Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2026 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Thanks for the post, very useful.
Can you show a character that you like (with no HD details ideally) before and after applying the 5 morph heads.
I am curious how much they change the original shape, from how they look I'm betting a lot.
Sure! I've only got time to do one but they change the shape quite a bit. I used Kala 8 and applied both Kala and Head 1 at 50%, then both at 100%. It looks kinda cartoonish with both morphs fully applied, but at 50% I think the results are beautiful.
Thank you for this!
You are right, both shapes at 100% is too much as it is normal. Both at 50% is really interesting. I guess my problem with Head 1 shows up here as well and that is waaay to strong jaws for a woman for my liking but it is interesting. What I don't see though are those new HD details the new shape is supposed to bring in. Maybe somebody with a better eye can point them out for me.
There is no right way and wrong way to make characters.
I myself use a combination of HD sculpts, normals and displacements on my characters.
The HD sculpting can really bring a character from looking plastic to looking organic. Thats what I do in my first pass with HD, then I add the big wrinkles like knuckles and elbows and various facial detail, and veins.
I use displacment for more character dependant details like smaller wrinkles (or fur for some of my characters).
Normal maps I use mostly for pores and sometimes wrinkles as well, depending on the character.
Bump maps I use for situations where I just need that little extra definition to the displacment or normals.....because sometimes we need to exaggerate details.
I see some extra details in the eyes and lips.
I really like the kala / head 1 50% mix.
BTW, here was my test.
First is Exile at subd4, second is Exile at subd1, third is subd1 with Normals from baking HD details.
The second image is sort of... smoother. It's most obviously different around the nose and forehead. Third has a lot of the quality of the original image, and you can only really see the difference along a few edges, and only if you peer very closely.
(click for new window with full size)
I actually bought these mostly for Head 1 because it's hard to find square-jawed female characters.
I don't personally see a lot of HD difference with them, but they look about the same to me as most HD charas sold in the store so I think it might be a positioning thing. Like folks pointed out early in the thread, these don't seem to really be HD addons for G8 so much as a set of character heads. But because they presented them in the same way they do HD addons, with a clay render only and text that makes it sound like you should dial these in to existing characters to enhance their detail, it's a bit confusing.
That's a super clear example, thank you!
Oso, did you bake those normals within Studio (I've never done that, should probably try it if it works that well) or in Zbrush or elsewhere?
I baked them in Substance Painter.
It's been a while, but I think the steps are:
Save figure with HD details and subd 4
Save same figure at subd1 (or maybe without any hd details, depending on how the morph is set up and what you want to do; some figures separate base figure from HD details, some don't)
Load the subd1 figure into substance painter, go into the Baking window and set the subd4 figure as 'high def'.
I THINK you then just need to bake normals and then export OpenGL Normals. Something like that.
There are a host of programs that can bake like this. I know Mudbox can. Maybe Zbrush can, but I haven't experimented with it. (I tend to avoid paint/uv stuff with Zbrush with human figures because it's so funky about managing UV mapping)
PAs make whatever they want and as long as it seems reasonably likely to sell, Daz generally sells it.
So the excuse is generally 'we felt like it.'
For me there is also the problem I never know how high poly something is. Less with people although I would not want to crank up the subD level too much but so much more with clothes.
You buy a piece of clothing because you like how it looks and surprise, it has an insane amount of polys.
As long as we don't have these sort of details when we buy a product, I think they don't feel that constricted about optimizing performance for us.
If that could be a criteria for us when we buy stuff, I think it would matter more to them.
Thank you for that explanation, that's pretty interesting. I have Zbrush Core (the cheap version) and that makes me wonder now if we can export a sub-d 4 mesh from Studio along with a base model, bring the high-res one into Zbrush Core, edit it, then do what you said in Substance Painter to bake the details into a normal map (because I don't think Core can do it) and take that over to Studio for near HD-details. Got too many things going on right now to do all that right now, but it's something to add to the list. :)
I don't know about Core, but you can do it with ZBrush.
