Pleasantly surprised by Map Transfer

DavidGB

For quite a while, most of my experiences with DAZ and their products have involved various degree of aggravation and annoyance, about many of which I have posted. So to be fair, I feel I should post about being pleasantly surprised for once.

I was looking at the Gia normal maps, and thinking it would be nice to have them available to use with V5 and V4 mapped texture sets on G2F and Genesis 1, However the Gia Normal maps are for the Gia UVs, so using them with V4/5 sets would mean converting them. And the only tool for doing that available would seem to be DS's own Map Transfer tool.

I was expecting difficulty and complications. Haven't used Map Transfer much, or for ages. I expected that , like a certain other texture converter or two, Map Transfer would only work on diffuse, transparency and bump maps, so I'd have to load the Normal maps into the diffuse channels or something. And the normal maps are TIFFs, the R, G and B channels holding the x, y and Z coordinates: I was sure Map Transfer would only save as jpegs and gifs, and wondered vaguely whether I'd have to take the normal map TIFFs into the GIMP or an old Photoshop, disassociate the channels into separate images, load each up into the diffuse as jpegs, do the transfers, then recombine the channels in the GIMP or PS and save as TIFFs. Frankly, that would have been a pain, and I suspected the results would be of poor quality.

Luckily, I decided to start off lazily and just try the straightforward way and see if DS's map transfer was more capable than I expected. Frankly, I did not expect it to work.

To my astonishment, it did.

Loaded G2F, and applied a material preset (actually for Genesis, but works on G2F) that removed all maps and just left her grey. Applied the Gia Normal map preset that just loads the face, torso and limb normal map TIFFs to the appropriate groups (as normal maps, not diffuse or anything) and sets those groups to the Gia UVs. Started Map Transfer. Created the three templates for face, torso and limbs and dragged the appropriate groups onto them. Selected them all and set the target UVs to V5. Went to choose output format and was surprised to find TIFF as a choice, so picked that. Dragged the quality slider to max. Hit go, and started to settle back, expecting a long wait while the converted maps were drawn, as in certain other texture converters.

DS said it was done in about 2 seconds! Very surprised but certain that the results would be hideous, I loaded one of the output TIFFs and its original into the GIMP and disassociated it them into their separate r, g and b channels to compare them. Blinked in further surprise: the converted one's channels all seemed to have all the original detail with the same crispness as the original. So I bashed a copy of the Gia Normal Map material preset so it would instead apply the V5UV conversion maps and switch the G2F's UVs to the V5 ones and tested. Rendered the G2F with Gia UVs and original Gia Normal Maps (no other textures or anything, just grey) still sitting in DS; then applied the new material preset that swapped the normal maps to the V5UV conversions and the UVs of the G2F to the V5 ones, then rendered again without altering cameras or anything else.

I cannot tell the difference between the two renders. Not at all. So then I redid the Map Transfer of the Gia normal maps but this time to the V4 UVs. Knocked up the material preset to apply them and change the UVs in G2F, applied that and rendered again.

Again I can't see any difference between rendering the G2F with the original Gia normal maps and Gia Uvs, and rendering with the map-transfer-converted V4 UV versions with V4 UVs set.

The Map Transfer tool has converted those Gia-UV Normal Maps (applied as normal maps and TIFFs) to V5 and V4 UVs at such high quality I literally cannot see any difference at all in the render results switching between them, and took only seconds for the conversions.

Colour me impressed.

Couple more minutes to make the Genesis 1 material presets for the V4 UVs and V5 UVs (annoying that Genesis presets work on G2F, but it doesn't work the other way), and I had everything I'd started wanting - those Gia Normal maps available for use with V4 and V5 UV sets on both Genesis and G2F. And it all took only a couple of minutes (longer making the presets than converting the actual maps), with no hassle and the highest required quality (that is, a high enough quality that I can't see any difference at all, let alone any qualitative difference).

So - pleasantly surprised by the Map Transfers tool. VERY pleasantly.

Pendraia

Thanks for the info David...do you know if I can convert from Genesis to V4 maps using this tool?

Thanks

Pen

Zev0

You can convert any uv to any uv that is populated in the UV list on Genesis:) Be it D5 to V4. However minor seam work will have to be fixed in photoshop, other than that it is more accurate than TC2 in terms of UV conversions.

Here is a mini tutorial http://poser2octane.deviantart.com/journal/Daz-Studio-4-Map-Transfer-Mini-Tutorial-303888794

Pendraia

Zev0 said:

You can convert any uv to any uv that is populated in the UV list on Genesis:) Be it D5 to V4. However minor seam work will have to be fixed in photoshop, other than that it is more accurate than TC2 in terms of UV conversions.

Here is a mini tutorial http://poser2octane.deviantart.com/journal/Daz-Studio-4-Map-Transfer-Mini-Tutorial-303888794

Thanks for the link Zev...: )

Zev0

Cool. Just do them one at a time..EG all the torso diffuse maps first, then bump separately etc. If you do them all at once you get some messed up results.

Pendraia

Zev0 said:

Cool. Just do them one at a time..EG all the torso diffuse maps first, then bump separately etc. If you do them all at once you get some messed up results.

Thanks for the tip...: )