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UV and Normal Map Help Please!


danmst3k
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Hi all! Ok, here's the situation, I've done a voxel sculpt of a character. I retopo it and create UVs and send that to pixel paint with a normal map. All is good. After doing some work on texturing in the paint room I realise that my UV mapping could be better (had some stretching) so I decide to try to adjust it in the UV room. I do that. Now, to my surprise, it seems the normal map tracked the changes I made in the UV room. So, here are some nagging questions I have that make my head hurt:

1) I updated the voxel sculpt and added more details on the surface. How the heck do I get a new normal map generated from the voxel room to my newly changed UV map in the paint room? Do I need to somehow update the UV map in the retopo room to match the one in the UV room? If so, how do you do that? I played around with the various export and import and load and save UVs in the UV and Retopo rooms and can't get it to work. One writes out a mesh file one writes out a uv file and one writes out a obj or whatever format you choose file. It seems you can't get there from here. Is there a way to just regenerate the normal map from the Voxel room and have it applied to the newly changed UVmap in the paint room?

Sorry, thought I was going to have a 2) but got all my questions in under the 1).

Thanks in advance!!!

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You could also just bake a new map from the Retopo room, with voxels visible. In 3DC it's got a term called "merging", which is really misleading and is used in a multitude of ways, even.

In this merging form, it basically bakes a map and send the retopo mesh with that map to the paint room for painting.

It can be found in the Retopo room, under the menu Retopo>Merge with NMap (per pixel). That should do the trick, and you wont have to mess around with exporting a map and then re-importing it.

Hope that helps.

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Thanks, Javis! Yeah, I'm familiar with the merging in the retopo room. But, when you do that it adds a new mesh to the paint room with a new normal map, correct?.

I was hoping to keep the mesh that is already in the paint room and preserve the paint work that went into it. My main issue is with UV islands and if you change the island in the UV room it would be nice is there was an easy way for the UV islands in the Retopo room to be updated as well to keep everything synced. This would allow a nice workflow pipeline within 3D Coat that would allow you to go from Voxels to Retopo to Paint then make some adjustments to the UV islands then maybe go back to Voxels to fix something then pop on back to Paint. Kind of a random access way to work instead of a linear flow. I hope this making sense, ha ha?

I should say that I really love 3D Coat and I've been using it for some time now. It's really the only software that I actually look forward to using. Great videos btw Javis. I think I watched each one about 20 times. I think there should be a video that explains the inner workings of 3D Coat. Maybe an explanation of what's happening under the hood as you use the software. This might help clarify some things about the various "rooms".

Thanks again!

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After merging to the paint room do not use the retopo room to make your changes.

Use the UV room. Your model, mesh and uv map will show up in the uv room after merging.

Now make all your changes.

Next in the left menu click apply UV -Set. Your new uv map will be applied to the model in the paint room with all layers updated and preserving your work...

But before applying the new uv set, study the tool sets on the left to see what functions they do in the uv room

Example:

You have made new uv seams. you would click on Upd.Islands to create the new uv islands. Now you can manually move the new uv islands or have 3DCoat repack it. Of course in most cases you want to manually rerrange your new uv islands.

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Edit : I noticed I misread your statement.. as you were already doing the uv room part I think... but the below should help...

At the moment it appears you have to export your new uv map from the paint room and then import it back into the retopo room replacing the old uv map but that is just a workaround...

At the present time after doing the above and then making changes to the voxel / surface model and before remerging, you need to save some your 3DCoat layers from the textures menu/ export diffuse / spec no reason to export the normal map or displacement map as you get new ones for the added voxel changes.

Also you have to make sure you delete your model and all layers in the paint room expect layer (0) before remerging, then reload your saved textures after merging...

The above is the only way for now, I know of to get somewhat of the workflow you described but it is a workaround...

Yes, apply uv set does not update the retopo room but does update the paintroom mesh. It really should update the retopo room to keep the workflow from being confusing. In the UV room it names the new uv set a different name than in the retopo room.

I think a feature request is order...

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  • 4 months later...

Yes, apply uv set does not update the retopo room but does update the paintroom mesh. It really should update the retopo room to keep the workflow from being confusing. In the UV room it names the new uv set a different name than in the retopo room.

I think a feature request is order...

Hi

is there a mantis request ?

you know ?

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