Thank you for the update.

I certainly haven't mastered the technique in 3D Coat. I noticed that there is a method of making use of the low poly model plus a highly detailed model, to bake the details into textures for use on the low poly model. It's shown in this tutorial on YouTube. 3D-Coat Sculpting Workflow Tutorial

There are also a number of 'alphas' available for use in adding skin details in 3D Coat over at ArtStation. Some work better than others, some don't work at all - depends who is making them and with which program I think. .pngs normally work. It's the .psd files that are iffy BUT if they open at least in our image editors they can be used there too. I test out the free ones before making purchases from any of these vendors if I can. And of course if one has Zbrush there are oodles of brushes available!

Oh definitely, normal and displacement maps can replicate most of the detail of HD morphs. It's just a matter of ease of use. With the HD morph tools you just use the bridge to ZBrush, sculpt in HD, and re-import, voila it's done. You don't have to set up a low and and a high poly mesh, you don't have to do any baking, you don't have to worry about the displacement maps matching at the seams (with the way Iray handles displacement maps this is easier said than done). Its value lies in the amount of time saved, and that can be substantial. I wouldn't go through the hassle of making displacements for a commission unless I were to charge way more (and even then I wouldn't really want to) but with HD morphs it would be essentially the same workflow I use now, just with more detail. Even if I only use it to add a little more detail to a nose for example, or add proper dimples and laugh-lines. All those little things that the base mesh just doesn't have enough polys for.

No non c'è, l'ho cercata l'ho cercata. Poi ho scoperto che esiste un add on per farlo. Vabbè....

Oh,beh... Quindi immagino che nemmeno G8 abbia quei morph? Magari è affidato ad una delle trecento ossa del volto...

Scusassero, ma Genesis 3 Female, non fa la linguaccia. Ieri per provare ho cercato di far uscire la lingua di G3F, ma nulla da fare. Non la caccia. Credo ci voglia qualche morph apposito per farle fare le boccacce.

Dovrebbe essere nel pacchetto delle espressioni e non devi selesionare la testa ma il corpo intero. Se poi manca anche nel pacchetto delle espressioni, G3 è più rotto di quanto pensassi.
Non ho acquistato nulla che fosse successivo a G2, per cui non sono nemmeno certo che effettivamente esista... Tuttavia, se hai GenX2 potresti trasferire i morph della lingua di G1, da me funzionano correttamente.

Scusassero, ma Genesis 3 Female, non fa la linguaccia. Ieri per provare ho cercato di far uscire la lingua di G3F, ma nulla da fare. Non la caccia. Credo ci voglia qualche morph apposito per farle fare le boccacce.

It looks like the hardware upgrades paid off for you... Around 25% less time for G8F and Real-world Scene loading is a nice improvement in time-savings.  I bet you are happy with those numbers!

Yes! :D

I'm just quite angry because I decided to get a X570 motherboard, and I didn't expect they would be SO loud. I'll have to switch to a B450 and to build the entire rig again :(

UPDATE

The new hardware has arrived, and I've made extensive tests. We're talking about

• Ryzen 5 3600 (compared to Ryzen 5 1600)
• RAM 32GB 3600MHz (compared to 16GB 2400MHz)
• X570 mobo (compared to B350M)

The results are very interesting IMHO!

I have repeated each test twice, to make sure the results were reliable. I have tested with the old and with the new hardware, in the same day.
I have tested 4 different files:

• A real-world usage scene, with a complete apartment and 4 figures (3 G8F + 1 G8M). I've loaded it, cleared the scene and rendered it up to 200 iterations.
• Basic G8F: load and clear scene.
• Basic G8M: load and clear scene.
• Preload environment without figures: load and clear scene.

RESULTS

• Real-world scene
  • Loading: 235s vs 318s (-26%)
  • Rendering: 288s vs 320s (-10%)
  • Clearing: 228s vs 297s (-23%)
• G8F
  • Loading: 48s vs 64s (-25%)
  • Clearing: 62s vs 79s (-22%)
• G8M
  • Loading: 25s vs 27s (-7%)
  • Clearing: 17s vs 23s (-26%)
• Environment
  • Loading: 16s vs 24s (-33%)
  • Clearing: I don't know, it's too fast

So we can see an average reduction in loading times of 23%, an average reduction of clearing time of 24%. And what surprised me the most is the 10% reduction in loading times, considering that I've kept the same GPU (RTX 2060).

