to get too many people on board before the official release, because I want that out as soon as sensibly possible now and I'm not particularly good at cat herding.

That idea for the lashes and eyebrows sounds good. I'll see what I can do.

While I'm at it, I should probably making separate mappings for the eyes and for the finger and toe nails, yes?

Very minor point, but what's the verdict on UV-mapping the corneas? Obviously, all the normal texturing should happen on the irises and eyeballs. One shouldn't need a mapping for putting procedural bumps on the cornea, but maybe there are some interesting special effects one could do if they were mapped? On the other hand, it's a bit confusing to have four instead of two eyeball-shaped bits.

Some people like to do detailed fingernails, so I think mapping them bigger than the rest of the hand is probably a good idea. I don't know about the toenails. Somebody else have an opinion? Certainly need separate material zones, but maybe not private mappings. But maybe the entire hand should be in its own UV map, so more detail can be produced (wrinkles and such) without having to overburden the body map. Of course, that would make vein maps hard, crossing into a new map. That's what I hate about V4 maps. Crossing from the arm/leg map to the body map - nearly impossible to match.

If you have a 3D painting program, where you can paint right on the figure, I guess seams don't matter much.

I could care less if the cornea has a UV map - I make reflections in shaders. But some people like to paint a reflection on the cornea (shudder) so let them have it.

Eyes should be private map, but you can put both eyes on the same map. I don't find it a chore to use a mask if I want left eye and right eye to use different maps. What you don't want is both eyes identical.

If you want me to make procedural iris, the eye mapping should be aspect ratio 1:1, so if you're putting both eyes on the same map, make that map overall 2:1.

And make sure the pupil is dead center of the square for each eye.

Also, I've never found any use for the pupil being its own material zone. A black circle in the iris map works fine. I would suggest, however, that you have a "dilate" morph, and that we make sure I know the radius of the pupil and iris within the eye map exactly. So I know what part to make black, blue, white.

Ithink this is what bagginsbill means by lining up the seams, it's difficult but it can be done. The first shots on the top show other models and how they dont line up at the seams but using the method I was developing you can get the seams to line up.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/media/folder_9/file_412503.jpg

I was working on this idea not for shaders but just so that you could lay out a flat texture and it would line up on the model, but I can see how this would be very helpful for the type of thing you're talking about.

IMHO...

Any mesh for Poser should be mapped always... mapped and grouped being best. A map would allow a false catch light highlight for stylized renders. I do z-toon and ambient only "no light" renders for nice illustrative and painterly effects and don't always want to set up the whole reverse scene for a raytraced corneal reflection anyway.

Also, I have never seen transmapped eyelashes that compare to any of the pure geometric lashes even the Yamato's for Posette pre-Y2K... density can be controled by morph along with length and curl. I use conforming prop eyelashes on all but the Millenium 4 and that is because I just don't have them and haven't modified any from the older figures to fit. I double them up for density.

The layered eyebrows don't work for me but that isn't important... my personal preference would be that they be a sepearate body part if possible so they don't get in the way of headmorphs. No one ever seems to use transmapped textures for eyebrow geometries, I have not since the two layer eyebrows for Posette Eve, but the idea of a purely procedural skin including lips and eyebrows is intreging... I have tried lips and irises but never eyebrows.

If you do the brow maybe also a couple crinkly layers for pubic hair and armpit hair? I use iether geometric hair or transmapped  for that depending on the scene resolution but I figure most people prefer transmapped.

The last thing I would ask for is precise scale ratios between different parts as that would help with both textures and procedurals... knowing that the face texture resolution was 4x the torso texture for instance would help bridging the neck seam...

Thanks :)

Quote - Can you make the legs mapped so that where the seams join inside the leg, they have exactly the same V value? I don't care about U so much, just V. Here's why.

I like your suggestions, but I don't think that would not be possible without compromising other areas of the mapping. You may run into problems like Stretched UVs, Not so easy layout to texture, tons of chopped up seperate parts etc. It's tricky to balance things out to avoid the problems I mentioned above. Usually the benifit of one thing is the detriment of another.

