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Oh well, so much for that idea. I'll stick to the cheap shots. ;-)
But then, seriously, why? If these changes have been made for the benefit of animators and game developers, is that really a market that has significant financial meaning to DAZ; compared to the constant churn of new, new, new content pouring out of the store for consumers day in, day out?
Maybe the answer is in there: make the base figures low detail so that the consumers have to buy extras to get the high detail.
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Alternatively you could save out the higher Sub-D details as a normal map and apply that.
Animation is about more than making movies; animation is whenever you pose the figure at all. Optimizing the polygons so that they smoothly crease and pull when posed, even for still images, benefits everyone. Also, the majority of those polygon reductions were made in areas you don't even realize are changed: the eyes, lashes, and teeth (through unification of the area into a more realistic whole).
And while vram might not be an issue, system memory can be.
Normal maps can't replace detail you get with geometry. Normal maps are basically a trick, that look nice in some regards but don't work as universally well as the HD Morphs do. Sure they are a bit more sophisticated than bump maps, both serve valid purposes. But in reality normal maps only can do so much.
That's why we have HD morphs right?
Telling people to use normal maps is just defending the practice not to release tools to end users :/ Which I've seen for a long time now and have grown tired of.
Again, I really find Daz Studio and the figures a time saver. But the artificial business restriction remains a pain point.
well I downloaded them but if anyone here follows most of what I've said in the past. I will be sticking with Gen 1 until HD morphing is something everyone can do. I'm glad to see some of you have hopped onto this view as well. my low poly Gen ! looks just as good as anything new now days anyway. I'll keep checking back to see if there are any new utilities around like always. I just use my Zbrush and get what ever shape and detail I want on my Genesis 1...lol. Looking to pay for some nice software hope you come around soon DAZ. Till then good luck with my one or 2 purchase a month (used to be a lot more but I guess I've grown maybe I don't need much after all).
on another note I know for a fact that any texture or morph will work with any other from base to base...so I wont be playing around with seeing if Gen 3 is anything till I see something REALLY different that I cannot do myself (I love IRAY!!! BTW) ;)
System memory is much cheaper :)
Although we do understand the wish to have access to the HD morph loader, the subject is not directly related to the topic of this thread and the position has been explained in the past. Please drop this topic in favour of the main topic of the thread.
EDIT - sorry Frank0314, composing as you were moderating.
(and there I was hoping to learn what the hell one of the unmentionables is)
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lol oops sorry my apologies, well my point was and is I wont be using updated Gen3 till some things change. And that was an opinion about Gen 3 as well so I thought it fit. I like Daz and understand their views. I can respect that. Gen 3 looks great! BTW. Don't misread me here
Technically Gen 3 is really great for bends so I need to just expless that being my motive for my technical replies and keep them simple I guess? When I switch I will be switching to Gen 3 and that's what counts right?
We have asked for the topic of HD morph tools to be dropped, please.
Gen 3 is great for bends! I agree, but they don't need to be so defensive about on topic questions! I don't get it. I stated facts about the difference in G1/G2 and 3 and even that was bad for some reason :/
Does anyone have just G3F installed and not V7? I am curious to know what I got with V7 that did not come with G3F morph wise. Not sure why this is so controversial. I got G3F and V7 at the same time since I tend to get Vicky any time she is released because of the UV map support.
I don't have anything but the free starter essentials. These are all the morphs included. Pose dials are quite a bit more lengthy though.
I don't have anything but the free starter essentials. These are all the morphs included. Pose dials are quite a bit more lengthy though.
ok what does mouth realism look like? ;)
I don't have anything but the free starter essentials. These are all the morphs included. Pose dials are quite a bit more lengthy though.
That is very helpful. Thank you.
ok what does mouth realism look like? ;)
Put a default grey on G3F and play with the slider...it's easier to see without textures.
ok what does mouth realism look like? ;)
Put a default grey on G3F and play with the slider...it's easier to see without textures.
I did I'm not seeing it?
Put a default grey on G3F and play with the slider...it's easier to see without textures.
I did I'm not seeing it?
Set to Sub-D 3?(sorry if you knew that)
System memory is much cheaper :)
...but motherboard limited.
...but motherboard limited.
If you need more than your MB can handle I have to say you have many options to avoid it. In truth, characters not close to the camera don't need high levels of sub-d if any at all.
I would reserve Sub-D for close ups, portraits and pinups. Unless you are rendering for print media that is. Then at very high resoltuions 3000px plus, maybe you need sub-d to have a smooth render.
