Rough SL Avatar on import to Deep Paint 3D

I am using Deep Paint 3D to create textures for SL. When I import any OBJ file into the application, the object looks smooth and easy to paint.

But when I import the Second Life male or female avatar OBJ, the model comes in rough and bumpy, with square pieces pulled out of the main surface.

What am I doing wrong? How do I get the SL avatar to import smoothly?

Thanks in advance.

The OBJ's are a little whacky. Different programs output OBJ's in slightly different (optional) ways, and these appeared to have been saved without any accounting for that. I found them to be pretty much useless in Maya. Normals were all screwed up. Polygon faces were rotated bizarre ways. I ended up just exporting new ones from Poser and they work fine.

That having been said, "fine" is a relative term here. The UV's on these models are not exact matches for the UV's on the actual avs. They're close, but not perfect, so unfortunately they're not going to be an instant cure for all your seem-matching woes. You'll still find yourself spending a while in Photoshop with Chip's templates ironing out the wrinkles left behind by your 3D painter.

I don't have Deep Paint, but in order to use the model in LightWave and BodyPaint, I had to weld the points, too. Before that, they were ... ummm ... less than optimal (although I didn't have missing polys, or flipped faces.)

But welding the points, smoothing the texture, and changing the parts so there are just the 3 used for the mapping seemed to have taken care of all the problems I was having with them.

Chosen's right, though. These models aren't exactly like the ones used inside of SL. They are very, very close; but not exact.

I remapped them, and the remap seems to be working well when I bake the texutures I make onto the Linden maps. At least, so far things like the seams on the arms are completely eliminated. (I'm using it mostly to get patterned fabrics to look good on the AV.)

The main problem I've been having is that the models themselves aren't quite the same dimensions. So things are still warped in Second Life, even on the "standard" models in the "Preview" box.

All of which being said, projecting the textures for things like jeans onto the models in BodyPaint is still working better than anything else I've tried. I just wish I had more time to work with it!

I thought it was just me. I impoprted the av .obj into max to bake a texture for a latex suit and had to adjust the hard way. But once I got that done and backed the textures the real annoying part was the fact that the UV from it doesn't match the in gave UV! The UV maps are funky as it is without giving us .obj that don't match the in game avatars. ><

The only problem I had on the with UVs was on the male avatar, the bottem row of polygons on the torso is in the pelvis range insted of the torso for some reason, with some fancy slicing and dicing you can get it into the right group, but yah every time I've imported the .obj files they come with no smoothing, I've always had to add them later be it max, maya or lightwave.

It seems to only be the outer edges of the UV mapping that are off. I'm pretty sure it has to do with jpeg2000 and the bleed area rather than an actuall difference in the UV mapping. I tweaked the mapping on the av models by taking all the edge UV vertices and moving them out a smidge. That did the trick for me. Of course I also had to weld the verts and split the model apart at the actual texture seams and apply smoothing to the polygons.

Sorry you are having some difficulties. Here's some info. that may help.

There are two different sets of avatar OBJ meshes supplied in the mannequin download. The files found in the " SL Avatar" subfolder are OBJs formatted in the way Poser needs them to create Poser characters. Since they are in OBJ format you can open them in other 3D apps like Maya, but will probably look pretty bad and require a lot of editing, as Chosen Few noted.

There is another OBJ file included, called "SL_Avatar_OBJ", found at the root level of the download. The formatting of this OBJ file is a little different, and should display with far fewer artifacts in apps. other than Poser. It still won't appear as one smooth mesh, however, since its vertex groups are devided into the bone groups used for animating the SL avatar. This was done so those of you attempting to build animation models in other 3D apps. would be able to recreate the same groupings. To display a completely smooth skin you still need to weld the vertices together at some point in your process.

If you are just trying to build a clothing model you probably don't care about bone groups, but rather texture groups. There are 3 texture groups for the head, upper body, and lower body and can be constructed by joining and welding the appropriate bone groups. Use the UV templates as a guide to the texture groups.

The texture UVs are the same for both the mannequin and the *base* in-world model. One complication exists for clothing designers in that for every morph target (there are anywhere from 1-5 targets for most sliders in the av. customizer) there is a slightly morphed UV map as well. This was done to reduce extreme texture stretching between, say, a very skinny bellied avatar vs. a round bellied one. If you create a shirt texture using the base UVs provided in the mannequin, it should work reasonably well on most avatars, regardless of girth.

UV morphs should account for most of the differences in mapping you might notice. If there is a difference in UV edges, I would suspect something along the line of what Chip mentioned. Extending the texture colors beyond UV edges is good practice anyway, since mip maps can cause artifacts along those edges at lower LODs. For example, if you are making a red dress texture, paint the entire background outside the UV boundaries of the texture red as well (as opposed to leaving it black or white).

If, using the downloaded models you create a great mannequin for, say, Deep Paint, consider sharing it with the SL community. Chip's been very generous with his templates and I know they continue to help a lot of people.

-Xenon

Actually, what I did was pull the model into poser, export it as an OBJ into the Geometries file, and voila, the model was perfect when brought into Deep Paint.

Thanks for all your input everyone.

Tyg