My Cinebench 20 score has gone up by 51%, and my Passmark Test CPU score has gone up by 51%.
So, maybe, the loading/clearing times improve by half of the CPU performance gain?
Has anyone else tested this?

The video card would have no affect on the loading times as that only comes in to play when you actually render a scene.

How are you measuring the times? Is there a utility for this? I would like to test my system as well.

I am curious why you went with Ryzen 5 instead of going up to Ryzen 7? I'm guessing that it was cost based on your location...

Why are you telling this? We know the GPU doesn't affect loading times :)

One of the tests I've made was a rendering one, that showed a 10% performance increase. My RTX 2060 was probably bottlenecked by the RAM/CPU before.

For the rendering times you can see the log.

For loading/clearing times I'm using a normal stopwatch from when I click on the file until Daz is responsive.

Zen 3 CPUs are coming soon, so I preferred to take a 3600 for some months so that I'll have the budget to switch to a Ryzen 7/9 at the end of the year.
Plus, single-thread performance are basically the same, and they say that's what matters in Daz.

A useful option might be a verbose log that can be enabled to record load times for every morph.  A lot of data at first, but may reveal the packages which take the longest load times.

I also wonder if it's possible to "integrate" all the morphs into a single character file?  Not sure it would save time or even be feasible, so just a passing thought.  Might even be a feature request to have a "cached" load to use until the user manually refreshes/clears it (such as after a new package is installed).  Might allow for faster loading since error-checking and linking would only need to be done once.

That's actually what I'd like to do: to join the morphs I need for specific characters into just one new custom morph (there are tutorials on YouTube), and then uninstall them.

But I'm behind my schedule for Patreon, so no more learning/optimizing Daz this month, I need to render! :)

Interesting, the 2 TB NVMe drives are roughly half that here in the US. :(

You may see some speed improvement with a new MB/CPU/memory but it won't be nearly as much as using an NVMe drive as your boot drive (even if you don't load your entire library onto it). Also there is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to RAM speed. That is to say it probably won't be worth the extra money to go over 3200 and you probably won't see much difference between 2400 and 3200. Having more cores sounds like a great idea but if the software isn't written so support it - and I doubt Daz Studio is - then you won't see any gain beyond the increased clock speed.

I have an AMD Ryzen 7 2700 8 core / 16-thread CPU on a 470 board with 32 GB RAM, a GTX 1060 Ti, and the aforementioned NVMe drive. The bottleneck IMO - at least in terms of loading - will still be the SATA speed. If the .duf files are compressed then a CPU upgrade will help somewhat.

Best of luck, and I hope you do see some better performance!

Lucky you :D

Consider that that model is PCIe Gen4, and that in Italy all prices are VAT included.

Yeah but everything other than figures loads crazy fast, so I struggle to think that the problem might be the SATA connection here!

I already have an NVME as boot drive, I use it for Windows only. That's where Daz is installed.

I've already purchased a Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB of 3600MHz C16 RAM and a X570 Motherboard (in the future I'll probably get a Ryzen 9 4000something and 2 high-end GPUs), that should allow me to overclock properly. We'll see.

Hay all, made an interesting discovery. How fast the figures load can have nothing to do with D/S per sae. Check how much 'empty' space is on the drive holding D/S. It works better if there is more than 15GB free, even better if there is more than 20GB free. The problem is how in the world that drive keeps filling up in the first place! But, some claim that's because of all the various updates for the OS,  and its parts.

And yes I too have deleted a few purchased programs from the C drive - installing some of them onto external drives. Bit of a lag but nothing super note worthy.

D/S is on the C drive and ALL its content is on the D drive. 3D Coat is entirely on an external drive. Carrara has yet to be reinstalled.

I highly doubt that's it! I have 600GB of free space in my drive.

I think you're using a Hard Drive?

 

SATA SSDs are crazy fast for Daz: again, if I take a complex complete scene, delete the figure, and load it, it loads in around just 10 seconds. Hard Drives are much slower than that.
My problem regards Genesis 8 figures and only those!

