Can someone please explain: 1) What a remapped Victoria is? and 2) Can a remapped Daz character be distributed as long as the cr2 is not? Thank you.

1. The UV cordinates (the instructions on where the apply the texture) have been changed. This is usually to facilitate a different type of mapping, or to have one character able to use a different character's textures. (AprilYSH remapped several characters and I remapped Vicki2 to be able to use Steph's textures.) 2) Yes. You can create a .uvs map (which is just the texture maps points) and distribute that. UVMapper can read that file and apply it to an existing .obj file. (.uvs maps are useless without the original .obj files.) After that, you save the .obj under a different name. You can then use the original .cr2 file though you do have to change two lines in the .cr2 file to point to the remapped .obj file. If you grab my remapped Vic, you'll see a readme in there with instructions on how to use the remap and how to modify the .cr2 file to use the remapped object. Cheers!

Crescent, can you explain the basics of how you remap a figure - nothing detailed, just the major steps. I know it (remapping) is a lot of work which I probably wouldn't attempt but I've always wondered how its done.

patience... major patience... having done the mayadoll to V1 uvmapping myself, I can sympathise with the difficulties it can present. Took me two weeks to finish it... mainly because I had to start from scratch on the head. I guess one of these days I'll get to explaining it, but really, I learned a lot straight from the uvmapper tutorials on Steve Cox's site. Its a lot of stretching vertices in vertex mode, most of the time.

LOL Yeah, I figured there was probably some of that involved (patience and stretching). I was just wondering if you're adjusting the mesh to fit the target texture displayed as a background in UVMapper?

yes, I import the target uvmapping as a texture in uvmapper pro :) I can then see how its looking in the 3d view as well. often I will also import photographic textures so I can see when a texture is stretching badly in spots, too.

I see. That was the only way I could picture doing it. Thanks, that fully satisfies my curiousity on the subject. I certainly appreciate folks like you, Crescent and April who undertake the arduous job. The job you did on the MayaDoll is sweet and immediately increased her versatility for everyone. I wonder if the process could be automated, to some degree at least. If you know the texture coordinates for say the lips on both figures...who knows :-)

thanks ... it was my pleasure to do it... I fell in love with the model as soon as I plunked her in Poser... then realised, I didnt want to retexture her all the time g it would be very difficult to automate the reuvmapping, I think. I think Real uv tries to make it much easier... (I've never used it, only read the descriptions) but Real uv also has a corresponding... very stiff price tag :/ I'll stick with uvmapper pro g Cheap and does what I want it to do.

lmkenzie, isn't what you describe sorta what the texture convertor does? I don't have that app so I am not sure, but it sounds like it somehow automates the process. And changes the texture too of course, but to do so it will need the coordinates, right?

well, the texture converter only changes the bitmap, not the uvcoordinates... I think changing the uvs is much harder than just converting a bitmap :) I love the texture converter, though. Its a novel piece of software, very useful. also, in the case of the mayadoll, it really needed a different mapping for what I wanted to do with her... realism :)

Mere ignorant speculation on my part. You know what the xy coordinates for the lips on each texture. I'm assuming you'd have to use percentages to accomodate different scales so the lips are always at X% of the width over and Y% down and you know the size of the bounding rectangle you position and rescale as necessary. Which is probably completely wrong :-) I program databases, not pixels. Changing the mapping adds a third axis to complicate things of course. It seems though that if you can create an application like the Tailor that manipulates one set of 3d coordinates in relation to another set then you should be able to do the same with the texture mapping coordinates, at least as a good approximation that would make completing it manually easier. I'm sure someone can explain why it's totally impractical. Also, of course, there are going to be times when as bijouchat says, the maping really needs to has to be redone. With the new "digital clones" they are probably at the point where the laser scanner can pull the geometry and the texture off in one go, already mapped. If not now, soon.

well, you have to put xy coordinate to xyz polygon on mesh... I'm not a bigtime programmer, more a scripter... but its not that easy, I think... especially when you think of how the geometry varies from model to model. would be cool, though g

Well, it would certainly take someone with a better head for numbers than me to say the least. Don't know about the xy to xyz. In UVMapper, you're working with a 2D surface that's been generated from the 3D data. If you move the extreme leftmost vertex of the lip material on one figure, to match the extreme leftmost lip vertex on the other figure, you're not messing with the z position directly, it was laready determined by the original mapping. The process ins't entirely arbitrary, you're taking 'lips ' from one xy place and moving them on the xy of 'lips' on another. If they're too big or too small, you adjust them to fit in the available space. That's the part I think should be possible for algorithms to be written to automate the process. Of course, it would be a "dumb" process in that it would only work with matching or equivalent materials on both figures. Also it wouldn't be able to see that some thing looked too stretched or squashed etc. That's wherethe judgement of a skilled human is definitely required. At any rate, programmers always like being the one to say, "That should be easy for you to implement, right?" instead of being on the receiving end and thinking, "This idiot has no idea what he's talking about."

actually, the texture is the skin off a xyz model, in three dimensions. Hence xyz representing the model. I think this is a common problem when people are uvmapping, they are thinking in a 'euclidean' way, in two dimensions, instead of grasping three and trying to make them two in order to make a texture uvmap. When I am uvmapping, I am literally creating a 2d surface that wraps on a 3d object... Hope that explains my viewpoint some. Automating the process would be the same situation, placing 2d surface coordinate data (u and v directions on the surface, or xy as a texture map) onto a 3d surface... xyz For example, when I was uvmapping the mayadoll's lips. Parts of the lips fold inward to the mouth, and even though on my uvmap they seem flat, the texture actually curves inward and overlaps behind other vertices that are in a similar xy plane, but not the same z plane. (some are behind, some are in front) These vertices had to be spread out, and flattened onto an xy plane, so you can texture them. Automating a uvmapping conversion I imagine would be difficult... because you have to take the uv coordinates from one three dimensional model and translate it to the uv coordinates of another 3d model, that usually has very different geometry (vertices and polygons won't line up exactly).

Thanks for not saying "This idiot has no idea what he's talking about." :-), your example helps. My thought was that Poser reads the obj file which tells it "take this section of the bitmap and place it on these vertices/faces." Knowing that, (the area on the bitmap) I wanted to modify the other figure to say "OK Posette, get the texture for your existing lips material from this area of the Vicky (head) bitmap, instead of the area you used to get from the P4NF map." Where it ends up in 3D space is the same place it always did, just coming from another location on another bitmap. I think I've been hungup on the texture converter, thinking that if you could move a section of bitmap to a new position appropriate for a different model (which has to be done for each texture file), you could make it a one time deal by adjusting where on a texture the model looks for its materials. At any rate, thanks for your patience in explaining it.