DS4.6 Pro & 3D Coat - Need Advice on IMPORT/EXPORT
Techyman
Posts: 61
I have a problem with a complex texture. Earlier, several members of this forum pointed me to 3D Coat as a possible solution. I checked it out and it looks promising. A good friend of mine has both DS PRO 4.6 and 3D Coat. I will be visiting him next week for a day and he is going to let me try them out on his system. Unfortunately, he has not used 3D Coat in combination with DS and can't really help me with my problem. 4.
My time will be very limited so I don't want to depend on trial and error. I have found a lot of tutorials on using the tools within 3D Coat, but not on importing the figure and texture from DS, modifying the texture (including displacement) so that they will still be usable in DS, and them exporting them back to DS.
I am hoping that someone here can take me through the IMPORT/EXPORT Procedures or point me in the direction of a good tutorial.
Thank you in Advance!
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I see you got some of your answers in your other thread, but I'm feeling generous tonight. Give me a bit and I'll type something up for you.
Edit: The following mini tut is not intended to be the "only way" or the "right way" to paint a texture. It is the way I do it. I'm sure there may be others that do things differently, and they are welcome to put in tips or advice to help us both out.
For the sake of clarity, I am going to assume that you wish to paint a skin that could be redistributed, therefore it must not include any texture maps from any other creator.
OK, start in DAZ Studio. I think you said you wanted to put an intricate design on the back of a Gen2 figure. Load up your Genesis 2 Base figure. If you have a specific shape you are painting on, and a specific UV set this is intended for, make sure they are loaded. Example, if you wanted use the Aiko 6 shape with the base female UV, dial up the shape in the shaping tab and make sure you have the correct UV showing in the surfaces tab. I'm keeping base female shape and base female UV for this tut.
File/export - then give your new obj a distinctive name and save it in a place you can find it. A dialog box will open as seen in this screen shot. Select No Maps so it doesn't bring any of the existing texture files along.
EDIT: If you have a base texture you are going to use, load that on the model, and check Original Maps when you export. That will keep your texture files, but you will still need to do the material grouping in the next step.
Ok, the next part is the fiddly part, but it is really important. If you import the object as it is into 3DCoat, you will end up with an object with each material on its own UV island. That is the opposite of helpful and defeats the purpose of painting across seams. So, what you need to do is group all the materials from the genesis 2 figure into material groups that correspond with the UV template. I use UV Mapper for this. I think SickleYield said she uses Blender for this part, and I'm sure there are other programs that will also do this.
To get your model into a form useable by 3DC you have to group the materials to match the standard DAZ UV sets. Instructions here are for UV Mapper. Go to Edit/Select/by Material. A drop down box will show up listing all of the material zones on the object. Select Face, Lips, Nostrils. Then Edit/Assign/to Material and call it something like 1FACE. Repeat for the rest of the material groups so 2TORSO will have Ears, Head, Hips, Neck, Nipples, Torso, and 3LIMBS will have Feet, Fingernails, Forearms, Hands, Legs, Shoulder, Toenails.
If you are only interested in painting the skin, you can group all the rest of the materials into something and call them UNUSED, or just delete them.
Save the model with a new name. I usually keep the name from above and add 3DC at the end so I know it is a model prepped to be used in 3DC.
OK, onto 3D Coat. File/Import/model for per pixel painting and select the object you saved with the special material groups. You'll get a dialog box that shows the material groups you just assigned, and you can choose the size of each map. 3DC gets really slow (depending on your RAM) if you have a lot maps over 2048. I like to use 4096 for skin zones to retain as much detail as possible, but you can go smaller depending on your end use. In the example below, I must have needed the mouth area as separate, and I'm sure I grouped everything to do with eyes on what I called 7-eyes. Since eyes are so easy to do on the texture templates and I'm not painting the mouth this time around, I changed those to super small 64 pixels.
Alright, in the interest of not turning this into a 3DC tutorial, I'll just run through what I think you are trying to accomplish by putting a pattern on the figure's back, going across the seams. If you had a texture on your model, it will show up here. I just flood filled a skin color on my model on layer 1.
I grabbed a png from my hard drive and added it as a new brush. In this case it is vine pattern. I added a new layer (layer 2) to put the decal on without it affecting the skin layer. You can position the brush image and then just brush it on.
Here is a quick and not at all careful paint job. It does go across multiple seams though. Now let's export it.
