seams along UV edges

with some help I've finally got my av set up right in 3ds max with proper lighting etc and everything else, and have been happily baking away, wasting hours and hours on test renders then full detail renders with an eye to bringing them all into the beta grid at once, then going on to photoshop for the post production, wrinkles and such when I ran int a new problem which I have been fighting with the past few days.

I have a very visable seam along the edge of every uv map, one up the arm, one at the shoulder, one down the side etc etc for all the edges of the UV Maps.

I tried the quick and easy fix of using FP solidify filter in PS and deleteing the alpha channel, but while it made them smaller, it never actually cleared them up.

as a test today, I took the baked render from 3ds and plugged it back in as a new material without making any adjustmantes to it, and hey presto, even in 3ds I find I have the seams.

I have bumped the padding setting up to about 50 with no real results to suggest this is working, and been combing through the forums hoping I'm not the only one with this issue and seen comments about liquify in PS, which is another thing in the list of tools to learn.

I am really hoping this is just some stupid setting in 3ds I have missed that can be fixed easily. I am tempted to start rendering at a slightly higher res of say 1100x1100 instead of 1024, but I know that would take a lot of playing in overlapping and checking sizes against the templates till I found the right size.

I'm willing to kill the time figuring it out if need be, but thought I would see if there was another fix first

When you bake in 3DS Max, there is a setting called Padding. I've never really used it, but I think it's there to help with seams.

Personally, I deal with baked seams in Photoshop.

Bake texture to TGA with an alpha channel.
Open it in Photoshop.
Load the alpha as a selection.
Contract the selection by 1.
Ctrl + J or Ctrl + Shift + J ... one of those shortcuts to copy and paste the selection to a new layer that is aligned.
Then Solidify by Flaming Pear.

I even recorded an Action to do that and bound it to a key. Can even batch process a ton of renders for when I go on a baking rampage.

I prefer doing this in Photoshop because I always end up in Photoshop to do cleaning and post work anyways.

it's padding I've played with in 3ds, it starts out at 2, I had it up to 50 ... grins... no real difference .... sighs

not sure I am following you on the photoshop bit, copy the black and white alpha channel to it's own layer?

but then, solidify wouldn't work as it needs the transparency on the layers, or at least thats the only way I ever got em to work.

sorry if I'm sounding stupid here ... grins... am trying to learn all the programs at once and sometimes the going is slow ... chuckles

Okay, let's see if I can do this without Photoshop open.

You render your texture and save it as a TGA with alpha. What Max spits out.

Open it in Photoshop. You will need Layers palette and Channels palette open. View > Layers and View > Channels.

Now, the Channels palette is a bit different and can take some getting used to. When you open it, you should see three channels at the top and they are R, G, and B. These first three channels are the amounts of RGB individually that are being sent to your monitor for full coloured goodness.

Beneath the RGB channels in the Channels palette there should be another channel. Should be called Alpha1 or something like that. This is greyscale and represents the amount of opacity/transparency that Max rendered for your object.

Extra channels in the Channels palette are commonly called alpha channels. You can do a lot of things with these nuggets of joy. Not only do they represent transparency/opacity, but they are also interchangeable with selections. If it's in the Channels palette, you can turn it into a marching ants selection. R, G, B and any other channel you have in the Channels palette - even the temporary one resulting from having various masks active.

You want to load Alpha1 as a marching ants selection. The more common way is to hold down Ctrl and left-click the channel directly in the Channels palette. Once you do that, the ants should start marching.

I do believe that there is a menu command, something like Select > Load. I never use it because I stick to ctrl + click.

Once you have the selection loaded as marching ants, hit Select > Modify > Contract and enter a value of 1. This will tighten the selection, so to speak. Or it will adjust the choke. Whatever you want to call it.

With the selection now contracted by 1, make sure that the Layers palette and Background are active. Hit the key combo Ctrl + J, but it might be Ctrl + Shift + J. What that will do is copy what's in the selection, create a new layer, and paste.

If I remember correctly, the selection will be unloaded and no more marching ants. If you still have marching ants, hit Select > Deselect or Ctrl + D.

You should now be ready to Solidify.

If all went well, you should end up with a mish-mash of nicely blended colours all over the place.

I don't use 3DS Max for baking (ZBrush, instead), and I don't use the beta grid for previews (main grid, instead), but that shouldn't make any difference.

Visible seams come in two different forms. One form is texture/resolution dependant (different cross seam textures or resolutions), and the other is caused by insufficient padding (bleed). Often, the way you can tell these apart is by watching them resolve during a rebake inside SL. The first pass usually renders at a resolution close to 64x64. The second pass is close to 256x256, and the third (final) pass renders the texture at the full 512x512. If the seams are related to insufficient padding, then you will see the seam line visibly contract between the second and third pass. On the other hand, if you don't see the seam contract between these two passes, then you know you are dealing with a texture/resolution mismatch on the seam(s) inside the UVW boundary. In the later case you will need to throttle the higher resolution with a blur filter to better match the lower resolution (in Photoshop, or similar), or closely examine your texture for other seam matching issues (like color, or luminosity). In the first case removing artifacts and solidifying (like Abu suggests) is the best solution. I'll also add that Defringe (under Layer/Matting in Photoshop) can help reduce the bleed artifacting if it is there. However, for 100% accurate results hand editing (before solidifying) UV seam artifacts can't be beat.

thank you abu .,... smiles... am trying what you said now

I think I might not be explaining myself properly, it's like the baked UV's have shrunk, if I overlay the baked top over Chips templates it is actually slightly smaller all round. thats why I tried padding first

ooohhh thank you thank you thank you abu ... grins... been playing with this all day on and off till I started getting consistent results but now I think I got it all sorted ... beams happily... still wish I knew why 3ds was rendering them slightly small... but now at least they look good like they are meant to..

just one additional question, anyone know what the difference in the three solidify's actually are other than the time it takes to draw them?

I wish I knew the algorithms used in the various Solidify filters. It would be a tremenduous short-cut for something that I want to do in 3DS Max.

I can offer my thoughts, but they are just that.

Solidify A
Seems to use a simple variation on Worley's Cellular. Find the the two closest points and interpolate between them.

Solidify B
Really not sure. Seems to be some sort of segmentation/skeletalization with some blurring. Could very will be water shed, or maybe even Sobel. Due to the speed, I would have to guess Sobel.

Solidify C
Looks to be B-Spline with several weights/anchors. Maybe, just maybe, could be some sort of wavelet transform. I get some colour variation with C and I have no idea what could be causing it.

Just guesses based on observation and I could very well be extremely off base.

If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go back to hiding under my rock.

Hi friends i actually design all my clothes in Photoshop and i woudl love to can use a kind of baking workflow, and as i read you are playing with those kind of process, i would like to know if you could oriented me with some sugestion. I try to import the Female.obj avatar to 3DS MAX, but even when i got the UV Map in the scene, i got the object like abdomen separate of the chest, and i dotn know how to manage that, so i can figure i need a some preparation of the model before can baking somethig on it, im wrong??