this looks interesting,

says M4 to g3m

but, what about g3m to M4? g3m to g2m? g3f to g2male?

anyone tried it?

thanks

I didn't see a way in the standalone Texture Transformer. But, I heard there could be a way inside Blacksmith 3D itself. Unfortunately, I have not been able to test it yet. I keep getting distracted by other things.

I was disappointed to realize only after buying the add-on that it wouldn't do that transformation, since I bought it on impulse upon noticing that Eddie is just the skin I've been looking for for a beloved M4 character. (Not going to try to return it because if I'd actually read it, it says clearly what it is, and I don't want to be that person.) About the Genesis 3 maps...I'm copying and pasting this from a product description for the M4 UV's for Genesis 3 male:

"The UV maps for Genesis 3 figures use a UV mapping protocol called UDIM (U-Dimensional) and now divide the surfaces differently from preceding generations of DAZ figures. This means that some surfaces of Genesis 3 figures cannot use all the corresponding textures of previous generations because a surface cannot utilize more than one UV map.

However, if these surfaces are given a second skin in the form of geografts then the geografts can use their own independent UV maps to access the textures. Usually geografts are used to make geometric additions to an object, but in this case they serve only as surfaces to display seamlessly the otherwise unavailable textures."

That's all like a foreign language to me, I don't understand the explanation for why the maps can't be made to cover the figure, so I don't know whether or not it would also be a problem when trying to do it in Blacksmith.

Interested in hearing more.

seeing it on sale, but m4 to g3m not the direction i want >.<

Willdial, what is the way you heard of to do it inside of Blacksmith? The projection brush would do it but it would take forever to do it correctly, because you would have to get every body part from every angle, and if one part is covering another part you'd have to remove it to get a good shot of the other part. If you have the Genesis 3 UVs for Genesis 2, and you can get the texture transfer brush to work, then you could transfer them to Genesis 2 and then convert them to M4, but the texture transfer brush does not work for me. :(
Did you mean one of those, or is there yet another way?

the g3 to g2 product seems involve a geoshell.

i've used texturecoverter, which re-creates the texture image.

the Blacksmith version creates a new uvs for M4, or gn1 or g2? instead of re-arranging the texture maps?

i only have few g3m textures and a couple of g3f.

the sale price makes the pro version pretty reasonable right now, it would be worth it to be able to use my few g3 textures.

thanks!

Texture Transformer (which comes with Blacksmith 3D Pro or can be bought as a stand-alone) works the same as Texture Converter, it recreates the texture for the other map. The Genesis 3 UV's are different (see the quoted passage above.) The UV swapping in Daz between Genesis 3 and any other figure involves geografts. I do not understand the reason why you can't just remap the texture, there's presumably only one surface, it's beyond my comprehension. Blacksmith has a feature (the texture transfer brush) that allows you to copy textures between the same figure with different UV's (it also works with figures who have the same mesh if you morph one into the shape of the other) and in theory this should allow you to transfer a texture from Genesis 3 to M4 if you load one figure (Genesis 2 or 3 or whatever) with Genesis 3 UV's and the texture you want, and the same figure with M4 UV's, but again there is the weird geograft situation, and the texture transfer brush is apparently very picky and I don't know how to appease it. I've never been able to get it to work with Genesis figures at all.

thanks AsteroidLady.

i'll wait on this software for a g3 to m4 feature.

Post it in the Blacksmith 3D forum so they'll know there's interest. I'll back it up.

Don't mean to waste your time but don't have the products to check before posting. If the problem is UDIM could not exporting G3 from DS using Collada or FBX produce OBJs with plain old UVs? The thought is UDIM is relatively recent so these formats might not support it.

Ironsoul, that was a good idea, but was there a follow-up thought that I'm not seeing? I think exporting as FBX does in fact produce normal UVs (I'm guessing from the texture maps that I had it save to the folder, I don't know how to determine this in a more technical way) but the M4 UVs still do not cover the entire figure, there are gaps where the geografts were.

Would welcome a plain language explanation of why. "Because a surface cannot utilize more than one UV map" comes off as a nonsequitur to me in that context, following only that they "divide the surfaces differently." My understanding of UV maps in general is that they are different ways of dividing the surfaces. Wouldn't each point on one map still correspond to a single point on the other map? Obviously the answer is "no," but why not?