I know SickleYield said in your other thread that she exports layers to get the layered psd files. I'll show you two alternate ways as well.
Option 1-go to Textures/Export/Diffuse Map. You get a dialog box and you can export just the maps you need, or all of them at once. I chose to save all textures and below are the texture maps it gave. You can see the mouth and the eyes are super tiny because I set them to 64x64 when I imported the model. I won't be using them, so I can just delete them.
Option 2-make layer 1 (skin layer) and layer 0 (default base grey layer) invisible. This leaves you with the decal only layer showing. If you save as a png, the resulting images are black decals on a transparent background. You can then layer this on top of your skin texture in your image editor.
One more bit of free advice for 3DC before we go back to DAZ Studio. Edit/Preferences and be sure to set Padding to Always make padding. I'd say go for at least 5 pixels worth. This will ensure that your texture maps slightly extend past the UV boundary. If you have no padding, you will see the seams in DS.
Edit: My second bit of free advice is to be sure the Fade on Edge box is checked in the Brush Options tab (over by the colors and palette.) This will prevent the texture from stretching on the sides of the model when painting.
OK, I'm positive you can take it from here and load your new maps in the surfaces channel, so I won't go into that. Here is a render of my new skin texture.
I really hope this was helpful. Shout if you still have questions.
cheers!
How would it work if you needed to wrap it to the front? Flip the brush and hope to hell you line it up right with the back?
Rotate the model to get a good angle on it, rotate the brush to line it up, and paint away.
This is going to save me so much time with trial and error.
THANK YOU so much for this amazing tutorial!
You can also use the Geometry Edit tool in DS to combine surfaces - just click the + next to each surface in the Tool Settings pane to select it, then right-click on the group you want to use for the combination and Assign Selected Faces to Group.
You're welcome Techyman. Be sure to put up a picture of your finished texture. I'm very curious.
Thank you Richard. That is a perfect example of something I might not be doing in the most efficient manner, so I appreciate the help.
I have the demo of 3DCoat and thought I'd try adding a simple texture to a dress. Needless to say, I got in a big mess staright away with the Geometry Editor. I reassigned all faces to a single group (I called it "Combined"). However, when I tried to undo this, I couldn't. So I thought - no problem, I'll just delete the dress from the scene and reload it. Horror - it reloads my "Combined" group and I have no idea how to get it back to the original.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Also, I can't find a simple texturing tutorial for 3D-Coat. They seem to assume that everyone is going to be painting only the models they have created in the Voxel room and not exporting them. So what if I don't want their complex PBR type Smart Materials? All I wanted to do was paint a simple fabric texture on a dress but it insists on calcualting AO and light sources and other complex calculations that are a mystery to me.
OK - so I tried uninstalling and re-installing the dress using DIM. When I loaded it again it still had everything in the Combined group. So the information must be in the scene data and, sure enough, when I loaded a new scene and loaded the dress again it had the original groups restored - phew!
>>I'll just delete the dress from the scene and reload it. Horror - it reloads my "Combined" group and I have no idea how to get it back to the original.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/66414/geometry-editor-modify-not-reflesh-when-re-load-same-item-solved#latest
at that time,, I can remove the problem, by delete current scene,,.then,, if you save it as scene already, ds seems keep your edit. I believe.
then you need to load new scene, then load the item.. is not it work for you?
Yes - the only way I could reset the Geometry Groups was to start a new scene and reload the dress. There does not seem to be a way to reset the groups while in the original scene.
EDIT
However, I've just read the thread that you linked and I see that I need to purge memory. Thanks for that :)
then,,, you may find paint room you tube tutoriall.. and it is simple. you just need import obj as per-pixel painting, from top menu.
have you checked official manuall about paint room of 3d coat already?
about UDIM type UV,, (at current many daz items seems UDIM type ), you can use each UV template as UV set.
then may need not tweak surface group match. the only difficulity is ,,may be,, 3d coat not exactly distinguish,
surface group and UV layer,, if it inot UDIM type,, 3d coat try to use surface group as each UV layer, then it somehow complex, to make one texture for each UV layer.
I understand,, when first I try 3d coat,, I feel messy,, but try with simple primitive, then learn import process,
actually 3d coat is really powerful ,, (then you may find,, 3d coat modeling (sculpting) is not just sculpt tool,,
but you can easy use boolean, or mix, cut,, move,, extrude,, with primitives, then merge,, as voxell,,or surface,,
so that,, it is really powerful modeling tool. too (though we may need to re-topo ,, ^^; )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kj_Ze5g9D8
.
