Skin Seams: How to avoid them?

cesar_monroy

Hello to all.

I've been playing with the Daz3D Studio 4.6 settings, but as soon as I generate the Texture Atlas, skin seams appear almost everywhere. It happens likewise when I bake textures or export the model.

Can this be prevented or it is a program "feature"?

Thanks for your answers.

C:

Richard Haseltine

Are you sure you are using the right UV set?

mario.cicalese2_d6b65131db

Same problem with Texture Atlas here too... lots of seams:(

Is there some tutorial for it?

cesar_monroy

Not the slightest idea of what you are talking about...

Not really true. However, let me explain what seems to be my problem:

I load a model, like Genesis for instance. Apply some standard pose, get some lights (like the Fiery stuff) and setup a camera to point to the model. Hit the render button and got a perfect image.

Now, I select the model, hit the Texture Atlas button to the map and after the map is saved, skin seams are at the neck and limbs. Nothing too fancy, you know... Just a simple posing and shooting session with a plain vanilla Genesis model...

Richard Haseltine

I just tried a quick test and it worked. Why are you using Texture Atlas here?

Khory

Total shot in the dark, but could it be a shading rate issue? I know in the past some textures have had issues with that.

cesar_monroy

@ Richard:

As the Wikipedia says: "...is...more efficient to store the textures in a texture atlas...".

It is usually simpler to test your ideas with some simple cases than attempt to render a few hundred square metes loaded with buildings, props and people only to find that texture seams are visible. As some scenes may take a few days to render (haven't been able to buy me the nVidia Tesla K10 as yet), it makes sense to bake textures in each figure and produce a texture atlas so your graphic card knows what goes where a little faster.

I may have to test some new figure, like Victoria 6, to see if the skin seams are invisible after baking/creating the atlas

@ Khory:

It could... Problem is which one of all shaders to use? Right now it seems to me that skin seams visible in Genesis may be a problem of the skin texture itself which could be a little too tight around the corners when they should overlap a bit, BUT... since I am not a graphic designer, I really don't know what the heck I'm talking about, hence this post asking for help to the DS savants in the community.

to both: Thanks for your input.

PS. If you look closer at my avatar's shoulder, you may be able to notice the seam...

Khory

Shader rate is in your render settings. What is yours currently set at? And it may or may not be an issue with the texture. I know that a couple of years ago shader rate caused seams sometimes but I don't recall reading about it recently. Of course that would be with full sized textures. As I understand it texture atlas puts them all on the same template and that could be lowering the resolution on the textures so they may need additional attention.

cesar_monroy

Hi Khory.

Render Settings are as follow:

- Quality: Best
- Shader: default (i can select cartoon from the dropbox)

But rendering prior creating texture atlas works fine. If I load a ready to render scene, like the Genesis Fiery, and use the Texture Atlas tool, skin seams appear even in Victoria 6, proving false my previous hyphotesis. Of course, if I export the model the FBX file shows the skin seams :(

PS. All other parameters in the Advance Tab are set as default.

Richard Haseltine

Texture Atlas is mainly useful for games creation - because it replaces several iamges with one. But you aren't going to get that much benefit from reduced resolution in DS as it already uses MIP-mapping to reduce the image size at render time, and you arte going to take more disc space since you will have the original maps and the reduced maps on your system. I'm not sure what relevance the graphics card has - unless you are using LuXRender with the GPU version, or an external tool like Octane, then rendering is handled by the CPU.

Could you load a base character, any figure though Genesis or G2F using a non-default UV set might be a more through test, take a screenshot of your Texture Atlas settings, and (assuming you get seams) post the image here please.

fixmypcmike

I see this in the change log for the public beta:
Fixed #DS-131: Fixed LODs getting incorrect UV sets; was causing issues in Texture Atlas
Can you see if you're getting the same problem in the beta?

cesar_monroy

Sorry for the delay, guys... I've been cheking and still can't reproduce skin seams after texture atlas consistently. I do have a couple pointers, however:

- It seems that DAZ Studio 4.6.0.18 Pro 64 bits by default saves maps to C:/Users/Public/Documents/My DAZ 3D Library/runtime/texutreAtlas/ and as such when you load another model, it applies the stored UV map which may or may not be compatible with the new figure. If it is not, skin seams shows up. Now, skin seams are always there, although they are not noticiable as they blend with the other side quite well. As a possible fix, I've been saving textures to a specific folder for each model. Note however that if you have a master model from which you derive anothers and create a texture map for the derivate models, you will get noticiable skin seams. Applying skin textures from one model to other (like from Victoria 4.2 to Genesis 2, or whatever) does not seem to cause any problems, and the same goes for most morphs. For consistency, I would create the texture maps BEFORE morphing, as some morphs overextend the underlying mesh to wich apply the skin texture (in which case you also get skin seams).

- This other pointer, which may or may not be related to the subject here, is an error I get when baking textures: ERROR: 3Delight Process exited abnormally: tdlmake.exe -ushort -bakeres 512 -nomipmap : error while making texture file (and obviously, if it can't make the texture, much less can't open it). A sample of that error is included below.

Creating bake textures.
ERROR: 3Delight Process exited abnormally: "C:/Program Files/DAZ 3D/DAZStudio4/bin/tdlmake.exe -ushort -bakeres 512 -nomipmap C:/Users/PCAdmin/AppData/Roaming/DAZ 3D/Studio4/temp/3_SkinFoot.bake C:/Users/Public/Zuburbia/Personajes/Shayane/3_SkinFoot.tif"
tdlmake: cannot open input file 'C:/Users/PCAdmin/AppData/Roaming/DAZ 3D/Studio4/temp/3_SkinFoot.bake'
tdlmake: error while making texture file