my current feedback on overal daz products after some test
Ellessarr
Posts: 1,395
ok after taking some days testing daz products into unreal engine here my toughts on what i liked and what i hated and which would love to see improviment:
good things
1 - morphs import - the most amazing thing daz can give for sure, it's really amazing how is easy export morphs and being able to use them inside unreal you can easy make a character customization system with it, it's really amazing no complains here for this part only really amazing
2 - character base poly count, daz characters really looks like one of the best base model, even being around 16k the naked model it's still much better than many others "characters creators", like CC or fuse or any other, i really love how the character look very round and hardly you can find any "seam/sharp" due to low poly, the body is really amazing, would be better if they could go a little further like it was in the past with generation 1 and 2 and have characters around 18k to 20k polygons to even better shape and details that could be really good.
now what i really hated and wanting get improved and is what making me for now give up in using daz
1 - as i told in another post, the "texture/material export in daz is really horrible, when exporting a character to others places like unreal you only get the "base/diffuse" texture and in few cases like hair the alpha to make the opacity, it's really bad all the others important maps like normal, roougness, metalical and ambient occlusion don't come (ofcourse i know which not all products does come with that maps but at last i know which they come with a normal or bumb map and), they are inside the product in many cases but the export option just don't grabe then too and you need go to a process who sometimes can be very troublesome to find then in the right fodder, it really do need some improviment in the export system
2 - i think probably is the worst problem of daz and a really big let down the bones structure, it can be really the worst problem from daz, while i can't talk for unity, for sure i can talk for a unreal user, the bones structure names is a big nightmare, first the root bone is named after the type of character, for unreal while not totally obrigatory and he can still read that bone, still important to have it named "root" for any model, this is the minor issue and can be ignored, the real pain come when you have "addons" or hairs or cloths with they own "bones", because many of the have the "same bone name structure, like you have the genesis 8 base model then he have the basic: hib, pelvis and bla bla bla and it's fine but why all the others things also does have bones with that exactly name???, this is a big nightmare for unreal, because unreal work with "unique names bones", any duplicated name bone will not be loaded in unreal and after look into it how to solve i ended finding which you "really can't solve this", because if you try to rename the bones, they stop to work, then make impossible to use any cloth or addon like wings which have they own bones structure because they do have "duplicated bones" even the same base hib, pelvis name bones from the base body, i'v tried to load some cloths and addons like demon wings and tails or some cloth with they own bones and man it really don't worked no matter what i tried, it just don't worked then i ended getting full frustrated over it and now i'm really thinking in give up using daz since for unreal engine it in some aspects can be even worst than CC from iclone which already is alone terrible to work with unreal.
now i'm really conflicted cuz i really wanted to use daz in my projects but with all that bugs it get's hard to work in my game project ( a fantasy game) because i do need some "fantasy creatures" but the daz limitations make impossilbe to use then, it's really frustrating.
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Well considering the assets sold here are made primarily to work in Daz Studio first and foremost,there are bound to be issues using them in other apps.
I messed up XD
ofcourse, that is why told which from a just "daz and rendering point of view" everything is perfect and happy ever, you have a awesome program and awesome assets, but the moment you try to use it "outside" daz which was supposed to be one of the selling points otherwise the "interactive license could be pointless and it being a daz only work, but since it is not like that it "does need some improviments, a good exemple is CC from real illusion they suffer the same problem, they asses where originally to be a "iclone one" but they started to support game develop and while it still "very bad" with a lot of bugs and issues, they at last are trying to give support and improve it, they are really trying to push for it, while here, after following it for more than one year i really don't see any real improviment and they just keep using the samethings over and over, they need to take some of the money they are getting and work a little to improve the "off daz" support otherwise if everything here is "just for daz" then remove the pretty bad third party support and just stick with working inside daz and remove the interactive license because she exist for it, peoples being able to work with daz assets outside daz specially in game design and it is really being a little bad, because of the lack of improviments on where it's "lacking" like i told, it does have really some awesome things like the very good base model and even a working export to unreal(while it's poor due to lack of maps still better than even cc where you get all maps but for some reason they work like a nightmare and you need to work a lot on the material to fix all the mess, here the only mess is the lack of maps, but at last the base difuse and opacity wok really fine), without count the morph export which is really top ahead any other character creator, due to the awesome morphs.
if they focus on improve how to proper export maps and how the bones on addons are attached it can be a really amazing tool and be on top of any other tool, they just need to work on tha.
Might be helpful: only aspect I find a pain is the eyes. G8F exports and imports almost perfectly, minor tweaking required, but then ANYTHING outside of unreal will require minor tweaking when imported.