Disclaimer: Im a noob at uv so I may not have a clue what Im talking about here :) It may very well be possible and still be able to balance the common uv problems.

I agree with ODF photo texture maps are very overrated and often done wrong ( highlights on the maps, too much detail etc. ) I'll take a good shader and a subtle diffuse color map, decent bump map over a good texture map anyday.

Edit: Whoops! I just read the post by ODF and Phantom3D that it can be done so nevermind the above post.

The whole eyeball should be one texture, it is very hard to make a good eye texture when iris eyewhite and puppil are spread around the UVS (like in P5 people and V4) iris pupil and eyewhite should be continus to take real photos easier... Also cornea should not be on the same texture with iris, this could overlap the eyeballs an IF someone wants to make some special effect with it than it would be easier than spoiling the half of eyes texture...

Anyway, here's a picture of my current, preliminary layout.

The individuals charts will of course be rearranged and scaled, but the seams are probably fairly close to what they will look like in the final mapping. I'm trying to find a balance between as few seams and as little distortion as possible. Also, I am of course trying to put the seams where they will be least obvious. I'm not quite sure if I'll be able to do that exact alignment at the legs and arms that we've been talking about, but at least I'm not too far from it.

Will the whole uvs be on one map? or this is a temp texture?
The unfolding looks very  nice and the whole body layout
Will you stitch the chest with the torso & feet with legs?
Some thoughts:
Genital should blend with the skin texture because making those bigger will create the different pattern aspect issue that is mentioned before
I like the Apollo idea that back of the head belongs on the body map while face texture (and ears) is separate only for the front of the head, this gives much better texture-economy while if needed extreme details for face can be done with a smaller texture without spoiling resolution for the most times useless back of the head

Will the whole uvs be on one map? or this is a temp texture?

Temporary. There will be multiple maps, but I don't know how to make those in UVLayout, so I'll do it later in Wings. At the moment I'm thinking one map for the body and limbs, one for the head, one for eyes, lashes and brows, and one for the inner mouth and teeth. That last one might go on the head map though if there's room.

Will you stitch the chest with the torso & feet with legs?

I haven't found a good way yet to stitch the feet to the legs. But I'll keep trying and maybe look at some existing mappings to see how people did it.

The cut below the breasts is fairly new. I used to have that in one piece, but that would lead to some extreme texture stretching around the nipples. My feeling is that the extra seam shouldn't hurt too much, as most of it is in a crease anyway. UVLayout is very good at minimizing distortions, so the seams should align really well.

*Genital should blend with the skin texture because making those bigger will create the different pattern aspect issue that is mentioned before

Again, the seam should align well. Her crotch got in the way of the legs, which is why I cut it off. Thanks for the tip with the exact scale factors. First I thought I'd keep the head at the same scale as the body to avoid problems at the seam, but your approach is better.

I like the Apollo idea that back of the head belongs on the body map while face texture (and ears) is separate only for the front of the head, this gives much better texture-economy while if needed extreme details for face can be done with a smaller texture without spoiling resolution for the most times useless back of the head

Sounds like a good idea. I'll try that.

By the way: the colors in the layout indicate the texture distortion. Red means stretch, blue means squeeze, green no distortion. The more intense the red or blue, the worse the distortion. I'm trying to go mostly green with only faint reds or blues.

I think this thread should be sticky - who can do that?

Klebnor

mods can do that, but i would be surprised if they did.  actually, it technically shouldn't be here at all.  even development of freebies isn't supposed to be in the Poser forum, and if Antonia is going to be a product, it doubly shouldn't be here.

I hear ya cobaltdream.

However, for really good threads (and this is one), they obviously turn a blind eye. I post about stuff I'm building all the time, and then they turn into freebies and we still post about them. I've also posted many threads that were freebie announcements from the first post. (Matmatic, Parmatic, The Loom, AMUCFS, Environment Sphere, Shadow Catcher, GenIBL, Orbs, etc.)

I think they know that they'd be perfect putzes if they relegated all this great discussion to the backwater called the "Freebie Forum".

I want a community forum where we exchange ideas and tons of lurkers learn from what we're saying. If they put a stop to that, or even start to hassle me about my posts, I'd probably leave.