I agree that there should be an option for those who don't want to/need to/can't deal with the weight on resources, but I don't think PA's should stop doing HD morphs in exchange for an alternative method such as normals (maybe offer both?). In the above example, the SubD 1 w/ normals looks passable if you didn't know what was missing...but I as an end-user definitely would miss the SubD 4 details and I probably would avoid buying a product that didn't offer the full HD detailing. In fact, there have been more than a few times where I've found myself having to customize a product in order to push bigger and better details, mostly because I really look for and enjoy seeing bumps and grumps strutting their stuff from the side (I don't know why, maybe it goes back to my days as a video game texture modder and screenarcher where the devil is in the details *cough* tessellation. Things look fake when they're flat). It really all depends on what type of renders you are doing and what your goals are.
ok ..I'm still confused. Are the Heads just 5 head shapes or is there more to it?
the using normals thing has been discussed endlessly
I have asked so many times because I use DAZ content in other software
most use FBX exports which is always base resolution
Some Premier Artists have told me in no uncertain terms they only cater for DAZ studio and adding optional normal and or displacement maps is too much work for them and increases the download sizes too much even though they created their HD morphs in Zbrush and it's a couple of clicks to use multimap exporter, I have it and can do it with my own crappy sculpts.
Others do indeed include the maps as well and I am always grateful for that.
is off topic to this thread though I admit
I imagine these shapes will sell simply by virtue that they are HD and only a PA can create them, it is after all the reason DAZ keeps the technology in house, as I said not an issue in itself except it also keeps content DS only if maps are not an option.
AFAIK yes
but 5 headshapes you and I cannot do
They're five full head shapes, similar to a package like this.
Continuing with the other heads at 50% and Kala at 50%. They're really nice morphs IMO and have interesting effects on feature proportions. For example, the eyes are small compared to many female characters, and that balances the overall look of the face when added to another morph. I imagine I'll get a lot of use out of these on that alone.
They are indeed nice head shapes but the HD details are very small in my eyes. There are plenty of other head shapes out there that look better to me and also have a nicer price/packaging.
I am glad that you find them useful though since you are the one that purchased them. I wish you many happy renders with them. :)
HD morphs show in preview and are readily mixable with other HD shapes. Mixing maps (displacement or normal) is not possible in the base material, and not trivial even with custom work.
I'm mostly posting experiments at this point because the bulk of the discussion has been about whether they're worth it for the HD (probably not), so I'm interested in showing what they are actually good for.
i bought them, both, but the head thing I'm going to return. I have at least 250 complete head morphs already, and some even have HD details, unlike this package. Yeah, there are 5.5 billion different looking females on earth, but I don't neeed that many in my work.
These are for "PowerPose"?
Sub division and so on?
I agree, I would love Daz to realse more dial type HD detailed morphs for both body and head.
I would love to purchase that as well. My thing is I need better high res skin details on all of my characters. I would happily purchase a back of different normal maps that I can mix and match for various skin details.
You might be thinking of something like Auto Face Enhancer. These are just morph presets for G8F heads, and they work like any other morph.
Okay I have a question, I bought the HD body package, and I have installed it and... I can't find it... I went to the alphabetical listing and found it there, but clicking it would not bring up anything so I now need help because I am frustrated to no end...
That sounds good, but normal maps really need to work alongside the actual texture, otherwise you get details in places that don't match up with the color map. Sometimes it can work, like with goosebumps and small wrinkles that don't need any texture detail, but you wouldn't want to use a normal that had things like scar depth or raised blemishes and not have the texture map also show them, or wrinkles on knuckles that didn't match up with the lines on the texture itself.
What I'd really like to see are detail expansions to Zev's Skin Builder. Those create accurate normals and bumps alongside the texture details, and since they can be used on existing textures, we could customize the textures we already own.
And I STILL have not found them...
I don't have the product but probably Shaping Tab Actor>Full Body>Real World and then you should see Athletic, Curvey etc...?
Thanks, not there though and I have installed it with the install manager and in the same place as everything else and I have seen something that I installed in the same group as the HD morphs so I know that i installed it in the normal place... Doing a search now, and going to see if it is even there, and if it is I am going to see where it is...