Oh hell..

Wrong link above.
The link above is to the OBJ file and the templates alone, not the cr2
Oops.
stupid edit time limit
Here's the correct link:
 apns_09.home.comcast.net/APNS/UV09/apnsUVs_09_cr2.zip

I'm a hopeful user not  a developer... have any morphs or other things yet been release for use on the preview or this new UV figcure by end-type users like me?

Quote - I'm a hopeful user not  a developer... have any morphs or other things yet been release for use on the preview or this new UV figcure by end-type users like me?

Well, the Antonia 114 cr2 in odf's signature has all the basic morphs in INJ format which can be applied to the one I made.
The textures, however, won't work.

I'm not good enough in Photoshop yet to make a full blown texture for it from photos, though I've bought some and am working on it...

It's my hope someone who's more experienced at it will undertake it.
For that matter, I'm likely going to be seeking out someone to hire soon to do a good, professional job on a texture set.

So if any of you texture artists out there want to make some money, Sitemail me with some links to examples of your work, and we can get into a discussion about it - time frame, cost, and other details.

MikeJ, there are several of us who have already started textures. :)
I just need to do a DS set to finish up two of mine so they'll be ready.

And I'm going to see about adapting them to your UV set as well.

Quote -
All I need to know is where there's a version that won't change vertex count ect.. it's a little daft to spend days on morphs that won't work because the grouping changes :)

Don't worry! The topology and grouping won't change anymore. We already have too many morphs that rely on it. Like Believable3D said, the link to the latest available version is in my signature.

Quote - I'm a hopeful user not  a developer... have any morphs or other things yet been release for use on the preview or this new UV figcure by end-type users like me?

At the moment, only the body morphs by Jules53757 and the expression morphs by JOELGLAINE are in the package available from my file locker.

You guys should start watching Antonia's Google site at http://sites.google.com/site/antoniapolygon/. From the next preview on, I will put releases up there, and I'll also start collecting contributed content (either links or direct downloads) that have been made available to the public.

Quote - MikeJ, there are several of us who have already started textures. :)
I just need to do a DS set to finish up two of mine so they'll be ready.

And I'm going to see about adapting them to your UV set as well.

Cool, thanks. :-)

odf, got it bookmarked. :)

Thanks.

Nice work there Mike!!  Thanks for the link(s)

Quote - Nice work there Mike!!  Thanks for the link(s)

Thanks and you're welcome. I hope you can make use of it. :-)

Meanwhile I "made friend" with the new UV map and think you did very fine work!! It should give Antonia more support in future as it is easier to work with and to avoid stretching.

I am still busy with some "projects for profit" as there is still this nasty electricity bill each month (and some others as well) but will re-do the texture I have made for Antonia (the tattoos will stay almost the same as well but Leo may have to paint some of them again). But before I sharp my digital pencil I would like to know what you all think about a remapped Antonia. And if we agree in using her new UV map: May we have a rigged remapped version? It's much easier to test the textures (and how it stretches!) if you can bend the character.

Saintfox: Just copy your cr2 under a new name and change the name of the geometry file from "Antonia-114.obj" to whatever Mike's remapped version is called (assuming you put it under Runtime/geometries/Antonia). There are only two places in the cr2 that you need to change, so it's easy enough to do that by hand. Just use Wordpad (if you're on Windows, that is) or your favourite plain text editor. Don't  use Word or any other word processor.

I think it's up to you and BluEcho to decide which mapping you prefer for Antonia. But before I switch to Mike's as the default, I'll wait until you have a complete texture and Mike had a chance to work on possible kinks.

Thanks, SaintFox.  :-)

Here's the link (from just a few posts ago) to the cr2  version I made of Antonia with my UV's

apns_09.home.comcast.net/APNS/UV09/apnsUVs_09_cr2.zip

Olaf,

I think I got all the kinks out. The only problems I had was those really tiny overlaps I had such a problem finding, but I got them all.

I am, of course, open to any suggestions people may have for how it could be improved or what could be changed to make it easier.
This was actually my first hi-res human mapping project - most of the UV stuff I've done has been for hard surface models and low res animals and creatures.
Was a great learning experience. :-)

One thing we'll need to check is whether the new mapping still works for the low-poly version. I've had a quick look at the torso map you posted some pages ago while still working on this, and saw that the seam between torso and neck was not placed correctly. Seams have to go along the edges of the low-poly mesh, or otherwise the map can't be used with it.

