Solved - What's up with noisy UV templates?
Okay, so I have been getting reacquainted with all the (new to me) stuff from Genesis 2 thru til now. And I noticed something I don't quite understand. I used to love to make my own textures for items I would purchase so that my renders would be unique in some way, or so I could make freebies for others. But, I've noticed that several of my purchases have a really odd feature. It seems the template is mapped out to various "noise" areas that are shared by different areas of the mesh, so it's practically impossible to create a unique texture for them. You can't, for example, hide ribbons with an opacity map beause it will "erase" other features of the mesh as well.
Is there some reason for this? Do creators not want support products being made to promote their product? I'm so confused...
Comments
I haven't come upon products that use that yet - that I'm aware of. That was introduced by something like Zbrush or something - an alternative to UV mapping. Yeah... not a fan myself, as I really like to have the option to create my own textures for things as well.
Drats. I can't remember what it's called and/or where it came from. Right on the tip of my tongue!
I have noticed some products, however, that have another strange behavior: Open Geometry Editor and try to select part of the mesh and it doesn't work - a single selection will cause polygons all over the place to become selected. I almost returned the item since it thwarted what I wante to do with it. But I like the artist who made it, so....
I found this behaviour with some products as well, it was really odd since it didn't make any sense like having the same texture only in those poligons, it was really scattered
UDIM
but I don't think that's what JasmineSkunk meant
they don't overlap (and Carrara even can use them in 3D paint)
I think it might be stuff just sharing tiled textures, IE overlaping UVs
I'm not sure what UDIM is, but yes, it seems like an issue of overlapping UV's. I can't understand... WHY? lol
possibly so they can use the same texture
without knowing which specific items I can't say
But it sounds like it could be the same thing maybe. Because I am changing one area of the texture and several areas of the mesh are affected....in a very "noise-like" manner
If the overlapping are on different surfaces, it should not be a problem as they can be assigned different textures on each surface.
Can you give an example of a product with this issue?
One of them is Zou Hair. The hat. In the pick below, the first image is how it loads, the second one, I removed all the textures and placed a square in the center of the map (3rd image) to show what I mean because I can't share the actual texture in here ( it would be considered distribution, right?) Okay, so you can see how it scatters the blue to several places. I tried to use the provided opacity map as a guide, but I kept running into things I didn't want gone disappearing.
It's not a perfect example because the texture map is beter than the opacity map, but it gives the general idea. The opacity map doesn't even look like the texture map at all
Correct - you must not share textures from products.
I don't have that product.
But if you open the surface tab, I would assume that that there are different surfaces, so they just uses different textures, so some surfaces uses one texture, and some another.
Are you aware, that you can select one or more surfaces, and set the viewport to "UV", and then you can see the UV layout of the selected surfaces.
Sounds strange. Can't remember that I have seen such.
Another option is to use the geometry editor. There you can either hide (selected) polygons or assign them to a new surface.
Not sure if this will help but I labeled all the sections of the Zou Hat UVs. There are a few that cover all of a particular item type like the small bow loops, large bow loops etc.
Elli
@Elliandra it looks like you have deleted the attachment after you attached it as a picture, as it is not visible.
Fixed lol
Thank you so much, Elliandra! That is very sweet of you!
Do you wanna know what I did? What a complete dork I am? I saw your map and I thought,, that's not what mine looked like... So, I investigated and realized....
I was trying to use the "clothing opacity map" not the hat one!! I'm such a dork without sleep!
I may never have figured it out without your help though. LOL Thank you!
Oh! and it works! Thank you, again!
That happens when the item is subdivided. Just take it down to base resolution and select again, it will now select the correct faces. :)
Okay so....
It did work...
Except ALL the bows are mapped to the same areas of the map. So, I had to learn how to use the geometry editor thing. And I got the extra hat bow hidden like I wanted. BUT - When I try to save it as a material setting, it doesn't recall my geometry edit. How do I save this edit as a material preset and include my geometry edits in it? THANK YOU!
btw... I really do appreciaye everyone's help
Geometry that's hidden with the geometry editor doesn't stay that way across sessions -- it's not saved. There are a few ways around this; the simplest is just to do something more drastic to the geometry. You can just delete it outright (only do this if you're 100% sure it's what you want. It's not revertable, and I haven't checked, but I assume it breaks all of an object's morphs), or you can assign a new material to it, then make that material invisible by turning its cutout opacity down to zero in the surfaces tab.
I prefer to make a new bone with the Joint editor (right-click menu) and then assign a group with the parts to be hidden to that as its Selection Group (Tol Settings pane). That way if hidden via the bone's visibility it isn't sent to the renderer at all.
As an alternative, Conditional Geografts would be a nice choice, more flexible and not sent to renderer with Hidden either.