Geometry Shell Vertex Normals?

rilla

Hi, I'm a newbie at Daz Studio and I have a question about editing verticies.

1) Is it possible to create a geometry shell for the head of a figure (G3,G8) and then edit the vertex normals of the shell?

2) Would Daz Studio be able to read the edits?

Richard Haseltine

Only via a normal map, as far as I know.

JD_Mortal

If you are not afraid of hand-editing, or using a program to do it... To reverse a normal, you just have to reverse the order of the vertexs... Direct-X uses one direction, Open-GL uses the other. One is clockwise(3D) the other is counter-clockwise(3D). But if they are already ordered, then half the work is already done.

Default order = A -> B -> C, re-write each point as... C -> B -> A, in the file.

Now each normal will be "flipped" or inverted.

(On a side-note, that is why simple triangulation {like in Sketchup-3D} causes some normals to be flipped. It does not correct for the original normal face, it just cuts surfaces into triangles, in the order it finds the points. They should be recalculated so they maintain the same normal as the original, which is a more complex formula to reorder the points after each triangulation. That is how I found-out about how to flip normals... Combatting Sketchup-3D OBJ output.)

Richard Haseltine

A Geometry Shell is a live copy of the original, it isn't a separate mesh that can be edited (but it can have different materials, hence my comment about normal maps).

JD_Mortal

You can't export it as an object? Odd...

Can you alter the normals of the original object, so the shell is flipped... Then hide the object and not the shell... Then put a regular copy of the non-flipped object back where the object where the flipped normals was? (Long way around, but possibly faster.)

Can you "Fit" a Gen3 model to another Gen3 model? (Like he is wearing an Edgar suit)...

Richard Haseltine

If it's exported it will no lomger be a Geometry Shell, just a static object that won't follow the pose of the original figure.

rilla

Richard Haseltine said:

Only via a normal map, as far as I know.

 

Richard Haseltine said:

A Geometry Shell is a live copy of the original, it isn't a separate mesh that can be edited (but it can have different materials, hence my comment about normal maps).

 

Richard Haseltine said:

If it's exported it will no lomger be a Geometry Shell, just a static object that won't follow the pose of the original figure.

 

Thanks for the responses.

I think I understand what you are saying. Would the normal map determine the verticies? The reason I'm asking all of this is because I've learned that editing the verticies or copying the verticies of a simplified mesh onto a complex version of that mesh can help produce smoother shadows on toon characters (i.e. Gulity Gear Xrd, Dragonball Z).

Here is an example of what I want to do:

 

 

@JD_Mortal How would you hand edit? I'm not so much interested in flipping the normals as I am adjusting the angles of the verticies. Thanks for your response as well.

Richard Haseltine

I can't sit through the whole video right now, but DS ' render engines are already using smooth shading (if it is enabled for the surface). There isn't an exposed way to adjust normals except via maps, which use the RGB colour values as XYZ values for a vector defining the normal at that point.

rilla

Richard Haseltine said:

I can't sit through the whole video right now, but DS ' render engines are already using smooth shading (if it is enabled for the surface). There isn't an exposed way to adjust normals except via maps, which use the RGB colour values as XYZ values for a vector defining the normal at that point.

Thanks! That clears up a lot for me!