Product without a UV map or textures
marble
Posts: 7,500
I recently bought this dress:
https://www.daz3d.com/elegant-cocktail-outfit-dforce-dress-for-genesis-8-and-81-female
... and found that it seems to be missing a UV map and textures. All it has are colours which are not textures but merely changes to the base colur in the surfaces tab. I would like to add textures myself but I don't know how to do so without a UV map to edit. Any advice?
Post edited by marble on
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According to the ReadMe file list, it is supposed to be UV mapped. Is your problem that there are no templates provided in Product Library (quite likely the case, lots of products are missing them) and no texture maps that you can copy and use a a basis for your own?
If you select the surfaces and change the viewport to UV Mapping (I think that's what it is called, I don't have my DS desktop switched on right now to check) you should be able to see the wire-frame of the UV map. You could screenprint that (although it will be quite low-res) to paint over. Or export the dress as .obj and take into Blender, maybe Hexagon (I'm not sure), or a free UV Mapping utility to get a higher resolution image to paint over.
Yes, I thought the same as you so I checked the UV Map viewport display and it does show one but it doesn't look right to me (pity the image attachment is not working on this forum). So I looked for, as you call them, texture maps but found none (I don't mean templates ... I didn't find them either even though it is listed as a DAZ product - I thought all DAZ products include templates). Bit of a PITA having to create one myself in Blender though. Quality of products certainly seems to be dropping - the dress has no rigging either so it just relies on dForce and a few basic morphs.
If you apply a full photo image to the dress and it shows only a solid colour, then it is not uvmapped. And if that is the case, suit yourself, if it were I, I would return it as an unfinished product.
what happens if you apply a shader to it?
Shaders work, of course, but I want to add my own texture patterns - lace with opacity maps, etc. Also shorten the dress using an opacity map. Shaders just apply to the whole and I do use them very often in my scenes - I have quite a nice collection of cloth shaders now. But there are some things that require a texture and for those I use the UV map in a photo editor (Affinity Photo in my case) and apply a Fill Layer to a selected part of the map.
Yes, I'm tempted to do that although I suspect that DAZ (as it is a DAZ Original) will claim that is sold as advertised.
your terminology is what's wrong
it HAS a UV
you want a template
and that as Catherine says is not a DAZ requirement, plenty of products don't supply templates
DAZ sell a product that produces them if you only want to use DAZ studio and not a UV program many of which are free
https://www.daz3d.com/uv-tailor
I don't have this pack myself so can't test it to see what's going on. How are you installing it? I'd doubt it highly that an unfinished/untextured and/or UV-mapped product made it through several checks in QA. I'll see if any of the other mods have it and can test it and if not see if someone in this thread can confirm the same before putting in an inquiry.
I installed it the way I always install - with DIM. I have all the files listed in the Readme.
Yes, I understand the difference. What I'm trying to explain (it would probably be easier with screen shots but this damn forum is not accepting images) - is that what I usually do to add my own textures is look in the Surfaces Tab and pick one of the maps (base or bump or opacity). These are in the shape of the UV map (or template, if you prefer). You say it has a UV but I don't see it other than in the Viewport UV display which is next-to useless. I was also under the impression (from comments in another thread) that DAZ products always have a template included. Well, this one doesn't. Nevertheless, even without a template, it is usually easy enough to create my own template from one of the texture maps that come with *most* products. This product just doesn't have any.
If you have somewhere to host the images you can use the embed/insert image option on your post. That does still work. We did pretty extensive testing yesterday for Daz to know where the issues are.
Maybe DAZ should provide a host for images. I used to have a website with a hosting company but not any more.
the product does not have a baked texture map in otherwords
many products don't including stuff by Stonemason
I love those products as you can use the often tileable images on other things
the only reason for baked texture maps is most merchant resources require them or it has a detail like a lace hem etc as you want to do
its not a faulty product
Again you are putting words into my mouth, Wendy. I don't think I said it was faulty - just lacking some of the things I have come to expect. I have no idea what you mean by Baked Texture Maps - I always think of textures as overlays on the UV map - so the texture is scaled and positioned within the boundaries of the UV map.
what you just described is a baked texture map
OK thanks - now we are on the same page.
If you have Hexagon, send it over the bridge and get the uvmap via a screengrab from Hexagon's uvmap tab.
{and I'm glad to hear that it is indeed uvmapped, etc. as it's on my list of considerations}
They do. It's their website, which everyone is pointing out isn't working. That was a way to post an image so we can see what you are while the site gets fixed.
We're trying to work on getting the templates for you
OK, took a while as I haven't done it ecently but here you go
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ynmrwtg2bxmirzo/ECO template.png?dl=0
Thank you Richard, very helpful of you. I'm on my iPad right now but I'll download it later. I'm still interested in how you did that ... did you use Hexagon? I'm more comfortable with Blender but UV mapping is a blind spot for me.
Happy New Year!
Or you just use one of the many many free image hosters on the web and post a link.
Yep, there is a lot you can use. Google Drive is the easiest and is free and you have I believe 15GB of storage room. All you need is something that gives you a link.
I used modo, which would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut if it wasn't already there. Export the OBJ, load in modo, then select each surface in turn, hide unseelcted, and export as SVG template (which is one of the things I couldn't initially find). Then opened all the SVGs in Affinity Designer, chnaged the line colours, and pasted them into a single file which was then exported as PNG.
Didn't think of Google Drive .,, Good idea, Frank.
Ah well, I don't have Modo but I do have both Hexagon and Blender. I'll just have to try (again) to get my head around UV mapping. I only have Affinity Photo as I never saw a need for Designer. I guess that I could buy it or download Inkscape if I really got serious.
You might try this (free) mcjTemplate to create a template when none is provded.
Of course Casual would have an app for that!! Why do I always forget to look there first?