Blender Advice for UV and Text…
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I tend to go with the latest Stable (or at least listed as such) versions. I guess Blender Render was what it had been set to by default. There was a video tutorial I followed where I changed it ot the Cycles renderer, but you know Blender...everything will change if you don't set it, and save it as a new startup from the beginning. I think I'll jump up to 2.80, just so we're more on the same page.
I tried it a good number of time but never got your result... I'll try again, maybe I manage to do it!
About Armor Paint... Perhaps it's just my immagination but I see a lot of Blender in it. I saw some video and somehow the interface reminds me of Blender. It's a sort of derivate work?
you wanting to print a logo on the outfit?
you could create a geoshell of the area
or create a new shader domain of that area.
use free uvmapper classic to uvmap it as a plane,
http://www.uvmapper.com/downloads.html
carrara can uvmap.
hexagon does also https://www.daz3d.com/hexagon-2-5-download-version
and is FREE
comprehensive UV-mapping modules, advanced 3D pain
It's based on Armory game engine which in turn is based on Blender. Armory Engine is an in-development game engine (Blender is depracating its internal Blender Game Engine). But as stated above, Armor Paint is a bit easier to get your head around than full Blender because it's focussed on one aspect. Yay for open-source software :)
.
Oh, thanks to you I found what I was doing wrong! I managed to import my Genesis char with geograft and I painted across all th UVs, even the geograft ones, without problems!
All I needed to do was disable the "write groups" and finally Blender let me paint on everything at once.
If ArmorPaint works the same way, I think I'll buy it straight away!
I understand wanting to stick to stable versions. As I understand it (based on the weekly 'Blender Today' videos on the official Blender Youtube channel) the full release of 2.80 is not far away - before the end of July hopefully. The UI is 'frozen', and mostly it's bug-fixing now. There is some re-learning to be done, but I haven't found it too painful even after several years using 2.7x (though I am sticking doggedly to right-click select!). There are a lot of compensating positives including but not limited to the easier texture painting. Still having 'Where did that go now? moments though.
Glad you got it working to your satisfaction. I'm not sure how disabling the 'Write Groups' (on export from DS, right?) would help, I usually leave it enabled, but I'm happy it worked for you.
If I keep the option selected, when I import it in Blender I have to select each Group one by one and select the "Texture Paint" function. Also I can paint only on one group and not across UVs.
Making one single group I can paint across everything activating the paint only once.
Now I just have to find out how to export the painted textures to see how they look.
I snagged a version of Blender 2.80, and I have to say - the difference is night and day. I think it addressed nearly all of the things I've been complaining about over the past half-week. Feels like I learned more from watching a few simple Youtube videos about the new layout, than I had the entire weekend. All of that being said..I still face the problem of not knowing how to paint on specific groups/materials. Below is my documented experience:
1, 2 and 3 - It took me awhile to figure out the workflow, but I think I have it now. Select material, click [SELECT], click on scene thing I want to apply it to, click [ASSIGN]. Click [DESELECT] so that part isn't assigned to the next selection, and repeat. I think everything was already properly distributed.
4 - When I click on a thing in the Scene part of the right pane, the corresponding Material is selected (And I think vice-versa). But it's note mentioning that all the UVs appear stacked on top of each other in the UV Edit workspace.
5 - All image names in the materials property panel are uniquely named: Belt Base Color, Leather_Vest Base Color, etc.
6 - And yet, when I paint, the whole thing gets painted.
Maybe there's some setting I don't know about that tells Blender, "Hey buddy, just apply this paint to the selected material!" I never checked the difference between Material Mode and Image Mode, but that was never brought up in tutorials I've looked at. On the plus side, this whole experience has been much smoother than the last time I tried doing this.
You might want to have a read through this threat at Blender Artists.
https://blenderartists.org/t/multi-tile-uvs/581457
Laurie
If the area on the model 'lights up' in the viewport when you click Select under the list of Materials then you don't need to click Assign, that material already assigned to that area, but no harm done.
The stacked UVs should not be a problem for painting purposes as long as you have a separate image associated with each material.
Ah, I think I now understand what behavior you want. I think what you need is masking. Here's the steps that work for me.
Example here is a shirt with material for the body ('default1', plain red image created), a material for the 'placket' (yellow image) and 2 materials for the collar (blue image). The colors could all be the same at this stage, they are different just for clarify. Suppose I want to paint just the body green. I found that saving the 3 images at this point solved some problems later.
I hope that makes sense, masking is still a bit tricky in 2.80.
OK, I see your point. I keep the 'Write Groups' checked when exporting from Daz Studio, but since I choose 'Poly Groups' in the OBJ import options in Blender, this seems to keep the figure as a single mesh. I like to get the vertex groups created in Blender, and if you don't use 'Write Groups' you don't have those.
I see. I'll try that too, then! Maybe it can work for me too.
I use Blender 2.79 for texture painting. Here is an axample of my painting workflow.
Good to see what can be achieved by someone with artistic talent who uses these tools for serious projects.
For those interested, this recent Youtube video https://youtu.be/JX-UwgKaPsA covers all the texture paint options quickly including masking (within first 2 minutes), painting with textures, and painting bump, roughness and specularity maps such that you can see the effects immediately. This channel has a couple of shorter videos on texture paint - https://www.youtube.com/user/jayanamgames/videos, amongst other useful topics covered.