Oh and i don't even go through the Rendo Free Stuff process. Too tedious IMO. I upload to my site, and post an announcement.

No complaints so far. :)

Who you callin' a lurker?

I hate to second guess but here are my thoughts for what they are worth...

If you are cutting up the body could you put the cut/seams where they would appear with clothes on the body... e.g. cut the feet off where the socks would fall on the shin, the hands on the wrist where a long sleeve shirt cuff would fall, on the neck where a collar would be, if you cut the trunck do it where the tan line of a bikini or bra top would be... this would hide the transitions where actual people have color shift due to tan lines and other skin variation and if these cuts were matched in the grouping would make second skin texture and "dimensionalizing" morphs easier.

You could even cut out the whole bikini area rationally rather than just the vulva since most women who are not proffesional strippers or prostitutes have much paler bikini areas and buttocks than their overal skin tone regardles as to how dark or light that is.

It would be great to have the grouping and texture mapping agree for what used to be called sub-division... second skins can be applied with cuff morphs falling on the map division. The best clothing textures I have seen are mapped like actual dress patterns, imagine a body map cut that way? One last thought... could grouping out the palms and soles of the feet make procedural textures for dark complexions easier allowing something like a darker African texture with light skin areas?

One last mesh suggestion/comment... I would prefer rounded feet, toes, and fingers with a compression morph to flatten them over the standered flattened feet which are difficult to morph up for when say the bottom of the feet are visible in a pose.

Finally, my preference is for as few maps as possible... one for the body even if it is cut up, one for the eyes, and one for the face and inner mouth. I hate having to remember which head parts are actually on the body map etc... so I would love one map for all head detail and another for body including nail and finally one for the eyes.

Just MHO :)

"actually, it technically shouldn't be here at all.  even development of freebies isn't supposed to be in the Poser forum, and if Antonia is going to be a product, it doubly shouldn't be here."

It might be useful for Rosity to have a special forum for community projects.  This seems to be developing into one, which is really pretty cool, I must say!  Fantastic work, everyone!  Wow!  :D

oh, i'm not saying it should move.  i'm saying, other equally helpful threads like this have been moved before.  the problem with them not bothering this thread or other specific ones is that they not only move  other people's development threads, people have said they got warnings on their records for it..  not that i'm trying to be an agent of fairness, just pointing out that not everyone has been judged simply according to how useful the information is.

Hi ODF
Here's my take on the mapping.
The good: I like how you cut the lower part of the body and made the legs straight ( not the classic x pose ) it should be easier to texture. I think it would be better to add the genital to the lower body.
The bad: I don't like that the upper torso is seperated from the body. A seam in the front wouldn't be real good for textures.
The ugly: I really don't like the side by side mapping for the head at all. It would be a nightmare
to texture. You might want to try a front view under the jaw line is a good place to hide a seam.
Please no seperate lips or she may suffer from sharp lip syndrome. As Baggins mentioned
about v4 having the lip material your may suffer from that effect because you couldn't blend the lip into the face. I suppose BB could still do it with  shaders but how would you get a smooth blend even with a mask control map.

I think it would be best to keep all parts of the body together with maybe the exception of the feet and possibly  hands on another map and all head parts besides eyes,lashes,etc. on another map.

Something like this.
Head map
Bodymap
Hands and feet map
Teeth,tongue map ( possibly on the head map )
eyes map
lashes map

I see this thread as primarily an exploration of ideal figure design principals even if the occasion is a development project... that and that this work represents a radical forward development and a tremendous gift to the community gives it place in center on this forum to my way of seeing it. Personally prefer tags to splitting of forums anyway... in the old forum long threads took screen real estate but not now... esp if you view by OP date as opposed to response date. The OT for that web toon and other OTs have not brought down fire and I find I just don't have to click them if I don't want.

I have been wondering this though... this single seam for body and limbs is standard now and I get it for shoulder tattoos but isn't there less need for distortion if the torso and legs are split at the sides to front and back like on Victoria 1/2? Those old layouts were sure easy to texture... is there a way to find a balance between a front/back orthognal and actually unwrapping the UV to feature less distortion? The problem with V2 wasn't the map layout which was very convenient... it was the quality of the unwrapping.

