Is Genesis 2 and 3 custom UV necessary

hjake

I did a Daz forum search on this topic and could not find an answer.

Is it actually necessary to make a custom UV for Genesis 2 and 3 male and female sub-characters like Karen 7?  Are they so different from the original shapes that there would be distortion?

Can anyone show me what the distortion would look like?

 

 

wiz

No, it's not necessary, at all. In fact, it's typically harmful.

People cite more extreme body types like Olympia 6 as a reason for custom UV sets, but Oly 6 actually has higher mesh distortion (average difference in the angles of the vertices of a facet in the character mesh and the texture map) than using the base Genesis 2 female UVs with the Oly mesh.

Fortunately, the PAs have wised up to this and very seldom release any non "DAZ Original" character using anything other than base UVs.

hjake

Thanks wiz or is that Mr. Wizard :-)

It is a shame that they have kept doing this with Genesis 3.  I agree with a distinct base male, base female, and base quadraped figure and maybe even a second high resolution version for close ups, but a different mesh for each shape is going a little overboard. In my less than humble opinion.

Oh well it must be making bucket loads of money if it is worth alienated a high percentage of users who won't buy every shape made but like the skins.

: - )

 

CypherFOX

Greetings,

How is anyone alienated?  If you like the skin, you have to buy the character to get it.  Then you've also got the UV, and can use the skin on any character you'd like.

There are very, very few (I can't think of any) skins that are made to the non-base UVs, either 3rd party or DAZ Original, so nothing's being lost, and nobody's being alienated.

--  Morgan

 

FSMCDesigns

Not entirely, it's more like if you like the morph you "have" to buy the character. Well to be fair, unless you purchase the addon characters, there is a distinct possiblility you won't be able to you certain skins because the specific UV set only comes with that character. It's why i make sure and check which UV set is being used before a purchase. It was more prevelant whith Gen 2, but not so much it seems with the gen 3 figures and for the vendors that are sticking with the base gen 3 UV sets, I am thankful.

hjake

CypherFOX said:

Greetings,

How is anyone alienated?  If you like the skin, you have to buy the character to get it.  Then you've also got the UV, and can use the skin on any character you'd like.

There are very, very few (I can't think of any) skins that are made to the non-base UVs, either 3rd party or DAZ Original, so nothing's being lost, and nobody's being alienated.

--  Morgan

 

Well fair enough I will recant my previous statements. I just went through the last 60 characters skin introduced for G3F and they all were "This product uses the Genesis 3 Base Female UV Maps". Which begs the question why even bother with custom UVs unless there are more vertices on the mesh?  And why put more vertices if the original mesh was supposed to be "genesis" flexible?

Inquiring minds want to know?

OT: after scouring so many products it would be nice if DAZ updated its entire site indicating render compatiblity in the description some new stuff says it clearly some do not.

DAZ Studio 3Delight Material Presets (.DUF)

DAZ Studio Iray Material Presets (.DUF)

 

Havos

Custom UVs do not add any vertices to any mesh, they merely move the values of the material vertices around. The idea is to get the best looking skin for that particular shape, to avoid any texture stretching that might occur during morphing, for example much bigger breasts. I think most people feel these small UV differences are not really worth it, but there is some value in the theory.

RobotHeadArt

The other problem with custom UVs is it causes LIE addons to not line up correctly.  For instance there are makeup or skin freckle LIE texture packs designed for base UVs but when applied to a character with a custom UV will not line up correctly.

hjake

Thanks Havos and RobotHeadArt that adds to the lore concerning these custom UVs.

If anyone can show where this distortion would show on a texture meant for Genesis 3 Female Base UV with the character shape of Karen 7 or Eva 7 that might be a useful contribution to this discussion.

So far it seems base UVs get the job done?

hjake

FSMCDesigns said:

Not entirely, it's more like if you like the morph you "have" to buy the character. Well to be fair, unless you purchase the addon characters, there is a distinct possiblility you won't be able to you certain skins because the specific UV set only comes with that character. It's why i make sure and check which UV set is being used before a purchase. It was more prevelant whith Gen 2, but not so much it seems with the gen 3 figures and for the vendors that are sticking with the base gen 3 UV sets, I am thankful.

I think the point that you and CyberFox makes about everyone using base UVs for Genesis 3 seems valid. I had not found anyone using the custom UV since they came out.  I did certainly notice it with Genesis 2 and was not happy about it.

 

tl155180

I think that the new Cailin model is a prime example of how just using the base UVs can look every bit as good (if not better, in my opinion) than the custom UVs that are supposedly needed for the different shapes like Eva or Karen. Its my firm belief that custom UVs are not at all necessary and are really only a marketing gimmick to encourage us to spend more on products we really don't need.

Of course, thats just a hobbyist's opinion and a real professional might have reason to disagree. But it does look as though PAs have gotten wise to the idea that their creations might sell better if they're more versatile and don't require you to buy something you don't want first. Which is excellent.

hjake

tl155180 said:

I think that the new Cailin model is a prime example of how just using the base UVs can look every bit as good (if not better, in my opinion) than the custom UVs that are supposedly needed for the different shapes like Eva or Karen. Its my firm belief that custom UVs are not at all necessary and are really only a marketing gimmick to encourage us to spend more on products we really don't need.

Of course, thats just a hobbyist's opinion and a real professional might have reason to disagree. But it does look as though PAs have gotten wise to the idea that their creations might sell better if they're more versatile and don't require you to buy something you don't want first. Which is excellent.

I agree, it seems more like marketing. If the mesh was going from Super Model Victoria 7 to DAZ Troll for Genesis 3 Male, I think there would be enough distortion to justify a new UV, but the shape changes from character to character seem more within the realm of the same UV. Look at Shape Shift by Zev0, those morphs do not seem to need a new UV?

 

 

wiz

hjake said:

Thanks Havos and RobotHeadArt that adds to the lore concerning these custom UVs.

If anyone can show where this distortion would show on a texture meant for Genesis 3 Female Base UV with the character shape of Karen 7 or Eva 7 that might be a useful contribution to this discussion.

So far it seems base UVs get the job done?

There won't really be any disgtortion, if the texture were actually painted on the target figure.

Distortion is only caused by the difference in the interior angles (or however you want to measure distortion of polys) of the polygons on the mesh you paint the skin on vs. the mesh that you're trying to use the skin on.

In other words, you could use Olympia 7's map on Josie 7, paint a totally new texture onto the figure, and that texture would look undistorted on Julie, but highly distorted on Olympia, despite using Olympia's UV map.

But if the texture map were optimal on Olympia, then despite the high distortion, the quality of scaling would be better on Olympia. As you zoomed in closer, you would lose detail at the same rate horizontally, vertically, or at any random diagonal. While on Julie (even with the undistorted texture we just created for Julie in the last paragraph) there would be an unequal loss of detail. You would have more horizontal detail, so the vertical detail would stat to fall apart first, and you would see vertical smearing.

That is, if the Onlmpia 7 UV map were actually optimal for the Olympia 7 shape. I have not verified this yet, but I did analyze the Olympia 6 map, and it just had some stuff shoved around randomly, but nothing actually optimal. There is, literally, no reason for that map to exist. One of the "specialized" maps from the Genesis 2 figures (can't remember which one) actually introduced a fold that was not present in the base Genesis 2 map. That was in 2014, and there was abolsuletly no excuse for the UV mapping process to produce a fold.