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Because it is...
Exactly. The process is low-res, then add in high res details. The normals come from the hi-res details so the mesh can stay low poly. That's why if you think you can sculpt hi-res and get a HD morph, you're absolutely wrong.
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actually they are easy to animate in Octane as I recently found, iray forget it
Well There is one solution to all of this that I found and it is the one tool daz gave us all which is Export to FBX to Maya once in there I stay in there. but didnt say it was a cheap solution.
Yup. Of course if you subdivide in Maya you'll have other issues, like tooth rounding and the imported morphs not working properly, especially around the mouth.
Reading this thread back again people seem to be under the impression video games use low poly characters. Typically it'll be around 20k (Daz subdiv 0 is around 17,000) but it depends on the game. Some can be 100k. Adding normal maps for detail is nice but doesn't cut it, especially in silhouette.
In-engine tessellation is widely used these days and that could give you detail down to pixel size. The trick is to somehow bake out vertex displacement maps and apply them in-engine with tessellation. I've seen an attempt at this (and attempted it myself) but it's hard to get the bake and the shader right. Too hard I think. Will have to wait until tools are available to do this, and when they are, you'll be able to bake your high poly obj export from Daz into maps used by a tessellation shader in UE4 (or other engine) to get HD features, otherwise working with low poly meshes.
In terms of the business case, I expect Daz people are watching closely. They could leverage their store with Unreal for example, with tools and plugins for that and I think in the end that will be inevitable as real-time Ray Tracing is building up steam and game engine tools become easier to use with more people trying their hand at animation over stills.
You know, I really wish DAZ would subdivide like Autodesk programs with "seperate by smoothing group"...
I think the thing to do is to export fbx, subdivide, then import a high def obj and make a blend shape with it. Or something. Seems like a lot of work to me. If I can get the vertex "trick" working I'll be like a pig in mud. No need to engage in any schenanighans like this (tip for interested reader: I will never get the vertex trick to work - I can't think in tangent space).
That's Daz Studio trying to help you with the smallest export possible. Given the base res model, any app that uses opensubd should be able to reconstruct the subdivied model closely. You can subdivide in the other app until it hurts, or at least diminishing returns.
For example, Blender now uses OpenSubD and models exported at base res (which is NOT the same thing as subd level 0) look almost exactly the same.
A um, 'minor detail' I recall reading of in a post from long ago in here ... that fantastic HD plugin that Daz3D is holding onto, is NOT easy to use. While I am sure some could fanthom its mysteries, it was not expected [by the commentator whose name I'm not sure of] that the general customer base would. Given some of the questions I have seen posted from time to time [including my own sometimes] I tend to believe them. Just say thank you and pay the man, HD morphs sculpted in Zbrush, okay. For the cost of Zbrush, one can buy a lot of characters in here and the work is already done :-)
after read some "sites" and forums like unreal what i get about "poily count for game characters:
1 - Poly count: it's a little complicated to know "exactly a poly count because while some peoples "use "quad" to count the poly count others uses "tri, making complicated to know when someone say "100k if they are talking about "100k quad or 100k tri which are totally diferent:; a 100k quad normally would means 200k tri while the 100k tri normally would means 50k quad making hard to know when someone say "using 100k or 200k if they are talking about tris or quads.
In general for what i get about the "poly count, what is matter is your "game project" and what type of "plataforms you are aming, because we have "mobiles, consoles, "low ending pcs +, middle ending PC+ and high ending PCs+, is important to know what plataform you are wanting to work to know how "much polygons you can use" for mobiles ofcourse you need really low poly characters then the most common number would be between 5k to at best 15k polygons for the most "top mobiles phones"(maybe a 17k) normally you really must use a lot of bake normals, tesselations and others tricks to make your character look really cool, because your character will be really low poly; for low ending machines and above then is something like the "mobiles, going around 8 to 20k poligons, because you are working in "old machines then" you need the characters to be low, not on the same level at mobiles but very close, characters which are most used to run for "low ending machines are ones created with the cc fuse character creator, normally the characters on this program will be around 10 to 15k which still doable for "some old 32 bits machines based on the size of game and number of characters in the screen, this make you get a huge gain in performance as the pcs used are more "strong", for middle pcs which already are 64 bits but still windows 7 or 8 and things like that you can be around 15k to 30 at best 40k, then for high ending pcs if you want to use all the pc powers then you can go really high like the 100k+ goin around 200k to 300k(in some "big" bosses cases)but remember it would means a 64 bits machine with a good video card(video cards near xt series have at laast 16 to 32 or 64 giga memory and things like that; for consoles then it will be based on the console configurations like a ps4 pro or x-box- x could be something between a middle to high ending machine then according the specs you must adjust the poly count, but overal the most important thing is have in mind "the overal number of polygons which will be renderized in the game, which normally will be between millions or billions then is important to know the whole impact the character will have in game along the scene, while i'm trying to use daz characters for game i'm doing my best to make sure which any outfit i'm using don't make the character "go too high", because again the real big issue of daz characters is not really the "daz character" the base character itself "is fine" the issue are the Cloths, and "hairs" for daz, that are things which can be really wild and crazy making some insane high poly characters even for animations, while for "render it can be fine" for game or animation many cases they are simple impossible unless you character will be the only one in game or you gonna have like at best 1 or 2 characters at time among your main characters and the "world will be really small and low poly to count for the insane high character, now going to characters themselfs you normally can have 5 archtype of characters when comes to count "polygons number:
A - "main character- Normally main characters are the ones "overal with the best poly count because they are the ones which does need to look very good most of the times, then normally a main character poly count based on the plataform you are aiming can go like around 120k to 140k(for pc and modern consoles), this count hair and outfits not just the "naked base mesh" which in some cases "dont exist" the outfit is sculpted direct on the character body mesh to "reduce the numbers" the same goes to hairs, normally the "big villian" of polygons can be the "hair" if you want a realistc hair for game then normally the "hair alone" goes between 10k to 30k leaving the remain poilygons for character and outfit.