AsteroidLady posted at 9:09PM Wed, 28 December 2016 - #4293818

Ironsoul, that was a good idea, but was there a follow-up thought that I'm not seeing? I think exporting as FBX does in fact produce normal UVs (I'm guessing from the texture maps that I had it save to the folder, I don't know how to determine this in a more technical way) but the M4 UVs still do not cover the entire figure, there are gaps where the geografts were.

Would welcome a plain language explanation of why. "Because a surface cannot utilize more than one UV map" comes off as a nonsequitur to me in that context, following only that they "divide the surfaces differently." My understanding of UV maps in general is that they are different ways of dividing the surfaces. Wouldn't each point on one map still correspond to a single point on the other map? Obviously the answer is "no," but why not?

The thought was if people can get G3 into Carrara the export process must convert the single UDIM space into separate parts and UV maps, for example if V4 was UDIM an export would produce a model with separate groups and UV maps for face, torso and limbs which Texture Transformer might then be able to read but I'm just speculating. Not sure what you mean by the geografts missing textures, are you applying the "Legacy UVs for Genesis 3: Genesis Pack" before exporting? If so I was thinking more of exporting the native G3. I found the following article helpful - Maxwell texture mapping - UVs and UDIMS

I exported both. Since that particular Texture Transformer add-on doesn't currently exist, it's irrelevant whether Texture Transformer can read it or not. Trying to figure out how to transfer it within Blacksmith 3d. The texture transfer brush in Blacksmith depends on both figures being the same except for the UV's, so I am not exporting the geografts, only the figure. When you change the UV's on the Genesis 3 male, and apply textures from other figures, there are gaps; that's what the geografts are there to cover. This is far from the only problem I'm encountering though, so while covering the gaps is an issue that needs to be addressed, it will not solve the larger problem of how to transfer textures from G3m to M4.

It turns out I was accidentally exporting the geografts with the figure even though I believed that I wasn't. (They are conformed to the figure so even though they are not selected they attach themselves when exporting and if you export as obj it is merged into one thing and you can't tell they're there. You have to delete them first.) That's why it wasn't working with the texture transfer brush. If you export correctly then it works. You also have to select "collapse UV tiles" which I think (correct me if I'm wrong) turns it into a normal UV map. (If there is a way to do this on export, is there a way to do it before applying the textures?) The M4 UV's for G3M are not the original M4 UV's. They're similar but not identical. For example the ears are grouped with the face instead of the torso, and the face area is smaller. Converting textures to that map is not going to make them fit correctly on M4. The places where the gaps are on the image above are the areas where the problem is. Using Genesis 2 for the transition is no better. You can transfer what you can and then spend a lot more time piecing it together with postwork, but really if you're going to spend that much time on one texture that you won't even own, you might as well be making your own textures. Here is a link to a tutorial on how to do it in Blender, which I have not tried. (It is about Genesis 2 but should work with any figure if you can get them into the same shape.) http://the-freehold.com/2015/09/03/texture-conversion-using-daz-studio-and-blender/ Blacksmith are not going to make the add-on unless people express an interest.

The V4 to G2 converter product I purchased creates new material zones on G2 which I assume allow the V4 original textures to be loaded directly onto G2 rather than bake a new set. How this is done I don't know, the mechanics between the obj, body part and material group escapes me. So the thought was once the G3 figure was exported could a similar approach be used, there would be two parts, the exported textures and new mat groups for M4.

Forget above post, I can test idea with ZB.

Had another look at the V4 to G2 product and it's changing the UVs not the mats, the new material part was me attempting to load V4 directly onto G2. Anyhow, projecting G3 material zones on to M4 removed the gaps and gave me some ears but that doesn't solve the problem on how to transform the UVs. Googling suggests Maya or 3DSMAX have someway to automagically do this. I'm just curious how someone took a UV map from one mesh and applied it to another non identical one, Ptex I can understand but how UVs if the faces are non contiguous which they appear to be? Sorry to go about this but always found UVs a bit of a dark art.

Is copying material zones something you can do in Poser? I'm still not familiar with all its capabilities.

Are you saying that you actually got the textures applied correctly to M4 by changing his material zones? Do you currently have a copy of M4 that is wearing G3M textures and looking normal?

great find AsteroidLady, thanks!! had no idea there were geografts to cover seams.

i forgive M4 his lil bend issues, for having uncomplicated uvs.

so basically, would have to manually drag m4's uvs around to cover the g3 texture?

