kwhitt Posted July 10, 2021 Share Posted July 10, 2021 I've been attempting to create some assets for a bath renovation I have coming up. Something is screwy with the way Chief is interpreting/importing UV maps. I am able to open the attached towel model (3DS) in Cinema 4D, AutoCAD, SketchUp, FormZ, 3DS Max, Marvelous Designer (where it was created), and Substance Painter all with the UV's intact. I have tried exporting the model out from Cinema 4D via OBJ, COLLADA 1.4, COLLADA 1.5, DWG, DXF, 3DS, and SKP. The result is always the same jumbled UV mess. Something within Chief changes the UV map as when I export out of Chief there is a noticeable change to the map when opened in Cinema 4D. And, yes, "Use Imported UV Map" is checked within the Chief Symbol Specification DBX. I have also tried both X12 and X13 with the same result. My UV map is perfect and both textures I intend on using align with the UV map. I have also tried different image formats (TIF, JPG, PNG, etc.). The image maps have been flipped vertically and horizontally in PhotoShop and still the problem persists. Below are some images illustrating what I'm getting from these experiments. Anyone else run into this? Is there a combo of file format, image format, UV orientation that anyone has found will work? This is making it impossible to build my User Catalog. Thanks, Kevin towel_full_isolated.3ds Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwhitt Posted July 10, 2021 Author Share Posted July 10, 2021 Here is the Chief file (X13). This was imported from Cinema 4D via 3DS. As mentioned above, I tried various other formats with no luck. The OBJ import for some reason had missing polygons, so this was useless. towel_folded_body.calibz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kbird1 Posted July 10, 2021 Share Posted July 10, 2021 I have a Program called PixPlant ( $37 for 1 person businesses BTW ) to help with seamless textures but I have not been able to get the 3D mappings to work/look correct in Chief, so just use the Textures. I had thought it maybe an Issue with PixPlant, but now I am thinking otherwise....... Sorry not much help to you Kev. , but I think you know more about this than me , just thought a "me too" may help Mick. https://www.pixplant.com/index.php 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwhitt Posted July 10, 2021 Author Share Posted July 10, 2021 1 hour ago, Kbird1 said: I have a Program called PixPlant ( $37 for 1 person businesses BTW ) to help with seamless textures but I have not been able to get the 3D mappings to work/look correct in Chief, so just use the Textures. I had thought it maybe an Issue with PixPlant, but now I am thinking otherwise....... Sorry not much help to you Kev. , but I think you know more about this than me , just thought a "me too" may help Mick. https://www.pixplant.com/index.php Thanks Mick. I have tried everything I can think of. I use UVLayout by Headus which is the best unwrapper I've ever used. It has to be an issue with Chief as I get the expected results in all of the other software I use. I'll wait to hear if someone else has a workaround before submitting a bug report. Thanks again - the "me too" helped! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ridge_Runner Posted July 10, 2021 Share Posted July 10, 2021 Maybe Rene will chime in if he has any input. @RenerabbittHe gets way over my head real quick! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwhitt Posted July 11, 2021 Author Share Posted July 11, 2021 Chief has definitely got some issues with UV maps. I spent a couple hours yesterday creating custom tile for a shower in Cinema 4D as a second experiment. The first image below is how the tile is intended to look with bullnose corners and tile chair rail molding at the top. The second image is how Chief butchers it upon import! How is it people are able to create their own assets for use in Chief when it appears it cannot get the UV map correct upon import? I will go ahead and get this reported. This problem makes it impossible for me to move forward with this project as I had intended and I suspect this would be no easy fix for Chief. Chief - Does the software allow UV's outside of 0 to 1 space? Also, are overlapping UV's permitted? This is the only thing I can think of that might be driving the problems I'm having. I know we have a new render engine with X13. Could this be the reason? In X12 I made hundreds of assets and never encountered these problems... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwhitt Posted July 11, 2021 Author Share Posted July 11, 2021 A quick update after more experimenting today... I was using a mapping type known as planar mapping in Cinema 4D before generating UV's. Planar mapping is a mapping type that projects a texture onto a single plane (face of an object) and has a shrink wrapping effect on the other faces that are pointing away from the planar normal. Evidently this type of mapping is foreign to Chief Architect. That said, I'm not sure why it made any difference as I generated UV's that Chief should still be capable of reading. When I switched to cubic (and cylindrical mapping for the bullnose) before creating the UV's, it worked. I also used Collada 1.4 upon export. I noticed that it was necessary to triangulate upon export, so that there were no missing faces when brought into Chief. The shower tile now looks good (image attached). I'll now focus on the problem with the towel and report back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kbird1 Posted July 11, 2021 Share Posted July 11, 2021 Thank for the Update Kevin , apparently the "fix" is well above my pay-grade but it looking good in the pic now..... Dustin is one of the guys at CA who does this for them and looks after the Substance Player thread / Program for CA so maybe he can enlighten you on the workflow for Chief..... And maybe for PixPlant if CA uses it too? @CADustin 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwhitt Posted July 12, 2021 Author Share Posted July 12, 2021 1 hour ago, Kbird1 said: Thank for the Update Kevin , apparently the "fix" is well above my pay-grade but it looking good in the pic now..... Dustin is one of the guys at CA who does this for them and looks after the Substance Player thread / Program for CA so maybe he can enlighten you on the workflow for Chief..... And maybe for PixPlant if CA uses it too? @CADustin Thanks Mick. I got the towels working. Before I was using a non-square image that I had to manipulate in Cinema 4D to hit all the right spots on the UV map. This custom placement would open in other apps after export using Collada (i.e. - FormZ and SketchUp), but not without errors in Chief. I created some seamless textures in Substance Designer and I guess, since they are tiling, they work fine in Chief. I'd still like to know why I can't get a combined image map to align with the UV's in Chief. Anyway, the turned out fine. Below is a link for the towel assets if anyone wants them. They have 2k textures, so too big to upload to the forum. https://www.dropbox.com/s/s3isf8w393blr17/towels_hanging.calibz?dl=0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kbird1 Posted July 12, 2021 Share Posted July 12, 2021 3 minutes ago, kwhitt said: Below is a link for the towel assets if anyone wants them. They have 2k textures, so too big to upload to the forum. Thanks Kevin , you should be able to export the Chief Material once in your Library, ( looks like whole plan on DB?) and post them in the Symbol Forum if you'd like to share the Towel or Tile Materials etc. people are always happy to have choices.... Similar to how Rene has a Thread for his Assets...... Mick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwhitt Posted July 12, 2021 Author Share Posted July 12, 2021 9 hours ago, Kbird1 said: Thanks Kevin , you should be able to export the Chief Material once in your Library, ( looks like whole plan on DB?) and post them in the Symbol Forum if you'd like to share the Towel or Tile Materials etc. people are always happy to have choices.... Similar to how Rene has a Thread for his Assets...... Mick. Thanks Mick. I didn't know about the symbol forum. The download is the CALIBZ file with the textures. There are 9 texture maps all at 2K. I keep my materials fairly high-res, but someone could always reduce them. Kevin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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