It's all part of the process. Knowing what your system can and can not do. If you have 8Gigs of ram, work around that. But you don't need sub-d on 20 characters :)
Put a default grey on G3F and play with the slider...it's easier to see without textures.
I did I'm not seeing it?
Set to Sub-D 3?(sorry if you knew that)
And open the mouth...it impacts mostly the teeth and tongue, with very tiny, hardly noticeable effect on the lips.
When it comes to a base mesh, less is more... it's better to have a lower poly base mesh with density placed carefully for deformation needs, with subdivision used at higher levels for final renders.
I'm very curious about how this new Dual Quaternion skinning is going to work in game engines.
As far as I can tell, Dual Quaternion skinning is not supported in Unreal Engine.
In Unity, an FBX imported with DQ skinning falls back to a traditional linear "smooth skin", with the same old 'candy wrapper' effect on wrists and shoulders.
Maya 2011 or greater supports DQ — I'm installing Victoria 7 right now, and plan to export to FBX and import into Maya 2013 to test deformations.
I believe it's only a matter of time before game engines eventually support Dual Quaternions — from what I've read about DQ, it is computationally superior to older methods...
REAL TIME SKELETAL ANIMATION WITH DUAL QUATERNION
http://www.jatit.org/volumes/Vol49No1/48Vol49No1.pdf
...so again, why did they have to change the mapping structure in the first place? All I see it resulting in is making G3 less versatile as it totally kills backwards compatibility not just with Gen4 but the first two iterations of Genesis as Not long ago, the issue of all the individual UV maps being released for each G2 figure stirred up enough a hornet's nest. Now with G3, forget using any older texture maps, or previous texture resources (like Skin Builder Pro.),
While the idea of a Texture Converter was brought up, if some remember a while back, 3DU 00ceased any further development of the utility for the PC platform. So no Teen Julie5 texture, no Freak 5 texture, no Genesis Troll texture. Everything will have to be new, and specifically created for G3.
Poses? Apparently the same issue due to the Geometry changes as there is a separate pose conversion tool for G2F poses in the store (and most likely will be one for G3M when it is released). Sadly G1 apparently has been left out. in this department.
Morphs? As I mentioned previously the basic expression morphs have been broken into a separate product, so G3F now requires three instead of two products to make it useful (and the same will no doubt apply to G3M).
As the above are all requirements for Vicky7, one is looking at 'over a 73$ investment (non PC intro price, for PC members it's around 51$ and full retail about 109$) just for the Base V7 figure.
...and that isn't including hair, poses, or clothing.
So, what about clothing and hair fits from previous generations? With the original Genesis, one had a plethora of autofit clones which were included with the legacy body shapes available for just about every figure back to Gen 3 (with only a couple exceptions for 3rd party characters). With G2 it became more limited to just Genesis, Gen5 and M4/V4 (the K4 clone was for the UV map only). Continuing the trend, we may be fortunate to only have G2 and maybe G1. (provided autofit clones are included with with the G3 Essentials or supplied by a PA/third party). Considering what MallenLane mentioned concerning Gen4, I'm not counting on anything prior to G1 fitting to G3 at all (and even G1 might be pushing it). Also as with regards to G3 clothing and hair content, it will not be compatible with earlier Genesis versions unless a PA (like SickleYield) steps in to provide the means. Doing so however will involve more than merely making a clone as it will also need the aspects of a clothing conversion tool like CrossDresser™ to accommodate the added bones and changes in geometry of G3.
If this week's PC freebie is any indication (clothing content for G3), G1's and G2's days may very well be numbered with regards to new content support, and I feel, no, make that "fear", it will be much quicker than "soon". We saw it happen to Gen4 after Genesis was released, and again with Genesis after G2 was released. However. at least there was still a very reasonable amount of compatibility and versatility maintained. Apparently that is no longer the case with G3
The bottom line to all this is the "bottom line". In looking at how G3 is set up, it will require more of an investment than the previous two Genesis versions combined, to build it to a reasonable level of usefulness due to it's lack of compatibility (by its design) with older clothing, hair, pose, morph, and texture map content. With G3, Genesis hasn't evolved but ironically in a sense, "devolved" back to the old Gen4 "Unimesh" concept
My two zł worth.
...but motherboard limited.
If you need more than your MB can handle I have to say you have many options to avoid it. In truth, characters not close to the camera don't need high levels of sub-d if any at all.