Can someone please wipe my silly question about the rigged version out?!?!? LOL Yep, now I remeber that there was some quick and easy thing that I could have done on my own. Must be the fact that it's early morning here/I didn't sleep long last night/fill in any other poor excusion...

I am sorry that I have such few spare time at the moment! I don't want to get the project stuck and on the other hand would like to do the texture again from scratch - from the same photos so that Antonia will look pretty much the same. So far my experiences with any kind of texture conversion are not really convincing, there are always some details missing or misplaced.

Quote - One thing we'll need to check is whether the new mapping still works for the low-poly version. I've had a quick look at the torso map you posted some pages ago while still working on this, and saw that the seam between torso and neck was not placed correctly. Seams have to go along the edges of the low-poly mesh, or otherwise the map can't be used with it.

I never even thought about it, actually.

I'm not sure I'm understanding what you're saying though, I didn't even attempt to remap it in accordance with the low res version.

@odf,

I just thought about it for a few minutes...
You do realize that all the seams changed, right?
There was never any hope of making any of the new mapping "fit" with the old mapping. That's largely why I did it. I just started out on it for my own purposes, knowing what works best in the programs I use, and I didn't like where the seams were.
I mean no offense by that, but my intent was to make an optimized 3D painting version, where the seam location is a huge thing and it's especially important to have even and proportional UVs throughout as best as possible while not sacrificing resolution.

If I were to go about making a map for the lo res version I would probably do so in the fashion one would do for a game or an animation and map it in SUB-D and place it all in one 0-1 space, with nothing overlapping.

Hmmm.... how about keeping the textures we have for the low-res version? People are pretty used to the fact that some things only work with the low- or the high-res version of a character. The P6 people are a good example, almost every character set that was available was for Jessi/James high-res.

If you ever did a non-overlapping single map I would certainly love to have a copy. I'm still a Poser 4 user at heart... given how large textures Poser /can/ handle now and given I always render at least full figure at less the my modest screen dimensions I almost always use lo-res when possible and single map is great for me. Easier for someone like me to texture for that matter.

Quote - If you ever did a non-overlapping single map I would certainly love to have a copy. I'm still a Poser 4 user at heart... given how large textures Poser /can/ handle now and given I always render at least full figure at less the my modest screen dimensions I almost always use lo-res when possible and single map is great for me. Easier for someone like me to texture for that matter.

I could do that easily enough, and now that I think about it, I'm going to want that sooner or later anyway.
I could probably do that this weekend, if I have some time.
But yeah, I'll go ahead and do that.

MikeJ: You'd only have to move some of the seams by one polygon to make things work for low-res. I'll check your templates tonight if I have time and let you know which ones. The basic idea is that whenever you have a pole near a seam, you want that seam to be at an even distance from that pole.

SaintFox: I'm all for keeping the old mappings as well. I've always said there's no good reason not to have multiple UV mappings for a character, except for the small nuisance of having to copy and edit the cr2s. But it's not very hard to make things so that they behave nicely with the low-res mesh, so I'll just keep bullying people into doing that.

PS: What I said about seams is true for material boundaries as well, by the way. But that's less critical because material groups are essentially just tags that we put on polygons.

Somehow it comforts me that there's still need for the textures we already have - regardless how eager I am to work with the new template

Quote -
I am, of course, open to any suggestions people may have for how it could be improved or what could be changed to make it easier.

Hi dont no how other people feel about this but i would really like to see the lips UV to be connected to her face,just my opinion
have just always hated when there seperate especially for someone who isnt a master at textureing lol
but i do realize theres probs then due to stretching and stuff like that lol :P

Ditto. I don't think my Zuloni textures are high enough quality to redo, but it's nice to know there's still some use for them, especially with the work I did on the shaders. :)

well, i'm not sure what plans you have for her in the long term, but there are very good usability reasons - for this community -  not to have multiple UVs.  the main benefit of the Unimesh was shared maps.  multiple UVs mean you have to switch characters just to use different textures on the same figure..  basically, you're making her more complex to use, without a clear benefit to the average user. 

about 99% of the time, it's better usability to offer one good choice than to force people to chose.

none of that matters if you don't want people to sell things for her, or for her to be used by a wide audience instead of just the kind of people to re-write cr2s.  otherwise, i'd suggest trying to make using her simpler wherever and whenever you can.

cobaltdream - I had a long answer, but I think the key point is this: I don't think there's necessarily a trade-off between useability and versatility. If one puts enough effort in it, one can have both. That's what I'd like to get to: many options under the hood for people who are interested in experimenting, but some clear and simple defaults for the general user.

