Converting V4 textures to Genesis 3,8,9 Methodology

ObscuroArcanum

I know, this has been asked a million times before and there are a few threads I've found on the forum, but they're out of date. Many of them call for the Blacksmith3D texture converter, the easiest and fastest way to convert, but it is no longer available. Another calls for Blender, which is more practical. There is also the methodolgy that uses Ultimate Unwrap 3D, but both Blender and UU3D both utilise morphs that arrange G2 and G3 in UV space so they're overlapping, so without knowing what's going on under the hood of those morphs, I don't know how to easily recreate them for V4.

I was wondering if anyone knew of a methodology or what exactly I need to have overlapping for a V4 to G3, G8, G9 texture conversion to work the same way with either Blender or Ultimate Unwrap. Will it be enough to just hide the eyeballs, eyelashes, teeth and inner mouth, everything I don't need, leaving only the body surfaces visible and overlapping? It's only the body textures that I want to convert. Namely, the fantasy characters by Maddelirium. They're too amazing not to use now my pipeline is 100% Daz.

I know there are scripts that put a V4 UV on the Genesis figures, allowing the textures to be used, but what I want to do is an actual texture conversion - taking V4 textures, projecting them on to a G3 or G8 figure and having the textures assigned to the new character's UVs.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Richard Haseltine

You have the V4 UVs for Genesis 9and Gensis 2, with an add-on) so having two versions of the mesh in Blender and baking the maps from the V4 to the Genesis would give you a native Genseis 1/2 version, then you could use one of the add-ons for a later figure (exported with the geografts) as a source for those UVs and bake them to the native UVs on the target figure - I think you could probably get to Genesis 8 in two steps, not sure about 9.

ObscuroArcanum

Thanks for your reply, Richard.

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I fully got what you were saying. Your explanation was a bit too fast and lacking detail for me to follow and I'm just lost. With the add-ons that create the V4 UV to the Genesis figures, by selecting the V4 UV set under Surfaces and exporting the Genesis 8 figure, are you saying the exported OBJ should have the V4 UV's when I then import the OBJ into Blender? If so, this doesn't seem to be the case and perhaps I'm missing something because the UV's appear to be the G8F when I look at them in Blender.

The help is greatly appreciated, I just need a slower explanation about what I should be doing.

Richard Haseltine

The exported UVs should match the currently assigned set, though it does ring a bell that there were problems with that (but I assumed, if so, that they were fixed). You could try another export format, such as FBX, though ultimately you want to merge the GeoGrafts into the base mesh to get a single, V4 UV mapped, model.

ObscuroArcanum

I've been away from art for 2 years, so I'm having to refresh myself with Blender - my whole pipeline, in fact - at a gallop. I'll try exporting as an FBX format and see if that helps. I'll also give G3 a try, as the first one I did was with G8 when it appeared that the UV's were still the Genesis format and not the V4 set I selected under surfaces. If there is a known problem with the UV sets not matching the assigned set, maybe it's been fixed on G3 and not G8.

As of right now, there doesn't appear to be any GeoGrafts in the Daz scene, only the figure I loaded with the changed UV set. So perhaps I'm missing a step, if there are supposed to be GeoGrafts.

I'll take some screen grabs on the next attempt, if that will help troubleshoot what's going on and if what I'm seeing and doing matches up with the way it's meant to be done.

I might double-back and follow the tutorial to convert the textures from G3 to G8, iron the kicks out of that workflow and then see if I can nut out what's going on with trying to get a G3/G8 with the V4 UV set exported.

WendyLuvsCatz

as long as both figures are the same shape, you should be able to transfer baked textures

you don't need geografts just clone shapes

each generation has one for the previous one and G1 has V4 UVs

the clones are not exact, for example G9 legs need reposing to match G8

so make sure you match them up, the shrinkwrap modifier in Blender might help

ObscuroArcanum

Thanks for the input, WendyLuvsCatz!

I know about the figures needing to match up with the same zero pose, so that's at least one thing that's clear for doing the texture transfer! Everything after that gets a bit foggy.

As mentioned in the previous posts, I'm having some trouble getting the clone shapes or the V4 UV sets to hold when I'm exporting the G8 figure. But I'll be giving the FBX export a try tonight and also giving G3 a whirl, see if I have more luck with that. I might even drop back to G1 and see if I can get that to export out correctly. I think if I can at least get my V4 textures converted to one of the Genesis figures, it will make it much easier to transfer them across to other generations. I'll be focusing on G3 and G8 for my V4 textures, so I'm not looking to transfer them a dozen times... getting them to transfer once seems to be the trick.

WendyLuvsCatz

I personally use Ultimate Unwrap3d or Zbrush to transfer textures and mostly use genesis1 to get to the other figures 

I do obj export  collapse UV tiles for UUW3D

Zbrush trickier, I use a UDIM version of Genesis 1 no longer available 

ObscuroArcanum

I have been looking at the UUW3D workflow, but the tutorial I've found only has the G3 to G8 methodology. Is it a similar workflow when using G1?

I would love to know more about your workflow, of how you approach this, particularly how you prep your models in DS to export them for UUW3D.