I would reserve Sub-D for close ups, portraits and pinups. Unless you are rendering for print media that is. Then at very high resoltuions 3000px plus, maybe you need sub-d to have a smooth render.
It's all part of the process. Knowing what your system can and can not do. If you have 8Gigs of ram, work around that. But you don't need sub-d on 20 characters :)
..for Sci -Fi art shows I render in large format as I need "fine art" quality prints.
Most of the clothing I've autofitted is fine, barring the usual caveats with autofitting, hair too. In fact a couple of the hairs I tried look BETTER on G3F...got rid the 'blech' around the neck and shoulders. Poses can be corrected...Zev0 already has products in the store for that, or they can be done by hand (did several last night). Morphs...because of the G2F clone, are doable and with decent results, so it's likely that a GenX update/type product will be around in the future.
The only real stumbling block...textures...and that's more to do with the new zone splits and reassigning areas (not to mention rescaling...). Doable but not easily in an image editor and not a completely impossible task, but one that won't be easily automated, either.
When exported in .FBX G3F doesn't have anything special: geometry, skeleton and weight map. For TriAx figures weight map initially was computed (averaging different axial maps into one), then DAZ have added option to have separate 'general' weight map that could be painted independently and you can switch figure between TriAx and General skinning back and forth, finally TriAx is silently RIP in G3F and she uses only General plus corrective shapes. DQ skinning support is feature of engine, not figure. Figure only have to have bones oriented the right way in the rest pose (T-pose for Genesis) so roll ('twist' in DAZ terms) will be extracted correctly into 'second' quaternion. Corrective morphs may also be exported (as blendshapes) and relinked to their master bones in game engine.
In DAZ Studio DQ may be turned on/off for figures which use General skinning method.
UE3 once had DQ implemented but artists were lazy to update their character's skeletons (and programmers - to adopt technique for their A-pose based character standards :) ) so DQ was made optional and finally wiped off UE4 completely. (But nothing prevents it from returning, especially when UE4 has source code available to everyone)
Unity never had it.
CryEngine has at least two forms of support for DQ and they really use it in Crysis 2.
Many open source engines have it. Starting from Ogre3D and anything based on it like NeoAxis.
I'm going to test G3F in Tesseract (http://tesseract.gg) in the weekend. It has GPU-based skinning with DQ.
That's why she is really 'new version/generation' of figure while G2F was only 'patch release' :)
I think of it as of 'return to mainstream or die'. Poser figures always were different from what was used in CG - different skinning in the first place, much more material zones than needed (to fake skintight clothes) with old school UVs etc. That's why (plus EULAs :) ) there always were problems exporting these figures for use in external apps (and niсhe for 'DS Pro', 'Poser Gamedev' paid versions of software). Then DAZ invented TriAX and made situation even worse with another unsupported skinning method in addition to 'poser legacy'.
G3F is attempt of 'prodigal daughter' of CG to return to her family. So MallenLane had carte blanche to do what he have done :)
...however the sticking point is the change to the skinning structure. Only skins made for G3 will work with G3, period. UV mapping compatibility is no longer a factor.
This means all the skin maps I have in my library are useless with regards to G3 and I will have to lay out a small fortune buying new G3 figures/characters just to get a decent library of skin maps. At 22$ a pop for new base figures (PC price) that is still a lot on my meager budget when you multiply that by say 12 - 15 different products.
This is just one reason is why I am extremely hesitant to adopt G3 at all as
Another is I already have a lot invested in both G1 and G2 for creating the characters I need for my stories (as well as the time investment in developing them). However, apparently sticking with with G1/G2 will has the pitfall of rapidly becoming a dead end as attention shifts to providing content for G3, which as I mentioned above, will not be compatible with the older Genesis generations.just like G2 clothing wasn't compatible with G1 (until SickleYield's G2F and G2M fitting clones).
Finally just to make the base G3F useable (without V7) requires purchase of now three morph products, the cost for which is about equal to a week's worth of groceries. Given my current cash flow situation it just ain't going to happen no matter hos "advanced" G3 may be.
I specially tried to avoid discussing DAZ business practices here and concentrate on technical details instead. I doubt it was MallenLane's decision to sell her in such way :) DAZ has to survive as company at least to continue Studio development and that means they have to make us spend our money in their store, in current economical situation it means even more money :) So they made this decision - if it play well, then OK, if not - we'll see a change in strategy as it was when DS Pro eventually became free :)
That may be the case, be it doesn't mean you need them all to have sub-d applied. Just like how big movies use low poly figures for background characters and such.