Trying to get a texture across a complex figure

Oso3D

Carrara, you are my only hope!

So I'm trying to get a complex texture to flow smoothly over a humanoid figure. Obviously, what with all the material zones and whatnot, it looks terrible and seams and the CLAVEN...

 

I converted it to an obj, imported it into Carrara, but the material zones are still there and parametric shading still looks terrible. So... is there any decent way in Carrara to work on the UV map to be a bit more fluid?

 

Steve K

I'm not sure it will help, but you might check this out, the part about Carrara's "Texturing/Materials".  It helped me with a problem texture:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?forum_id=106&show_faq

MarkIsSleepy

timmins.william said:

I converted it to an obj, imported it into Carrara, but the material zones are still there and parametric shading still looks terrible. So... is there any decent way in Carrara to work on the UV map to be a bit more fluid?

 

Below is something I did quickly in Carrara using G2M.  There was no need to import as OBJ (unless you are doing this with G3 figures which don't work yet natively in Carrara). Is this the sort of thing you are trying to do?

Here's what I did:

1. Load G2M into a scene in Carrara
2. Click the 3D Paint tool
3. Expanded each texture I meant to paint across, right clicked and added a layer above, then made sure that just those layers were selected as active.  You can paint directly on the orginal texture if you want, just be careful not to resave it over your original.  If you look closely at my example below you can see I actually did paint directly on the texture first, just to make sure I was doing it right.
4. Selected the Airbrush tool and drew a line over the figure.
5. Right-clicked on each texture and exported it out seperately.  On my computer, Carrara always tries to save these with a .PSD extension, but the actual file is .BMP so I have to manually rename it after export.

When I was done, I ended up with three separate .BMP files showing just the painting part (or you would have three separate .BMP files with your modified textures if you painted directly onto the original texture).  I can now load those textures onto any G2M and my lines appear without seams.

You could do this same thing by creating creating a brush from your complex pattern and stamping it onto the figure.  It might take a while to get it right (save frequently - in my experience 3D painting tends to crash Carrara when you have a bunch of layers).

 

 

evilproducer

If you do use a photoshop layer or .tiff, you should be able to save those layers with transparencies intact I believe. I've not been brave enough to try it on a figure map because I'm afraid I'd FUBAR something.

Oso3D

Very interesting, thanks! I'm ... not sure if this will work for me, but it's definitely a direction to pursue.

 

evilproducer

If nothing else, you might be able to use the 3D paint tool to paint across the domains and see where they line up in relation to the UV map.

Also, if you are skilled at using an art program or photo editing program with paint functions, then you can get some nice results. If you suck at painting, then maybe not. ;-)

I used the 3D paint function to paint the teeth on this skull.

MarkIsSleepy

Another idea - if this is for a one-time still image, you could always do it in post-work, like I did for the image below.  I rendered the scene with the characters each having just a normal set of skin maps and then in Photoshop I painted them to match the background - I cheated a bit in this specific example by re-rendering the scene without them, but it's simple enough to paint a texture onto a character and get it to match their curves and lighting in post-work.  I also blurred and added a subtle brush texture to these to make them look more like body paint, but could just as easily have left the textures clean and sharp.

Oso3D

The solution I worked out was using UV MAPPER and do a projected map from an arbitrary angle. That is, line up the projected texture from the camera's view. A bit involved. With Daz studio there are some special shaders for 3dl that does this automatically. Unfortunately I'm firmly on board with Iray.

MarkIsSleepy

timmins.william said:

The solution I worked out was using UV MAPPER and do a projected map from an arbitrary angle. That is, line up the projected texture from the camera's view. A bit involved. With Daz studio there are some special shaders for 3dl that does this automatically. Unfortunately I'm firmly on board with Iray.

Nice - glad you got it figured out.  I'm sorry I didn't think of that, I use the same method (called project from view or project from bounds depending on how you want to UV map to fill the square) in Blender all the time but I was stuck on ways to do it without changing the UV map even though you said right in the first post that that is what you wanted to do.

Dartanbeck

It sounds like you're wishing that the material zones would have gone away with the obj ex/import?

We're glad that doesn't happen or we'd have to redo UVs every time we export/import.

But if you need to get rid of them, just open the model in Carrara's model room, Select All, and in the Global tab on the right, lower part of the screen, Select New Shading Domain.

"Do you want the new zone to be applied to selected vertices?" > "Yes"

In that window, select the other zones, one at a time, and delete them.

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For most models, especially good modls like those sold at DAZ 3D, you don't want to do that, though. It's those zones tht take the headache out of the texturing process.

Oso3D

That's useful, Dartanbeck, thanks.

(It'll simplify the process outlined above)

 

Dartanbeck

Pleasure ;)