Why Custom UV's Again?
Sal UK
Posts: 432
I can understand using custom UV's on extreme morphs such as changing Genesis 1,2,3 to an animal ect. But the only reason in a human figure is just a Cash Grab as there are no needs for custom UV's on a human figure.
So I would like to know why?
steve.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
For me this was the reason to stop buying figures.
It is also a topic that leads to deleted threads... just warning you...
If you have limited reuse, the customer ends up buying more.
Think razor blades.....
Nope not this end, well not anymore. ;)
yes I was going to buy the new V7 then I saw the custom UV thing and thought oh well V7 cant have anything extra than the Base UV and with G2F I used to buy the figures for the Textures and as you know you had to buy the morphs to use the new UV's.
I just ain't in the mood to keep on buying morphs just so I can use the skins all over again.
Greetings,
Within Genesis 2: Because having a custom UV allows more precise placement of skin features; sure it matters more in the cases of heavier muscles (Gia, Gianni) or voluptuousness (Olympia), but it also matters for more petite characters, getting detail in the right places. It mattered for the skins that used it, but you didn't have to use them if you didn't want to. There's no 'cash grab' involved, it was purely a benefit for those specific skins.
With Genesis 3: It's an entirely different APPROACH to UV mapping, as I read. It's just not compatible with G2/G1 because they went a direction that makes it easier for artists to create textures, and better compatibility with the tools that content creators were using.
I encourage you to not presume malice.
-- Morgan
There are measures for curvature differences of meshes. Yes for very different figures this makes sense. But for many it makes absolutely no sense at all.
And even for different figures: You could also increase the texture size. More detail without new UV. Or per material use a different sized texture on the part you need the detail. There are many solutions to this problem that do not require different UV sets...
To understand why, you'd have to understand 0,0 - 0,1 UV space vs the 1001-1010 UDIM method. G3F utilizes UDIM, whereas previous generations utilized the 0,0 - 0,1 method. UDIM allows for a lot more maps without stacking the UVs.
http://bneall.blogspot.com/p/udim-guide.html
I meant Genesis 2, where each figure got a new UV set even those where it makes almost no sense...
I understand and I am good with the new mapping for G3, as long as there isn't a new set for each new addon character like there is for GF2
I like the new UV's lets hope they dont try to milk us with new UVs for each character (especially since they started making a new character every month now)
I stopped buying characters/textures after V5. V4/V5 is what I use and by avoiding those speciality characters I saved a ton of money. V4/v5 will have support...RandomCharacter of the month is already obsolete.
So does V7 share the base UV?
No it says Victoria 7 UVs which is the only reason i got V7
I have not taken the time to compare UV though...but i will say the new texture split is smart. but sadly it means old textures from all the years are not useful going forward.
Smart?
Smart would have been 3 yrs ago...
Now...'it's about freakin' time!"
I think the new split is going to be very noticeable when comparing old textures. And in PBR/plausible shaders it will be noticed.
I can agree to that in a lot of ways, but at same time I think people might have flipped out even more if they did it then. But I agree, its overdue,and personally I wish all that great stuff I collected in the past 3 years was using the new system.
The new layout is just better for me. Though it will take a long time for me to adopt it. I'm ok using my old stuff for a few more years though :)
Actually...if it was done with Genesis, it would have been better...in my opinion.
I know...
It would be tedious, but possible to do the maps in GIMP/Photoshop...very tedious.
Well I thought that is what you meant actually. And I think if they would have also changed the UV groupings then...Genesis would have had even more challenges.(i think the genesis adoption challenges are the only reason we have Daz 4 pro for free....) Depends on how they would have implemented it. but I feel Genesis NEEDED to support V4 textures to even have a chance...not sure they had the time to figure out a new system, plus support for the old all on one shot.
they slowly migrated towards a solution it seems to me.
But I agree... I probably would have been fine with it then. Most may have just saw it as another reason to complain about Genesis.
That's the problem, isn't it...if you are going to break compatibility do you do it all at once and get it over with or do you do it slowly and ease 'pain'?
I was always a grab the bandage and yank kind of guy. None of that slow 'gentle' pulling it off for me...
right now my wallet agrees with you :)
Painting textures is a time consuming process....so either I have to wait for PA's or get to work...and I have other projects at the moment. So I guess I have to wait for that stock art to come out.
There are measures for curvature differences of meshes. Yes for very different figures this makes sense. But for many it makes absolutely no sense at all.
And even for different figures: You could also increase the texture size. More detail without new UV. Or per material use a different sized texture on the part you need the detail. There are many solutions to this problem that do not require different UV sets...
Indeed, there are measures.
I was working on a texture conversion utility that used PTEX mapping as an intermediate stage (PTEX is a distortion-free method of UV mapping) and in the process, it could compute the peak and average UV map distortion. I found that using the stock Genesis 2 UV map on Olympia is slightly superior to the Olympia map, with some 3% less average polygon distortion.