There is a reference to renaming the bones within Studio BEFORE exporting for Unreal. Make a copy of the character first and use that (will destroy the copy as far as DAZ is concerned.
There is also a series of (questionable,) tutorials on how to get G3F from daz into Unreal, (G8F works the same way,) It also talks about how to get clothing into Unreal as secondary objects, so character can wear different items.
(not the series of tuts I am thinking of, but a good start:)
hmm thanks, another problem for me with daz is the "poly count if cloths hairs and now even "eyebrows, while few "cloths are "very game friendly the majority no, many can easy go above 100k going even around 200k to 500k, while decimator can help a little some armors/cloths are impossible to "reduce due to the too high ammount of polygons making it goes broke in the animations if you cut then too much.
if not ask too much you could send a link for that others tutorials if not here by PM??
hairs also are a nightmare, the only usable hairs in general are from genesis 2 and under(V/M 4 and genesis 1 overal are the best) few genesis 3 are good and even more few from genesis 8 "can be view as "good", but overal many of then have a huge amount and in some cases going around a insane number like 500k+.
and now with the new "fibermesh" it's just getting worst which now we have "eyebrows fibermesh" which again crazy in the poly count some eyebrows can easy go around 500k to 600k
and talking about "eyebrows" this is another thing which i feel annoyoned, most of the eyebrows are direct painted in the base skin, while for a simple character is not a big deal for a character customization it ca be really bad, i would love to have all of the characters "shaved" and having things like beards, eyebrows, mustaches and body hairs "being a layer(the last one does have a painted layer for body hair for genesis 8 which is very good), specially now which we are moving to fibermesh and all the base skins are coming without a "painted brow" then would be good if instead of "full removed that paint" it could come as a layer like in victoria 8, she come with 3 options: painted, layered and fibermesh, then it would be cool to remove the direct painted and all being just layers and fibermesh for the user choose what he feels is better and keep things good for game develop.
The series of tutorials I am talking about are put out by a game developer. He is actually the asset coordinator for the company, did all the calculations and came up with the fact that there is actually no significant gain in any other product OVER the use of G3F. Then goes into a 15 minute schpeal about the numbers he looked at and why...
Anyway, just putting it out there, been working on getting G8F into unreal for a while now, just to see if it can be done and what I would have to do to get her fully functional as a player character within an open world.
interesting, really interesting i would really love to see that serie, well for the only thing missing to make daz the most perfect program to use for game excluding all the "too high poly assets" in many cases, is the fact which unreal don't support the "daz system to correct bone deforms(you need a mod which make unreal support dual quartening), for what i read in the past unreal supported it but they drppped later "which is sad, if they had not dropped it could make daz the best program ever because it have one of the best base model character with really awesome textures, the only issue is the lack of "normal maps" in many cases but you can really create amazing character with daz, again the problem come to cloths, hair and body/face hair which nowadays in many cases are almost impossible to use, due to the extreme high poly count, but overal i really like it much more than for exemple illusions character creator, currently i'm totally regreted which i had bought CC3 from real illusion the only good thing is the "low" poly count cloths and better "exporting of maps(base, normal, and others) which is another weak point for daz, but overal the "porh export and others possibilities make it a really top program, the only problem is really the lack of focus in game develop and only render(which is the reason they going into the ultra high poly count).
Okay, I have to find the videos.
I'm serious when I say this guy is working with Studio specific content and has a running Unreal game up and working. He goes into explaining the multi-user purchase even and what that means to the importing of DAZ Studio content for multi-player game content.
And found: Utube for FrankieV, he has quite a few "Blob" type videos that are full of information on how to do exactly what you are asking. Be forewarned, he is VERY long winded, and often goes off subject. (it's a blog" not really a tutorial, so give him some leeway.) this is one of his blogs, which talks about pulling in G3F character and how to work with the bones. (yes a pain, but do it once and SAVE IT. :) won't have to do it again. DAZ doesn't care what the bones are named, so you can actually continue working with your "modified" character.
And actually the Morphs can be imported as well. No conversion needed. (a different Tutorial series.)
Just pay attention to the EUL, and the DAZ Content vs DAZ Comunity content.
FrankieV Theory Character Developer blog Intro 1-5 Part1
P.S. - Define "too high a poly count" Unreal does iRay rendering on the fly, most graphics cards (game worthy,) can handle multi-player environments with photrealistic quality or close to it, Cable companies provide up to and over a Gig/sec of data tranfer rates. Yes you want to keep your poly count in the lower ranges as best as possible, but I honestly believe the "lower poly count" cry is an archaic one from the days when "Great internet connection" was a V40 Modem over a virtual network.
