Just bought a hair piece by Ali over at his web store and the UV maps are different from the texture maps and they overlap. Can I make new UV maps in Blender without messing up the morphs and pose dials?

I make new UV maps all the time with uvmapper - I have not yet had any issue with breaking morphs / dials - since the UV is based on the original geometry before the CR2 calls the morphs etc, I would think you are fine. As always, make a backup of the original geometry before saving the new one out. That way you can return to the original if necessary.

Yes, just load in the texture map and realign the UV islands where you need them.

I've done this a few times in blender, just load up the obj, making sure you select to keep vert order, then in the UV editor workspace make your adjustments and export the amended obj, again making sure you keep vert order, then simply replace the original obj with your new one and load. After EZCloth I was going to write EZUV to allow you to load different UV maps on the fly (obviously if the objs were the same in terms of verts) but I never actualy got around to it, I think because you couldn't add tverts using python but I really can't recall the exact details.

Just to illustrate the issue I'm having with this hair model.

How many transparency bounces are you using?

caisson posted at 1:59PM Tue, 11 February 2020 - #4379978

How many transparency bounces are you using?

min 4, max 32

with less bounces is does get worse but does not get any better even with 128 bounces.

Why don't you turn on Normals_Foward with Material Room?

I don't have that particular hair but I do get odd artefacts on a similar hair which seems to be due to polygons that are occupying almost the exact same space.

Render + wires in Poser -

The highlighted polygons below belong to 3 different strips of geometry -

Does using 1 level of render subdivision change the appearance of the artefacts?

mne1106 posted at 4:41PM Tue, 11 February 2020 - #4380000

Why don't you turn on Normals_Foward with Material Room?

NF doesn't fix it.

caisson posted at 4:42PM Tue, 11 February 2020 - #4380001

I don't have that particular hair but I do get odd artefacts on a similar hair which seems to be due to polygons that are occupying almost the exact same space.

Render + wires in Poser -

The highlighted polygons below belong to 3 different strips of geometry -

Does using 1 level of render subdivision change the appearance of the artefacts?

yes, the shape of the holes change but it doesn't make them go away. I think you have found the problem though. Would this be considered a bug with Poser/SF?

I honestly don't know. I suspect other render engines may have difficulty in the same situation but don't have the experience to say for sure. I'll do some more testing when I have time and see if I can write something up for the dev team.

If it's geometry that needs pushed apart, is the morph brush any use?

you could download the Silo trial (good for 7 days) and try to push it apart if it's only strips that are too close to each other and not poly's in more than 1 strip of geometry

Squeaky wheel gets the grease. I had sent an email to Ali/Mankahoo last night and he/she fixed the geometry for the most part. Great response from this vendor, I highly recommend their products. Take a look.

Well done, and yes I'm a fan of Ali's products too.

What has caught me out with transparency bounces in the past is that my overall max bounces was set less than my max transparent, so upping the transparent bounces didn't help :) ISTR a similar sort of issue in FF where polys cast shadows on themselves when too close to each other

Ali's products are excellent and are obviously backed up by great customer support!

@ghostship2 - if you have a finished render using this hair, please share ;)

caisson posted at 12:36PM Wed, 12 February 2020 - #4380089

Ali's products are excellent and are obviously backed up by great customer support!

@ghostship2 - if you have a finished render using this hair, please share ;)

here you go!

Very nice render, cheers!

@AmethystPendant python can't create facet groups directly. The only option is to write out a new obj file and load it, at the moment.

Charlize Theron?

movida posted at 9:07PM Fri, 28 February 2020 - #4380718

Charlize Theron?

supposed to be I guess. It was a character that used to be here at Rendo and at Smith Micro but the vendor doesn't sell it anymore. I'm using different maps on it as well.