Hey all! I want to discuss textures for a moment. Obviously, my work (photo-realistic human characters) depends heavily on the textures we use - in fact, good textures are the only reason we can do this at all. To that end, I think I have been pushing the "state of the art" with Poser for a month or two now getting more and more realism for our potential clients. It's going well. BUT - there is a dirty secret that I have to hide all the time... Necks look horrible. The interface between the body map and the head map is one of the weakest places for any texture - often the head has as many pixels in it as the entire body map - and while that is OK for face shots or for body only shots it is a serious problem at the seams. This is even more evident when the texture uses "speckles" or "spots" to create pseudo detail ont he texture - it looks good until the maps come together. This is one of the reasons why the Daz Hi-Res texture is one of the best around - there are very few "speckles" and instead the texture is ... smeared? Anyway - I just wanted to mention to the texture atists (and you guys are AMAZING!) that this area will be more and more of an issue as Poser standards get better and better. Thanks!

This is a render of Asia, in 3DS Max. Obviously the texture is AMAZINGLY GOOD, and well worth 3 times what I paid for it. So there is no disrespect or criticizm intended. it is just a render that shows the issue I mean. Any texture you load will do almost exactly the same thing. I can fix it in post, but that won't work for an animation. Personally, I think body maps of 4000x400 might be needed to correct it all. Look at the amazing smoothness of her facial skin compared to the rest?

This is so true. Map size is the trick here.

in animation (which I have never done and have no idea about the technical stuff)... If you do post on each frame and you are really precise, could one do it in post work? or is it just not time/cost effective?

The time would kill you. If one had a good tex and bump map, there would be no need for post work here.

I figured that but had to ask anyway! Asia sure is pretty... :)

I render Asia in Lightwave 6.5 I use "Merge Points" on the mesh. No postwork. Mazak

Yeah, this isn't a texture issue, it's the way MAX (or maybe the import plugin) treats the mesh parts by default. The seams for several body/mesh parts are visible in that (soulhuntre) shot, not just the neck.

That's not to say soulhuntre isn't right about there being problems with textures at 'joins', especially those with differently scaled heads, etc. It's just that in his shot above, there are more fundamental problems with the body seams.

The render in #2 - could it be, that the orange peel effect is due to the bump map? It looks to be a lower resolution on the body and the strength is at least twice what it should be. The head neck texture join is there because the density of the pixels on the Head is higher than on the Body? Adjustment of the relative texture sizes can minimize this, but the same effect at wrist and ankle is unchangable - because the hands and feet are on the same texture as the rest of the body.

Hmm.. OK ... I see the point (now how I will fix all that in the PPP max plug-in I have no idea....) But the image above uses JUST poser renders to show the same trouble spots. This is NOT (again, I promise) meant to be an insult to the textures in question - just to illustrate it to try and find a solution. I MAY wind up altering the textures myself and blending the edges some.

Hmm.. I'll have to double check and see if that is Bobby Sue or Carly :)

Have you tried running your exported OBJs through UVmapper, using the "tools - fix seams" option? It makes A LOT of difference when exporting figures to Vue 3, which also has the seams problem.

OK... well, the problem is very evident even in renders INSIDE poser - so that is the core issue. I don't export things to Max, Poser has a plug-in that hosts PZ3 files directly into Max. There aren't any seams problems I have seen other than the texture ones so far. The thing is, the Pro Pack lets me keep my poser files AS PZ3's, and that is a big advantage when doing animations.

How are the maps coming in, as "Standard" material type? You might be able to use a "Blend" material to mix the two maps and smooth things out.

soulhuntre is right. This is a 100% texture map problem. the maps must be large enough to overcome the pixle probs.

Hi! First I'm sorry 'cause I've missed this thread before... Well Soulhuntre, I've understood the problem and the point is that Poser cannot work with body textures of 8000x8000 pixels, that should be the right size to go well with the head texture (in photo based textures). At the beginning I've created the body map of Asia at 6000x6000 pixels, but Poser crashed after any trying. So I had to reduce the body to the actual 4000x4000 pixels that are already big for Poser but works well. So the renders of Asia in Poser were and are good with this resolution. And I'm sorry but I've never tested Asia on Max or Lightwave. Well, I think that you cannot compare handdrawn/textures with photo/textures, 'cause the hand/drawn maps are a little flat and it's easy to fix seam problems with airbrush. And the Daz V2 Hirez Texture that you mentioned is more handdrawn that photo based (is a little bit flat) and rendered without Bump Maps is not very photorealistic. So I'll be glad to make 8000x8000 pixels texture and fix the Max seam problems only when Poser will be able to handle them! Stefy

The texture sizes do not have to be proportionally perfect (though that would be nice) ... but extra attentio to the seam at the neck would help a lot I think. It should be possible to copy some of the neck texture to the body map (photoshop will handle the resize) and do some smoothing there so that it blends a bit better. The renders of asia in Poser are good from a distance. For serious close up's I just need to hide the neck. it's the same on all "speckled" characters :)