That's just me talking there, I run a system with a MSI GeForce GT 730, yes 730. my drivers get updated only because nVidia makes backward compatible drivers, and I play MMORPG's for the most part, my Internet is AT&T business class (freaking dialup I swear it is, but it's all I can get here.) In some games I top refresh rate is 10Frames per second, and yes I notice the chopiness, but the game is STILL Playable. (Black Desert Online is my latest binge game and I have the graphics set to max quality.)
Take a look again at that first video. ALL the characters on screen during that tutorial are fully functioning and textured characters, imported from DAZ Studio. ALL of them, there are what 100-200 on screen in any one direction he is running around in? So I say "too high a poly count" is now a way to define extra polys that are not needed, (a box only needs 4 sides (faces/polys), not 8 or 20, If the box stays a box; however if the box becomes a character, then by almeans use a poly count that makes the character move teh way it needs to, and can be textured per the game criteria. More is just a waste of time and effort, not really anything against some magical poly count.
Sorry, getting off my soapbox :) Enjoy the tuts
i means a full clothed character, for exemple the current G8 base character is around 16k quad which translate to 32k, tris which is a really low number and no problem, you can have hundreds of then in the screen, the problem comes when you start to add the "extras" like hair and cloths, for me a "regular character "don't matter if npc or player is fine being around 80k to 160k quadri which is itself already a very good number for details, having again hundred of npcs around that is when things start to get a little complicated, the problem is which nowadays daz products a single character can easy go around 1 (yea one) million polyugons, when you add cloths, hairs and fibermesh extras, which again alone is insane for a single character, you must take in account which the world is not just the "npcs" you also have the "world" and if you want to make let's say a big "open world", then having characters which "millions of polygons" is not what you must want, because you must remember which when making games, you must becarefull with the ammount of "budget"(not money but let's say polygons count) you can have to work, because "the more polygons you add the better will be the machine to "render" it, specially if is a open world, if you are running a game with few npcs around and "level based with a small area to walk then you can really go a little crazy in the poly count for character like having characters around 200k, more than that maybe big bosses and thing slike that but for what i get is which for a boss you can go around 500k, but again it's only a single character not almost every character.
yeah the "too high is about "not needed extra polygons, the thing is for exemple look at this guy work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rw14OzD69s0
this character look beatfull and awesome as any daz character but look at her poly count, around 42k quad and 80k tris, to achieve the same with daz characters is almost impossible because many cloths here are too high, being too high is because you have too many not really needed details like for the game i don't need which each strand of the hair to be a full rigged piece of polygon, or each buttom of the shirt to be a full detailed "object", if you can achieve that using some tricks and use that "extra polygons for the scene and things like that.
when making a game is important to have taking in account your poly budget to know where you can go high or low and not just place each ultra high detailed piece in your game just because you "want realism" or you can ending runing a game where the only thing will exist will be that character because it's the only thing the engine and the game can handle because he already around the "billions" poly count you where planing for your full game.
A typical G3 or G8 body has around 18k vertices, and 18k faces...since daz bodies have quad faces that comes out to 36k tris. Thats only the body...as in no clothes or hair or anything else. I downloaded a Black Desert Online Witch model with one of the default/starter outfits and it has about 50k tris. I dont know what LOD it was but most model extractors use the highest LOD model when they extract models since the stuff will most likely be used for machinimas, 3d smut or whatever...same purpose as Daz models basically. So assuming my guess is correct and that BDO model of a clothed witch is the highest LOD then it only has slightly more tris than a nude daz G3 or G8 daz body and of those models used in that first UE video you linked. And its only "slightly" more when compared to how many tris a fully clothed daz model can get up to. I'm working on something right now with a G8F and all Daz clothes and assets and altogether it has about 900k verts and 588k faces. I looked over it all and most of it is in quads so broken up into tris that almost 1.2million tris. I even zoomed in on the hair and pubes and even those are in quads so the tri count is 1.2mil and not lower since EVERY face would have to be converted to a tri (for better game performance). So lets see 100 copies of my CLOTHED character and put it in UE like how that guy has them in the first video and lets see how it runs then :P
Of course none of what i said matters since technically speaking Daz models arent supposed to be used for games and mods anyways, just for picture renders and animations. So we cant really complain about how a Daz model is too high poly for something it was not intended to be used for.