Applied to UV mappings that means the following: there'll be one official UV mapping - either my original or MikeJ's new one - but I will try to make it easy as possible for people who want that to experiment with other mappings. Still, if someone makes a texture for sale, they better provide it in a way that fits the official mapping.

The image is a small part of the head map. The red grid shows the polygons in the low-res mesh. It's just a 2x2 grid on top of the high-res one. You make any pole a vertex of the red grid, and then continue from there in steps of 2. Very easy! Now just imagine that red grid everywhere on your template and see if all the seams lie completely on red lines.

In the bit I'm showing that's the case except on the torso/head seams. So you need to either add one row of squares to the head along that seam or subtract one. Once you correct every seam in that way, I can transfer your mapping to the low-poly version, which will then automatically take any texture made for the high-poly one.

Olaf,
I'm not real sure I understand what you mean. I think I do, but are you basically saying that in order for you to be able to transfer the high res UVs to the low res model, all the seams have to be the same?
If that's the case it would negate part of the reason I did it in the first place, as I wanted different seam placement.
As I said, I didn't even consider any of this ahead of time. You keep saying I have to "correct" something as if I tried something and failed to do it correctly. ;-)

In any event, personally I believe the low res version should have separate UVs, mapped with the intent of using it in a program that can do subdivision surfaces. Specifically mapped for Sub-d use, that is, to avoid texture pulling and stretching when it's subdivided.

Is there really a big call to use low poly figures in Poser? it seems to me the trend has been for denser meshes over the years.
OTOH, a low res Antonia UV mapped differently, with nothing overlapping, would be perfect for programs that can do sub-d, and the ZBrush people would dig it too.

I do understand that Antonia has been designed for Poser, but as I said before it never occurred to me there would be any need to remap the low res version or to do anything special with the high res version to make it jibe with the low res version in any way.

Quote -
Hi dont no how other people feel about this but i would really like to see the lips UV to be connected to her face,just my opinion
have just always hated when there seperate especially for someone who isnt a master at textureing lol
but i do realize theres probs then due to stretching and stuff like that lol :P

corvas,
The reason I did it that way wasn't because of any stretching problems I might have. I did it to get a larger UV space for the lips for getting detail into them without having to use huge texture maps.
If the face uses, say, 75% of the space of a 2K map, the lips, by proportion, will only get a very small amount of that space. So if you want to make detailed bump and spec maps, they have to be much larger.
Making them separate on the map eliminates that problem.
Honestly, I don't like having such an extreme proportion difference like that either, but it's a trade off and I thought the ability to get more detail into the lips easier would be worth the extra effort to texture it.
You can, of course, always shrink the UV map down to something like 1K just for the lips, which should be sufficient. The lips don't have to be textured on the same map as the face is, and you could even use a larger map to paint in extremely detailed bump, spec, diffuse, and any other kinds of maps.

Great Job on Antonia. How coud I miss this thread till now?

I'd rather have a hires version than a lores, personally.  And I am definitely very interested in Antonia (speaking as a freebie clothing creator, ahem).

I know that you have already put a lot of work into the new UVs, and I think everyone would understand and accept if you don't want to do any more work on them, as they already work fine on the high res figure. And I think we all appreciate very much having to new UVs. But I think you are not understanding what odf is saying, so I will try to say it again in my own words.

I think this is what odf is saying. For every 4 polygons in the high res mesh, there is only one polygon in the low res mesh. In order for the UVs to work on the low res mesh, the UV seams need to fall on the edges on the low res polygons, but some of them fall halfway between the edges, making them half a polygon out on the low res version.

In the above image, the green lines represent the texture template of the low res figure. The red lines represent the texture template of the high res figure. Some of the seams in your UV map fall on the red lines, but to work on the low res figure they need to fall on the green lines. By the very nature of the meshes, the seams can never be out by more than half a polygon, but that half polygon distance is enough to stop the UVs working on the low res figure.

To make the UVs work on the low res figure the most you would have to shift any seam would be one high res polygon (=1/2 polygon low res).

Regarding the seperated lips I am torn in two pieces... the one piece is happy to have a clear, perfectly visible area to work with. The other piece likes to work very small parts of the surrunding skin into the lips edges. For makeup purposes the seperate lips are better - for natural, undone lips it's easier to have them on the face map. Or, if this is too technical: if you look ito the mirror you will find that lips are never perfectly even with a clear separation between face- and lipskin. So blending them together here and there looks more lifelike.
As soon as lipstick is used you have a pretty clear line where the lips' edges are.