Looking at the other conversation going on, it almost feels like for a case like Southern Noble Outfit - and my desire to paint pieces selectively - that it makes more sense to uncheck the 'Write Groups' option on export. I still don't know enough about the terminology to know exactly what this is doing; just that when I import the Ungrouped mesh into Blender, if I select "Leather_Vest," that's the only part I can paint on (Which is what I want). If I might take a shot in the dark, I'd guess that it's treating it as several OBJs, rather than just one. That's sort of the approach I was alluding to back when I had an earlier epiphany. Is there a disadvantage to doing it this way, if all I intend to do is paint a few layers per region? And are these 'Vertex Groups' in Blender and the 'Surfaces' in Daz the same thing? i.e. It's a way of dividing a single mesh up into different named regions.
Masking will definitely come in handy for painting the outer trim of the outfit, so it's good to know that regardless of if I do that on a material-by-material basis on one mesh, or on the ungrouped version. That video you linked is also extremely helpful.
Thank you for your kind words.
Someone knows how to avoid that terrible effect on Paint Mode? If I put it on Object Mode the textures and ther shadowing are Ok, but once in Paint mode everything gets mixed together, like overexposed, impossible to sse what I'm doing.
I tried all the possible options, but Blender isn't famous for its user-friendiness...
As I understand it from observation, if you check the 'Write Groups' option in Daz Studio the OBJ exporter will write group data into the OBJ file based on the sub-option you choose - Existing Groups, Node Names etc. 'Use Existing Groups' writes data based on the DS Face Groups; 'Use Surface Names' writes data based on the DS Surfaces. When importing into Blender, if you select Split and check 'Split by Group', the item will be split into separate objects for each group defined in the OBJ file.
If you only want to paint and save the images, then exporting from DS with 'Write Groups' and 'Use Surface Names' selected, then importing with Split selected and Split by Group checked you will get a separate object for each surface from DS and you can paint on each object/surface independently without having to mess with masking. However, the splitting into multiple objects is not helpful for some other operations e.g. modeling or animation.
Conversely, if you uncheck 'Write Groups' on export, no group data will be written to the OBJ file so you will inevitably get one single object on import into Blender whether you choose Split or not. In this case, you have to rely on the materials in Blender being assigned to areas on the object (you just need to check 'Write Surfaces' on export to get this) coupled with masking to restrict texture painting.
Vertex groups are as you say a way of conveniently splitting a single mesh into multiple areas, and they have many uses beyond simply convenient selection, weight mapping and controlling many of Blender's modifiers to name a couple. Beyond easy selection, they aren't especially useful in texture painting though as far as I can see.
I think you need the Opacity turned down. It's under the Overlay options - see images attached.
Yes! Thanks, now everything works fine! I wonder how I missed it, I checked everywhere in the interface.
Thank you for showing your workflow, Vyusur,
and everyone else for valuable tips.
Okay, I tested it out today. At first glance, it looked like leaving Write Groups unchecked did exactly what I wanted - if I painted on Leather_Vest Base Color, said paint would not show up anywhere else on the model. Then I added a Belt Base Color to Belt - it was yellow, and separate from the red I splashed over Leather_Vest. Then I went back to paint on Leather_Vest, only to find that sure enough, painting on that material also covered the Belt Base Color material. So in conclusion, having 'Write Groups' unchecked in Daz is not a secret shortcut to accomplish what I want without the use of masking - though it does still call each group by its corresponding surface name in Daz. I believe I had Split By Object selected during the import (Which shouldn't do anything, it's only one OBJ).
Next, I exported with Write Surface Groups. As expected, there were now several objects in the scene when I imported. I didn't like how they were spread all across the scene menu, rather than being grouped together like in previous tests, so I made a new collection and dropped them all in. Just for the purpose of painting, this should be fine - but if I did want to do some remodeling, I'll Keep Vertex Order with Poly Groups selected. But...that would be opening Pandora's Box. I'll create a separate thread, should it come to that.
Udemy has a 67+ hour blender course, currently it's on sale at only $9.99 (6 days left). Might be something useful there.
https://www.udemy.com/blendertutorial/
That's a very hefty discount! Worth noting they are 'in the process' of updating the material to Blender 2.80, which perhaps explains the discount. Basic principles will still apply of course, but the UI will be quite different.
I ran into a new product whose diffuse map suffered from texture repetition (every 400 pixels on the map, you could see a very jarring dark splotch) and seams at the UV edges. I 'reverse-engineered' a procedurally-generated, seamless texture using Genetica. Is there a practical way to turn a standard 2048x2048 image into one of those repeating materials in Blender? The kind that's seamless, regardless of the model geometry.
Not really, not without all the parts of the material set procedural. Unless it's a solid color with a perfectly symmetric set of supporting properties reflected in the bump and those things. That sort of thing typically only happens for some types of clothing as far as modeling people & such goes. It happens in some things in architecture but not too often.
I am thinking of working on UV mapping in Blender. Is there a way to remove the mapping to start from scratch?
In the Object Data tab (three connected green dots icon) of the Properties panel, under UV Maps, click the minus sign to delete any existing maps. Click the plus sign to create a new map.