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Heirarchical mats can change the surface settings of more than one item in the scene without having to select each component and applying a mat for it. For example clothing and also the accessories parented to it so they all match. When there are a dozen bits hanging off the parent it can get annoying finding each one in the node tree, selecting the correct component, then applying each mat. Try expanding the item you're using hmats on and see how many subcomponents it has, some products can have a lot. So it's done for your convenience normally, though ideally we would have hmats as well as the classic single item mats. :)
...there have been many clothing sets in the past with a number of components and props, that needed maps to be applied separately (like Bunny Daized for V4 or SickleYield's Business Suit for Genesis. I don't see that as an issue as in some cases, mixing textures can achieve some nice results particularly when alternate sets are available
For hair (even back to the Gen 4 days) the texture maps provided took into account all the parts/layers in the single texture file. This is why I don t see the need in this case. In the Surfaces Tab for Primavera Hair there are ten regions however there are not separate maps for each one, the single colour maps cover all 10 regions.. When as a test I just did where I manually fit and parented Fanta Sea Hair (G8F) to a G3F character, there are 28 regions in indicated in the surfaces tab, but I can apply any of the available maps that come with the hair without the hierarchal issue as it isn't set up that way.
A complex clothing set that is designed to be coordinated with various other parts (like a uniform or traditional historic costume) I can understand, but it makes little sense for hair, save maybe in rare situations like some of 3DU's characters where the hair and character are sold as a single package.
This is why others besides myself have become a little frustrated running into it more and more, particularly when it is a separate standalone item like hair.
I think you are missing the point of H.Mats. They are not to cover all the surfaces of a single item, they are to cover all items in a hierarchical tree. Each item could have more than one surface, but unless the material settings are split up to apply to individual surfaces, a material setting for one item will cover the entire item (and any H.Mat that includes them will include all of them). An H.Mat preset includes all the items in that tree, regardless of how many surfaces they each have (or at least the items that were included, you cannot select individual surfaces when saving an H.Mat preset, just the items).
And, did you know that you can select individual surfaces from the Surfaces pane for any of the items in the hierachy to target them specifically. Just use the CTRL key when applying an H.Mat and you will get the Material Preset Load Options dialog where you can decide to apply it to the Selected surfaces, or All.
The main problem with this hair is that it requires a Genesis 8 Female base node to be the root element, which is quite annoying and counterintuitive when not used on the intended figure.
...I guess. never seemed to be needed in the past even on some fairly detailed and complex hairs.
If the hair was it's own node that would be different but agreed, using the figure as the base is ridiculous.
So for now I will just steer clear of H-Mat hair as I primarily use G3 (saw a couple nice hairs to night that I liked but they all had H-Mat textures).
The only G8 characters I have are the "unique" ones like Floyd, Mabel, Ollie, Edie, Drutherson, Topsy (along with their "Gelfling" counterparts) and two of the standalone G8 teens. No point in duplicating figures/characters I already have that are G3..
I also have the G8 - G3 character and clothing conversion scripts for both genders.
Still thinking about returning this as a simulation time of 19 minutes is just too much (I actually got the dishes washed and the kitchen cleaned while the sim was running). Going to be while before I can afford an RTX 3060.at the ludicrous prices right now.
The issue isn't complexity, it's items that have multiple separate parts - things like hairs which have parented/fitted additonal parts for bangs and tails, clothes which have buttons parented to Rigid Follow Nodes to avoid distortion with morph projection (or to work at all in dForce).
...so for hair it's in part, due to the introduction of dForce.
I have a large collection of hairs that include separate parts such as bangs, braids, ponytails, "fly" hairs, etc . This includes earlier Genesis generation as well as Gen4 hair, all of which I've cross fit between generations many times and never had trouble applying the texture maps that were included until now.
So to use G8 dForce clothing on a G3 character, do I need to manually deal with the H-mat base issue as well, or do the clothing converter scripts handle that?
No, it's due to the use of mutliple items for arious reasons.
It's a way to reduce fiddle, it isn't that selecting each part in turn and applying a plain preset doesn't work.
If there are hierarchical presets you wither need to split them down into regular presets or parent the target items to the original figure (you can leave them fitted to the figure you are using them on) before applying the preset.
... as I mentioned, a fair portion of the hair content I have has multiple parts for posing/styling purposes but single texture map files that apply to all parts.. The test I mentioned a few posts above where I cross fit a G8F hair product to G3F that has nearly dozen different parts or "zones" worked fine as it didn't have H-maps.
So what I gather from the above, apparently the conversion utilities sold here don't change the figure parent if there are hierarchical presets. Seems I wasted my money on those.
Overall this is souring me on purchasing much in the way of G8 clothing and hair anymore, particularly if hierarchical presets may become more the rule than the exception. Sort of takes some of the enjoyment out having to fiddle around with this.
Parts and zones are different things, so I'm not clear that this is relevant. I can't think of any hair with that many distinct parts.
I'm not at all sure what you mean here.
It has no real connection, other perhaps than age, with the figure.
[See attachment below]:
...there are actually 28 separate zones or "parts" to Fanta Sea hair, each that can be assigned a separate colour (I did a few experiments and quick render tests to verify this). This hair has no H-Maps while Primavera Hair which has about 1/3 the zones of Fanta Sea does, even though it also doesn't also have separate "parts" like bangs, tails, braids, or such.
The only difference I see is that Primavera is dForce and Fanta Sea is not. I've also seen H-mats included with other dForce hair products so that would say dForce is the determining factor.
...there are several G8 to G3 clothing and hair conversion utilities in the store. For example:
https://www.daz3d.com/clothing-converter-from-genesis-8-female-to-genesis-3-female
If say I convert G8F clothing product with H-maps to a G3F character using the above utility, does that also change the hierarchal base to the G3 figure so the different texture maps can be applied?
Those are surfaces on a single model, a regular Materials preset is all that is needed there. it's when there are separate props or figures that Hierarchical presets become necessary.
No, or not as part of converting the model since the hierarchical part is in the preset. That said, a script could adjust the Hierarchcial presets and I don't know if any of the converters include such a script.
...was giong through the store and came across two "add on" products for this hair (different styles) which then would may explain the reason for the use of H-maps. In any case, I'll still avoid products with hierarchal maps.
Also found out in a comment on another thread that the longer sim times are due to the use of geoshells to add volume and keep polygon count down. On that thread one individual mentioned the siulation took 5 min with a 3090, however my old Titan-X, the RTX 2070 (mentioned on the product page), and the RTX 3090 all support the same version of OpenCL (3.0) which is used to run the sim.
And all CPUs of a given generation support the same instruction sets, but that doesn't mean they all perform tasks in the same time.
...so the CPU is also a factor.
No, what Richard meant is that the same code may need different time to execute on different hardware. Just because both cards support OpenCL 3.0 doesn't mean they execute it at the same speed.
So the OpenCL version is not the factor that determines speed.
...then, as the Titan-X has about the same compute performance as the RTX 2070 it should have taken maybe an extra minute or two to complete the sim but not almost a factor of four times what was stated on the product page. Meanwhile a 3090 should have been able to do so in about half the time of the 2070 given it's compute performance which is double that of the two other cards
...deleted the hair and G8 preset base then manually fit and parented the hair directly to the character without setting up nulls or editing .duf files, oand whatnot, applied third party shaders, then ran the sim. Came out a lot better and closer to what I was working towards than the earlier attempts.