Texture Problem: Creating designs across TMap Seams - Any Advice?
Techyman
Posts: 61
I have been working on a project that will require me to to create a design that will cover the back and arms of a GEN2 character. The design is somewhat intricate and will incorporate both color maps and displacement maps created in Photoshop. The problem that I have is where the designs cut across the template seams. In the past, I have just used trial and error. It was incredibly time consuming and, at times, I wanted to bang my head on the keyboard until I lost consciousness. I am really dreading this project because the design is so complex.
Does anybody have any suggestions to make this process any easier? I am open to any suggestions, including new software, to try and mitigate the headaches I know are coming?
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Comments
These might help.
Most of us use painting in a 3d program for that. 3d Coat does it really well (and it works with layers like PhotoShop, very easy to use). I own and use Blender, which is free, but its 3d paint features are harder to use than almost any program that does the same thing. There are a lot of others that I don't know as much about, such as BlackSmith3D (cheaper than 3d Coat). Zbrush is expensive and doesn't let you do alpha channels natively in the program, so I wouldn't pop for that just for painting tats.
I would test any demos before purchase. I have not heard favorable things about Blacksmith. That said, you have to grok with any program and what may not work well for one, may work excellently for you. As for Blender, it continues to make strides and the latest changes in 2.72b, with the ability to work with different texture type layers, is really heading in the right direction.
It is a great advantage to paint directly on your 3D figure, to be sure.
Blacksmith has undergone a UI overhaul, which makes it much more easier to use than it's previous iteration (I hated version 5, but 6 feels more natural). As Cris said though, download trials of software and see what you're more comfortable with.
In addition to the apps already mentioned, Photoshop Extended/CC versions can also paint over seams in 3D view, but if you have access to something that does it better (ie 3DCoat or Blacksmith) then use those over Photoshop's 3D mode.
You may also encounter Allegorithmic's Substance software thrown around a bit, and I will tell you right now that it will not handle painting across materials. So, for instance, if you were to pull Genesis into Substance, you couldn't paint the whole body at once as it's separated into multiple material zones. It's meant more for game assets and the way they're laid out.
Thanks for all the advice! That's why I love this forum. I know somebody that owns 3D Coat and he's going to let me play around with it on his system. If it's what I'm looking for, I'll bite the bullet and purchase my own copy.
Blender's 3d painting is miles better than in Maya. It hasn't been updated in forever.
Good to know about ZB's no alpha thing, that ruins some of what I was planning on doing soon. I've been eyeing substance painter quite a bit too.
@Techyman, projection texturing is usually my go-to, but requires a little skill in 3d modeling/UV mapping. It can be done in most 3d modelers, I think Daz Studio has a transfer option, or xNormal.
You'd duplicate the model, and delete all the polygons that you don't need. (just a few polygon strips along the seam in the arm for example)
Redo the UV mapping on this duplicate to get rid of the seam, keeping the same scale, and fixing any terrible warping.
Bake the texture with the seam issue from the original model to the duplicate, fix in photoshop.
Then bake back to the original model, and blend the result back in with your originals.
Zbrush is the best at painting a full texture with displacement from scratch. It does that really well, maybe better than anything does. 3d Coat is really much better if you want to have a lot of discreet layers with alphas for later editing. If you want to do palette swaps of something in Zbrush you'll have to use its own layering system, and it will always export opaque. There are workarounds people use, like having a layer on opaque green so that the green can be converted to an alpha later, but that has very limited usefulness to most projects, I've been finding.
I already have a base texture that I want to use. I want to be able to modify the color and the displacement maps and then take them back into DS. Right now, I'm looking at trying out 3D Coat, but I would appreciate any advice on importing the texture into 3D Coat, modifying it, and then taking it back into DS.
Thanks again for all the feedback.
Has anyone ever used The Foundry's Mari? Is it suitable for texturing DAZ human figures? I see Steam is selling (or leasing) a version with limitations called Mari Indie (same with Modo Indie) for quite a reasonable cost (currently £86 in a sale). The limitations inc. 4K image resolution, a limited range of image formats, an object limit of 3 and only 2 UDIM patches (whatever they are).
Export the figure as an obj from DS in a zeroed pose with the texture on it that you want to use.
I have versions of all my models that I've "pruned" in blender so that they have no teeth, eyeballs, inner mouth, etc., just the three main body material zones that share UVs (the ones that share the torso UV, the limbs UV, and the face UV, although that last one is just the face and nostril materials). It might be worth getting the free Blender to do this part even if you use it for nothing else. It saves a lot of time.
In 3d Coat you would use import and model for per-pixel painting. It will pop up a thing asking you what size the UV maps should be. Usually you want to leave it as their defaults. If you pruned the model you can have as few as 3 materials here; otherwise it's going to be a long list.
Now 3d Coat will import the model. You have a dialog on the right with layers and paintbrushes. Add a layer and turn off depth and specular to make it easier, then pick a brush and paint. Your palette tools are on the top of the bar that covers the far left of your screen.
Make sure you save. 3d Coat sometimes crashes on multi-layer export.
When you're done go up to the top of the screen again to layers -- export -- color. It will ask you where to save a layered .psd. The bottom layer will be a wireframe; I haven't yet figured out how to make 3d Coat not do this, but at least you can copy your top layer to paste into a texture in your image editor. Make sure you save as a new torso etc. with tattoos if you're doing it that way and not as a transmapped geoshell.
UDIMs are the way modo and Mari handle the same sort of texturing as DAZ uses on its human figures, so each is a separate UV map in effect - in Mari they are offset, so instead of each occupying the [0,1] square one is on [0,1] and the other on [1,2]. I don't have Mari at all, so I don't know if that would stop you using different textures for each group of materials (and ignoring the UDIMs) or if UDIMs are the only way to have overlapping maps (in which case two isn't enough for any DAZ figure since the first/second generation).
Thanks, Richard, that was my worry. Probably not an easy thing to find out for sure without trying it.
Thanks SY,
I can't wait to give this a try. I've taken your message and made a copy to take with me!
From 3D Coat, I go to Textures/Export/Diffuse Map. A dialog box opens to select which UV-set to export, select save all textures at the bottom and it will give you a single layer PNG (or jpg, bmp, tga, etc.) of each UV-set. It will give a merged image of whatever layers are turned on, including any blend settings or opacity that you have set on the layers in 3d Coat.
I can definately see the use of exporting PSD layers too, so thanks for the tip.