Texture Converter 2 (TC2)
3Diva
Posts: 11,550
in The Commons
Does anyone know how this works: http://www.daz3d.com/texture-convertor-2-tc2 ?
Can it be used in Daz Studio? If I buy that and this http://www.daz3d.com/tc2-v4-a4-plugin does that mean I can use V4 skins on other figures? Or just other figures skins on V4? The description seems a little vague.
If anyone has this product or knows how to use it, I would be grateful for any help you can give. :)
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Comments
its a standalone texture convertor that redraws the source maps pixel by pixel to match the target figures UV mapping.
You see it doing it in realtime on a canvas.
Its great for using newer textures on older figures or some of the cool older textures like A3 Mulberry on Genesis etc with V4 UVs.
Plugins for Later figures were never added which is a pity as Map transfer a right PITA and not possible for going to Genesis 3.
I really had hoped 3DU would do it.
Blacksmith3D has a Texture Converter for baking from V4/M4 to G3M/F (via a plugin) and a variety of other figure UVs. I've been using it to bake V4 textures to G3F/M (I almost exclusively use the G3F UVs these days).
Ah cool, thank you for the info! :) It would be nice if you could use it on newer figures as you said.
Oh nice! I'll have to look into that! :)
I wonder how it would compare to using Cayman Studios product that lets you use V4 textures on G3F. I've been considering getting that product.
TC2 was a decent product, however it had problems with texture stretching. The blacksmith product does a better job of converting textures, but there are still some issues. Also keep in mind that a lot of the V4 textures have issues with spec which doesn't translate well to iray... meaning those textures end up looking like the figure is dirty. Those textures need to be cleaned manually in photoshop or another tool.
Remember that TC2 is really aimed at translation of generation 3 skins (these are not the same as Genesis 3) to Generation 4 skins. If you do not have many generation 3 skins (ie V3, M3, A3 etc), you are unlikely to have much use for this product.
There is the Batch Convert Victoria 4 to Genesis 2 Females and its male counterpart. These require the UV maps, sold separately. I've been hoping for a Genesis 3 version of this because it is very simple and converts all the textures in the folder you choose. It does not alter the original texture, it just maps it to the G2 UV.
So to get this image below, I used the converter on Sabby's Kmmi (from the other store,) and used GenX on the morph. After that, I loaded up G2F, added the textures and used V3D's Iray Smart Converter for Genesis 2. That's it. I literally did nothing but click a few buttons. Any idiot could do it, even me! Its not Genesis 3, but I like it.
TC2 was a fairly essential product some years back when people were moving older skins to gen4 and Genesis 1. But there was never a Mac version, so I can't speak with any kind of experience with it.
There were loads of people with substantial collections of gen3 skins (particularly Aiko 3) that they wanted to be able to keep using. However, the UVs for gen3 were thoroughly incompatible with the UVs for gen4. Genesis 1 accepted the base V4, M4 and K4 UVs natively. So getting the UVs to match any of them was a go. The base morph sets for the older figures were available, so the shapes were accessible. And GenX was able to port the specific character morphs quite acceptably, but getting the skins from gen3 onto gen4 or later was a whole other pair of sleeves.
Those that could, and were willing to, ported a lot of gen3 skins to the V4 UVs with TC2 and were able to keep on using them until G3 threw its major game changer into the mix.
If the Generation 3 skin has already been converted to a V4 UV using TC2, then it is a couple of clicks to get that onto G3F using Cayman Studio's tool.
I actually use it to put later skins onto M3 and V3 mostly as inspite of being higher poly you can load more of them in a scene than genesis + which sends my RAM into a tizzy after a few.
+1
I considered both, before chosing Blacksmith 3D; I wanted to avoid the extra texture masks that are added to hide the join areas. I am, however, also considering that both might be a solution; and depending on requirements, and time available, one more suitable than the other.
I suspect that there is more work involved in BS3D; further manual conversion of none default G2 (one of the reasons I use it) is necessary before using it; so neither is perfect, and it depends on what you need.
One of my favourites was Belle 6 texture; it was great for altering. Here it is after converting to default UVs for Genesis 2, then transferred to Genesis 3.
Stating up front that I have no experience of the Blacksmith product. That said, one of the issues that I've been running into with the Cayman Studios product is that it interferes with some types of HD morphs. For example, if you want to use one of the vein HD morph products, you wind up with visible discontinuity at the shoulder geograft. The advantage of the Blacksmith product, from what I can see, is that it actually rewrites the texture maps to the new UV, so that you won't see that sort of issue.
That said, the thing that keeps stopping me from getting the Blacksmith program is that the workflow looks so Poser-y, and I just haven't wanted to spend the time to deal with it.
As I recall, 3D Universe stopped dealing with the Texture Converter series because several AV programs started wrongly flagging it at a virus because of some subroutine that it used, and it would have required a complete rewrite of the program to fix those issues.
