Can vendors please say what UV set the skin textures are on their products?
Zev0
Posts: 7,086
This is important information. Is it so hard to say what UV set the skin is for on the product description? Eg I see all these new teens that just came out and have no idea what UV's the skin is on. Is it a new UV set? is it V5? V4? Isn't that what the "What's Included & Features" tab is about? Please include the UV set type in there. They just give you a list of textures.
Post edited by Zev0 on
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Comments
I SECOND THAT!!!! In a big way. It's very important to know what UVset I'm going to be using.
They don't want to tell you that since half the S5 textures use V4 and then you'll start to wonder why we even have a S5 texture set to begin with.
But on a serious note, yep they should be upfront about it. There was a point when I wanted a texture for stephanie before I had her, only to find out a few months later that the texture works on V4....I could have purchased it earlier had I known that.
A good example is that I remember there was an M5 character set that somebody bought assuming it used M5 UV's only to find out it used M4 UV instead and was not impressed. All this confusion can be sorted out with it being mentioned up front.
I'd like to see this as well. And the new young teens don't introduce a new UV mapping, so I suspect all the characters launched with them are using V4 UVs. But a character can still be for one of these 'icons', such as the M4 skin for a product for M5 you mention, if it relies on the morphs from the 'icon' to look correct from a bodyshape perspective.
Some characters tell you if they require a UV set which doesn't come packaged with Genesis as it'll say "Required Products: Victoria 5" or something. It would be certainly be useful to have it displayed more clearly on the page though. That said, the majority of textures I've picked up lately have been Victoria 4 textures. Seems she's still the most popular choice for new character textures.
You really can't rely on the "Required Products" statement, though. More often than not, it's the shape morph they require for the character to look correct. Very few characters use anything other than the V4 UV map. Raiya seems to be the only vendor that actually uses the alternate UV mappings on a consistent basis.
I think most use V4/M4 UV because of the complaints we get if we dont. All my sets except for one use V4 UV's. Our Asobi for Hitomi uses V5 UV's and I had countless mails complaining that it was not for V4 so they could have at least used the skin on V4. Seems like only a small portion of people really care if the UV's are for the corresponding figure since many of them want the skin for V4 and will use their own morphs =/. But that is a good idea to list it. Will start doing that in the future :D
Begs the question of what the benefits of the Gen5 UVs are.
Since it may not be to DAZ's advantage to advertize what UV sets are being used, maybe it's time for a customer-generated listing for this, like the Updated Genesis Products List and Non-Genesis Content with Metadata List?
The only real benefit I have personally noticed using V5 UV's is that the brows fit a little bet better without too much stretching and warping of the original shape. There might be other benefits Im sure but thats the only real difference Ive noticed personally.
I noticed V5 texture behind the thigh does not stretch as much as V4 when the leg is bent. Overall it reduces tetxure stretching in most places. It is better overall, but most stick with V4 UV because it can be used on V4 as well.
I understand why vendors stick to the V4 UVs: 1) your target market is a lot smaller, since not everyone has the alternate UV support because they didn't purchase the figure it came with. The only non-V4 UV you can even really consider targeting is V5, as that's the only one that you might have a chance of people owning. The second reason most vendors use V4 UVs is that's what the texture resource kit they use is for. I've pretty much stopped buying V4 UV-mapped characters, since they all seem to be based on the same two or three resource kits with just some different makeup patterns painted on the face and maybe a slight tint applied to the overall skin. (This is really obvious when you look at the texture files directly and see the resource kit attribution off to the side.) So now buying V4 skins is kinda pointless, since you're just buying the same skins you likely already own. Sure, the characters may come with different face morphs, but when you have the shaping capabilities of Genesis at your power, that's not really all that important any more...
V5 skin seems to deal a little better when the breasts are sized up a bit (and I'm not talking the uber mongo breast expansion ginormous sizes) than V4 skins do.
It seems like the place where v4 vs. v5 uvs is most relevant is where you want to do a lot of closeups on the skin, since that is where the differences really become apparent. I also would like to know what UV set people are using, but more so on custom creature type characters since a lot of those kind of need their own UV if you want to avoid bad texture stretching.
I wouldnt always judge by that attribution tags on the skin. Im not sure about others, I do know a few who have told me this as well, but I build alot of my skins myself using resource kits as the base and we are required to keep the tag. So all you might be getting with that is the 'edges' as it were for seamlessness. Lips, Eyes, Cheeks, Foreheads, etc are often changed out just using the resource kit as the 'bones' for the set. I have been considering using V5 UV's for all the Genesis only sets we do here at Daz. I think I will try this for our next Genesis set and see if it effects sales at all. I do notice more returns on the set that doesnt use V4 UV sadly :(
I think another reason a lot of folks complained about non-V4 UV maps is because they were using Poser and couldn't use Genesis or any of the associated additional UVs in Poser until recently. Combine that with most vendors not explicitly labeling what UV set the skins use, and I can see how that would lead to a bunch of returns. And while it's true that a lot of people don't actually look at the "fine print" if you will, explicitly listing the UV used should help reduce the number of returns as people would know up front what they are buying.