Well that's definitely not all that's involved then. It helps me though. Yes I'm using the internal harddrives on this computer for D/S. One is normal, the other is SSD.

Yes :)

A SATA III SSD is more than enough, I guess.

At this point, it's just a matter of uninstalling useless products and upgrading CPU/RAM.

I don't understand these Loading and Clearing times you guys are getting 

My G8F loads into a blank scene in about 7 seconds, G8M loads in about the same time. This is on an i7-3820 with 32 GB ram,

GTX 1060 with 6 GB vram driver ver. 441.87.  No ssd drives, All Sata III

It depends on the morphs you have installed!

You probably have not bought many G8 figures/morph packages yet?

If they come as BVH files, you can easily transfer them to blender using the diffeomorphic BVH retargeter. I use Mixamo files with that very easily. 

 

I don't see a newborn puppy product at Hivewire3D. Where did you find it? Can you post a link?

It's a morph for their dog. It includes a 'puppy overlay' and you will need the basic HW dog. They also, have Chugs and 6 other dog breeds. This cutie is here: 

https://www.philosophersegg.com/shop/index.php?rt=product/product&path=75_82&product_id=184

Thanks. Their beagle looks good, too. I too wish we had more breed support for Daz Dog 8.

Yeah, I am a huge dog lover, and the small breeds are what I'd really love to see. A poodle, chihuahua and pug would be great. The beagle is good. The 'puppy overlay' can be applied to any HW dog skin, so I think technically you could use the beagle skin on the pup if you wished.   I considered trying the hair, but it might be a bit overkill on a pup this size.

I noticed someone using the chug moddle on Deviantart. IT was... Adorable. So It reminded me of Mr. Puggles, who I still have. I wanted the chug, but got the newborn instead. The chug, and probably all the others will have to happen someday. 

 

I don't see a newborn puppy product at Hivewire3D. Where did you find it? Can you post a link?

It's a morph for their dog. It includes a 'puppy overlay' and you will need the basic HW dog. They also, have Chugs and 6 other dog breeds. This cutie is here: 

https://www.philosophersegg.com/shop/index.php?rt=product/product&path=75_82&product_id=184

Thanks. Their beagle looks good, too. I too wish we had more breed support for Daz Dog 8.

I don't see a newborn puppy product at Hivewire3D. Where did you find it? Can you post a link?

It's a morph for their dog. It includes a 'puppy overlay' and you will need the basic HW dog. They also, have Chugs and 6 other dog breeds. This cutie is here: 

https://www.philosophersegg.com/shop/index.php?rt=product/product&path=75_82&product_id=184

I'm very rarely excited over 3d animals, but I love the newborn pup morph for the hivewire dog.  It's just super... Super cute. Man, why can't we get one like this for Daz dog 8? I've been waiting so long, and oh, they are adorbs. 

AHh glad its not just me or something wrong with my new GPU then. I've asked Daz for version 4.12.0.86 as that is what's currently on my old PC and doesn't have the newly introduced animation bugs but I can't find a way to transfer it to my new PC, I unfortunately had "delete package" ticked on DIM when I initially installed it. Its been nearly a week and no response from them yet though.

Go to "C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D" on the machine with the older relase and copy the folder "DAZStudio4" onto a flash drive (I suggest also compressing/backing it up to a more permanent location with a name like "DAZ Studio Pro 4.12.0.086.zip" or something for future use.) Plug the flash drive into the machine with the newer relase and overwrite the "DAZStudio4" folder found in the same place with the folder copy you just made.

Alternatively, you can also just copy that folder to any location on the other machine and run the previous DS version simply by double-clicking "DAZStudio.exe" found inside the folder. That way you don't have to worry about possibly breaking the newer installation or DIM overwriting it without your knowledge.

AHh glad its not just me or something wrong with my new GPU then. I've asked Daz for version 4.12.0.86 as that is what's currently on my old PC and doesn't have the newly introduced animation bugs but I can't find a way to transfer it to my new PC, I unfortunately had "delete package" ticked on DIM when I initially installed it. Its been nearly a week and no response from them yet though.

A useful option might be a verbose log that can be enabled to record load times for every morph.  A lot of data at first, but may reveal the packages which take the longest load times.

