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Re: Black metallicity map:
I have no idea, I find it baffling. I'm just not convinced it actually matters much.
But it still drives me batty.
If the shader has metalicity turned on, it needs a map I think. Or at least that is how the shader tutorial I watched explained it. It has to be a pure black/white map, black where there is no metalicity, white where there is metalicity. Greyscale tones are not physically correct, it's either metal or it isn't. That said, if it's all black, or all white, You should be able to plug in a tiny ass map like 10px and it should work the same. I think. I don't really have time to play and try it. If you have a surface that has both, then a tiny map might be an issue, unless the seams between zones are not visible.
I have turned up metalicity without a map and it works
It will work without a map, but like all strength channels that take a map, you can add a black and white map to the channel to control where the metallacity effect on the surface and where it does not. A simple use would be for zippers and buttons on jeans or a jacket instead of giving them a seperate material zone.
A single 8K texture map really doesn't matter much, it's when there are 10's of, if not hundreds of ridiculously sized maps. It's unfortunate, because many artists in the 3D world (not just here at Daz) are incredibly talented, yet they clearly skipped class on texture management.
A single 4k map is generally 64mb uncompressed, while an 8k map is 256mb. That's 4 times the data usage, and at first glance the average user/modeler might not quite understand and think "shouldn't it be twice the size?", and that's because they're not thinking in squared. An 8k 8192x8192 map is 4 times the size of a 4k 4096x4096 map, and the data usage shown represents that.
And to try to put things into perspective, 10 8K texture maps consume the same amount of data as a whopping 40 4k maps!
The worst offenders IMO aren't the folks that forget about the single 8k metallicity map, but those who flippantly do so on anything that isn't a hero prop.
You can tell it's been a while since I tinkered with the iray shaders then lol. Yeah, if it has an all black map or white map, then it would be more economical VRAMwise to just use 0 or 1 instead of a map at all.
this is the"tiled" terrain that is not!
I actually feel embarrassed for the PA,
OK update that was the one without displacement
with it looks better
This is where information about the necessary/required color depth in different channels would be essential, if a channel only looks for black or white, the memory footprint of BW map is just a fraction of what 24bit map has, even without reducing the size of the map in pixels.
Texture size management is of minor consideration in the '3D world' as opposed to poly budget. Texture management is left to the end user, as it should be. Person A and Person B will likely have different uses for the textures, so the optimal thing a vendor can do is give a full high quality .tif or .exr file and let the end user decide how to compress/convert it. Vendors like Quixel strike a middle ground and provide options for 2K-8K JPEG/EXR for all maps through their interface.
Is it more work for the buyer? Yes, but it ensures everyone who can download them is happy in the end. 3D is a bad hobby to get into if download sizes are going to be an issue.
In here we are not talking about the "3D world", but using the assets made and sold for use in DS, and in this case the textures and their footprint in RAM and VRAM is the problem not the poly budget.
To be fair, I did bring up the "3D World". Funny though that the previous user would mention texture size budgets being minor in comparison to poly budgets in 2020, as well that no one had implied they weren't important to begin with. That's skim reading for you though...
Anyways, to keep on topic. In the end, my suggestion would simply be for Daz to perhaps begin mentioning file sizes on new product pages, polycounts, and for PA's to offer lower res textures as well for a wider audience. No one would be "deprived" of anything.
Oh, and on the subject of including download size on product pages, storage capacity isn't the only thing that need be kept in mind, limited bandwidth is a thing folks.
"...yet they clearly skipped class on texture management." smugly insinuates a fault on the part of artists, that there is some lesson when becoming a professional that covers basic texture conversion the end user can spend 10 minutes on Google looking up. My comment that confuses you was to correct this misguided take; in industry ("3D world"), poly budget is more important than texture size. As I'm sure you know, they are related. But that wasn't nearly the point of the reply, so I honestly don't see what the issue could be.
(I hope you see the irony in the bolded phrase.)
When I submitted this topic I really didn't expect it to last this long or get the response it has. I also want to thank everyone for the great input and the amount of information that has been passed about file size, compression software and information about texturing.
I have submitted a ticket to tech support in the hopes of getting file size(s) added to the product listing. Now I just have to hope that it doesn't get tossed aside or ignored.
