HD characters question
hello guys i do have a question toward HD characters, for usage outside daz, ok my question is if hD characters like this one:
https://www.daz3d.com/orc-hd-for-genesis-8-male
can only be used inside DAZ or you can export then to others places like maya or unreal, what exactly can be lost if i try to export them.
Another question is if they aways are in High Defintion (more than base poly) or i can set the to base and still have the character???
how exactly they work???
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Its possible but a lot of work, I never have done it myself I just use the base mesh, in Unreal that is, you need licenses for games too for every character and clothing hair etc used, I have only done it for rendering purposes
https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Daz_Studio_To_UE4_(Tutorial)_Part_1
yeah i know about the license part, my only current problem is really the "HD" part, what make then different from the "non HD" outside DAZ, what really means that "HD" and if it can be used outside DAZ, or is only exclusive for DAZ.
and to be fair, if the problem is just the "HD" details of high polygon, it can be done by baking the normal, using the high poly into the low poly, it's not something hard to fix, add the hd details to the character.
the HD specific can only be used in Daz Studio since it is a feature of Daz Studio and not just a higher def mesh.
Not entirely true, an obj export of it can be used in another program that supports subdivision morphs
Carrara just got a HD plugin that does this and the link I supplied says how to do it in Unreal
I read that this specific HD tech is limited to only DS and while other apps have ways to deal with HD, it isn't the same as what DS uses, then again I don't spend all my time trying to make things work outside of Daz Studio. I tried getting it to work a few times in 3DSMax, but never got good results
Off topic but this is the result in Carrara, pity my animations on Genesis 3 & 8 suck extra eggs
i'm asking that because i'm was thinking in buy that orc character, because i don't like too much the rawart version which looks "too fat" for me, this one look more proper muscle, then i'm planing in buy this orc and rawart female orc, which look very good in her proportions.
after see that tutorial i do feel it is a a bit outdated, whenever i'm exporting a character to unreal i really don't need to do all that work, all i do is just export it to unreal and proper retarget the bones for the animation and all work fine, no real issues.
you can easy find some "easy tutorial to export characters to unreal in youtube which work perfect for game and even to export "morphs" to be used in game, it's not really a big deal.
my concern to hd is more if it would lose all his shape, or if gonna still looks almost like what we see in the pictures, i don't care if some "minor details" disappear it's not really a big deal, if he still looks like a orc and texture and normal maps can help things ok, it's just about exporting him to outside daz he gonna still being what he looks like (a badass bulk orc)
here a fast test i did using a "normal human HD character in this case using rana for kala
https://www.daz3d.com/rana-hd-for-kala-8
here her render from daz:
now inside unreal engine
while the render from daz look a little beter (due to some not proper material and ilumination configuration in unreal), in general both characters looks like the same in both images.
if the character in general does still looks the same when exporting to outside daz then it's fine to use him outside daz, if the only loss will be some smail details like "some veins here and there" then no big deal, in some cases i't can be fixed using a normal map.
It depends how extreme the character is, a lot of the DAZ HD is indeed small details likes pores and wrinkles some like that disrupter alien in my Carrara video have lots of HD sculpting and yes I retarget for Unreal much simpler too as as said I never tried bringing the HD over but it is possible.
another thing which i do noticed is which in general you can only export in fbx is the base 16k, the high definition mesh is not exported it aways exported as base, have anyway to export it as fbx or you must go to the whole process to export as obj and reskin and all that work?
Well as I said I have not done it in Unreal but FBX is always just base resolution, you add subdivision in your target application and then use the obj as a morph target, blendshape whatever in that.
Export the SubD-ed figure in object format then import into a program that can bake it to normal maps.
yeah this is what i'm planning to do with more detailed characters, just bake into the normal must help with the "minor details". then next month i will give a try on the orc and see the result if things work fine then i will keep it otherwise just refund it as i did with anything which not proper worked in the past, i'm also planing in maybe in the future make a proper tutorial for peoples coming here looking for asset for games like me to help then, but i still need test more products and some more work to see what is good or bad to use.
