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Post by elaynestone on Jul 29, 2023 16:01:27 GMT -5
Hello, my first time posting here. I am attempting to convert a dress into a top for personal use. I deleted unwanted vertices and then I went on to rearrange UV islands to fit UV layouts I found here on the forum. But since Diffuse Map and Base Texture have stayed the same, the result is pretty messy. Is there a way to make to make them automatically rearrange to fit new UV layouts? I assume it could be done in Photoshop, but that would take a really long time. Surely there is a more efficient way of doing it? What puzzles me is that everything looked fine before I started editing UVs, even though it didn't fit the UV layouts. So perhaps these layouts are inaccurate or perhaps I don't understand how UVs work. However I am determined to understand it, because there a lot of dresses I want to convert into tops. I would like to make my own CC one day, so this feels like fundamental thing to master. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to upload a blend file, considering that mesh isn't mine, so I'm including a PSD file with screenshots of issues I'm running into. link
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Post by BokchoiJo on Jul 29, 2023 22:51:45 GMT -5
Hi, the uv_1 needs to be scaled 2 times in the x-axis & moved to the left by half so you only have half of the whole uv on the main uv layout (check maxis object). The uv_0 needs to be rearranged, the hand uv or any other part of the mesh that will have a skin texture shouldn't be moved. For other parts arrange it around the original one.
example of uv_0 & uv_1 (I use a long dress, for top just arrange the uv in the green area)
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Post by elaynestone on Jul 30, 2023 4:42:51 GMT -5
Thank you for replying! Rearranging UV 0 was painful, akin to a very tedious game of tetris, but I've managed to fit everything. I was following the you tube tutorial by sigma1202, but I've realised that my version of blender (3.6.1) doesn't have texture baking mode. Which one should I use instead? I don't get the bake option in Evee, is it fine to switch to cycles instead? link
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Post by mauvemorn on Jul 30, 2023 10:19:49 GMT -5
( bold text - common causes of problems, so make sure to do this)
- separate the body; - select your garment, create a new uv map with + button; - select the new uv map, in uv editor select everything with A and assign a template; - re-arrange the uvs; - with all uvs selected, create a new image, change its height to 2048, optionally change the Alpha to 0, click Ok; - change Timeline to Shader editor, choose Add, in the search bar type in Image, choose Image texture, do not plug it into anything; - in the drop down choose Diffuse image, select this node; - in Render tab switch to Cycles, expand Bake menu, set it up like in pic, bake; - Image - Save as; - select uv_1, create a new uv map out of it with +, then delete both uv_0 and uv_1; - rename UVMap to uv_0, UVMap.001 to uv_1; - join the body back with the garment
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Post by elaynestone on Jul 30, 2023 13:53:12 GMT -5
Thank you for taking time to put together such an easy to follow guide. I hope you'll indulge me a couple of more questions. Under "View Layer" there is only rig and garment mesh present. Body seems to missing. By seperate do you mean "disable in renders" camera icon? If the original Diffuse was 2048x4096 pixels, can the new one be the same in order to be HQ mod compatible? Adjacent Faces was originally set to 16 pixels, after baking garment looks fine, so is it okay to keep it at 16 or does it strictly need to be 10 pixels? The only issue I'm having right now is that I'm unable to seperate the body from the garment, resulting in body texture being baked as well. link
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Post by mauvemorn on Jul 30, 2023 14:04:39 GMT -5
These body parts are a part of the garment. You are meant to select the garment, switch to edit mode, select hands and the torso, then press P and choose Selection. Alternatively, you can remove the baked skin texture from the image in the image editing program. 16 would be too much for the default size but ok for 2048x4096. The point is to not get the texture on the skin area or other cas items
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Post by elaynestone on Jul 30, 2023 14:17:27 GMT -5
Oh, so that's how you seperate. Yeah, that makes more sense. So now when import it back into S4S do I need to make a Specular and Shadow map as well?
