UV Transfer From Mesh to Mesh

artstream

Hey guys,

I remember a few months back that there was a topic that covered how to transfer clean UVs to your already textured mesh. That workflow is awesome (thanks to Pior, Vig, and the others who discussed it in the thread) but I've run into an issue in which I want to transfer my UVs from a mesh to another mesh, they share the same silhouette, but the topology is different on the models (one is animation ready, one is a Zbrush ready model. Anyone have a solution? Thanks guys

renderhjs

I assume you use 3dsmax,
you might look into skinWrap a modifier that mimicks the deformation of the other and so you can animate your rigged & skinend mesh and let the other zBrush one along with the rigged one automaticly.

have a look at the official discreet information video regarding skinWrap (r7 feature video):
windows media
quick Time

more videos here:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=5904001

pior

You are a bit unclear here. If you just want to transfer 'paint' information from one to the other, well you just need a very usual cage projection thingie - recreating a new texture map pixel by pixel fitting the UVs of the new object. Render to textur ein Max, Transfer Maps in Maya, and similar.

However if you want one object to 'look' like the other and also share the same UV layout : you can try the transfer tools in Maya. They will cut UV chunks to fit the source model, making both of them compatible with the same texture maps. It works surprisingly well. I don't think Max can do that.

artstream

pior wrote: »

You are a bit unclear here. If you just want to transfer 'paint' information from one to the other, well you just need a very usual cage projection thingie - recreating a new texture map pixel by pixel fitting the UVs of the new object. Render to textur ein Max, Transfer Maps in Maya, and similar.

However if you want one object to 'look' like the other and also share the same UV layout : you can try the transfer tools in Maya. They will cut UV chunks to fit the source model, making both of them compatible with the same texture maps. It works surprisingly well. I don't think Max can do that.

Sorry about that. Let me try to be a bit more clear. First, I am using 3DS Max. I have 2 meshes, one with optimized/animation friendly topology, and one with pre-Zbrush topology. They are the same mesh (same silhouette, same forms) just with different edge flow. The one with the ZBrush topology has the good unwrap and my sculpt information and I want to transfer those UVs to the optimized model so I can use the normals on it. Having to find a workaround for this is my fault TBH, I was going to use XNormal for my projection, but I was unaware that even the slightest scale difference can screw with the projection. I would just optimize the UVed one again, but I already set up my morph targets for the facial animation (again, my fault for bad workflow). But regardless of what happens, I learned from this so it worked out. Any suggestions would be great, thanks guys!

Funky Bunnies

you can use the projection modifier to transfer UV's.

Just add a projection modifier to the object that has the correct UV's,
pick the target object,
go down to the projection rollout and click 'Add' for 'Project Mapping'.
Change the necessary settings
and click 'Project'.

I don't know what all versions have this, though. I use Max 2008.