Matty, I want to thank you for taking the time to answer some of the questions and give your views from a PA perspective on this issue. I have found your posts to be informative and helpful.
I have submitted a ticket to tech support but isn't this something you could help with passing on th othe right people at daz?
A lot of products I bought cannot be used without 'laying-on-hands', or I abandon it completely.
But at least this taught me which PAs to go for and which to avoid (for my specific usage).
Absolutely agree with file size (and polycount) on product page.
Poly budgeting is on the fast track to being a minor inconvenience thanks to newer technology that better utilize high bandwidth SSDs through improved automatic LOD generation. It's ok to be out of the loop though, information gets around eventually.
As for there being a lesson on texture management when becoming a professional, yes actually, there are entire university lectures dedicated to just that, which include conversion methods. And no, I'm not being smug by pointing out that there is a noticeable blindspot in many 3D artists skillsets, be they here or elsewhere, and that said blindspot should be addressed.
Seriously, why are so many folks here so hostile to constructive criticism?
Thanks for the link, this looks like it will be a lot easier and faster to use than importing each image into photoshop and reducing it manually.
As I'm sure you know, automatic LOD generation is for rasterization engines (Unreal engine and the like). Game asset optimization is a completely different beast and has its own intricacies that aren't very relevant to path tracing engine constraints. :)
I apologize, didn't mean to snap at you.
Of course, however as I mentioned earlier in this thread, Daz also markets assets to game developers through their interactive licenses and the new bridges, which make it entirely relevant to the discussion at hand.
Thanks, I am glad I was able to help out, hopefully it will be something that gets added in the future.
I used to be limited to 3G mobile broadband once so know too well how important file sizes are
I missed a lot of the old freebies that were pulled in various places simply because of that, I just couldn't afford to download much, only first joined PC+ 4 years after starting 3D for that reason too and skipped many freebies, how I obtained my habit of sporadic 3mth membership.
Have unlimited broadband now but still my drives are pretty full.
I'll point out that 'why not have lower resolution map options' is A) more work, and B) then makes the downloads even bigger, which is going to be a problem for some of the folks having issues.
You can't suit everyone, so all you can do is try to suit the largest number of people in a way that makes you the most money.
I am going to call you on that Oso3D, while I can see where it would be a little more work for the PA to make lower resolution and high resolution maps but it is not going to make downloads bigger. You have a zip that has the data and mesh files and then you allow the cusotmer to download either the low or high resolution maps. I am really trying to figure out how is that going to make downloads bigger?
That would require a revamp on how the store and DIM/connect does things. As it is now, it would mean the download gets bigger. Because you would be downloading a pack that contains the high resolution images, and the low resolution images added to that.
That is incorrect, you would download a file that contains everything but the runtime and them you would select either the high or low resolution zip to complete the set. There would be no need to download everything. I do not see how that would require a revamping of anything. You can select which files you want to download in DIM or connect.
Hi all, been following the discussion with a lot of interest, because I'm also one of those who has to take file size into account, download- as well as render-wise, so to speak. Just today, I bought a PC+ hair which was on my wishlist mainly because it looked like it would use a lot less resources than a pretty similar hair I already have, which uses lots and is therefore hard to handle for me. And now the download link tells me the zip size is more than 780 MB! For me, that is just insanely big. It's just one hair, not even with versions for G3 and G8, and it's short and all, so - WHY 780 MB??? Must be the textures I know, and I also know I can reduce them and all of that but - I just wouldn't have bought the hair in the first place if I'd have known. There are so many other options in the store. I would have chosen something else.
Now I have a hair which will clutter up my much needed hard disk space and which I will barely ever use, and I feel chagrined and upset and generally not very good about the experience. So I'm very VERY much in favor of adding a file size info to the product pages. It could even just be for the newer things since the older stuff is generally not that big. This wouldn't exclude anybody from making close-up renders with really huge textures, and so wouldn't really be a problem for anyone.
+1000 for the file size info!
Me too - I'm also on a limited monthly download budget. I sort of yearn for the olden days when the product pages had that information (the attachment is from 2011, two shop upgrades ago).