I got Texture Converter 2 shortly before it got pulled from the store. On all characters, I found that it had major issues with visible texture stretching on the back of the head; as long as you put hair on the character's head, that was OK. More problematic was that for male characters with armpit hair as part of the texture, for some reason, that got stretched along the line of the pectorals almost all the way to the sternum. Not sure why, since the rest of the torso texture didn't show that sort of extreme stretching. It wasn't awful to clean up, as long as you had even basic graphic program experience. (Which I really didn't when I first started.)
Oh nice! I love waking up to a bunch of responses and helpful information to my query - and this information here is great! Thank you guys, I really appreciate you taking the time to give me some insight and information on the different ways to transfer textures from different generations. I can use all the help I can get. Particularly with converting to G3F.
Right now I have the V4 clone for G2F - so I'm covered there on bringing V4 textures to G2F. I also have Cayman Studios product that lets you use G3F textures on G2F figures - so G2F is pretty much covered with the UVs that I want her to be able to use. However, I'm hoping to find a product that will let me do the same for G3F (I want to be able to use G2F and V4 textures on G3F).
I'd also, ideally, like to find a product that lets one use G2F and G3F textures on V4 - does such a product exist?
No.
But if you were to delve into Blender, or had another 3D app that can projection bake textures from one mesh to another, and had a V4 shape for G3F (via a clone for fitting V4 clothing to G3F, etc), you could do it there I believe.
Of course, having said "No", some bright spark's bound to post a G3F to V4 texture converter.
I see this way too often:
This product is not available for the MAC OS.
I've used TC2 quite a bit, in the standard mode of converting backwards and forwards from V3/A3/Laura to V4/A4. The only things I found lacking were that it didn't do the V3 eyes correctly and the more complex texture sets with diffuse, bump, displacement and specular needed several passes to get all the different sets of files converted. I put V4 Marie on Laura, and the V3 textures Shadiyah and Sanura on V4.
To get a G2F texture onto V4 you can use map transfer inside Daz Studio to convert a texture from G2F UV to V4 UV
To get a G3F texture onto V4 you will need to use blender or the like to convert to G2F first, so not easy.
Belle is one of my favorite textures. Did you do her conversion with Blacksmith? I don't know if I can do that manually. I managed to get a standard g2f skin converted to g3f wth Cayman, but I'm not fond of those extra zones it adds.
TC2 works really on furry type textures.
The original TC worked very badly on hi tech style 2nd skins that were made up of multiple plates. I can't remember if I tried this with TC2 or not.
CaymanStudios told me that he would consider making G3F>V4 converter IF he got around 50 requests for it on the forum, but he did not think there would be sufficient demand. I, for one, would like to be able to use all of my V4 high heels while keeping character continuity with my lead G3F characters. Since CaymanStudios already has the expertise, I hope you might be interested in starting a G3F>V4 converter petition thread.
Yes, I wrote that without thinking. Generation 4 figures don't take geografts so that particular solution is, alas, not an option.
Instead of all the texture transferring, I may actually use V3, M3, and A3 again with their original textures and morphs. Just not sure how to Iray them. I wonder if just the Uber Iray would work. I have a lot of great V3/A3 Hansdpan and Thorne characters that still look great and I wonder if V4 clothes could autofit to them but I do have some V3 and A3 clothes, I think lots of A3 including a bunch of freebies. I wish A7 looked as cute as previous Aikos. Without PA morphs I'd have no interest in Aiko7. The G3s are mostly sexy, but unless they're toons, have just become too generic.
i would like to use the converter to get K4/Matt/Maddie onto the younger Genesis characters though, although many of Thorne's V4 characters will look great on Genesis series kids. I have a billion V4 textures so definitely don't need a G3 to V4 converter.
Genesis 1 does take K4 textures natively. The UVs are in the surfaces tab pop-up. But the gen3 kid skins are something else again.
Would applying a K4 texture set to Genesis and then saving it as some kind of preset (materials preset?) make it possible to apply it to G2 and/or via the Cayman patch to G3?
using blacksmiths texture converter which got lucky a found it and the addons on sale for 5 don't think they meant to lower it so much since it was off sale just a few minutes later, V4 elite Maya on Lindsey nowhere near done at 18% haven't really noticed any texture stretching having converted about 50 different ones. I
JOdel, you can convert a Kids 4 texture via the Map Transfer facility in DAZ Studio to any other native Genesis UV (e.g. V4, M4, V5, M5, Steph 5, Aiko 5, David 5) and from there you can use one of the Legacy UV products to put it on Genesis 3.
Thank you for clearing that up. I can stop pestering you now.
I have a questions for either 3D-Universe or anyone who might know this...
I've been using TC2 for years on my old PC but I recently switched to a mac, and as we know, TC2 doesn't have a Mac version. But I really like having TC2. So I'm trying to get it to work using Wine or Crossover, but so far nothing. It installs, but won't run. I'm wondering if there might be other windows programs that are needed for it to run (i.e. Visual Basic, etc...). If anyone knows, I'd really appreciate it (and then we'd be all able to run TC2 on our macs!)
My recollection is that it does require soem ActiveX or Visual Basic controls - I thought they were listed in the instructions.