How to use Texture Atlas with V7
vintorix
Posts: 220
It does not work as before! The generated UV/texture do not fit the figure.
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Yeah Genesis 3 uses a different uvmapping method so it will not work until DAZ3D updates the Atlas
Just out of curiosity, what does "uses a different uvmapping method mean"? I assume you are not referring to the different UV map for each figure, since that would imply every single object ever created would need to be programmed into Texture Atlas. Are there different formats of UV mapping, one of which is common and used across many figures and objects, but not everything uses it? The reason I ask is I've recently encountered an object (an Xfrog palm tree) that doesn't work correctly in Texture Atlas. Some of the surfaces work fine, but others are all messed up, all within that same single object. I'm wondering if that could be the same issue the original poster is encountering with V7, and/or if there's any way to identify what products will or won't work with Texture Atlas.
Sorry I can't remember the exact details but I read it on these forums. If I come across it I will post a link.
That is actually how the atlas would work... You feed it model-A and Model-B, and tell it which points should align from one model to the next.
You define the "crotch seam", the "shoulders", the "fingers"... and it pulls the points (like how it wraps clothing around figures), to the designated "closest UV mapping" from model-A to model-B. But it has to know where those thing are, and thus, has to be programmed per-model form. Luckily, all models per-series, are mapped the same. It is when they change models, adding points and remove them, and altering curves, that things don't line-up. They don't have the same points, but still use a similar unwrapped image, which is why things sort-of fit... (Think of it like a UV morph.)
The alternative is to alter the image itself, since you can't normally remap the UV of an existing core object without messing-up all other skins. That would require moving pixels from one location to another, so they align on the new UV map, which damages the actual image detail in the process. (I assume this is the neutral alternative, so it does not alter the older images too.)
Basically old school Daz figures didn't use UV's outside of 1, so they were all stacked on top of each other. This was fine because you would just tell each surface to use a different texture and it worked fine.
With V7, it puts the uv's into like 7 different zones outside of 1. Some programs don't like things outside of 1.
I thought I was able to fix this, but it only worked in DAZ, and once you send it elsewhere no dice. You can get it to work in daz if the sharder applied allows for tiling and offset. some textures need to be offset by 0.5 in x or y for example. However even if you get it to look OK in DS, not all third party tool will read this right. Unless it has offset ability.
The surface boundaries are different, so areas that are on one surface in G3F may draw from areas on two surfaces, using diffeent maps, in the V4-to-G2M layout or vice versa. That's why simply creating a new set of UVs won't help.
Wrong context, Richard. We're not talking transferring V4 texture to G3F or whatever, it's why various programs (including Texture Atlas) can't figure out G3F's normal UVs at all.
If you open up G3F's UVs in a program that does such things, the parts that use different texture maps go marching off the right hand side of the UV map, basically "outside bounds". I'm told that ZBrush likes this sort of setup better than stacking everything up in the 0-1 space, but frankly it's the only program I've ever heard of that has that quirk so I'm sure there's more reasons than just ZBrush for moving to this system.
Unfortunately, the flip side of the Zbrush problem is that some programs could handle the overlapping UV templates just fine, but find the out-of-bounds UV templates incomprehensible. I personally find the idea of out-of-bounds UV templates irritating, but that's not a technical argument one way or the other.
So there's really know way to know if any given product is compatible with TextureAtlas without either just trying every single product or (if one knows how) examining it's UV map in a 3rd party application? (although it sounds like one might be able to guess in certain circumstances if one knew what application the product was designed in?)
I'm puzzled though. If a product wasn't compatible because if this, wouldn't all the textures be off except for the first one that was lined up correctly, rather than most of the textures converting ok but having only one or two parts that failed? See screenshot.
Ah, sorry - yes, UDIMs. Mari also uses them, as does modo, but they are a relatively new thing.
Is there any application that can read both formats, that could possibly be used to convert one to the other? (I don't know enough about it to know if that's even technically possible though.)
Blender can, and has the benefit of being free - but it doesn't have a one-click convert button that I know of. The user interface is a little cryptic, though, so I may just never have found that button, script, or command. Let me look into that.
Generally speaking, i've never had problems with items other than G3F.
Why don't I get any notification? I though no one had answered my thread!
But, I found out how to use V7 with Texture Atlas. You have to change the new UDIM UVs to overlapping UVs.
You can do it by exporting V7 in obj format and check for "Collapse UV Tiles". Then import back in and apply Texture Atlas.
ya know, that is so logical and makes perfect sense. Thanks for the tip! not related to texture atlas I had to export OBJ with collapsed uv's to get the Hair solutions to allow me to paint..and never thought of using that technique for texture atlas.
to see notifcations I think you have to change a setting in your profile.
Nice. I tried the export/import on my palm tree, and although I lost the opacity (a separate issue I'll have to figure out) and of course I need to rotate it on import, at least now texture atlas works on it.