Why Custom UV's Again?

CypherFOX

Greetings,

mjc1016 said:

AlienRenders said:

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?
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...

But in practice that was a rare, and mostly theoretical downside. ...and thus, IMNSHO not worthy of the anguish that's been attributed to it...

Edit:
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.I encourage you to pursue this, but I'll temper your enthusiasm a smidge... You will likely find that there isn't really a good 1:1 mapping, even via the clone, for the vertices. It's enough to get clothes to translate over reasonably well, as I think it's mostly used to decide the weight-mapping level to apply to the clothes at any given point, but it's not really enough to map textures, which have a significantly higher detail threshold to look good.

Definitely give it a try, however, and let us know how it comes out!

-- Morgan

Sal UK

AlienRenders said:

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?

Your missing the point all Genesis 1,2,3 character's are just morphs of the mesh not a new mesh character unless geo grafting has been done.
So there is no need to alter the UV's at all unless you have an extreme morph that requires more work on the texture to cut down on the stretching of the texture. All it seems to me is its saying well if you don't buy the morph then you can't use the skin texture.

And I offer a challenge to Cypherfox show me the difference on olympia 6 texture on V6 and vice versa and show me these details you talk about. I bet in a normal render situation that detail (If Any) makes no difference.

You know like the Elite sets of textures Daz did, they didn't need new UV's they use V4 and M4 UV's so why the change? Or why dont they do an Elite series of textures for Genesis 2 or 3 using the Base Texture UV's instead of the unless you buy this morph with custom UV's you cant use its texture, If you dont buy the morphs then your stuck with the basic skin that comes with the base. I want different skins not pay for a morph that I will not use just to get a texture for its UV map.

Maybe some PA could think of making a Skin Pack just using G2 or G3 Base UV's instead of me feeling like a cow all the time getting milked.

As this reply was overlooked I'll quote it here, as it shows new UV's are not really needed.

wiz said:

fxbar said:

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)

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.