Using decimator for optimization

sribatchha · July 2015

Hi I am using decimator to lower the polycount of the characters, which I am intend to use in unity game engine.
But decimator always triangulates the model and this triangulated model is dificult to handle in any other 3d programs like maya.
Is there any way we can get an optimized character from daz wthout triangulation (with quad output)?

Cris Palomino · July 2015

First, please be aware that you need to have a license to be able to use DAZ models, such as this one http://www.daz3d.com/indie-game-developer-license for Indie development. It will depend on how much you make and the license will allow for specific models. Have you gotten a license?

Chohole · July 2015

Just as a matter of interest, are you aware of this new Development concerning DAZ 3D and Unity. https://www.morph3d.com/

sribatchha · July 2015

Hi Cris, I am aware of the license and that is why I am doing this research in Daz, once things seems to be working fine in my pipeline
I will go for the license, but before that I have to make sure this will work for my game.

larsmidnatt · July 2015

99% positive its always tris from research I did years ago. I saw people explaining it on other forums and it basically makes a triangle soup to work with. It depends on if you are shooting for fast, quick and relatively lazy or if you have time to do the higher quality and better practices route.

I'm sure you are aware that most programs that do any sort of decimation tend to be sloppy, so it depends on if you are ok with that or not.

Not specifically talking about Daz figures, but often times you will hear that people prefer to retyoplogize models over using decimation techniques. Sure it takes a lot longer, but gives you great poly flow and is a better end result.

You can't have it both ways. Can't have super fast and easy and it be great result. But if you are on a time restricted schedule...gotta do what ya gotta do even if the wireframe looks ugly. Might be OK for the game.

FSMCDesigns · July 2015

Ultimate Unwrap 3D can go from tris to quads and back again and even has a poly reduction tool. I find the decimator in DS to work very well on DAZ models and it keeps UV layouts pretty intact after decimation.

larsmidnatt · July 2015

thanks for the tip. it even has a demo. gonna try it

Intital testing suggests its pretty solid actually...just depends on if someone wants to re-rig it or if the FBX export works OK and stuff like that. but from what I am looking at, I took a G2F with basic clothing, triangulated it for decimation. Lowered the poly count down to 10k, then returned to quads and it looks almost like something a human might produce.

I wanna say I'm almost impressed even. but since I can't do much testing here (not at home) I don't want to say too much but I think people should try the demo. I want to try Ultimate Unwrap 3D some more when I get home.

It seems to have a lot of tools but just to decimate and return to quads was pretty simple to figure out just by looking in the menu without any tutorial.

larsmidnatt · July 2015

oh and forgot to say, I tried Morph3D out of curiosity. The best thing is the 2 sided shader provided in the package. I personally don't see the value of the figures, but I can see how the typical Unity developer my find them useful.

i will warn users who want to use Ultimate Unwrap to unTriangulate stuff that is likely not going to work much at all. But from what I can tell it's decimation is pretty nice...It actually lets you choose between reducing verts or polys where as I understand Daz decimator does not allow you to reduce vert count specifically. Often times reducing vert count is important for games. Depends on hardware and stuff, but figured I would share an update of the demo.

Another edit...I did end up buying Ultimate Unwrap UV..this year I have spent waaaay too much on new toys and tools. ANY thanks FSMCDesigns for the lead. I first looked at it for the poly reduction tools, then started messing with other stuff. I used it to UV some hair I made a while back and painfully UV in hexagon (poorly too). even with just an auto UV in Ultimate Unwrap the UV's seemed like they would be perfectly fine since I paint in Substance painter for a lot of things...and I could make the UV better if I did seams and stuff. Anyway going to take time to get a serial since its manual process by people:) But I ended up liking the tool and want to dabble more and fork over money for the pro version.

The poly reduction tool seemed to honor the shapes well. While it does not have a weighting tool (that I found yet) that Daz Decimator has, you can subdivide/smooth areas before you do poly reduction which seems to work for me.

sribatchha · July 2015

Thanks for the heads up on tools like Ultimate Unwrap 3d and Morph3d. I am definitely gonna try "Ultimate Unwrap 3d" today.
As far as re-rigging is concerned I think it can be resolved easily by transfering the rig and weights from an existing daz charcaters like G2F
using "Daz Transfer utility" tool.

larsmidnatt · July 2015

well transfering the rig is OK for clothes. Clothes still follow the base figures rules. However for characters...well it seems limts are no longer working properly and stuff like that. If you apply a pose that works for a daz figure to the optimized lower poly version it will not behave the same. This is assuming it was optimized externally. If you use decimator i hear the rigging works marvelously.

But from my experience with bringing back say an OBJ that is exactly the same as a stock daz figure, and then using transfer unitily many poses are butchered. Its' not an always issue, and I have found copying the pose from a daz figure to the new figure seems to work...but pose presets can act weird...because it's not something I have had to use for any real purpose I never explored to figure out the cause.

But the point is I would not assume a figure that uses the transfer utility will behave exactly the same as the original figure. The Daz decimator does not have this issue from what I can tell.

so do some simple experiments before going to far. a simple figure, use your method. try some extreme poses or animations. see what happens.

FurGamStudio · February 2016

Sorry to necro this topic.

I need lower poly versions of some models I picked up from DAZ store (DAZ Dragon 3). Decimator is an additional $100 (not included in my DS4.9 apparently).

Before I buy Decimator I just wanted to find out if I use decimator will it blow away any morphs applied to original DAZ product? I'm playing with the DAZ Dragon 3.