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Post by mauvemorn on Jul 30, 2023 15:01:50 GMT -5
a shadow map cannot be edited this way. Specular - yes, but you can also do this manually. Normal map can be rebaked this way as well
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Post by elaynestone on Jul 31, 2023 0:02:34 GMT -5
I separated body from the garment, baked. Setting the margin to 5 pixels makes the result much neater. Joined the body back with the garment. Got rid of old Diffuse Map by setting users to zero, then deleting it in orphan data. I deleted old uv_0 and renamed current UV. Now I need to figure out how to make a bump and specular map. But considering I installed Blender 3 days ago, I think I'm making a good progress. For now this particular UV / baking issue is solved. link
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Post by mauvemorn on Jul 31, 2023 14:45:26 GMT -5
you can rebake both the same way. This just should have been done right after you rebaked the diffuse, now you dont have the original uv map when you zoom out, the game shrinks all textures to improve performance. When this happens, the borders blur and uvs start to project more.If there is nothing to project, you will see skin colored seams instead. This is why you need bigger margins, at least 7 px. But if the margins are too big, they may get into places that should have nothing ( where body parts or other cas items are unwrapped)
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Post by elaynestone on Aug 1, 2023 2:59:47 GMT -5
I saved blend files seperately before making any major changes. Figured something is likely to go wrong and I didn't want to start over everytime it did. I researched Normal maps and it seems I would need a low poly mesh to do it. At first I was confused why I need two meshes, but I found this explanation:
Your low poly mesh needs to follow all the major shapes and features of your high poly mesh. The purpose of baking a high poly mesh to a low poly mesh is to bake all the fine surface detail into a normal map. It gives the illusion of bumps and dents while keeping the polycount low.
So can I just copy my current mesh and decimate it? How much would I need to decimate it? I don't plan on actually using a low poly mesh, I just need it to to bake a Normal map and import it into S4S.
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Post by mauvemorn on Aug 1, 2023 6:48:39 GMT -5
Are you recategorizing someone else’s ts4 item or converting it to ts4 from another game? If it’s the former, it should already have a normal map. All you need to do is re-arrange it the same exact way you did with diffuse. Just replace your diffuse with your normal map and re-bake it. If the original package did not have a normal map, then simply ignore it. This is not your creation, you do not need to go out of your way to make it perfect. If you are converting it from another game, then, again, it should have a normal map as well. It will look different from ts4 normal, so you need to convert it by changing channels. If there is no normal map, just generate it from your diffuse.
The point of baking a normal map is to preserve fine details like seams, wrinkles, folds, through textures by baking them from high poly mesh that has them to low poly mesh that does not and will be used in-game. The mesh you've already adapted to function in-game has them. There is no point in baking them.
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Post by elaynestone on Aug 1, 2023 9:14:44 GMT -5
It was originally a dress, I deleted the bottom part. Creator's name is Belaloallure. I use alpha CC, so I picked alpha dress for practice. If that kind of thing is the issue on this forum, I will use EA items instead. I definitely don't feel confident enough yet to attempt making my own stuff. Yes, the dress already has a Specular and Normal map, but I wanted to learn how to make them myself.
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Post by mauvemorn on Aug 1, 2023 16:25:32 GMT -5
no, that is not a problem. For personal use you can do whatever you want with other people's cc, the rules exist for re-distribution and it is not our job to enforce them. What i wanted to know was whether the item already comes with all these maps. Since it does, you simply rebake them the same exact way after saving the rebaked diffuse.
This is not really the right situation or mesh to learn how to bake normal maps from scratch. You would need to make your own garment in two versions first, since you haven't done that yet, there is no point in learning that.
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Post by elaynestone on Aug 2, 2023 15:37:06 GMT -5
I hate to bump this tread again, but I couldn't rebake the Normal map the same way as I did Diffuse. I opened the blend file where I have both the old and new uv and redid the whole process, except I used Normal map instead. The result is always a plain purple garment with no details. I even tried switching from Diffuse baking to baking a Normal map, in that case the result is plain blue. I mean, it makes sense that baking a Normal map this way wouldn't work, cause there is no second mesh. Original Diffuse was already baked, it just had to re-arrange to the new uv layout. But blender probably sees Normal map as random image, so nothing happens. Even though I made sure it was selected in the image texture. I can't reuse Normal map from the original dress for obvious reasons. I tried simply making it blank, put putting the dress and my altered version side by side in game... lack of detail was noticable.
I understand that the mods are busy and probably tired of answering noob blender questions every day, but I really want to finish this project I started.
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