while i agree with you, we must also take in account which that "clothed character from BDO, they are "optimized" which means they body for better customization are "cut" to pieces, which means which when adding a "cloth" to that character let's say a "t-shirt" the "skin under the skirt mesh will be deleted and only exported the "skirt not only to reduce poly count but also to avoid the skin pocketing throught the cloths, many game dev like to do that because it's reduce a lot the poly count and help with the problem of weight influence, then a "real full clothed BDO character with a full skin behind the cloth could be much more if they don't cut the skin mesh under the cloths
here some exemple:
even when they are not "customizable" they still cut off the skin under the cloths not only to reduce the poly count but also because the influence weight skin again to avoid issues of the body pocking of from the cloths, for exemple a full clothed old paragon character(from epic) normally is around 60k to 100k tris. which still even if you manage to take off "cloths" could still be around the same of a naked daz character, the real big problem with using daz characters is really when come to the "extras" which as you told they normally are not "directed to a "game market" but to a render market where you can much more wild than the game market.
Yes i know all that...that was kind of the point of me making that comparison of a BDO body to a Daz body. To show that a BDO model is optimized for gaming. Interior surfaces aren't modeled, covered body parts arent modeled and so on. The video with 100 daz vampires doesnt really prove that daz models are fine for gaming. It only proves that naked daz models are comparable to purpose built game models that are clothed. Daz models have no set standard and they are not optimized for gaming because they arent even supposed to be used for that. People are ok with a fully clothed body having poly counts in the hundreds of thousands or even millions because they are fine with setting their PC to render a picture for one month.
actually they are modeled, you need a "half-naked body too, for when the character is "on his undies", that is why the character customization can be big pain in the ass, because for a single character, you need multiple variations of him, like a full naked body, only a naked torso, only naked lower body, head and bla bla bla, what is matter is "how much skin you are planning to allow being see, it's really a annoying work to do, that is why in some cases if you are not gonna to have "too much characters active some indies would prefer to just put the cloth as a addon without optmize the body, which make the character have more polygons but is much more fast.
DAZ does have tools which allow you to "delete the hidden mesh if needed, but the problem for sure is really the cloths and hairs.
That is why i've ben testing with daz about what is good and bad and overal the better hairs to be usable for games are in general the ones found in genesis 2 and under, some really few genesis 3 and 8, you also would need to use a lot decimator ou work by yourself to remove the extra faces in programs like maya and blender.
Another note, while indeed unreal "work with tris" and not squares, its aways recomended to export characters in square faces rater than tris and allow the unreal do the conversion itself, send a already converted to tri character is not good for what i get.
you also must take in account what type of game you are planning to make, like mmorpgs games which normally have thousand or hundred or million of characters players or npc active is not really good to have "a too high poly count character, but for games more like "single player" where you can have a better control in the "in game population then can be fine having characters like around 100k squares, if i'm not wrong final fantasy 15 characters where made around 120k squares(around 240k tris) the hair itself too like around 20k polygons, this for a game from 2016.
Again what is matter is the "type of game you are planning and the "plataform you are work, if just for pc and you are aimming for "high end machines" then you can go a little crazy, but if it's for consoles like xbox, playstation then while you can be a little agressive it's not the same as pc, or if you are aiming for mobiles then you indeed need to hold a lot.
I was lookng into that in the unreal forums and overal for exemple i read which most of the "market characters" are a lot too low poly" compared with characters made for "triple A games", because most of them are made to be the most "compatible possible with many plataforms as possible, but if you are aimming for a triple A game then you can really go high or use the characters from here, which while they are not optmized for 'low ending or mobiles" they for sure can work for current generation consoles and pcs, again i'm talking about naked, the real problem come to the cloths, which you really, really need to look a lot around to find "good cloths to be usable for games which is the real issue", or the hairs, but many of them are still pretty usable using the "right cloths" and how to proper fixe the "extra poly issue", many cases they are pretty doable.but the problem is which you really need to take a really good search but you can make a very good usable character for game from DAZ, if you are not aimming for mobiles games and even for mobiles, you can still use daz characters if it's a "2D" game using just the render of the character, then you can even use a full million polygons character, but overal i still agree who DAZ overal and specially now in the "G8" generation DAZ become a lot less "game dev friend than it was in the past".
And in another of FrankieV's tuts, he talks about how to optimize clothing and characters for different clothing sets. From loincloth to full armor. I believe in that video he takes the head off one character and put's it on another, same with legs. In his "developer" live version of the game.
I only mentioned the tut's because they "looked" like they were talking about doing exactly what you are/were trying to do, which is more or less what I was trying to do. I stopped because it was taking time away from other projects, not because the information wasn't useful.