Digital Art Zone

O.k., Patience, I see what you did there.

You created a body part separated Genesis.  Cool…

How did you go about creating this monstrosity?  It might be good to know for future reference if others ever need to accomplish this goal.

Patience55 - 18 September 2012 08:19 PM

so what are the lines called?

Nothing fancy. Just “edges”. 

And besides vertices and edges,  we have “faces”, which is probably a bastardization of the word “facets”. Either term is acceptable, but “faces” has become almost universal.

@ afreaginname

hehehe ... okay.

I’ve read that ‘faces’ are actually “face normals”. And some will be so pleased to know that from time to time, I actually call them that.

@DaremoK3

In D/S4, load in a Genesis. Export it out as one would have normally done so previously ... i.e. scaled so that it fits on the grid nicely when imported into Hexagon.
Import it into Hexagon like one would any .obj file like M4’s .obj for to model clothing on.

And there it is! A million pieces! Good for gluing back together to it as a clothing dummy.

One can create a unique rig for it and a .cr2 file BUT one CANNOT redistribute THE MESH. And that is ‘the official word’ from the folks that own Genesis [cause yes I asked already]

Have fun.

Patience55 - 20 September 2012 12:29 AM

I’ve read that ‘faces’ are actually “face normals”

Not quite. They’re two different things, and it’ll take me a couple of steps to untangle them for you. 

First know that all faces HAVE normals without being normals in and of themselve.

So next I should define what a “face normal” is: The normal of a face simply tells you in which direction the face is pointing.

By convention, a polygon is only visible from one side. However, most 3D applications (including hexagon) have a way of ignoring this convention so that you can see the polygon from either side. In hexagon, this is the “show/hide backfaces” setting.

To see what I mean, set hexagon to “hide backfaces” and draw a single quad (or any single polygon) in your workspace.
Now if you rotate that polygon, you’ll see that you can see it from one side, but not from the other.

And here’s the defining moment:
If you can see the polygon’s face, its normal is pointing at you (the face is “facing you”)
If you can’t see the polygon’s face, its normal is pointing away from you (the face is “facing away from you”)

Now this may sound like a silly technical point, but it can actually be a bit of a bane to modelers, since “backward faces” are responsible for a bizarre phenomenon often called “inside out” meshes. Ironically, hexagon inadvertently included some of these inside out models with your installation. One example is “[hexagon installed directory]\content\Models\Animals\boxer.hxn”.

And hexagon has a way of fixing these: It’s the “orient normals” tool found under the “utilities” tab. With this tool, you can flip normals back and forth, and/or you can orient all faces to point in the same direction.

I believe you know enough, Patience, about 3D modeling and terminology from what I have read of your posts.  Maybe afreaginname has taught you something about normals, or perhaps you already knew (I suspect).

However, I must add a correction to afreaginname’s post (sorry afreaginname).

The term “face normals” is not redundant, but an identifier.  Facet normals as opposed to vertex normals.

If you wish to learn about the differences (if not known to you), or see further examples in use, there are some great white-papers circulating out there as well as some good web pages on the subject.

As I said in a thread a long time ago regarding the inverted facet normals in some of the included models with Hex;  I think the developers (original) did this on purpose to force us to learn how to use the normals tools in Hex.  It sure made me have to learn them when I wanted to use a certain mesh (but I cheated, and performed most the work in Metasequoia).

DaremoK3 - 20 September 2012 02:50 PM

The term “face normals” is not redundant, but an identifier.  Facet normals as opposed to vertex normals

This is absolutely true, and I concede the point technically, although the main point I was trying to make was that “faces” are not the same thing as “face normals”.

Still, I may well have overstepped in asserting that “face normals” is a redundant term, and I can only offer in lame defense that I think unless “vertex normals” are actually being discussed in a given thread, that “normals” would generally be construed to be “face normals”.

So I retract that remark, and have re-edited my comment to reflect that.

Thanks for pointing it out, Darem. It shows that once again, “the devil is in the details”! 

afreaginname - 20 September 2012 05:33 AM

Patience55 - 20 September 2012 12:29 AM

I’ve read that ‘faces’ are actually “face normals”

Not quite. They’re two different things, and it’ll take me a couple of steps to untangle them for you. 

First know that all faces HAVE normals without being normals in and of themselve.

So next I should define what a “face normal” is: The normal of a face simply tells you in which direction the face is pointing.

By convention, a polygon is only visible from one side. However, most 3D applications (including hexagon) have a way of ignoring this convention so that you can see the polygon from either side. In hexagon, this is the “show/hide backfaces” setting.

To see what I mean, set hexagon to “hide backfaces” and draw a single quad (or any single polygon) in your workspace.
Now if you rotate that polygon, you’ll see that you can see it from one side, but not from the other.

And here’s the defining moment:
If you can see the polygon’s face, its normal is pointing at you (the face is “facing you”)
If you can’t see the polygon’s face, its normal is pointing away from you (the face is “facing away from you”)

Now this may sound like a silly technical point, but it can actually be a bit of a bane to modelers, since “backward faces” are responsible for a bizarre phenomenon often called “inside out” meshes. Ironically, hexagon inadvertently included some of these inside out models with your installation. One example is “[hexagon installed directory]\content\Models\Animals\boxer.hxn”.

And hexagon has a way of fixing these: It’s the “orient normals” tool found under the “utilities” tab. With this tool, you can flip normals back and forth, and/or you can orient all faces to point in the same direction.

 

OMG ... more content?!!!! Wow ... must check those out

I appreciate the explanation because actually I’m rather new to modeling [think novice, not beginner] and am not yet familiar with the precision as to the whys and wherefores of what is called what. or why.

I’ll have to do some experimenting with those buttons. Did know about the hide/show backfaces however I thought they were just hiding the faces on the other side of the object which truthfully I actually like to ‘see’ so seldom used that button. However next month I’m hoping to try converting some meshes so all this knowledge will be very helpful.

I see your point, afreaginname.  True…  true.  Generally, we are talking about face normals, and it was good of you to point out faces does not necessarily equal face normals.

Patience:

I wanted to see if I could replicate your “million-pieces” Genesis, and in my mind I thought it had to be something you were doing with DS export parameters.  I was wrong, and I was successful in achieving the million pieces Genesis in Hex.

I never encountered this before, because I have never used this avenue with Genesis and Hex.  Using default export settings in DS, and straight import into Hex does yield an exploded parts Genesis.  The sizing is as expected.  Roughly ten times that of using the bridge.

Here’s what I find interesting though;  I import the exact same Genesis mesh into Wings3D, and it is one solid mesh model (just like in DS).  Even further, if I use a mesh separation command the entire body mesh remains unaffected, and only face attributes are exploded/separated (teeth, gums, lashes, eyes, etc.).

I took the experiment one step further to see the results of importing the same mesh into Metasequoia.  Same as W3D.  One solid mesh.  Although, the default import for Metaseq creates Genesis at a very small scale compared to the other two programs.

I think there must be something in the Hexagon import module that separates the internal grouping (even though W3D does not even identify this grouping in the OBJ code) within Genesis.  I only used the default import settings.

The Hex/DS bridge does not do this, and Genesis is sent over as a solid mesh as it should be.  Which is much easier on the whole morphing of Genesis endeavors.

Below are five pics showing the differences I found using the different software.  Notice the default grid and Genesis relationship in the different pics for sizing:

That’s interesting. Yes good ol’ Hexie does have a way of reading things a little differently than other modeling programs.
And definitely, one needs to use the bridge to bring Genesis into Hexagon for modeling. The million piece guy will not be loadable as a morph.