By Renapd
It’s true that there are a lot of free Poser clothes available besides the default items. But what you might not know is that each one of those clothes can become dozens of other things to suite your needs for recreating a new item. All it takes is some imagination and Steve Cox's latest version of UV-Mapper.
To make this tutorial easier to comprehend, we will use a default item, in this case the female catsuit. At first glance I can already see lots of possibilities in it, two of them being : to be used as a tight pants item or as a tight turtleneck blouse. Big deal you’ll think. We'll use a transparency map for that, but, in order to make a detailed texture of your new item, you’ll need to inflate the original template at least by 300%-400% - anything but ideal since you’ll end up with a huge file! This tutorial intends to teach you exactly that, how to take advantage of UV-Mapper features and make new templates of the parts you need on a specific figure, so you can end up with crystal clear textures, YET without using a huge template of incredible size!
First start up UV-mapper and load the blcatsuit.obj located in your Geometries folder..P4clothes/Suits directory. What you’ll get is the default template that looks like this.
Go to Uvmapper top menu Edit/Select/ByGroup…the following window will pop up!
Since our goal in this tutorial is to recreate a high resolution tight turtleneck new template out of the catsuit, here is where we will select the parts that we DON’T need first! Select Hip, lFoot, lShin, lThigh, rFoot, rShin, rThigh - using the Shift key to add items. Press OK. Now your template looks like this.
Put your cursor over the top left corner of the selection, you will notice that the cursor changes to resizing arrows. Drag your cursor without releasing the mouse towards the diagonal opposite end of your selection till it gets of a minimum size. You’ll get something similar to this.
Place your cursor once more over this small selection and it turns to a cross, without releasing the mouse, drag that small selection out of the way to one of the corners of your template like the next image shows.
Now the fun begins! Make a selection by dragging a rectangle with your mouse over the rest of remaining parts on the template, UV-Mapper highlights the selection you’ve made. It should look like the following image. Just make sure you left out none of the remaining polygons!
Now go again to UV-Mapper menu. Edit/New UVmap/Planar. The following windows pops up. The default setting is split by orientation. Change that to Don’t split as the image shows. Don’t touch any of the other default settings. Press OK.
This is what you get now!
You think we’re done? Wrong! Our goal is to use most of the space in the template and that’s exactly what we will do making our map as high in resolution as possible, without altering the 1024 acceptable size. Once again, go to UV-Mapper menu Edit/Select/By group and this time select as described before, the left & right collars, shoulders and forearms, in a few words, just the sleeves of our tight turtleneck. You will get this.
Place your mouse over your new selection and when you see the cross, drag towards the bottom of the template, making sure you leave enough space around it as to make a new selection later on, without touching any other groups polygons. It should look like this.
Click any place in your template to deselect and then make a new selection that will include just the left arm. Drag that new selection below the other arm as in the following image, this is to save as much space as possible!
Once again to menu Edit/New Uvmap/Planar …this time select the split by orientation option and press OK. You get this distorted map of the sleeves that looks awful - I know- that would produce a terrible stretching map, but don’t worry!. We'll fix it later on..
Select the remaining top part of our garment and repeat the same procedure. As you can see, here we get no distortion because there’s already enough space on our template for a split view. BUT that’s not good enough for us. We want to make that huge. So here we go on!
Select once more the distorted sleeves and minimize them out of the way to the other corner. Something like this.
Now select the main blouse, drag a bit lower (make sure you leave enough space from the minimized parts so you can re-select them later on easily) and then resize to the x axis by dragging the middle placed handle as far as you can go. You will have something like this.
Economy of space is what we’re mostly after, so re-arrange your items on the map by selecting and moving them to get something like this.
Selecting once again the sleeves go to menu Edit/NewUmap/Planar , check this time the don’t split option. This will enable you to select each sleeve separately much more easily. Select one of both and put out of the way as the following image shows.
Now select the other sleeve and stretch and resize till it covers as much space as possible BUT baring in mind that there must be enough space left for one more sleeve later on.
Do the same with the remaining put aside sleeve. Things already start to look a lot better, right? Now your map looks like this!
TIP : Here is a good time to proceed with a check of any possible degenerated facets on your mesh. What does that mean? That we will look if there are any polygons inverted, which might later cause our map to appear with black spots at certain textured areas. Just press the Insert key on your keyboard. Uvmapper will do the rest on its own and fix them even if any are found.
Now go menu Edit/Select/None and here you are at last! You have a new non-oversized template of the tight turtleneck you wish to make! You can play ball and texture on these large areas as much details as you like! Here’s what the final template looks like.
Time to save but BE CAREFUL. Always use the same directory as the original mesh BUT make sure you save the new obj under a new name..blcatsuit2.obj or whatever else you like that will remind you of the new map. Then save the new template and you are done with Uvmapper!
Here comes the necessary procedure where we have to create a cr2 for our new Uvmapped figure. Open up the original female catsuit.cr2 in any text editor. Always select this specific cr2 when editing older items to conforming ones for the female figure. This is because it's the one that covers most parts on the female body and all necessary conforming commands are included. Never hurts to have more than needed and it doesn't work right with any required body part conforming command missing..
On the very first line, you will see the path that points to the mesh in Geometries. Change the name of the obj to the new one you gave to your alteration of the catsuit. Be careful here as the name is case sensitive! Now conduct a search on the rest of the document, under the string “geometries”…one more similar line will pop up ..do the very same alteration to the obj name here as well. Time to save the new edited cr2 with a new name that you like BUT in plain txt format. Close your text editor. Open up your Windows explorer and rename that extension to cr2 ignoring the warning window that will pop up. Now you are all done! You can open up that new cr2 right from within your poser presets and the catsuit that will appear will use the new texture template that you just made! Hide on the catsuit the hip and legs, and here's your new tight turtleneck to play with!
IMPORTANT HINTS:
If you want your blouse to be textured the same back and forth, or if you plan to make holes or stripes at the sides…then instead of a split planar map, I would recommend a non split planar for the main part of the blouse as well…That would give an even larger template and the map would be much easier to transmap at the seams. Of course each single item requires different strategic moves of parts, till you reach a map you like BUT.. if you carry out this tutorial successfully, I’m sure you can do it with all kinds of clothing as the basics are the same!
If you wish to distribute your new item, latest versions of Uvmapper come with the export uvs option. So instead of distributing the new obj..all you have to provide is the new uvs to other users! More economy on downloading zips too!
Just imagine what you can do with this method of minimizing the parts you don’t need…Use just the sleeves you like from one figure, the neck from another, the flared hip of a third and so on…the possibilities are endless. So, have fun transforming and hopefully this will help somebody, as personally I use this technique all and more often, as my garment requirements for posette get more and more complex!