So I've got a bit of spare time in between building projects and thought I'd have a go at something different.

I've got an obj top for one of the Poser figures and got it to fit great in the cloth room. I thought I'd create a few textures for it but so far using  UV mapper I can't seem to get the right kind of UV map or texture map to work. I want to do something more than just a plain texture so I'm trying to make a football (soccer) shirt with a number on the back and hoops etc. I feel like I'm going round and round getting nowhere so if anyone has any advice on how to get started I'd be grateful.

Hi there

What options have you tried in UV-mapper? As far as I remember the "Box" option could perhaps work for what you want to do.

Thought I'd tried that one but I'll give it another go.

If it doens not want to budge send me a PM and the file and I´ll see what I can do :-)

Will do (what's a PM?)

Private message.  There's an option for it at the top of the screen, where your name and avatar appears.  Hit the little "down" arrow.

FWIW' I'd go for a Planar map, separating front and back.

Wings3D is free and has a quite powerful UV mapping ability.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrV_YFnOGzU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToU-2A5mjXk

Thanks for the offer of help Pixpax, I'm going to try to get this working myself. I'm not on a deadline so it's good for me to try to solve it myself.

I'll have a look at Wing3D. I'm used to using Maya (when I was at work) and never bothered with any other texture editor.

I tried a Planar map and it did separate the front and the back but it still didn't apply properly. Maybe it's how I'm putting the texture on. I'm just plugging it straight onto the Diffuse_Color. 

If you're used to using Maya, and still have access to it, you might be able to do it there. If roadkill's still around, you can use that. It was free back when I used it. Blender can do UV mapping. It's not difficult in the latest versions and there are plenty of tutorials on Youtube for it.

Does your shirt already have a uv map? If you have the .obj you can easily check whether there are vt entries. 

Next possibility it has a uv map but the coordinates are not limited between 0 and 1. That is what uv mapper wants.

Does your shirt already have a uv map? If you have the .obj you can easily check whether there are vt entries. 

Next possibility it has a uv map but the coordinates are not limited between 0 and 1. That is what uv mapper wants.

UVMapper will give a UV coordinates out of range error for UDIM.

Easiest way to UV map anything organically shaped is a UV functional software that let's you mark seams, pin verts, stitch, normalize shell texture sizes, and ideally relax or smooth the UV shells. Judging from OPs comments he's trying to use the free version of UVMapper which has very limited functionality for UVing complex forms, just a guess. Planar, cylinder, box unwrapping usually will have serious regional distortions... planar along the side edges of the seams of a typical shirt pattern. Perhaps ok for a start unwrap but requiring further cutting, stitching, and tweaking for sure. Blender and Wings are free and have most of the map editing features mentioned. As much as I used to like Wings for modeling and UVing, latest releases leave alot to be desired. If I were looking to pick up a UVing skill with future proofing I would try to learn the process in Blender, IMO.

Typical results of UVs from UVMapper planar projection of a shirt split into 2 shells, with no further adjustment... note that all alignment options were tested and this was the best of the lot.

Notice stretching at side seams. 

Tried a different approach. This is the Roxie Top from P10 exported as an OBJ then used in UV mapper to create a map using the same settings above. The map was opened in Photoshop and the text added. Then the OBJ was imported back into Poser and the saved JPG attached to the Diffuse_Color. This is what I get. Pretty much the same with either exported/imported models or my own creations. I MUST be doing something wrong!! (Yes, I know I got the front and the back mixed up but I thought I should have got the texture applied correctly!)

Actually, it doesn't look like I got the back and front mixed up as the left part of the map is definitely the front as its lower. Going back to a pencil and paper is looking very inviting at the moment..

If I load the original Roxie top and replace the texture files with the one I created I get the same result so it must be something to do with my UV map.

I have a bunch of UV mappers, ranging from classic, free 'UV Mapper Classic', via the one built into ($$) 3DOC, to the ($$) 'Ultimate Unwrap3D', ($$) 'Lith Unwrap2017' and their clever kin. Truth be told, some easily match up to mapped textures, but many do not. I often resort to a 'binary search', trying to identify which part of a complex, broad-brushed, mapped-texture belongs where. As I say in reviews, 'Template much appreciated.'

