Texture editing and MAT Zone question

marble

I am trying to edit the texture for a skirt. Simple thing - make an opacity map to reduce the length of the skirt. However, the skirt has a trim along the bottom hem and I would like to keep that but have it positioned on the shortened hem. Is there a way to do this without going into the Geometry Editor? The bottom trim does have its own material zone. Or, if the Geometry Editor is the only way to do it, how would I go about that? I've created material zones before but never moved one.

Also I would like to keep the original texture/Material Zones as well as my modified versions.

felis

If you want to make it shorter but keep the hem, you could make the lower part one material zone you can remove with cut-out oppacity.

And above that make a new hem surface.

But your old hem texture would not fit that, as it is on another place in the UV map. That could be adjusted in an image editor.

I think my suggestion instead is to make a morph. If you in blender select the bottom row (the hem) of polygons, enable proportional editing, and adjust the influence size. Then move it upwards, and maybe scale in a bit if to your liking.

 

marble

felis said:

If you want to make it shorter but keep the hem, you could make the lower part one material zone you can remove with cut-out oppacity.

And above that make a new hem surface.

But your old hem texture would not fit that, as it is on another place in the UV map. That could be adjusted in an image editor.

I think my suggestion instead is to make a morph. If you in blender select the bottom row (the hem) of polygons, enable proportional editing, and adjust the influence size. Then move it upwards, and maybe scale in a bit if to your liking.

 

Yes, I'd like to do that in Blender but I don't want to mess with the vertex count (by shortening the length) otherwise I end up with a whole new prop instead of the original skirt. Then it gets into areas that I know nothing about like rigging and UV Mapping - I may as well make a new skirt from scratch.

felis

Proportional editing is a move tool, so you do not change number of verteces with that. That is why you can use it as a morph.

The only disadvantage of doing it that way is the texture will be more compressed in the lower part of the skirt than in the top, so if you use a pattern it might look odd.

A similar way of scaling, is to select the top row of verteces, and place the 3d cursor at selected. And then set pivot point to 3d cursor. Then select all and scale in Z-direction. That will although make your hem a little smaller.

felis

A quick demo.

Original skirt, and modified with proportional editing.

marble

felis said:

Proportional editing is a move tool, so you do not change number of verteces with that. That is why you can use it as a morph.

The only disadvantage of doing it that way is the texture will be more compressed in the lower part of the skirt than in the top, so if you use a pattern it might look odd.

A similar way of scaling, is to select the top row of verteces, and place the 3d cursor at selected. And then set pivot point to 3d cursor. Then select all and scale in Z-direction. That will although make your hem a little smaller.

You clearly use the edit tools in Blender wheras I tend to use the sculpt tools. I should really play with editing as well though because there are some things that might be easier to achieve by mesh edits.

I have adjusted cloth length using the sculpt tools but this time I started with the opacity map but the trim made it tricky. Maybe I should just ignore that and go with Blender.

Richard Haseltine

felis said:

Proportional editing is a move tool, so you do not change number of verteces with that. That is why you can use it as a morph.

The only disadvantage of doing it that way is the texture will be more compressed in the lower part of the skirt than in the top, so if you use a pattern it might look odd.

You could split it inmto two surfaces and reduce the vertical tiling in the lower section, or you could redo the UVs as a new, short skirt set..

A similar way of scaling, is to select the top row of verteces, and place the 3d cursor at selected. And then set pivot point to 3d cursor. Then select all and scale in Z-direction. That will although make your hem a little smaller.

marble

Richard Haseltine said:

felis said:

Proportional editing is a move tool, so you do not change number of verteces with that. That is why you can use it as a morph.

The only disadvantage of doing it that way is the texture will be more compressed in the lower part of the skirt than in the top, so if you use a pattern it might look odd.

You could split it inmto two surfaces and reduce the vertical tiling in the lower section, or you could redo the UVs as a new, short skirt set..

Are you talking about splitting surfaces in Blender or with the DAZ Studio Geometry Editor?

Again, this is getting into areas that I'm not really comfortable with - UV mapping and Material Zone creation. In fact I've never created a UV map for anything and it is the one thing that puts me off making clothing (or props) from scratch. I know there are applications (including Blender) that create the maps but I get lost quickly when I try to follow tutorials.

felis

In order to reuse the texture while avoiding texture compression, I would keep the UV of the hem, then pin the waist and recalculate the rest of the skirt. And then if needed a small scaling on the X-axis.

And then load that UV as a secondary UV in Daz Studio, so you had one UV for the normal skirt and then one UV for the shortened skirt.