I'm not ready to start modelling yet so I wanted to start by trying 3DCoat for morphing and texturing - especially clothing. I have seen on this forum that some people only use 3DCoat for textures and use a Polygon modelling program (like Blender) for modelling. Thin materials like cloth appear to be a problem for sculpting programs.
I found some tutorials on Smart Materials:
I know the tutoriall, the course is clear, and easy,, but , not which you expect I think..Actualy I said primitive, not about modeling . at first I use simple prop, which export from daz as obj, to test
but if you hope to know clear step, how to import export Figures (clothing) for paint in 3d coat, need to know the UV type of figure. it is UDIM type UV, or it need only one UV template,, or need some UV templates to add textures.
it is important to choose right import option for 3d coat.. and I change option for each type.
eg Now I export and make texture for gen3female dress,, I check the clothing, then find it only use one UV template.
then I do not need import each UV template for surface group. but hope to keep surface group , for painting easy.
after all, I export dress from DS ,with option ,use surface group . then when import dress , I check option. import tile as UV sets.
so that there is only one UV layer, but I can use surface group as obj grouop, then hide each surface when I need.
these setting (which is best) is different for each purpose,, then you need to check each option and learn how they work
without it,, even though you use same option,, it may not useful for different figure (with different UV template)
That was a good video, and good screen shots kitakoredaz. I'll offer up a few more screen shots for you. There are a few types of mapping methods you can set, either in the smart material properties or in the preview options. The first one here is what would happen if we leave it a cube mapping. The texture goes across the seems, but it is warping around the chest area.
The second one is changed to UV-mapping, which is probably best for clothing as people expect the shoulder not to line up with the sleeve as they are cut from different parts of fabric.
(thanks Destiny,, now I find your guide of this topic,,, then study again ^^; I did not know, there is topic for 3d coat before ,, in daz studio forum,,
it is very useful,, thank you,,
then hope marble can understand clear these how to,,)
The last one is the from camera view. You can see the texture tile here. Before version 4.5, the From Camera was the default way of applying textures, which is what I illustrated above. I would use From Camera method if I wanted to add a logo to a t shirt or something, or some other kind of decal to a surface. You can change the mapping method anytime you like, either by editing the material, or in the preview options, to see which works best for you model.
Cheers Kit!
Another note, it might be a bit of trial and error on what percentage to set the depth at, and if you need to increase or decrease the contrast of the map as shown in the video. A mid grey bump map that was good for 3Delight, gave me a completely flat normal map.
Maybe I'm just tired - I've been trying to figure this out all day and am no further than when I started - i.e. completely lost. I can import a dress object into 3DCoat and it has a UV map but when I come to paint on it, all sorts of stange things happen. For example, the Fill Bucket only covers some of the dress - any folds or raised areas are missed. I can't scale the Smart material so denim weave looks like chain mail if I use the scale widget in the toolbar the pattern instantly goes weird and I can't get it back to the starting point.
kitakoredaz - I'm sorry but I don't know what UV types or UDIM means. I think that shows I have no experience and don't know where to start. The time-lapse sculpting video you linked is way ahead of where I am. I have never made a model of anything - I just push existing polygons around to make morphs.
DestinysGarden - Again, I don't know what mapping methods mean.
I'll give it a break now and sleep on it. I used to work in computer support and understood the intricacies of TCP/IP networking but 3D modelling has me really confused. Maybe I'm just too old.
Preferred Mapping, it refers to how you want to map the texture to the object. I can do a more in depth, step by step for you. Is there a particular dress you wanted to texture? If I have it, I'll use it in the examples.
Thanks for the offer - sorry to be so negative, it is just frustration.
Any dress, really, but I used the dress from G2F Fan Service Outfit.
My steps were:
In DS Geometry editor - put all the face groups into one called "Combined".
Export as an obj using the same options as in your example in post #3, above.
Import into 3DCoat Per-Pixel Paint, again using your guide above.
Then I has the dress in the viewport and I selected a Smart Material from the Fabrics tab and tried to paint. That's when I started getting the pop-up about AO:
... continued.
Then I let the AO calculate and selected the fill bucket. I moused over the dress and left-clicked to apply the material. This is what happened (you can see the missing areas in the folds).