A question: differences between Characters HD or not HD?
nikijunpei81
Posts: 35
Hello. Buying some pro bundles i've Characters in two version: Hd or not HD. For exemple: Victoria 9 and Victoria 9 HD. Same story for Minerva or Kala 9.
I did not understand the differences between the two versions, because It seem they have the same resolution, then where is the difference? It influence the rendering or not? Which of them is better?
Thank you and sorry if the question seems stupid.
Post edited by nikijunpei81 on
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An HD figure has an HD morph. A non-HD figure will use base resolution morph.
Only Daz PAs can make HD morphs.
You need to set resolution high enough to see the difference.
So an HD figure should have more details, which might be relevant up close.
As far as Daz's terminology, a High Definition character has detail at more levels of mesh resolution, as opposed to simply using the levels of subdivision to provide a smoother mesh. In more simple terms, an HD character has more detailed geometry.
Daz do not however allow HD morphs to be sold anywhere else other than through their store. So when you see the term HD on other stores, it's usually the vendors themselves claiming that the model has what they think are high quality textures, or potentially displacement maps (which do have some of the properties of HD, I suppose).
In other words, Published Artists sculpt the character with multi-resolution level of subdivision mesh ( normally 1 - 5 ). In general, the higher resolution level that an HD morph has, the more details there's gonna be on that character. But the render result still depends on various factors....
The HD data is stored in *.dhdm files (encryted Daz High Definition Morph files in data folder) marked with HD level (HD1 to HD5). As above mentioned, if there's no dhdm files in a 'HD character product', that'll be a 'fake HD...'. And Render SubD Level property needs to be in line with HD level (e.g. Render 5 -> HD5), then you can get full HD effect from the render.
As for Victoria 9, she's with HD4+ Render Level 4, so it's easy to see the difference in b/t HD and non-HD ... as below, plus another HD5 example.
One place you can notice the difference is changing the skin textures to something more cartoony. You can lose a lot of maps when you apply a different shader - so the displacement / other maps disappear and the non-hd character has very smooth skin while the HD character will stil have texture, wrinkles, etc. because the detail is in the geometry. As I sometimes do cartoon characters, having the HD characters are worth the extra money as it is so much easier to work with than trying to manually lreoad a bunch of maps after adding a shader removed them.
Thank You. Then, if i understand, HD is good for portraits or closeup. but, how much this affect the time of rendering? What the difference in time between HD and not HD? It worth use for all of my rendering Victoria HD instead of Victoria normal map? I did two test: rendering Minerva (Raw, no hair, genitalia or clothes) and she took less than 2 minutes, while Minerva HD tooks 25 minutes. Zack 9 (with hair and beard and genitalia, no clothes) tooks 20 minutes, and Zack HD with veins took 75 minutes. All rendering is UHD (2160 px). This happens only to me or is the rule? I have a 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-11300H @ 3.10GHz 3.11 GHz, 16 GB RAM and a Win 11 Home system and a GeForce RTX 3050.
I would like to create a story with this chara, and i like the best quality, but i'm scared by the risk of infinity rendering
Thank you again
as you can see by the examples from crosswind, your camera needs to be rather close, so it's usually only one character in a render, max two if they are very close. If those are the things you want to do the HD is the right thign for you.
For me who it mostly doing shots with several characters in action for my comic (and not the toony version) the HD would be lost in the distance in most cases, so I try to avoid the HD most of the time. As well I prefer the details of the skin surface to be implemented with a normal map rather than a HD morph, which is much more render friendly, esp when more chearacter are in one scene, the average computer might get some heart palpitations from the HD morphs.
Something is not right here, if your initial render took 2 minutes an HD subd 4/5 model might add on a few minutes but certainly not 20 and 70+ minutes. It sounds like you're running out of vram and iray is dropping back to using your CPU instead of your GPU.
The HD data might well cause that drop from GPU. Higher resolution mesh - HD4 is 4^4 = 256x resolution, so takes the character mesh size up to 4.5million facets. Some hairs start over 1 million facets, and if they follow the character sub-d like usual, then that will increase by 256x too. Then higher res textures etc. I've had my 12Gb RTX 3060 drop to CPU with a portrait of V9's face only when everything was turned up to 11.
Regards,
Richard.
@nikijunpei81
Yes, you ran out of VRAM and the render fell back to CPU. As for Zack HD, his default Render Level is 5, which means SubD polycount is multiplied by 16 comparing to a non-HD Render Level 3 ( 25.6Mil versus 1.6Mil ). The VRAM consumption gap is appr. 4.2GB in terms of geometry, let alone the hair / beard on him.
The usable VRAM on a 3050 with Win11 is appr. 5GB, so when you clicked Render, the engine fell back to CPU for render. Better install a GPU-Z to monitor your VRAM consumption.
As Linwelly mentioned, as for making story or comics with these characters, HD morphs and high level Render Subd are not really necessary. I also make comics, even for close-up, I rarely use HD morphs even I have 96GB VRAM. I prefer to using storyline / storyboad and the 'punch' in comics to impress the audience rather than high definition details.
crosswind, I'm not convinced of your maths. When the HD level goes up by 1, the number of facets increases by 4. This is because each facet present is divided into 2 in the U and the V directions. Then each one of those facets is divided into 4 when the HD level increases by another level and so on. So the factor increase compared to base level is 4^n where n = hd level.
Regards,
Richard.
Oh... I'm sorry but I clearly said 'multiplied by 16 from Render SubD L3 (Zack non-HD) to Render SubD L5 (Zack HD), which is exactly 4^2 SubD polycount.... Anything wrong?
I did not mention anything about Base level which is irrelevant to Zack's case 'cause Zack 9's default Render Level is 3 ...
Yep, you're correct. My apologies.
Regards,
Richard
That's all right.
Whilst the difference between HD and non-HD is clear to see on the textureless clay images, the difference is far less obvious when rendering the fully textured models of the two side by side, which is what really matters, particularly if the figures also have normal and/or displacement maps. In my experience HD is best for non-human creatures, and also for older characters, as the wrinkles can be better captured with HD. For younger chars you generally only see differences in the lips, ears, and the edge around the nose.
As others have said, for this reason HD only makes sense when rendering really close up.
On the performance side, most computers can easily handle SubD of 3 or less, but viewport lag may happen at SubD 4, and will very likely occur at SubD 5 or above. SubD 5 of a G8 figure is 16 million polygons, which is an insane amount for one figure, and as such will eat a fair amount of your VRAM just for the geometry, plus textures on top of that. I rarely use more than SubD 3.
Thank You guys. All of your comment was really helpful for me. I think my pc start to suffer at subD 5, because i don't have problems with Victoria HD. Anyway It's a rarity for me use a close up, then I will follow for my project your advices.
Thank You for your time and best regards.
My own favorite example of the difference between HD and standard resolution is the character Scar 8. The Hd version had a visible notch in his left ear that is both present and invisible at standard resolution.
Just click that Gear icon on the HD morph dial, - in Parameter settings, there's a path where you can see the HD dsf file with suffix of HD level, as well as *.dhdm files.
I have a question (and I don't really have the computer to do a fast render and check myself
): what happens if I apply HD morph to a different character ? As an example, applying Victoria 9 HD to a Genesis 9 figure with only Base Feminine morph applied, not Victoria 9.
Technically there'll be no prorblem if you do so. Just like blending head morphs / body morphs, HD morphs also could be blended as they'll just show HD details rather than 'head / body shapes'. Then properly set Render SubD Level accordingly.