FVerbaas posted at 3:43 AM Sun, 11 September 2022 - #4444290

Thank you for the clarification, DCArt, but frankly said I think all one is after in the end is a set of image files. iRay, Superfly, 3Delight, Firefly are just different media, like watercolors, gouache, acrylic and oil paint are for good old real painting. They all yield different results for the simple reason they are based on different technologies. On top of that the Poser engines and the DAZ engines are designed to work in different environments with different post processing. Trying to convert complex shaders to get the same result is a waste of time. I therefore wonder if it is worth holding a release. If the product  is not for beginners, so be it.

As a minimum one needs the skin of body, head and limbs cut, stretched as appropriate and then sewn and laid out as needed for your target figure.  From there they can be copied into an appropriate shader for the target figure or fed into EZSkin to build one from scratch. Irises, nails, brows and lashes are options that can go same route. If the conversion tool can do this also even the better. I really doubt converting teeth, tongue and what else is worth spending time on. Noted exception are the male genitalia but they usually are a separate figure anyway.

 

Yes I agree that all one is after are the image files. However, as stated above, Texture Transformer doesn't recognize some image types and will not convert them directly. For example, if the original figure has normal maps that are connected to the Poser Surface node through connection with the Gradient Bump connection and the Tangent type selected, Texture Transformer will not convert them. Instead, the user will need to create a temporary MAT file that connects the Normal map to the Color input of the Poser Surface Node and convert that separately. 

Same for other map types that might be in the original figure that the Poser Surface node will not recognize. 

So there appears to be some sort of misunderstanding about what I'm trying to say. The Texture Transformer conversion kits basically project textures from the original figure (say, V4) to a version of La Femme that is morphed to match V4 exactly in shape and size. So in that respect, the user doesn't need to match UVs at all. 

Basically, Texture Transformer recognizes the types of maps that you used to assign in the Simple material view. But if anything passes through other FireFly nodes before connecting to the Poser Surface Node, Texture Transformer will throw an error. Likewise, if you are trying to convert textures that connect to the Physical Surface Node or the Cycles node with Principled BSDF, they won't be converted either, because Texture Transformer was last updated in 2016 before SuperFly was in its prime.

Yes, I realize the ultimate goal is to generate textures. But Texture Transformer doesn't recognize several map types commonly used today, and that is what needs updating in the utility (not the transformer kit). Otherwise, users will need to create custom MAT files to generate all of the textures in the source object - and that is the part that beginners with no experience with creating MAT files would have difficulty with.