How to convert UV Tiles into UDIMs?

LD1

I downloaded the "UDIM UV options for genesis 1 and 2" where someone converted the G1 & 2's UVs (which are all stacked on top of each other - see the first screenshot taken from within Substance Painter) into one long UDIM tile (see the second screenshot). The UDIM tile is very helpful for painting in Substance Painter. 

I was wondering how to do this myself for other characters and clothes? Does anyone know how to manually convert UVs (which are either stacked on top of each other in one tile or are separated into multiple tiles) into one UDIM tile? And if not - is there a Mac compatible software that will do it?

Richard Haseltine

Theu should not be doing this as the UVs are Daz' property. In any event, if you have an editor capable of handling UVs you just need to export a base resolution OBJ, open in your editor and switch to UV edit/layout, select all the polyugons for oen island, and use the translate tool to move them a whole number of units along the U axis. Deselect, seelct the next island, and move that. When done export the OBJ and load it as a UV set in Ds (Surface pane option menu>Edit>Load UV Set). The main gotcha is to make sure your editor preserves vertex and polygon order on import/export.

LD1

Richard, thanks for replying. I didn't know that there is a copyright problem for converitng UVs. It seemed to me that just the UV's locations was changing nothing else. I mean, how is this different that someone morphing an established character in ZBrush and then reimporting it back to DAZ? That's what GoZ is for. 

Oh well, thanks anywhay for taking the time to reply.

Richard Haseltine

The morph just has the changes in position, the new UVs have the complete, translated, data set as there is no equivalent for morphing with UVs. It's more like modifying the shape and sharing it as a new figure, rather than a morph.

The Vertex Doctor

Somewhat related question. Would there be any benefit to saving character textures as UDIMs for use inside DAZ or just keep using the seperate textures on a character? For example, say I wanted to use some background characters and simply swap out all the seperate textures for a single UDIM and make them look different just by adjusting suface settings and tints. Would there be a benefit to using them for a main character closer to the camera instead of seperate maps?

lilweep

LD1 said:

 The UDIM tile is very helpful for painting in Substance Painter. 

for G8, you would just export your figure as an obj but untick 'write surfaces' on export (or whatever the option is called, it's on the bottom right of the box on export).  Load into substance painter and on project set up, choose the UDIM workflow.  It will recognise the UDIMs of the daz figure and arrange them accordingly.  

you dont need to edit any overlapping UDIMs usually, unless you have exported with the Anatomical Elements or some other geograft that occupies the same UDIM as one of the main body parts.

for other figures that export with overlapped UVs, you can use Blender to translate UV islands to new UDIM tiles.  There is a video by InTheFlesh on youtube explaining this.  Essentially in UV Editor workspace, just select the faces of each island and press 'G' and then a number to translate across, up, or down, to new UDIM.