B - Common npcs - "generic npcs which normally are not important they are normally "low pólygons", normally going around 10k to at best 50k based on the "game level of detail, overal, they are normally "less than half of the main character poly count, normally they are the "walking around npcs" or generic quest npcs or even "basic generic villians, since they normally can be at a "big number" around the world, then you need then to be low as possible based on the ammount the more you have around the "less need to be the poly count" ofcourse they still need to "match" the detail level you need for game then you can't go tooo low, but you can like mobiles abuse a lot of tricks to make then look much more better.
C - Enemies - Excluding the "most generic and basic enemies which normally are really low, you can have some "middle detailed enemies, which normally still around the same number as the "common npcs" but in many cases they can go a little higher like betweeen 15k to 60 or 70k, based on the detail level you want or how much cool you want then to look but they still "under or at best near the main character level, but normally never on the same level of higher
D - Big Bosses - or big guys, normally when you want a really awesome big boss to "scare" the hell out the player or making him go "wow", you can make some bosses, really go high, like even having more polygons than the main character, then normally a important boss can go between 100k to even 300k or a really awesome look character "not necessary a boss or npc, but normally in this case you will have "only the boss" and maybe one to up to 4 or 5 small minions (based on the number of characters and level of detail of the fight scene) but only that boss will be like that or only that "creature".
E - Special npcs - in many cases you have "special npcs" which are normally the "named ones" in game which need a background and the main character gonna interact a lot with then, them they need to get "some love" as much as the "main characters" then those characters normally are around the main character number even being able to go a little more if you want, like going between 20k to 140k or 150k, normally they are npcs which or are "main character followers" or are characters which the mc gonna interact multiple times making then much more important than the "regular generic npcs".
Have in mind which those rules applies normally for "single player games" for mulitplayer games or mmos, things are a lot different but overal if the game is a sort of player vs player and not gonna have any "AI" and the number of characters is "not too high" like a 10 to 20 players games (5x5 or 10x10 or anything between) and you don't have "any npc and only that characters then "based on the level of detail/polygons" of the world the characters can be "middle to high", if you are working around "middle to high ending pcs or modern consoles", if you are aimming for low ending machines or even mobiles then they really must be low poly being around 5k to at best case 20k to 30k poilygons for non mobiles btu still low ending, for mmo games which gonna have "thousand to hundred of playe characters and "npcs" then you can't really go too high too, normally things will be around the 20k to 30k and all that numbers are as aways counting hairs and outfits, you really can't have high poly count characters when you have to count "how much of that "high poly characters" will be in the game and also the world itself.
Then the character poly count is really something complicated and you aways must be taking in account what you are working on and what you are aimming in that work in this cases the "plataforms" you want to work, because even if you want to make a game to run in "NASA" machines you gonna still need to be carefull and don't have a single 1 million" poly count character in the screen it not gonna work well for you or even many of then.
Exporting at base resolution **is** the actual model, it's not the program helping with the smallest export possible. This is the mesh you work with to create your characters.
So, for use in Daz as a Daz character, you can sculpt on the base model. You can import that sculpted base model as a morph in Daz. You can increase res on the base model in your sculpting program and use that to make bump, normal, and displacement maps applied to the morphed figure in Daz. If you want the model to still work as intended in Daz, you can't use retopo tools or change the poly count of the base figure as that will screw up the UV mapping and other characteristics of the character. You can apply new geometry as clothing or props, or as a geoshell; but that will add other requirements. Is that right?
Basically, yes.
You can NOT change the mesh in any way - with the exception of moving around the vertices (better known as morphing).
