Digital Art Zone

Is it possible to reduce the number of times DS 4.5 applies mesh smoothing to figures in a scene?

Once I have a figure set up and alter clothing collisions so that clothing collides with each other rather than the Genesis figure, it take me forever to get anything done. A Mesh Smoothing progress bar shows up every time I make an alteration to the figure, whether it’s adjusting a pose or applying a facial expression. It really throws off my workflow to have to wait anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute depending on what clothing I have applied and how the collisions are set up.

Sometimes I’d prefer to have the mesh smoothing work just before a render rather than having visual updates as I go along.

Is there a switch I can toggle somewhere?

Thanks!

There is a on/off button for the collision in Parameters which I often find handy to flick off as I set up the scene.

SmallFry - 28 August 2012 07:10 AM

Is it possible to reduce the number of times DS 4.5 applies mesh smoothing to figures in a scene?

Once I have a figure set up and alter clothing collisions so that clothing collides with each other rather than the Genesis figure, it take me forever to get anything done. A Mesh Smoothing progress bar shows up every time I make an alteration to the figure, whether it’s adjusting a pose or applying a facial expression. It really throws off my workflow to have to wait anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute depending on what clothing I have applied and how the collisions are set up.

Sometimes I’d prefer to have the mesh smoothing work just before a render rather than having visual updates as I go along.

Is there a switch I can toggle somewhere?

Thanks!

The default value in DS4.5P for “Smoothing Iterations” is 2 (it used to be 20 in the earlier versions of DS4), and “Collisions” is still set to 3.. My advice is to apply smoothing and collision only when you are ready to render. Every time you change something in your scene, the computer is going to recalculate everything, and that’s really going to slow your system down—and of course, the more objects in your scene that are using smoothing and collision, the bigger the performance hit you’ll take. You can apply smoothing and collision to the objects you want, and then just turn them off in the Parameters tab until you’re ready to render.

I have this issue too. It makes so many of my scenes unusuable. I’m not honestly sure how to turn it off though? Must I turn it off in each item which has it on, or is there a way to globablly turn it off?

SereneNight - 28 August 2012 01:00 PM

I have this issue too. It makes so many of my scenes unusuable. I’m not honestly sure how to turn it off though? Must I turn it off in each item which has it on, or is there a way to globablly turn it off?

I haven’t found a global turn-off for smoothing and collision in DS4.5P, and likely, there isn’t one (hint hint, DAZ). For the moment, all you can do is select each item that has smoothing and collision applied, and turn off each feature in the Parameters tab. (Parameters > General > Mesh Smoothing—set “Enable Smoothing” to “Off” and “Collision Item” to “None..”) Then, when you’re ready to render, select each item that will use these features, go back to the Parameters tab, and turn them back on. If you leave them on all the time, it’ll just bog your system down something terrible
.

I wrote a script a while back to turn smoothing off for all selected items, and to store its state so it could be turned back on again http://ovbi.org/~rhaseltine/data/ToggleSmoothing.zip

Richard Haseltine - 28 August 2012 03:36 PM

I wrote a script a while back to turn smoothing off for all selected items, and to store its state so it could be turned back on again http://ovbi.org/~rhaseltine/data/ToggleSmoothing.zip

Oh, cool—thank you. Have you tested this in DS4.5P?

No, I don’t think so (I have them on my toolbar, can’t recall when I last used them though - probably in an earlier 4.5 RC). I meant to add that to the first post.

I’ve been reading this thread to find out how to turn Mesh Smoothing of. According to the directions I followed in this thread there really isn’t a way to do it. The directions here don’t work. I think its really because these directions suck not because it can’t be done. What I’ve noticed in these forums is there’s a lot of good info, but once in a while the people who respond in these threads fail to understand that when it comes to explaining a process like how to turn Mesh Smoothing of U gota get all the steps exactly in order, or else it won’t work at all. This thread was not helpfull. I think it should be removed.

There’s a button labelled Enable Smoothing in the Parameters pane, in the Mesh Smoothing group.