What's the purpose of the subd?
unknownmystery445
Posts: 414
in The Commons
What's the purpose of the subd in a character's partners tab? Like there are two subds, what are they for?
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Do you mean paramaters tab? One is smoothing (which isn't real sub-d) and sub-d, which increases the density of the mesh. The purpose of sub-d is that it also increases details ONLY if there are details there to begin with. It won't add them where there aren't any. It's for the HD morphs and to remove jaggy edges from low resolution meshes.
Laurie
What's a mesh exactly? And you mean it can only be used in HD characters?
The mesh is the "cage" that makes up a 3D model...what the materials and textures go onto. The 3D thing you see in, well, 3D. Figures are meshes, clothes are meshes, hair is a mesh.
Laurie
A very quick explanation: when you buy a character from Daz3d, you are buying a mathematical construct which describes a shape (a mesh), how things fit on the mesh i.e. the map is the uv, the textures go on with a bumps,translucency (a shader), and the details are defined partly by the modeling and partly by the shader. The model renders with more complex surfaces because additional details are rendered (sd or subdivision) and Hd here refers to a custom process Daz has of adding even more detail without making the file much larger.
Everything you see in the 3D viewport is mesh, usually with textures and/or shaders attached to it. Think of it as virtual play-doh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play-Doh
When a modeler starts creating a prop, some clothing or even a figure, they are starting from simple mesh and molding it into what the final product becomes. When you sub divide a mesh it becomes more dense, think 20 polygons to 40 polygons to 80 poygons, etc.
Play with a modeling app and it will probably make more sense
In DAZ Studio's viewport, set the view dropdown to something like "wire texture shaded". Note how your object is composed of facets. Make a copy of the object, and subdivide the copy. Note that each facet has been subdivided into multiple smaller facets. One advantage of this is you can get smoother curves on objects that didn't have them. One disadvantage is that it only works under certain circumstances, so your mesh might become distorted or completely broken in certain places. It is very helpful, but cannot be used universally. See screenshot showing the original object (in the back) and the subdivided version (in the front).
So more polygons means? :)
More polygons means a smoother and more detailed figure; imagine if you were making a life-size statue of someone and the choices of artist materials were bricks, Legos, and clay (a mixture of clay particles in water). The brick sculture would bearely look like a person, the Lego version would be a cartoon, and the clay version could be an uncanny resemblence.
Finer details, smoother curves...generally 'better'/closer to real objects. It's easy to make a rather realistic box out of 6 polygons, but there's no way that a realistic looking ball could be made with so few. But a couple of levels of SubD on that box and it could become a rather realistic looking ball.
Sub-d just sub-divides the mesh as its name implies it does not add more detail by itself, in fact the default algorithm Studio uses smooth the mesh with each level of sub-d thus reducing detail. Create a cube primitive and sub-d it to level 5 and it becomes a sphere. Only HD morphs are able to add details at high sub-d levels, most at level 3 with some needing level 4.