How to get fine displacement skin details on Genesis, dynamic SubD ?

bbaluchon

Hello all,

While being relatively new to this, I'm currently trying to find a way about fine displacement details on skin, and the current SubD engine is far too geometry heavy because it affects all the figure at once.

I'm working with custom characters for Genesis 3, wich got deep scars and naevus (beauty spot), and I found the geometry wasn't dense enough to efficiently use displacement mapping. I found the bump mapping visually disappointing, and wanted to get better use of displacement mapping (before figuring out Disp. SubD level is tied to entire figure SubD instead of being dynamic).

My goal is :

- Keep morphs and base figure working, for obvious reasons

- Add more geometry on small localized skin zones only (finger/elbows/knees joints, deep scars and naevus on the present case), to allow precise details for displacement map like creases and folds

- Avoid GPU getting overloaded by the SubD level of 4-5 on the entire figure, wich is not even enough to achieve precise enough results.

 

So what I did so far, and didnt work :

- Loaded custom Genesis 3 model with desired morphs and textures, and sent it to Hexagon 2.5

- Selecting polygons on localised zones (the ones wich receive scars and beauty spots displacement), then square-tessellated them at least twice.

- Send the model back to Daz Studio, before getting error message about morphs not working (because geometry changed). I got a white model (Hexagon for some reason correctly read textures, surface groups and so on, but refused to send back the figure with texture on).

- After some minutes trying to figure out that "update base geometry" and "add level of details" are not working either, tried the "tranfert utility", and managed to transfer the entire figure AND new geometry with "Replace source with target" option, and pretty much all other options checked.

- Now I got a posable model with all surface details on geometry as I planned, but ALL morphs are not working (despite being present on the final figure), and for some reason I appears I lost UVs in the process (despite option checked as well), leaving me with a white figure and unable to load preset materials from the library to the new figure. Entire figure correctly added detailed geometry to surface groups, without creating additional information, so it should be okay to work with textures and morphs ?

Is there a correct way to do this without losing informations in the process, or from my current state, a way to restore correct textures, and optionally working morphs (wich may be useful to correct some posing). And if I have to correct UVs, please explain precisely how to do this, provided I have near to zero experience in there ; I do know how to create different mapping but not how to warp them on the figure, and I'm not aware of the original UV mapping as well, so it could be tricky for me.
I also own Zbrush if it's more convenient than hexagon (tried it and Hex is awful working UVs).

Basically speaking, consider me as a total newbie, in auto-formation on both zbrush and Daz... ;)

 

Alternatively, if anybody know how to achieve dynamic SubD/displacement in Daz, I'm all ears... ^^ Maybe with geometry editor, a hidden parameter or something similar ?

Thanks for any help and/or information I certainly missed !

 

The end result with SubD 1, wich should achieve far better results with level 2-3 on the entire mesh, without adding too much polys :

Richard Haseltine

The editing in Hexagon removed the UVs. What exact settings did you have in Transfer Utility?

Could you not use a normal map to add the detail? It doesn't appear to be high relief.

bbaluchon

Thanks for the quick answer ;)

I barely see the point of the Daz > Hex > Daz bridge if UVs are cancelled in the process... Is not the point to adjust our figure geometry "on the fly", or just assist for props creation before texturing ?

Anyway, see attached the params I used, so far I remember them (didn't note them after so much struggling I was happy it worked, at least partially), and the latest test I got from using Graft attachment options, the 2 figures zeroed and base shape at 0 SubD, I still got imprecise results (gap between the two meshes), and still unable to texture the damn thing...

I tried recovering UVs from a "fresh" textured base figure exported in OBJ from DAZ, and it tells me "The UV base selected was invalid"... I supposed the modified geometry is inconciliable with the base one without reworking the UVs manually ?

bbaluchon

Besides, normal map is in place, as well as all other textures, at least the surfaces tab tell me all is there... without showing anything but white material, so I presume it's related to the no-UV problem.