And I think that's the direction Apple foresaw, which may be evidenced by the fact that Otoy announced Octane X for MacOS and iOS at WWDC in June 2019, saying: "Octane X has been rebuilt from the ground up in Metal for the all-new Mac Pro and the latest generation iPad Pro."
Thanks
That was my point exactly, perhaps poorly expressed. I meant that the program "helps you" by not unnecesarily exporting the much larger subdivided model, because you can subdivide the base model any way you like in the target app. That's exactly what Daz itself does.
The most important distinction that tripped me up for a while is that the base res model and the base res model at subd level 0 are NOT the same thing.
you can aways try to export the high resolution in obj(daz allow you export the subdivided model in obj which will be just the mesh without any bones with the "current look) to bake the high mesh into the low resolution one, in some cases it can really work amazing and in some others it will work "average" what is matter is the complex of the "high resolution model" to be baked in the low resolution, many animators and game designers do that.
While I understand your logic for not distributing the tools, it would be an acceptable compromise if they atleast released the data format and encoding algorithm used for encoding the HD morph details (.dhdm files). That way tool vendors can come up with their own independent tools which would enable encoding the HD details in various morphs. Disclosing the data format and encoding algorithms for HD morphs would not diminish the hardwork that Daz has invested in developing their HD tools.
They developed it, they get to decide about that. Really, they should keep it as secret as possible! It's not as if we're helpless without it, and it probably adds another layer of complexity onto their workflow with attendant increases in figure loadtime, hardware requirements for acceptable rendertime and so on.
The helplessness is there... And its not just another layer of complexity... Given the number of threads we already had on this topic, the demand is definitely there. And the demand justifies the business opportunity for developing such a tool either as a community effort or commercially via any PA. So the absence of such a tool accessible for the end-user so far can be attributed to hurdles in creating that tool. Feel free to enlighten me, since I do not see any other technical hurdle other than the lack of public information on the DHDM files, to be deterrant in development of the tool. Why can't Daz support both encoded and unencoded (provided its data format is known) versions of DHDM files just like it does for the DUF files? Or why can't Daz support the DHDM files like the DS scripts which are supported in both encrypted and plaintext formats?
IMHO the answer right now is fairly obvious. If the tool is kept in house, and only available to DAZ PAs, then to get true HD characters people must purchase from DAZ, therefore protecting their investment, and any profit from that investment. You can purchase very detailed high definition characters at other stores, but they are created via displacement maps, not true HD morphs. Typically the displacement map method works fine, unless you have more extreme displacement which can easily cause poke through on clothes and other similar issues (and can use additional GPU memory).
Yeah, pretty much this. This is kind of like asking Coke to give up their recipe for Coca-Cola. Besides, if Daz were to release the secret sauce, it would be pirated, so they would give up their competitive advantage, and a lot of PAs would lose income.
Agreed
to be fair the only thing i would really like would be able to export the hd mesh don't need to be the tool just be able to "export a hd character would be enough.
If you have a HD morph then you already have the data format, it's not encrypted and it's not that difficult to understand.
It's a binary format containing the control points for the spline curves stored as 32bit floats, each subD lvl gets it's own data set, subD1 is listed first and contains the x,y,z positions of 4 control points per curve, 4 curves per vertex (vertex pair or line). Naturally you would think you need more because a subD quad has 9 vertices so should require 9x4 control points, but the mesh is made of loops so you really only need 4 otherwise your just duplicating data. Format actually stores X,controlpointID,Y,Z just to confuse you.
As for the algorithm, it's probably cubic or bicubic given the number of control points and the fact that Daz implemented opensubdiv back in 2013.
I think it's a lack of accessible tools that use opensubdiv that has been the issue until now, not understanding the format, 3D file formats are usually fairly simple. I think within the next year you'll see a blender/dhdm conversion script appear.
Thanks for sharing this info.
Very much agree with this. I know at least from my POV, the reason I crave access to the HD tools is essentially exactly why Daz shouldn't give them to me lol! I'd start spending far more time mastering it and striving to make my own high quality content and a lot less time shopping in the store.
Also, I imagine providing exclusive access to the HD tools is part of the honeypot that Daz utilises to attract the very top PA talent to publish through their store rather than Renderosity, Reallusion etc. From my personal perspective with my comparatively low skill set, I'd rather Daz keep it on the DT and continue to attract the enormously talented PAs that they do so I can buy their beautiful artwork, rather than release the "secret sauce" (as @Sevrin so perfectly put it) to everyone and see amazing PAs stop producing for the program due to falling sales.
And anyone who is totally desperate for the secret sauce can always apply to be a PA, right? I mean, I know that sounds overly simplistic, but the option is always open to any of us.
There is already nothing to stop a third party creating their own HD system, even if it wouldn't be identical to Daz' - as far as I know the SDK has everything needed.