I don't think side seams are any worse on the torso than a mid back where people generally also want to tattoo. The front and back are easy to match up with a seam guide. As for the breast distortion... is it plausible to pull out both the bikini top and bikini bottom areas? Reminds me of that weird old Y2K fad for mapping the nipples out to big detail inserts! But seriously... would granny underwear cut outs help in regards to stretching issues?

For the face I wonder even about just mapping a mask for the front of the face where again on most people you find a big shift from the rest of the head either lighter or darker... I have long experimented with using transmaps to do face as opposed to whole head transplants in Poser. Also, if we are to set the beautiful Antonia as a character aside and consider a "universal" figure... I have found the best way to clone actual faces from head shots is to apply them to an alternate geometry orthognally mapped and morphed to smooth out the distinctive features... if you smooth the features you can get a straight head shot to emote pretty well even in 3/4 view and a separate face-only region could even be perspective mapped right in Poser with the grouping tool.

More pseudo-random thoughts from a know-nothing but I beg your tolerance :)

I'm not a texture maker, so I might be going about this the wrong way. But I tend to think that extreme distortions are worse than some extra seams, if only those seams line up nicely.

I can stitch the genital area back onto the torso if that's what people think is best. There may be some slight issues, but I can probably deal with those. I can also re-connect the parts of the body, but then the breasts will have heavy distortion. Actually. I might just decide not to do that, even if people protest loudly, because most likely I will use programs like ZBrush for texturing, which are happily oblivious of seam issues. As I said, while I'm happy for any input and will try to take people's wishes into account, in the end I'm going to do what suits me best, but I'll do my very best to give people all the freedom to change things if they want.

Same with the face. I'll probably put the lips back with the rest of the face. There's only a slight overlap problem there in the inside corners, which I'll have to fix by hand in Wings. But I have to cut the face somewhere to avoid a heavily distorted nose. If you don't like the seams where they are now, suggest a better solution. I could, for example, cut off the entire nose and make it a separate chart. I'll do my best to put seams where they will do the least damage, but in certain regions, having no seams at all is just not an option.

Finally, about the on-topic/off-topic issue: I am aware that this forum is not for advertising products, or free stuff items, which is why I will not discuss any details concerning a possible release. When the time comes, I will post about those things in the Free Stuff Forum, or whatever else is the appropriate place. To me, the fact that I will eventually share the results of my work is secondary, anyway. This thread has been an excellent way of exchanging opinions and experiences about figure creation in Poser. I'd love to continue doing this in this forum, but if the moderators don't agree, I'll accept that.

Actually, it looks like there might be no place on this site where I will be able to announce Antonia's release(*) - once it happens, which isn't the case yet, just so we're clear - without being a naughty boy. I might have to rely on word-of-mouth for that. But that's fine with me. I'll probably post something cryptic like "bored now" and leave it to y'all to hunt her down.

(*) But when the time comes, I'll talk to the PTB and try to find some arrangement. There is, after all, such a thing as a R'osity LinkShare.

Jeez, just send a site-mail to Jenx and ask!  Don't be to paranoid to ask about this! This IS one of the few community efforts around here and everyone involved should be proud of their efforts! Ask fer gawd's sake.

Quote - Jeez, just send a site-mail to Jenx and ask!  Don't be to paranoid to ask about this! This IS one of the few community efforts around here and everyone involved should be proud of their efforts! Ask fer gawd's sake.

Well, I think I clearly expressed my intention to do something like that when the time comes, didn't I? I'll talk to all the right people and figure out what exactly I can and can't do. :glare:

Also, we discuss figures hosted elsewhere all the time, so I guess anyone who isn't me could happily start a thread about 'that new free figure that's just been released at XYZ and how do I find a suit of ridiculously impractical armor for her'.

Okay, enough of that. Now back to the intricacies of UV mapping humanoid figures with characteristic bulges...

Those "bulges" are just the pitts when you're UV mapping, but oh so nice on the figure.
Sometimes I just wish humans could be something sensible like square!