ghostship2 posted at 1:08PM Thu, 05 January 2017 - #4294406

you don't need anything but Poser to do what I think you want to do. Texture the figure the way you want then save the material as a material collection in the mats library and it will save all the material zones into one pre-set that you can recall.

I was asking about getting the textures onto the figure in the first place. I know how to save them once they're on. Have been editing some textures and every time I make an updated draft I have to swap them out and see how it looks. Sounds like EZMat will do it.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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?

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.