How to blend smoothly two meshes with different UV maps?

Good day everybody!
I’m new here, so sorry if I selected the wrong topic.
I tried to look for the answer to my Q everywhere and tried few things, still can’t understand how to do it. Will be grateful for your help.
To the things I’ve done:

  1. I got a 3D head+neck model (with UV map, textures) that was exported from the game.
  2. I need to merge the head to the body. So I created the right-shaped body with MB-Lab.
  3. Next thing - I made just a simple mesh from this body (applyed all modifiers MB-Lab had created), deleted this body’s head and somewhat mached the colors of the needed head and the body. But the MB-Lab body has more complex (different) shading mechanism than the head from the game.
    Now to the problem I have:
    I’m not sure if I have to create one object from the head and the body (union the meshes/connect their edges) to make it work BUT the thing I need is to create smooth transitions between those meshes(textures). There are different UV maps, textures and different types of shading. Is it even real to do it with blender without complete unwrap or redrawing the textures? May be MB-Lab is not the best option for this (I needed to create realistic body for free)? Or what is the general way to do it properly?
    I need the transition to be smooth if the character wears only swimming trunks, for example.
    I hope, my .blend file exported fine.
    Thanks for any help!

Other than in real life you can cut of the head without punishment but think about this:
You are mixing a body not only with it’s own texture and UVmap but also with it’s own shader setup…
While color adapting different textures and transfering the texture by maybe texture paint is very complex but manageable. Mixing shaders setups on the other hand …
Anyway: First off all you might wanna think about backing a simpler bodyskin color map / body bumpmap and use almost the same shader setup like the head albedo/normal… you may be happy (i doubt this) by making the shoulder border of the head being slight over the body and controlling the head texture transparency by a mask so it gets invisible over the shoulders of the body. (I saw a model with different head/shoulder and body some years ago but this kind of modelling was used because the body was more a base for the cloth… only the hands and partly the feet where visible in the end model so it doesn’t matter.)
Or you might go through the process of mergeing the two parts. Ttopology isn’t that different that someone would say impossible. (You know that you are jumping ahead of all the basics about modelling and texturing?)

Oh and by the way if you delete most of the textures (eye/slashes/hair/lip/shirt/accessory) you can shrink the file to half the size… and what are all the finalze-textures for…

Hello!
Thank you for the tip about transparency - it may actually work in some way! I’ll also consider using different body with head-alike shading.
Don’t really get what you mean exactly about basics - I know some basics, but which are you refereng exactly?(=
About deletting textures - you are right, I just was too lazy to delete 'em XD
Thanks again!
Could you may be help me with the somewhat related Q? In other file I connected those two meshes via vertex selection and Fill. After that there is a thin blue line going around the edge of the connected meshes (it’s not a sharp mark). Textures don’t have blue color at all. I have no idea what it is and how to get rid of it… Any thoughts? Thanks!
Here is the picture (pls, don’t mid that new faces aren’t mapped and not textured properly there)

Basics: you shouldn’t do it this way… Usually someone model some parts, even borrowing some and make one model (maybe with disconnected parts), then you make your UVs then the textures, the shaders… If you knew terh technics and workflow then you are able to repair some issues when just stich something together… Your image might be an example: yes not properly mapped but the shader isn’t also just a texture… so this may eb just an visual illusion in Material/Rendered Preview. You aren’t showing/texting which mode and it doesn’t matter anyway if not visible in real rendered image… This is also somekind of knowing the basics… you are irritated by a view…
It’s like: You want to build a cathedral and can’t do simple hut.
(I’m not mocking you here. But you are going for the holy gral in 3D: humans… be aware for 3D you have to learn a lot… and realism: a lot mor… and for digital humans: a lotter moreer… :crazy_face: )

1 Like

Okay, I found the okay solution myself.
My way of doing things will suit you if blender is your hobby and you just want to render images with characters from the game, for example. The final model also could be rigged and looks just fine.
If you are an experienced blender user (or it’s your work) - you may find my ways of doing things offensive. I’ve warned you (=

  1. Get a body with the simular shading as the head
  2. Smooth, sacle, subdivide if needed and shape the body as you like (edit + sculpt)
  3. Delete the head from the body, match the head and the body position, in edit mode change vertexes position so they may be connected later smoothly
  4. Ctrl + J head and body. Connect the vertexes to get one mesh. Make transition between them as smoothly as you can. Sculpt if needed
  5. Match specular and roughness in shading. Match colors by editing texture files.
  6. Create new UV map. Unwrap the part of neck and the body (the transition - new meshes - is in between). Scale the unwrapped items on the body-base-color texture (the neck-body part)
  7. Create Vertex color - now paint the smooth transition. New meashes you created must be black, then black smoothly shades into gray and white.
  8. In shader you need apply this thing to the head shading AND to the body shading:
    UV map node (select new map) goes into image (body texture), which goes into RGB mix shader. The other image that goes into RGB shader is your basic texture (body or head). Factor for RGB shader is Vertex color.
    Basicaly, you use third texture (which is you body texture) to blend it with body and neck textures to create smooth transition.
  9. You may want to merge vertexes by distance and relax them (there’s addon for relaxing).
  10. Copy the texture for the body and use it for the transition area insted of original in shading, so you can edit this copy image and fix seams (edit texture so seams aren’t visible).


Hi Kawai
Your solution working great thank you so much.
Actually I have 30 years experience in the industry and I worked always with Maya and we use this kind of solution in production also because head and body need to be separated in VFX
Depending if you need to animate just the head (body tracking) or the whole character.
So if someone get offended by your method (wich is great) probably doesn’t have too much experience in the industry.
Other than that thank you so much again.
You give me a good ida for my universal rig (I will post something her once I have finalized some stuff)