For now my only sure about what is no doubt terrible is the "annoying new fibermesh" that for sure will take a really, really long time(maybe in 20 or 15 more years at best) for it to be viable even for render i feel it's really over kill, just a eyebrows is around 48k polygons which means 3x the character mesh and almost the same of the high definition, whenever i load a character with fibermesh eyebrows it started to slow down the program and my pc.
i tried to do a test loading the most heavy character(with high poly cloths, fibermesh eyebrow, hair and beard)the most heavy scene i had and men it just keep crashing the daz, it could not handle that insane ammount of polygons and materials, it was too heavy for daz, that is why i really can't understand why they are going for it when even the daz itself can't handle it.
my pc spec is a I7 7700k, 16 giga ran, video card gtx 1070, while i can understood the desire to go "realistic" still don't look good when that realistic can give a huge weight in the machine and the program.
While lead to another thing which i also noticed which is the "lack of normal maps", many of the products don't have a normal map, the most close to it is the bump map, because of the "HD" side most of the artists looks like don't like to use normal map for details, which for me is really weird when normal maps can actually be really pretty good, specially if is just for a render, unless you are making a "close up" for the render to show the detail (like a render close-up for eyebrow or hair), you can really make amazing good look characters without need to go wild in the poly count just using all the proper textures take this guy as exemple:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5vyIQf97B4
he is really a amazing artits for "game" he can make really amazing look characters with really low poly count, compared with the products here, i really love his works, this show which you can get almost the same results using a low poly count with a proper use of textures/materials.
As away let's make clear which i'm not trying to really "bad mouth or attack or something like that" the artists here because i also do have many artists here which i do love and respect, it's just which i do feel in my and my only opnion which you really dont need to go sooo high when you have tools which can help you to achieve almost the same result with much less polygons and making less burden on the pc and daz itself, at last that was my experience trying to work with too much polygons inside daz.
anyway i will wait until next month while my pockets are recovering from my almost adiction here, man i really, really need to learn to hold me back more here, this place is a really dangerous place for pockets!!!!.
The reason you don't see a normal map always is because that is a game design tool, not a render tool. It is used to "fake" detail when you can't use actual mesh because actual mesh would impact performance in the game engine. Developing for a game and developing for rendering are two seperate mindsets with 2 seperate outcomes and most PAs here probably don't even think about the game aspect when developing since their target is Daz Studio. I used to co run a commercial addon site for SIMS2 and when I started modeling in this community I had to change some of the ways I worked to better fit with how things work in poser and DS. I actually prefer this kind of modeling over modeling for games since you have more freedom and can be more creative. When I was developing for MS simulation titles, you had very strict guidelines you had to follow in the SDK so that your model didn't bog down performance, which made sense, but it kinda stiffled your creativity a bit. Granted there are some addons for DS that are a bit resource heavy for average users, but there are tools to get them to work or a money back offer if needed.
Personally I love fibermesh and use it as much as possible
I use game models often in my renders, but I have to subdivide them quite a bit to get them to look half way decent and you can forget about closeups.
interesting and i can understand it
nowadays, when modeling, for game if for AAA quality you can actually have a character between 80k and 200k(average npc and enemies can go between 60 and 120k with big bosses being around 400 to even 500k if needed, for player characters can be around 100 to 200k), polycount, based on the number of character and also the "LOD", which also help a lot in the poly count, the problem is really things like the fibermesh and even many hairs which alone can count for that 100 to 500k poly count, which is something which i feel weird, you have a base character around like 16k to 64k poly count but in many cases he is just like 5% or 10% of the total poly count of the render with cloths and nowadays hair and beards and eyebrows and even start to come to eyelashs", being like 60 to 90% of the total poly count.
For me while fibermesh to give a high level of realism can really be cool, at last for, it's only really cool for a "close-up", if you make a render like let's say that:
it's really don't matter even if it's a 4k or 8k render, but as you told for average users it can be a lot resource heavy as myself already experienced many times, by just trying to load a character with that things is enough to crash my daz not even talk about "game" just even daz can't hold proper that heavy things, then sometimes i imagine how much time must take to make this render, like days???.
for close-ups really fibermesh can be really awesome and important but when you are making not so "close-up" renders" it's not really that a big deal, i must have, at last for what i could see in a lot of images from non fibermeshe compared with fibermesh, you really only gonna see the real difference if you close up enough for then to be visible.
I've aways advocace a lot for "creativity" and freedom in my posts" but i'm also about the "caution", too at last for me is not just because freeomd which youl can go and make a 1 billion polygon character just because is more easy and freedom is important to have some "balance" too and while is important to evolve more and more the tehcnology is also important to remember which you can't have the most top not program/addon, most cool, perfect and bla bla bla but you can't use it because no computer will or progran will be able to run it, due to being tooooooooo overkill.