But as said: I like both solutions so whatever you and others prefer is good for me.

P.S.

I realise I made a bit of a boo boo in my explanation. In my diagram the green lines are the low res mesh, but they are also part of the high res mesh. So you have to imagine thin red lines running through the green lines.

Quote - Olaf,
I'm not real sure I understand what you mean. I think I do, but are you basically saying that in order for you to be able to transfer the high res UVs to the low res model, all the seams have to be the same?

No, that's not what I'm saying. All you would have to do is move some of the seams by just one polygon. Or in other words, you'd have to cut off one row of polygons at some places and glue that row back onto the other side of the seam. Hopefully lesbentley's post has made that a little clearer than mine. I would make the changes myself if I could, but I don't have UVLayout.

Quote -
As I said, I didn't even consider any of this ahead of time. You keep saying I have to "correct" something as if I tried something and failed to do it correctly. ;-)

Point taken. Let's say  adapt then, okay?

Quote -
In any event, personally I believe the low res version should have separate UVs, mapped with the intent of using it in a program that can do subdivision surfaces. Specifically mapped for Sub-d use, that is, to avoid texture pulling and stretching when it's subdivided.

That may be the case, but it would still be a pity to have a mapping for the high-poly version that can't be used for the low-poly one when the required changes to make it work on both are so minimal. Besides, all the high-poly Antonia really is is the first sub-d stage of the original low-poly Antonia.

Quote -
Is there really a big call to use low poly figures in Poser? it seems to me the trend has been for denser meshes over the years.

Not quite. V4 is quite a bit lighter in polys than V3, for example. Some people like to make mass-scenes in Poser with lots of figures, and I'm sure they would appreciate a low-poly version that's easy to use (i.e. basically works like the high-poly one). Also, since D|S can do sub-d, the low-poly version should be useful there.

Quote -
OTOH, a low res Antonia UV mapped differently, with nothing overlapping, would be perfect for programs that can do sub-d, and the ZBrush people would dig it too.

As I said before, the high-poly Antonia is just the first sub-d step of the low-res one. Antonia was developed with sub-d in mind, and I've only subdivided her for use in Poser because Poser can't do sub-d and thus doesn't render the low-poly version correctly in closeups. If we had a mapping for the low-poly version that had been made with sub-d in mind, that would probably be ideal. Then again, I did my original mapping on the high-res mesh and then adapted it to the low-res one, and that didn't seem too bad.

Again, sorry for not mentioning any of this before. I'm sure I've explained it somewhere earlier in this thread, but of course I can't expect people to have read all 130+ pages. I guess I should start collecting the highlights of this thread on the webpage for future reference or something like that. :laugh:

PS: If you don't make the modifications I'm suggesting, it's probably still possible to produce a mapping for the low-res mesh that will take textures made for your hi-res mapping. But it would be somewhat fiddly and there would inevitably be deformations along the seams.

Thanks for the explanations, Les and Olaf. :-)

I do understand now what you all are talking about, although I really wouldn't know where to begin.
Which seams would be affected? Which would have to move over and how would I know?

Quote -
As I said before, the high-poly Antonia is just the first sub-d step of the low-res one. Antonia was developed with sub-d in mind, and I've only subdivided her for use in Poser because Poser can't do sub-d and thus doesn't render the low-poly version correctly in closeups. If we had a mapping for the low-poly version that had been made with sub-d in mind, that would probably be ideal. Then again, I did my original mapping on the high-res mesh and then adapted it to the low-res one, and that didn't seem too bad.

OK, now that is something I wish now I'd thought of before. I hadn't even looked at the lo res Antonia, and I never even questioned how the two related to each other. So high Antonia is simply low Antonia, subdivided once. Makes perfect sense now.

Suddenly I think it would in fact be a better idea if I simply started it over, working with the low res version and doing it Sub-D style. There are a few things I'm not satisfied with in the current version I did, anyway.
So a set of UV's made for low Antonia, with Sub-D in mind, would then work just as well on high Antonia.
That actually seems considerably easier to me than adjusting what I already did to work on low Antonia, less tedious at least.
And in either event, it would seem that either way would mess up any textures anyone may already be making, so I suppose I might as well...

