This is what I was afraid of.
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This is what I was afraid of.
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I looked over the new premiere generation Genesis 8. I wish I could be filled with joy, after reading the features and improvements on the pro bundle, unfortunately it doesn’t meet my expectations.
That’s not to say I won’t buy it, but certainly not at the price its marketed at present, even despite the discounts and coupon savings. I just don’t see that much of a jump in capability, features and rigging. I would have thought they would have increased the poly count. I was hoping for a minimum of 30,000 polys.
I don’t see how posing has improved with a diminished poly count. The less polys the more stress on the topology when posing.
The only way I will buy the pro bundle if the total with taxes comes just under $30.00.
I think to date Genesis 3 by far the superior product line. That’s where money will go filling out my Genesis 2 and 3 content.
But I WANT the ability to craft my own HD morphs. Always have. I think it sucks DAZ won't let the public have it.
Again, you would learn how to use normal maps for detail, there's not much difference in the result and for a hobbyist, this is by far the easiest solution. There is no "hi res" mesh. Also you do most of your work with the low poly mesh, so you are working with the same mesh PAs use for content, the difference is you would use normal maps for details.
Actually Genesis 8 and Genesis 3 would have the same topology. The difference is the removal of the eyelash and the eye geometry simplication. So you should be seeing the same bends, except G8 would have the jcms for the muscle moves.
Well, technically, G8 is free....
I would think the main issue is that they would be done incorrectly, which is evident in the responses of people thinking that there is a hidden high poly mesh somewhere. For an end user, low poly sculpting and a normal map will get you a very close result. HD requires more steps.
This is excellent work, but I'm unclear how you get the HD details on them once you do the low poly work. When I worked on G2 meshes, I was disappointed at how low density the mesh was because there simply wasn't enough geometry to export back into DS. Would you show the base models as imported into DS minus the normal maps, if that's how you're getting the detail?
Well, I can make do without HD. All I do is play with my 3d toys. If I get around to making a render, no one is ever going to buy it. Hell, if I post it its unlikely to get a like or a comment anyway. No one cares about my "art" but me. I buy stuff because I like it. I make characters because I like doing it. I am sad because I remember when I was broke and drooling over stuff years and years ago. More people were doing this as a hobby than seem to be now. My daughter draws Japanese style cartoons and wants to do cheap commisions as a hobby. I have bought cute things to try and lure her into 3d but she says it takes too long to do a render and she is free to draw anything in about two hours max. Oh, yeah and people think that is so cool and they will pay her to draw up something for them way before I make a dime with this. I like my toys, but I know they are toys in my hands nothing more. To be honest I was so happy that I had the cash to buy all this stuff so I could be part of a community and post and have a gallery. You know things you can't do if you come by your files dishonestly. I am happy I get to support the artists I like by buying their products. But I really can't say the community thing panned out for me. I like being alone. I rarely am alone, but I crave it. I have plenty of stuff and I don't need or want to start over with V8. That free Genesis 8 shell isn't even tempting to me now because I can fit long dresses and even many heels to the genesis stuff I already have. The picture I have liked best was using V4 and an old commercial character.
It is cheesy to withhold the HD tool. It just is. I am going to show my love by not buying any HD anything. I am going to show even more love by not buying V8 anything for a very long time, two years atleast, if at all. Not just over the HD but because I am sick to death of the 2 year upgrade thing and that is reason enough in itself. And I am staying off the forums. I have plenty of other stuff to do. For what its worth, I really think its wrong to pick and choose who gets to have tools. But its just what I think and it won't matter anyway.
For end users, you would create a normal map from a subdivided version of your low poly sculpt. This video shows how to do it in zbrush:
https://youtu.be/jikN3dPlUts
In zbrush i used dynamic subdivision to sculpt the meshes. I also used projection to project the HD details onto the low poly mesh. You can also exaggerate the morphs by making deeper cuts in mesh to get the detail, as subdivision smoothes the mesh as it adds polygons.
If you're just using her as a base for an illustration then yeah, I can see why you'd skip her. I think she will really shine with people working on creating as much realism as possible -like nearly photo-realistic renders. I see a definite improvement in the limb bends, the skin, the eyes, and most notably the expressions. The skin on the face, the nose, the skin around the eyes, ect all move with the expression. It's definitey a step forward in getting closer to photo-realism.
I agree. It also makes it harder for people who might want to become PAs but don't have a high poly mesh to work with to submit their morphs to the Daz people.
I'm sounding like a broken record. You have to start with leaning low poly meshes because there is NO high poly mesh. The result is the same as making a normal map. Has anyone even tried that before posting?
Also if you're going to be a PA, you're going to show the review team a low poly sculpt with a normal map to get access to the HD tool, so you'd better learn how to sculpt in LD first.
Yeah, I've been trying to work with the mesh all day. I must be doing stuff wrong though. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE V8 - she's a great step forward in added realism. I'm just having trouble creating morphs.
It's not going to be any different than making a G3 morph.. or a G2 or G1 morph for that matter. For those that are used to having 70K-200K to make a morph, you're going to need practice. For those people it's a shift in how you do things. But it's a shift you can't get around, because HD doesn't start with sculpting on a high poly mesh.