In fact, the Genesis 2 UV map is a pretty good map, and of 12 maps I tested, it was better on about half (which means that those characters should not have had custom maps) and no more than a couple of percent worse on the others. On the average, if custom UV sets did not exist, no one would notice any additional texture distortion, and life would be a hell of a lot easier for everyone.
This was completely true for most of the bunk put out in the last 2 generations for sure. They don't need new UV's for each figure releases, especially for the same gender. It was marketing. It sold more shapes that people didn't need or ever end up using enough to justify the cost. :shut:
I stuck with V4 and V5 for UVs and had no issues with distortion that the arbitrary custom UVs were helpful with. I avoid textures created for the figure of the month characters like the plague.
Greetings,
Hrm; would that be an Anecdotal Fallacy, or an Appeal to Authority? ;)Fixmypcmike is right. And my wife pointed out that I shouldn't feed the...hey, did you know I work in a city with an honest to goodness troll under a bridge? It's kinda awesome!.
Your definition of malice and mine may simply differ, however. I believe that the artists who produce the individual characters for DAZ have good reasons to create a new UV set, whether they are right or wrong I don't know. Also, I have not once had a 'DAZ character' UV set's presence/absence be an issue in what I'm building, so in my experience it's not anything like a 'cash grab', which implies malicious intent. Perhaps you have felt keenly the sting of not having a Keiko 6 UV for some third-party character, and felt the need to buy it just for that purpose. My condolences, if so.
-- Morgan
Let's keep it civil, please. Address the topic, not other forumites.
This was completely true for most of the bunk put out in the last 2 generations for sure. They don't need new UV's for each figure releases, especially for the same gender. It was marketing. It sold more shapes that people didn't need or ever end up using enough to justify the cost. :shut:
I stuck with V4 and V5 for UVs and had no issues with distortion that the arbitrary custom UVs were helpful with. I avoid textures created for the figure of the month characters like the plague.
Although I agree with the above and would love to be in the "DAZ made G3 with incompatible UV's to force us to buy new textures!" crowd, I've been trying to make palm'n'sole masks for every generation since Mil4, and have failed every time. With the G3f UV being touted as a significantly superior layout, last night I gave it a shot: success! Still a couple hours work to do tonight before it's ready to render, and it's not gonna be perfect, but the new UV layout's made a huge difference for me on this.
Last 2 generations was referring to G1 and G2, sorry for confusion. I've said elsewhere I do like the new UV layout. Just would have been nice years ago :)
And we likely are still going to get UV of the month characters...and I will avoid them like the plauge. I got V7 UV, I'm sure many sets will use that. V7 UV will at least survive one more generation if history repeats itself.
What was the problem with the different UV's? Is it that they only came with a new figure and you couldn't use character skin maps that were based on those figures unless you also bought the base figure? Or was it something else?
Basically. There would be a character you liked, but they used UV's you didn't own. You wouid buy the base figure, but only a handful of textures would ever be created for them. Thats because each month Daz came out with new UV's.
And when the next generation comes out, the only UV set supported is Victoria's. So all those side characters are trash, even though they are Daz UVs...
KickAir, if you would like me to place your palm and sole guides on my G3F seam guide (when it's done), let me know and I'll be glad to try.
That's the bulk of the 'UV of the month" problems...and not all that many things used them. So you were getting a new UV for practically everything seldom being able to reuse them...or if some really nice texture set did come out...you would not have the UV it was based on...
I started working on a tool that will remap textures from one UV to another for G2F. Looks like it may be possible to do this for G3F as well since I believe there's a G2F clone that I could use to map the vertices. Can get V4 for sure too. It's direct X right now. I'm letting the video card do the remapping. I may do a software only command line tool later where I can build a GUI on top. Way too much clutter with Direct X, but it has nice support for image formats. Maybe I'll compile GDAL again. Problem I have right now is that I only have code to load LightWave files. Soooo it gets a little tricky what I have access to. Locally, I have all the UV maps and I can export whichever ones I want. But suppose someone doesn't have the base figure of the UV map they want to convert. It's like catch-22. I can't store the UV maps in an app. They're owned by DAZ. Not sure what the rules are on that, but fairly certain I can't redistribute them. And DAZ shipped separate UV's for a reason. Or did they?
So might not be that useful unless I can store the UV maps in the tool itself. Otherwise, you need to have the UV map somewhere on your machine which defeats the purpose. At the very least, it'd be neat to see G3F skins on V4 or vice versa. G3F <-> G2F <-> V4 (and G3F <-> V4, and between G2F's) would be useful even if you own the figures I think and that can be done. I wish I could think of a way around the redistribution issue though.