So anybody reading this and making textures for my UV version, you might want to stop right now. ;-)

Although it's very likely that the next version will be very similar to the current version, so any existing textures might not have to be completely redone.

I'm also going to make that one-map-no-overlapping version too, for Low Antonia. I'll probably do that first, as it will give me a feel for the topology and will actually be a pretty quick and simple thing to do.

I agree that redoing the mapping on the low-poly mesh with your existing version as a guide will probably be quicker and easier than patching the high-poly version directly. Also, any modeling program that can do sub-d should be able to reproduce the high-poly version from the low-poly one. The vertex numbering will be different, so you can't quite test it with the existing morphs, but I can fix that later.

There's one caveat though (that I can think of): the low-poly version for Poser has the hard edges removed. You need to use a version with the hard edges still in it to get the correct sub-d shape. So I'll upload that to the developers site tonight.

OK, Olaf, thanks, and  I'll be watching for that file. :-)

It's now up on the developers site under "File to work on".

Quote - It's now up on the developers site under "File to work on".

Cool beans. Thanks. 

Hi;
Sorry I've not been active lately.
Been having the Fibromyalgia almost every day and it is painful.

I want to try to do new textures for Mike's UV mapping.
In my opinion, it would be a little difficult to adapt my textures from odf's mapping to Mike's without a lot of work.
The breast area is separate from the hip area on odf's and not on Mike's, the feet are different too.
Starting fresh seems better.

Then I'll be better prepared to give some feedback. :)

Having lots of fun playing with this model in DS.
Thanks alot.

Theres lots of mention of SubD but no mention of the LOD feature in DS.

It might save some time on the DS side of things when you're thinking of low res figures.

LOD is for this very purpose, so that you can swap out geometry, either manually or get Studio to do it automagically depending on distance from the camera. (and you don't have to distribute 2 complete characters (hi and low res.). At least not for DS users.) 

Quote - Hi;
Sorry I've not been active lately.
Been having the Fibromyalgia almost every day and it is painful.

I want to try to do new textures for Mike's UV mapping.
In my opinion, it would be a little difficult to adapt my textures from odf's mapping to Mike's without a lot of work.
The breast area is separate from the hip area on odf's and not on Mike's, the feet are different too.
Starting fresh seems better.

Then I'll be better prepared to give some feedback. :)

Blue Echo, if you're referring to the sets I recently uploaded, hold off on that, as I'm completely redoing a new version, considering the discussion over the last couple days here, in the interest of having a UV set that will work for both the lo res and high res versions.
I know I said I wanted to see people make textures for her with my UVs, but Olaf made me see why I need to do this.
It should be ready in anywhere from a few days to a week.
Sorry about the confusion. ;-)

Great!
I need a day or two anyway, got a new laptop on the way that should ease some of my hurting while working. :)

MikeJ: I hope you haven't started with the new UVs yet. I just realized that the file I uploaded had the wrong (old) shape. I just replaced it with a new version that has Antonia's current default shape. Sorry about the new confusion!

In addition to being more up-to-date, the new shape should also be easier to handle for UVLayout. The breasts are smaller and smoother, and I've removed the genital details since I decided that those are better taken care of by morphs.

PS: Since my mesh software is in a bit of a mess, there might be a problem with the way the new file is formatted. If UVLayout doesn't load it correctly, let me know. I'm off to work, otherwise I'd fix it right away.

prixat: LOD sounds great. One day, maybe...

Quote - MikeJ: I hope you haven't started with the new UVs yet. I just realized that the file I uploaded had the wrong (old) shape. I just replaced it with a new version that has Antonia's current default shape. Sorry about the new confusion!

In addition to being more up-to-date, the new shape should also be easier to handle for UVLayout. The breasts are smaller and smoother, and I've removed the genital details since I decided that those are better taken care of by morphs.

PS: Since my mesh software is in a bit of a mess, there might be a problem with the way the new file is formatted. If UVLayout doesn't load it correctly, let me know. I'm off to work, otherwise I'd fix it right away.

Well I had started it actually, but then I ended up trying to troubleshoot errors and crashes in the latest UVLayout preview version, 2.06, so I didn't get too far. Funny, I can't think of a single time until now that a crashing software beta actually worked in my benefit. ;-)
So I ended up reverting to 2.05 for now.

I loaded your latest version up and didn't get any error messages or anything like that, and it looks fine. I probably won't be able to do any actual work on it until tomorrow or the weekend, but I'll let you know if I see any problems.
Thanks for the update!