I also wonder if it's possible to "integrate" all the morphs into a single character file?  Not sure it would save time or even be feasible, so just a passing thought.  Might even be a feature request to have a "cached" load to use until the user manually refreshes/clears it (such as after a new package is installed).  Might allow for faster loading since error-checking and linking would only need to be done once.

My understanding is that if the morph is set to "export", it won't be applied to the character, but will be available as a morph in Unreal to be changed at runtime.  If it's set to "baked" it's built into the character, but can't be modified at runtime.  I don't think you can do both at the same time, but you might be able to go past the value of 1 for the morph to make it more extreme.

I'm also wondering if Daz is willing to work with an external developer to disclose some functionality details in order to develop a product that could be published on Daz marketplace.

For example, I am working on material transfer functionality from Daz to Blender, which aims to replicate Iray materials in Blender.

In order to replicate 100% of Daz materials in Blender, this would require understanding how shader bricks work.

But because the shader brick implementations details are all hidden, it's impossible to figure out how to replicate many of the shader bricks.

For now, I don't have a plan to work on the parts which require hidden implementation knowledge. But if Daz is willing to assist, this could be a win-win deal.

You'd need to ask Daz directly, through a support ticket or perhaps (if this might be a product) through the PA contact.

I asked. They said no.

Ooo Rainbow unicorn, I love it :3
Skipped this competition, my ideas didn't want to look on my screen how I imagine them.

I have a few super late questions about modifiers/d-formers:

Is there a way to associate more modifications to the same slider? For example, if I used push modifiers to make horns or elf ears or something like that which would require modifying the basic model 2 places.

You can have two or more active dForms and when you use Spawn Morph it will create a single morph that is the compound effect of the dForms

I might not have watched the videos carefully enough but wasn't clear, can these modifiers be used on dForce objects? Like to change the basic shape and use dforce simulation after the modifier is applied, or the opposite: first dforce stuff and then modify it with the modifier?

Yes, dForce will stack with other modifiers - once a mesh is dForce you can do anything to it, and if you run a simulation it will drape over the morphed or dFormed shape of the target items.

Thank you Richard
I saw the questions but I wasn't 100% sure on the answers so I wanted to be sure you got the answers you needed.

Sorry i forget to list it on the page every time for some reason, but yes the elf ears will always be a separate morph that is apply/removable for any of our characters :) 

Ooo Rainbow unicorn, I love it :3
Skipped this competition, my ideas didn't want to look on my screen how I imagine them.

I have a few super late questions about modifiers/d-formers:

Is there a way to associate more modifications to the same slider? For example, if I used push modifiers to make horns or elf ears or something like that which would require modifying the basic model 2 places.

You can have two or more active dForms and when you use Spawn Morph it will create a single morph that is the compound effect of the dForms

I might not have watched the videos carefully enough but wasn't clear, can these modifiers be used on dForce objects? Like to change the basic shape and use dforce simulation after the modifier is applied, or the opposite: first dforce stuff and then modify it with the modifier?

Yes, dForce will stack with other modifiers - once a mesh is dForce you can do anything to it, and if you run a simulation it will drape over the morphed or dFormed shape of the target items.

Is Phil's product an entire or almost entire sphere? or does it only cover the Cornea/Iris/Pupil area?

Normally [i.e. for clothing] the normal steps taken for making the item 'fit to' work fine - within reason. For a few areas, such as the crotch for G8M, there are jcms that have to be dealt with, matched, or somehow addressed. Extreme morphs may require an additional morph for the clothing to fit over any peculiar areas - or to smooth them or whatever. [extreme meaning for morphs like Gorilla, Freak, child size, etc.]

Sometimes there still is value for to have/use skin clothing.

Sometimes it boils down to how much time does one want to spend making something. And how concerned one might be for messing up the rigging of valuable purchases.

Daz Studio has many features, some of which I have not yet investigated. There is one for transferring active morphs. However clothing usually 'picks up' any morphs applied to the figure and it is not necessary to be adding to the storage folders all the additional morphs.

No there are no additional steps for 'binding' one mesh to the other ... save that the closer the mesh is to the figure the more likely it is to work well. That being said, there is an issue with Iray and that eyesurface layer of the G8 figures ... away from the 0,0,0 position it tends to render black. So with my contacts for reflections I was trying to have it [hopefully] far enough away from the rest of the eye to avoid that but not so far as to be intersecting with the rest of the face.