I also have Zbrush, but I haven't seen any help about what kind of method would be use for that, other than what I think about using the textures in the Projection Master and then manually painting everything on the new figure. Not the easiest thing for fantasy skins that have tattoos and designs that run across multiple seams.

WendyLuvsCatz

the earlier figures moving or hiding mouth parts and eyes is important

Genesis 9 you don't need to, otherwise it's all the same

there is a export plugin for DAZ studio but exporting an obj then saving it as a file.u3d works too

for Zbrush I use Zprojection on very subdivided meshes I also need textures converted to vertex colours and forgot I usually use UUW3D or Meshlab to do that first too (on very subdivided mesh)

ObscuroArcanum

Oh, that is a great tip about hiding mouth parts and eyes! I was thinking that might have been worth a try, since I'm not really worried about converting those textures - the iris textures I can do easily enough in Photoshop - but I wasn't sure if it was going to spit out errors. It will be easy enough to move and hide the parts I don't want, rather than trying to figure out how to replicate the helper morph that explodes the model into different non-overlapping pieces.

Thank you for the tip!

I'll give this a try as soon as I can. Things are crazy here at the moment, juggling too many things at once, but I might be able to attempt this the day after tomorrow.

Thanks for the help and the patience! It's really appreciated!

ObscuroArcanum

I haven't had a chance to get back to this to try it. Things have been an absolute train-wreck here and the last three days I've been sick. Hopefully I'll get back to this conversion ASAP and it goes smoothly!

ObscuroArcanum

Things have been an absolute nightmare for me. I've had no time for art, so I'm only now just trying to find time to get back to this project.

I've downloaded and installed Ultimate Unwrap 3D - only the demo while I do a trial run - added the plugins to their respective folders and then headed into DS. I've loaded Genesis and Genesis 3 to my scene and I started working on trying to match the poses of the hands and arms between Genesis and G3.

To transfer the textures, either using Ultimate Unwrap 3D or doing a Polypaint texture projection in Zbrush, do the forearms, hands and fingers all have to be in exactly the same position? I've been trying to get the hands to match up as close as possible, but I don't think I'm ever going to get it 100% right because Genesis's fingers are longer than G3F's. I know it's important that the verts are in the same position to get a good bake, but I was wondering if it's going to create a big problem or if someone else has another work-around or idea of how to go about projecting textures from the Genesis mesh to Genesis 3?

I'll also be working with V4 to Genesis, but for tonight, this is where I started.

crosswind

Optionally, convert with FaceForm Wrap or Blender ~~ The former is always the best one (though it's costly...), because it can nearly 100% correctly wrap V4 with any Genesis floating geometry.

A similar case: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/8771696/#Comment_8771696

ObscuroArcanum

Thank you for the input, crosswind. No, FaceForm is not an option because it is prohibitively expensive.

I know there is a Blender tutorial for transferring textures from G2 to G3, but again, it comes back to my original question. Do the meshes have to be aligned 100% or will there not be an issue with the longer Genesis fingers? The Blender tutorial calls for the use for preparation morphs and when these are applied, G3 alters to be the same shape as G2 - G3 appears to be a little bustier as I drag the morph slider and watch it apply - and so the meshes complete overlap. When I have both G2 and G3 in my scene with these preparation morphs applied and then load Genesis, the fingers on Genesis are longer and there are some differences in the body, the buttocks and a couple of other areas.

Taking Genesis into Zbrush and pushing and pulling the geoemtry until it matches G2/G3 won't be a problem if it's necessary, but the length of the fingers are still going to be out of whack. Changing the length of the fingers could lead to some distortion on the textures. To my way of thinking, changing the length of the fingers and thus the size of the polygons will be more intensive than just pushing and pulling the odd part of the mesh to make it fit to the shape of G2/G3.

Edit: And looking at the thread you linked, this person is doing something different, also using another program to transfer the textures - or so it seems, since they're following Jay's tutorial. This is also not an option for me. I don't particularly want to be adding yet another program and expense to my pipeline.

crosswind

Okay, understood. It's always up to your choice at the end of the day.

As for the way in Blender, I'm not sure what you mean by "preparation morph"... but yes, the mesh of both figures need to be aligned AMAP. That's why we dial a Clone on the target figure, for instance, V4 > G3, we dial V4's clone on G3, and also need to apply a UV Prep pose.

As for the case I linked, he just used DS + Wrap + Gimp... nothing special.

 

ObscuroArcanum

The attached screenshot is what I mean by the preparation morph. It explodes the G2 and G3 meshes, matching them up so the geometry of the two perfectly overlap.

There has been a lot of mixed information about the whole process, which has really done my head in. Some say use the clones, others say it won't work, others say you need the shapes of other generations etc etc. It's incredibly frustrating.

If the meshes need to be aligned as much as possible, then I'll take Genesis into Zbrush and morph it around until it matches the shape of G2 and G3. And I'll check to see if I need to do the same thing to V4, since a lot of my textures are coming from V4. Originally, it was me wanting to use Maddelirium's V4 characters in DS on G3 and G8 that started me on this merry-go-round for how to transfer/project the textures from one model to another.