This is not just for figuring where a ported model's features / accessories / ornamentation textures may be found, but setting up reflection and emission masks for a scene's mirrors and luminaires. Yes, yes, you can set up 'groups' within Poser, but gets very messy when trying to save-out to external library. Very rarely can you 're-map' just one mapped material of an object. And, process usually degrades 'portability'. Much neater to have simple B&W masks which 'plug & play'...

Most garments are sewn from panels. A usual pattern has front, sides and back panels. When edge lines permit you could try to reassign polygons to different materials representing the panels and project-map them separately. This will not give you flat distortion free uv's like Marvelous Designer does but the result could be passable.  Choosing a morph with minimal 'curvyness' may help to reduce distortion.

Err, you're losing me folks, I'm a fridge man by trade so I understand thermodynamics well enough but although I've had Poser, Vue, Maya etc for a while I'm still relatively inexperienced where 3D modelling and texturing is concerned. Emission masks usually means breathing apparatus to me :-)

Emissions mean light. You can set up any object to emit light with either that ambient plug in firefly or the emissions node in superfly. The closest thing to masks in the real world is probably stencils you would use with painting. You would use them with a blender or mix node to tell poser to put one kind of shader in one portion of an area while using another in a different portion. Here is a sample with a mixclosure node. the compound nodes are just the 2 shaders compressed to make it easy to see the set up for the mask. the image mask node is just an image node renamed.

Here is a sample with the blender node. You can use it with the poser surface root node also and plug it in anywhere you want to combine 2 shaders or even colors. I'd give an example, but Poser decided to stop working and I'm waiting for it to crash so I can restart it.

As far as the UV map, it looks like on Roxie'stanktop, the poser file didn't recognize the new obj. Or that you have 2 shirts occupying the same space. I find the best way to UV map clothing is to use a mapper that will allow you to create seams and then unwrap based on those. I've never used UV mapper so I don't know if that can do that. Then look at real-life shirts and make the UV seam based on where the seams are in the real shirts. And most of the software I've used to make maps did best if you have the seems in the middle of where you want to cut, so if your shirt is 20 faces around, have 10 in the front and ten in the back for the side seams. and do the same for seams at the shoulders. Usually, you can tell, but sometimes, I've counted out the faces.

I'm afraid I have to be totally honest and say that you're losing me with this. I didn't expect it to be so complex. I've now got access to Maya again so I'll have a go in that and see what I get. It's been a while but there's plenty of texturing tutorials out there so watch this space! I will not be defeated!!

Here is what FVerbass and RedPhantom are talking about.

This UV mapping is done with Rizom UV Virtual Spaces (if I recall correctly, the Maya UV mapping is based on a subset of this software). In my humble opinion, it is the best UV mapping software available. I have a perpetual version and it is well worth the money. 

First, you "cut" the seams where you want the parts to be separated. The seams are represented with orange lines in the following image: The front and back are also cut at the shoulders. And the sleeves are also cut at the bottom so they will lay flat.

Then you "relax" the UV Map, using the Unfold button that is marked at the top of the image. You can then position the parts on the tile so that they all fit as shown.

I opened the shirt in UV Mapper Pro and used the Texture preview to show the result here: You will need to edit the CR2 to point to the OBJ with the new UV map in order to see the results.

All in all, that UV mapping took less than 3 minutes.

YAYY! Worked it out in the end. I found out that I needed to load the model in to UV Mapper then save it off again. I don't know why it worked that way but the new file was a bit bigger and it seems to work.

Glad you got it working.  

Saving out again... yeah, that part is always essential because you've changed the mesh.  Prior to loading, it didn't have a UV map.  Once you create one, that's added to the fille, so the mesh sort of changes.

Things are always simple once you realise it. Thanks for all the advice and idea's though, there's some interesting software out there I didn't know about.

UVMapper Pro was something I bought very early on in the game.  I use Wings for making stuff, but never could get on with its UV mapping section, for some reason.

If you're making jointed/articulated models, Cr2Editor is worth getting, too.  It's free and, IMO, much easier to use than a regular text editor.  Makes hacking your Cr2 files much less of a headache, and in many cases, far simpler than some of Poser's built in functions.