Well, there is one simple HD morph I've been wanting to make but can't. Its for fanart, so it isn't a marketable product. I get that DAZ wants to restrict access to certain tools to vendors, but at the same time, I do feel that many of us could make our own stuff and quite easily, if we were allowed to. I've enjoyed my experiences with 3d modeling but I would like to be able to do some stuff on my own without being hamstrung.
You can do it:
1) Export Base to Blender or whatever.
2) Subdivide visually (but not permanently real subdivisions) and sculpt the HD morph you want.
3) Create the Normals from that Step 2
4) Create the updated texture and map set
5) Undo the (visual) subdivide and export the Base with your new morph
6) Import the morph to DAZ also with the normals and updated textures and make the DAZ presets and such.
Or at least that's what i think Mal3-Media has said to do...
Really normals (and HD) are the extra details on the genesis mesh. Each path requires a different set of steps and making a normal map is way easier. The problem is no one wants to try to make a normal map and instead posts about wanting a tool that requires them to make the same thing that you would need for a normal map. Why should DAZ release a tool that people are refusing to learn how to properly use?
Huh? The G8 expressions are far superior to anything G3 had. Have you not looked at the model?
I've tried making normal maps and didn't care for the results. I don't think people are refusing to properly use it I just think it is difficult to get the hang of it. I certainly wasn't very intuitive when I tried it.
Actually, not true at all. The lower the poly count, the better the mesh will deform. Don't know where you go that idea, but it goes against years of low poly workflow in every industry.
So does this DAZ HD tool we hear of really just consist of smeone making a proper normal map of fake HD details and some DAZ tools automates the normal extraction from that and translates it directly to the mesh as an HD morph?
Thanks I may try it again someday but it wasnt working well for me and moved on to different projects
LOL The same old HD argument gets spun again and again... HD is nice, but definitely not a necessity
I'm not arguing for HD as my interest lies mostly in cartoon styles like Girl 7 & Guy 7. I was asking out of curiosity.
@Male-M3dia I totally understand you point of view, that you first need to make a low-poly mesh, with nice topology, before you go to HD morphs, but you seem to totally misunderstand ours. There was a good example earlier in the thread, the nipples. You have 20 polygons to work with, and you can't really move the vertices that much, because that would destroy UV maps and textures would look awful. How do you fix that with low-poly sculpting and normal maps? Yes, you can fake it with normal maps to a degree, but the closer you zoom, the more obvious it gets, that you don't have enough polys there. To date, none of the PAs that have access to HD morphs have bothered to create natural nipples, so that's why we need to be able to do it ourselves.
EDIT: Actually I started to think, and maybe geograft could be used for those parts, where we need more polys. I really don't know anyrthing about geografts, but I assume you can kind of cut away part of the area and replace it with your own mesh...Am I on the right track? Could that be answer to our problems with low poly areas? Of course that would need it's own textures and stuff, so lots of extra work, but it's doable, right?
How close a zoom are we talking about? Also, have you checked a certain other site? :-)
Yeah, I don't know what he's talking about either. It's like complaining a box only has 6 sides. Base models use subdivision surfaces, so they are suppose to be low poly.
I'm going to have to say that's not universally true. A normal map will not change the silohette of a mesh, but an HD morph will. This wouldn't be super noticeable on a human character, and even some more extreme morphs, but there are times when you can use HD geometry to create changes to the shape where the illusionary effects of a normal map fall short.
In the two attached images, the creature on the left uses an HD morph while the creature on the right is genesis at base resolution with a normal map. The turtle's extreme scales are a good example of what an HD morph can do for the silohette. But at the same time, It seems a simple normal map captured superior detail in the mole rats wrinkles, and for the most part, in both cases, when the eye wanders away from the silohette and onto details that don't effect the outline of the figure, one can hardly tell the difference.
That is true, gaming meshes these days can be immensly complex in terms of guarnments worn and guns used etc. I have heard about polycounts in exces of 200.000 But the basic male or female mesh is a lot lighter of course. But I don't do morphs as much these days, I rather use a combination of displacement (in iRay, and that works more or less) and normal maps for detail. Much more control much lighter to build and render.
BTW, for those that don't own ZBrush, there is a program called Scuptris also from Pixologic that is free an can also do the job, and ZBrush Core, which is about 150 greenbacks and can replace ZBrush for most of the work. Personally I don't use them at all since I use Blender and that has a more then addequate Sculpt mode, so why bother.
Greets, Artisan
Heh, of course I have
... and there is some morph kits, but those are not HD morphs as far as I know. They just move those few vertices around, and that results in stretched textures pretty quickly. But back to the question. I hope you understood that my point really was, that not every problem can be solved with low-poly sculpting and normal/bump maps. I used nipples for an example, since it was already mentioned in the thread, and Male-M3dia did not respond to that. For example this same problem comes with wrinkles, scars etc., so you could say high definition image from a portrait range of a human face is already a problematic. Normal maps are just not enough, if you aim for photorealism. I understand why some PAs want to keep this HD morph privilege to themselves, so they have an edge over hobbyists, but I really don't understand why any normal user would be against it. If they don't want to use those extra features themselves, that's fine. You can happily keep your low-poly mesh, but those that like to improve it are still able to do it. So fight the powe...ehm, give us HD morphs 