Surfaces
Victor_B
Posts: 392
Hello.
Is it a good idea to have 20 surfaces in clothing? How does it affect on rendering and hardware resources?
Thank you.
Post edited by Victor_B on
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Comments
I don't know if the ammount of Surfaces is relevant to render preformance but if you want to go ahead and add as many as you like.
If those are needed is another question. You can have different shader settings and you can even apply different textures to the Surface Groups that you can edit for example with the Geometry Editor and the Tool Settings pane.
Surfaces are also used to apply different texture maps. Depending on the UV-Layout (overlapping UVs / UDMI) you have options to maximize the possible texture resolution. For example the skin textures of a whatever generation genesis figure is splitt into different areas to apply 4k maps onto the Torso, Limbs and Face surface. Here you have some information from the documentation center Basics: UV Mapping Guidelines (WIP)
The Genesis 2 Basic Ware clothing is a good example why you would want to have a few extra surfaces to have more color options. See the attached screenshot especaily the Cloth_Stripe surface.
In terms of dFroce clothing extra surfaces can also help to apply different simulation settings to certain areas of the fabric.
I know that more surfaces means more texture variations within Daz Studio (Photoshop not needed). The main doubt was about render preformance... but now I think it is better for user to have more texture variations, right? And user can easily delete unwanted surfaces if needed.
BTW. Is it possible to save Surface Preset in Daz Studio? I can't found how.
You mean new grouping? In a Character preset, used to load a new figure rather than to modify the selected figure, in a Wearables preset, or in Scene and Scene Subset.
I just realised that I forgot to attach the screeshot.
Yeah beside of the Presets to save modified Surface Groups with the item you also have other options. In the Tool Settings of the Geometry Editor you can also create Selection Sets to further modify Surface Groups.
First of as you import an OBJ into the DazStudio scene the so called "material zones" defined in the coresponding MTL file become the Surface Groups.
This also works the other way around you can export the current clothing item as an OBJ file and modify the material zones in an external geometry editor. Finaly come back to DazStudio and with the command Update Base Geometry that can be found in the Edit > Figure/Object > Geometry menu you can "update" the surface groups with the modified OBJ.
The big advantage, IMO, is that you can use colors rather than texture maps. I suspect that in many cases this might actually _improve_ render speeds.
Thanks for screenshots and "Update Base Geometry", but I still not clear understand about saving several Surface Groups. Thats all because of my bad English...
For example, I have a sweater with nice squear mesh. I can make vertical and horizontal Surface Groups for two textures. For example it has vertical surface groups by default. What about horizontal lines? Sweater should be saved as new "Figure/Props Asset"? Separate Figure asset for each Surface Group?
And one more question. Does DS has Loop Tool like in Hexagon?
Just save a Wearables preset, or save a Scene Subset with the modified version.
Okay.
I demand the Loop in Geometry Editor Tool. :)
With the Geometry Editor tool just select at least two polygons in the direction of the desiered loop. Then right-click and choose Geometry Selection > Select Loop. See the screeshots.
How did I miss it?