Is there any format or workaround for exporting content with "HD" resolution?

nikolaus.mcnerney_51c2515bd3

I am interested in the potential of the new HD content, but I do all of my work in Maya. So I am concerned that I won't be able to take advantage of the added model resolution because of the apparent limitations in some of the export formats.

It is my understanding that these new HD models use morphs applied to the geometry at a higher subdivision level, and therefore provide greater detail to the actual geometry. This detail can theoretically be viewed in the viewport by making sure "resolution detail" is set to high and by turning up the subdivision level (I don't own any HD models, so I can't test it).

However, I don't seem to be able to export geometry with subdivisions in either of the primary formats that work with Maya.

I upgraded to 4.6.3.52 and used the generic Olympia model to run some tests. I tried exporting the model to waferont object (obj) using both the lowest subdivision level as well as the highest subdivision level and discovered that exporting to obj definitely respects the subdivision setting. At the base level I was getting ~21k polygons and at level 2 subdivision I was getting ~337k, which is, as expected, 16x as many polygons (or two steps of subdivision).

But if I try to use Collada or FBX the export no longer appears to honor the subdivion settings and Daz3D only exports the base geometry.

This is unfortunate because it limits me to importing HD models using only obj, which doesn't support skinning or morphs or really much of anything that both FBX and Collada can support. So I can't bring the models in already skinned to a skeleton or with selected blend morphs already applied.

Does anyone know anything about this? Or does anyone know a workaround to successfully export an HD model so that it contains the higher resolution geometry as well as all materials, skeletons, skin weights, and blend shapes, but in a format that Maya will work with??

Richard Haseltine

I'm not familiar with maya, beyond the "how-we-did-it" articles in 3D World, but could you export both the high-poly OBJ file, for the zero-posed shape, and the FBX or Collada, for the animation and then replace the geeomtry from the animation with the high-poly version in Maya? I got the impression this sort of thing was possible, but I don't know the details or whether it would work in that way.

nikolaus.mcnerney_51c2515bd3

I think what you are proposing is two exports, both an obj and collada, in a matching default pose, and then skinning the obj geometry to the skeleton imported from the collada file and then copying over the skin weights as well.

Which, you are correct, totally works. Although this method won't allow me to copy over blend shapes (morphs) to the high resolution model, since they are geometry dependent. Not that it matters, because I can't get high resolution morphs out of Daz3D anyway, since it simply won't export high resolution meshes in the collada/fbx format, which are the only format that will export morphs in the first place.

I suppose that means my options are:

1. HD model imported as an obj and therefore static (no skeleton & no morphs)
2. HD model imported as obj and then manually skinned/weighted with a matching low-res collada/fbx import (no morphs)
3. Standard model imported with intact skinning and morphs (no HD features/resolution)

I have also seen the export options for biovision (.bvh), universal 3d (.u3d), and mdd by animate2 (.mdd), but since Maya (at least my version) does not have native support for these formats I hadn't even looked for import plugins or whether any of those formats worked for exporting hd resolution meshes with intact skinning and morphs.

I guess I'll probably just have to wait on using the new HD models for the time being.

Thanks for the help.

Richard Haseltine

Could you not export the morphs as OBJ files, otherwise zeroed, and then apply them as Blend shapes? I know in modo i can load a morphed OBJ (with matching vertices) into a new layer and then create a morph from it, I would expect maya to be able to do that. Not something you'd want to keep doing, but I'd hope you could set up a figure to use as a base and then keep adding extra animation or morphs as needed.

nikolaus.mcnerney_51c2515bd3

Yea. That would totally work. Although, at that point, we're talking about a main geo export, a matching collada export to get the skeleton/skin weights, and then as many individual geo exports as I want morphs. Considering that the Genesis 2 models have a few hundred morphs, that is potentially a LOT of work. Even if I automated the import/setup end on Maya via script it would still be an order of magnitude more effort than if the FBX/Collada export simply supported exporting the higher resolution models.

I am really hoping that it is just a temporary issue and that the export will be changed, at some point, to respect the current display resolution (just like the obj export). The only reason I can think that it might not happen is because of potential file size issues. Because, currently, if I do an export with all the morphs intact for the FULL morph list I get file sizes between 1.5gb and 2.5gb. So I can imagine that a mesh with 16x the resolution would cause file sizes to potentially be as much as 16x larger, or between 24gb and 40gb in size.

...but I would still like the option to do so, even at the risk of potentially giant file sizes, because I can always just select which morphs I want to include or ignore through the export dialogue.

Thanks again for all your help.

Richard Haseltine

Well, I was assuming you'd export only the morphs you needed initially. But you could certainly make a feature request for an option to export the geometry at SubD resolution - use the Contact Us link under Help at the top of this page to file a Technical Support ticket and add DAZ Studio Feature Request to the subject line.