AsteroidLady posted at 10:34AM Tue, 03 January 2017 - #4294144

Is copying material zones something you can do in Poser? I'm still not familiar with all its capabilities.

you can setup new material zones with the geometry editor. in pp12 I don't see a way to delete the unused material zones. i think, uvmapperclassic can remove unused material zones? that info is in the obj file.

now that my memory is jogged, lol, i remember using uvmapperclassic to import v4 uvs on to an m4 replica. and vice versa.

come to think of it, wonder if that would work with james6 and jessie6

they extended the blacksmith sale to "Ends: Jan 31"

ironsoul posted at 3:16PM Tue, 03 January 2017 - #4293822

AsteroidLady posted at 9:09PM Wed, 28 December 2016 - #4293818

Ironsoul, that was a good idea, but was there a follow-up thought that I'm not seeing? I think exporting as FBX does in fact produce normal UVs (I'm guessing from the texture maps that I had it save to the folder, I don't know how to determine this in a more technical way) but the M4 UVs still do not cover the entire figure, there are gaps where the geografts were.

Would welcome a plain language explanation of why. "Because a surface cannot utilize more than one UV map" comes off as a nonsequitur to me in that context, following only that they "divide the surfaces differently." My understanding of UV maps in general is that they are different ways of dividing the surfaces. Wouldn't each point on one map still correspond to a single point on the other map? Obviously the answer is "no," but why not?

The thought was if people can get G3 into Carrara the export process must convert the single UDIM space into separate parts and UV maps, for example if V4 was UDIM an export would produce a model with separate groups and UV maps for face, torso and limbs which Texture Transformer might then be able to read but I'm just speculating. Not sure what you mean by the geografts missing textures, are you applying the "Legacy UVs for Genesis 3: Genesis Pack" before exporting? If so I was thinking more of exporting the native G3. I found the following article helpful - Maxwell texture mapping - UVs and UDIMS

thank you for the link. had no idea what UDIM meant before.

basically, i think it's saying the udim allows texture maps of different resolutions on one mesh.

so to make M4 take a g3m texture, would have to sample down the hd texure or sample up the rest. ?

I don't think it would take anything that complicated because the G3M texture maps are normal, they look just like anybody else's. It's just a matter of creating a scheme for what goes where, like any texture conversion. Probably just leave the G3M figure out of it and work from the UV templates that come with him. I converted the M4 seam guides to him (to get some use out of the M4 to G3M add-on that I bought) and I'm using that to tell me what matches with what. It just seems like a waste to not do it in a way that is repeatable or can be automated, since any given conversion will always require the same steps. It has occurred to me that a texture converter could be written as a script for Paint Shop Pro (the image editor I use). You would just tell it to do all the things that you did to convert the texture, and have it do it on its own. But I don't know how to program so I can't be the one to write that.

In other words, UDIM is only indirectly the problem. It's a problem with using the figure for the conversions, not with the textures themselves. It's best to ignore it.

AsteroidLady posted at 12:56PM Wed, 04 January 2017 - #4294144

Is copying material zones something you can do in Poser? I'm still not familiar with all its capabilities.

No but converting the mat zones into seperate colours its possible to project them from G3M to M4 and then back to groups in a program like Zbrush (or maybe Blacksmith). Unfortunately the M4 mesh has quite large faces at the mat borders so theres going to be a mismatch in textures as the UVs will stretch. Getting the new mat zones back into Poser presents a problem in that the only way I can see this is changing the base obj which is no good as a general solution since we're not permitted to distribute the base mesh. It may be possible to do it in another way. And also no to your second question, textures did not load correctly because UVs are wrong. Creating the mats will allow M4 to have a specific group for the ears which solves the problem of them moving from the face texture map in M4 to the head map in G3M but it doesn't help with the UVs.

does the blacksmith pro let you use symmetry, so like, if you uvmap left half of face or torso, can it do the right side with some kind of symmetery commad?

Thanks!

I don't have pro, just regular, and I've never tried to use it for UV mapping, so I can't answer that. What are you trying to do?

i'm working on a new dragon figure

i thought bs6pro was a uv mapping s/w

it's not?

You'd probably get better answers to Blacksmith questions in the Blacksmith forum. I use it to make morphs and paint textures. It might have UV mapping capabilities for all I know, but I haven't reached that stage yet.