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Another dumb Genesis question: What is smoothing?

JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
edited December 1969 in Carrara Discussion

Sorry, I feel like this is probably going to be something obvious, especially as I think it was mentioned as a selling point for genesis, but what are the modeling level and rendering levels of smoothing I see on the Genesis 'actor' general tab? I just managed to crash 8.5 when I was fooling around with it and kicked the rendering level smoothing up to 5, and I'm not sure what it does

Comments

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,578
    edited December 1969

    It subdivides (known as SubD in most conversations) the model. At level '1', each single polygon becomes four. At level '2', each of those polygons get split into four, and so on.
    Along with that, some edges are marked as smooth, others creased. Algorithms are then used to generate the new mesh according to any SubD info stored with the mesh- or cage.

    Brief and simplistic answer... hope it helps explain why adding five hundred, thirty-seven bazillion polygons to your scene in less than a second made your memory chips grumpy ;)

  • araneldonaraneldon Posts: 712
    edited December 1969

    Subdivision surface

    I guess they just call it "smoothing" to avoid the scary nerdy words :P

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Thanks guys! I actually knew what subdivision was, just wasn't connecting it to smoothing. Lol, I instantly kicked it up to 5 on my laptop, while running Daz Studio and Poser and Thea Render in several other windows, plus browsing the web, I guess no wonder Carrara ground to a halt. I crashed it out because I thought it was stalled after a few minutes but now I'm thinking it may have just still been calculating. I rendered at smoothing level 4 with no problems though, but I'm guessing there's not much point in increasing it too much

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,988
    edited August 2013

    yep smoothing m4 makes my computer grumpy as well

    best thing to do is drop a vertex sphere in to vertex modeller, leave it as it comes with adding any more polys, then select a poly and click the smooth button and you will see some of the bumps smooth out,

    you'll find a few content props come in as bumpy

    and smoothing them really makes a better render - eg tea cups etc,

    most of the m4 k4 etc don't really need to be smoothed, don't know about genisus though

    Post edited by Headwax on
  • keshkesh Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    unless you are making a render of a closeup of some particularly curved bodyparts or some extreme posing/stretching on joints, you shouldn't need to go over 2 or 3. Most of the 'details' of genesis models are achieved through bumpmaps, normal maps (rarely) and displacement maps, so increasing poly numbers is in most cases useless.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,578
    edited December 1969

    Jonstark said:
    I crashed it out because I thought it was stalled after a few minutes but now I'm thinking it may have just still been calculating.
    Yup. She would have finished up after a while - but crashing her down is often what I do when I bind her thoughts too severely. I accidentally made my dynamic hair have nearly 1000 segments. Like I said, it was an accidental crank on the slider too far. Just didn't feel like waiting! lol

    You know... when I did my write-up on SubD, I was just making my answer more complete for other readers, now that I think of it. I somehow know already that you know... oh you know what I'm trying to say. Can't believe I'm still awake. Frickin' Head Wax and his awesome art. Just couldn't stop looking at the stuff! lol

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