Loading...
> >

Seamless skin texture - advice needed

Silas3DSilas3D Posts: 565
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

Hello all!

I have an idea for a Genesis 3 Female texture set which would require a seamless texture across the skin surfaces, the problem being that the existing UV islands have different scales (eg the face is packed much tighter for more detail).

There's also the problem of seams.

Does anyone know if its possible to paint a seamless texture on a 3d model, retaining the original UV's?

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,804

    What do you mean by seamless? All textures should be seamless in the sense of not having visible discontinuities. If you mean take a repeating pattern and aply it to the mesh then almost certainly not without cheating (such as the UV used for the sculpture kit, where front and back of the model are mapped on top of each other with sahred edges, and even then theer are visible distortions. In general an aribtary shape won't take a repeating pattern without seams or stretching, only a limited number of shapes can do that.

  • Silas3DSilas3D Posts: 565

    Same patter across the whole character, I appreciate its not as simple as adding to surface channel because of default uv's, but was curious to know whether it could be done by painting directly on the model and the best way to do that...

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,804

    You will still find that you need to stretch the pattern or have a seam (possibly disguised by flipping the pattern segment). The only way to have this work reliably would be with a shape that was always a whole number of repeats around, and where all joins met at right-angles (and I suspect even then not every shape would be uniformly tileable).

  • Silas3DSilas3D Posts: 565

    I've come up with another idea using projection with decals in 4.9, but for best results it's dependent on the decal position being linked to the active camera - is that possible given that the decal node has to be parented to the figure?

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    There are ways in 3DL, but not in Iray. The decal approach is good, but as far as I know you have to adjust it yourself for a given shot. The big limitation with decals is that decals have no displacement.

    http://www.daz3d.com/sculptural-genesis-ultra-fun-kit includes a special UV map for Genesis that helps mitigate the scaling and seam issues. While it isn't perfect (it's impossible with texture maps), it can help a lot.

    Yet another approach is to use procedural textures. There are limitations (for one thing, your control over patterns is constrained by what the noise is producing).

     

    Each approach has advantages and disadvantages.

     

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    Here's a quick example of Sculptural UV. Obviously, there is still distortion in certain areas, but generally the mapping 'flows' a lot more pleasantly for patterns than the usual mapping.

     

    Tile man.png
    667 x 1080 - 717K
  • Silas3DSilas3D Posts: 565

    Thanks for your help, decided to go with decals and works really well :0)

Sign In or Register to comment.