Some ideas work better than others ;-)

In the upcoming tutorial notes, I'll be showing of the various morphs which apparently come into play with Hitomi's eyes. Trying to keep my work flow on the simplier side, decided it would be better to simply make a new lens for Hitomi.

Hello Catherine3678ab!

I'm sorry for mixing my messages/projects here.

The good news is I was able to complete "phase 1" of creating and adding a 'Genesis1' UV map for Philw's product, basd on your great hex notes in your tutorial thread. I didn't follow them exactly, but the ideas were plenty complete to guide me along with my Hex skills/gaps and it works - I have a new dsf file with a working alternate UV-map! Yay and thanks! I'm curious how the tutorials you are working on will read now that I've sloppily hacked my way through a method and now have a frame-of-reference. Maybe an 'ah-ha!' or two awaits me!

Philw's product looks like an exact blend of the Gn1 5_Sclera and 5_Cornea mesh surface sections, with an added expansion or offset morph like you mentioned was needed for the contact black-eye problem in IRAY. When parented/fit-to'd the Gn1 Eyeball, his mesh seems to 'do the right thing' with the more extreme eyeball morphs available to the Genesis1 figure.

While I will soon try to make a G2 version of the UV map - maybe I'll wait for your pending tutorial and take the smart way...) - I am equally (if not more) interested in doing the same with your contact lens mesh - which is why I was asking about the 'conform' capabilities when adding meshes to a figure like we're doing. (this is the project "mixing" I mentioned - same result, different approaches).

Bottom line, I think I can create alternate UV maps for existing products now - maybe badly, but I understand the ideas, thanks!

Moving forward, I'm now curious if we can (or even need to) tweak the contact lens mesh save/export scheme to allow it to follow the various Gn1 figure morphs automatically and correctly. It may do this already, so I suppose I should go try it on a Gn1 and add the Hitomi morph and see what it does.

The geoshell concept was mostly for discussion/feedback/... as a point of possibilities and interest. (zillion ways to skin cats, etc.)

FWIW, I've attached some images of the philw product and the original/alternate UVs I was able to make:

Orig Gn1 Sclera mesh (note empty cornea in front):

 

 

 

 

 

Philw's mesh - ~= Gn1 Sclera + Gn1 Cornea meshes

Original EyeSurface Product UVs (don't overlap w existing Genesis reflection images):

Newly created UV maps (now overlapping the existing Gn1 UV Sclera and Cornea maps - mostly):

(I've included these images for you and anyone who is wondering what the heck we are talking about here... :)

 

cheers and thanks. This is very useful/interesting!

--ms

Wonderful! Happy to hear that you got something working for you :-)

I have a good mentor here!

Phil's mesh has more of the sphere than mine does - maybe that's the way I should have made it too lol ...

For reflections, I can't see there being a need for any more than what you did.

I am interested in what your discoveries might be for the contact lens and Hitomi {or any other extreme morph}. I have been trying to work on possibly too many projects at once. BUT I have edited all the images for the next tutorial. Next comes an attempt to proof read them and package them into a .pdf.

Here's another something I'm working on. A bit of a face morph which will hopefully get a skin set too. Shown with Dante's DMC5 Stubble and Bentley's Brows.

Seems like a rather approachable friendly fellow! ("he" looks like another very believable - not too perfect - figure/character). Fun to see that magic as it occurs.

Don't rush on the tutorial. Of course, I'm more curious than before, having had a success to compare, and anyone going down this path later will be certain to appreciate your approach, so it will be great when you get it done, but no pressure.

Nice job on your new character!

cheers,

--ms

In Keymate/Graphmate, there is an option to select which properties (or key types) to show keys set for: TR, TRS, or TRSV.  For the DS Timeline, I can select TRS properties (I have property types set to TRSAH), but I have not figured out how to show a key set for the nodes that have "value" properties set at a particular frame.  For example, if I go to frame 15, and change a morph value on a hair, I can see that a key set in the graph pane but I do not see a key set in the timeline view.  This is very important as I may have values set somewhere along the timeline and not even know where they are set because a key does not show in the timeline.  How to fix? 

Thank you.