Avatar painting, Maya and other programs...

Well the image pretty much explains my question:
http://o2arbitar.com/vox/uvs.jpg

I've been using Maya fairly well since 4.0 and though I've never been very interested in poly texturing, I'm competent enough to UV map and texture my own models. I've never worked with a mesh quite like SL's. I've tried zbrush, maya, and 3d-coat and I'm still not able to prevent these problems.

I've edited the meshes in Maya in many ways, including different combinations of normal smoothing, averaging, poly smoothing, and different settings of each. I've even experienced the same issue painting on the raw mesh with only unlocked normals.

It just seems like the meshes provided by LL aren't the ones being used in game...
Does this have to do with the mesh morphing in game?

The distortions you're seeing are caused by vertex movement due to shape morphs. The UV mapping is tweaked on some of the morph targets to help limit stretch (like when the stomach slider is maxed for example). Unfortunately meshes for the morph targets have never been released so there's no way to take the tweaks into account. There's not real good way around it, and the male chest area is particularly bad in this respect. You'll find much less distortion with female shapes. The downloadable obj files are the same as the viewer mesh. The UV mapping is correct, but once you deviate from the default male shape, all bets are off. Try to avoid horizontal stripes on items intended for male shapes. Verticals won't distort quite as badly. Untill LL sees fit to redo the mesh and UV mapping, we're stuck having to work around it through a whole lot of trial and error.

I created some horizontal stripe guides that you may find useful. You can find them here: /109/c4/255358/1.html#post1964135

Wow, that's quite a difference. Off hand, I'd say yes, it's an issue with the morphs. It's been a while since I've tried to paint right on the mesh myself, though, since I usually do all my av texturing in Photoshop, so that's just a guess.

One part of the problem might be that Maya's painting tools are not that great, as you probably know. If you up the canvas size to 4096x4096, you'll get better results. If your computer can handle it, you might even want to go as high as 8192x8192. The more pixels per polygon you've got to work with, the better Maya's paint brushes will work. And of course, make sure you're working with high quality render view turned on, so you can see your textures more accurately. I doubt those things will solve the bulk of the problem, but they should at least help some.




Quoted for truth.

I'm pretty nobody, apart from SL skin makers, has ever worked on a mesh quite like SL's. It's "uniquely" in a lot of ways. From its bizarre UV mapping, to its almost completely bass ackward polygon densities, to its highly quirky morphs, you'd be hard pressed to find a similar mesh anywhere else.




ETA: Listen to what Chip said. He's far more experienced with skin-making than I am. His post wasn't there yet when I began typing mine.

One thing that may help is to not paint directly on the default UV mapping when working on the male shape. Throw a planar or cyllindrical projection into a 2nd UV channel, paint on that, then bake it back to the SL mapping. Subdividing the mesh helps a bit as well.

Thanks guys, I did suspect it would come down to tweaks and more complex workflows, but I had hoped...
Skins were much nicer, baking out seamless bump and shading in Maya leaving mostly small and distortion free areas to paint in Photoshop or cross seam areas in Maya. Clothing is what got me into this sanity bender.

I'll try the custom UV maps and higher res before totally resigning myself to the hard way.
Thanks for the putting out those stripe guides too Chip, it looks like we're on the same UV setup so they'll integrate well.

As a side note, Maya's 2d Artisan tools are indeed annoying, especially the dozens of purely numerical brush options. But most other 3d paint programs had their head bashing parts too, though I've been trying the 3d-coat demo and it seems a little less so (if basic) from what I've seen. I'll post my findings on Chip's thread.

Fortunately you don't tend to notice the distortion when doing skin. It's mostly when doing stuff, like clothing, with an obvious pattern that you start pulling your hair out. I routinely do planar projections onto the male mesh and bake them back to SL UVs with good results. I've also done a lot of procedural textured skins baked out to SL without any problems with the zig-zaggy nightmare you get trying to do horizontal stripes.

Yeah definitely Chip, procedural skinning was loads of fun and no frustration, especially with shaders being my favorite aspect of Maya. But it's the subsurface stuff I really wish would work. I messed around trying to get an SSS process working, rendering turntable animations in thin slices and stitching them back together in PS for rebaking, way way way too much work. I'm thinking now of using surfaceLuminance data and a tuned minimum value map for a good fake the next time I poke at skins. The plus side is you'd only need to do it once per mesh.

Faking SSS is the only way to go so I've never minded much that you can't bake it (I use Vray over MentalRay but it has the same limitation). I generally don't bother baking lighting at all when doing human skin but if I were going to do it it'd likely be a combo of ambient occlusion and some hand painted specular maps. What I'd really kill for is a way to have micro-poly displacement not ignored by lighting when baking. Normal maps work, but it's just not the same.