Why aren't material zones practical anymore?
ColemanRugh
Posts: 511
Why does the torso material zone now incorporate the back of the head? Instead of stopping at the neck? Explain to me the usefulness of this for a skin texture creator
Why aren't there more arm material zones so a user can apply their own long glove? Using a shader bought from the store?
What happened? Why did material zones go from like 20 skin zones to 8 skin zones?
Newbies may not know this but you used to be able to create thigh stockings and arm gloves just using material zones and shaders.Now, DAZ has made it so you have to expend tons of time with photoshop to do the same thing others were able to do easily with genesis 1 and before.
Now we have to do all kinds of workarounds and it makes no sense
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Comments
The textures have been optimized for use as skin. The face, where people want the most detail, is thus isolated to provide more texture space for this purpose.
You can still create your own surfaces for other purposes. Second skin textures can still be made. You might take a look at the No Suit by RawnArt.
The material zones don't affect the UV map zones.
It's like you bought a Chevy, but the windows won't go down. You have to either buy a 3rd party fix for the windows or figure out your own fix to make the windows go down. When the manufacturer could have easily had it so the windows went down on the factory product.
Why does the 'torso' material zone go up to the back of the head? When V4's didn't
Why isn't the arm broken into several useful material zones instead of one that incorporates the shoulder?
These zones are useless to the buyer
Nevermind. It won't get changed.
I understand you appear to want versatility for clothing, but that isn't what most people do anymore. What is useless to one person is optimal to another for the purpose of making skin textures. If you export the figure using Groups, you will see the head zone more as you describe. I use Groups for ZBrush as it's more conducive for my morph sculpting.
As someone who started out playing with both V4 and Aiko 3, I felt like V4 was already significantly less easy to second-skin than A3 (who belonged to the previously generation), in terms of material zones. What you're seeing is merely the end result of a trend that started back then.
I personally don't care that its "textures have been optimized for use as skin" if that means that there are few material zones both on the characters and garments than there used to be. I don't want to spend a ton of time in another program creating an effect that on earlier generation I could just do in DS.
The maddening triangle: Engineers/Users/Marketing
i miss the spandex morphs.
Second skins are old tech anyway and the only thing they bring to PBR rendering is saving some resources, but at a visual cost IMO.
Genesis 2 had 4 skin textures with the ears on the torso texture, and at least G3 and G8 have seperate arms and legs textures unlike earier generations.
If you need a new material zone, use the geometry editor and create a new one
you know the Daz Studio has the built in ability to modify your own material zones? you can make tons. Use the geometry editor tool, select the polygons you want from the upper torso with it, add to material zone face ... select by surface ears, add to face, etc. you can make up new material zones as well this way. Just using the tools inside daz. You can always use geometry shells as well, which vastly outdo the limited use of second skin textures- just apply shaders to a geometry shell and turn off the parts you don't want, either via surface or group, or again, geometry editor. save the scene for whenever you want those materials, or save it out. Daz Studio figures and DS the program itself has so much built into it that you can make nearly anything inside DS. :)
Geometry editor is an extremely useful tool, but it does have its limits in, well, the geometry. As it pertains to G8 skins, some of the edges would be too jagged to be of practical use, although it could be great for edges that are covered up by something else (e.g., leggings under shorts).
The reason for the reduction in skin zones has to do with resource usage when rendering in Iray.
This is a promo from my product - https://www.daz3d.com/resource-saver-shaders-collection-for-iray - which will help explain it.
This. Unless there is some secret I'm missing the geometry editor is way to coarse for this use.