Hierarchical Materials Presets and G9

Sevrin

It's important that outfits using hierarchical materials presets be labeled as such.  Even though most garments autofit G9 fine, hierarchical materials won't work.  You'd need to load a G8, fit the clothes to that, change materials, and then fit the clothing to G9 again.  For some users, that can add a long wait.

Some outfits, like dForce Yuna Style Outfit for Genesis 8 Females, the latest one I came across, uses hierarchical materials, but that's not indicated on the product page.  In the case of this outfit, it wasn't even a matter of changing materials for the outfit at once.  Even the skirt with only 3 simple material zones has hierarchical materials.

zombietaggerung

And this is why Hierarchical Materials need to die in a fire.

Catherine3678ab

I don't like them either.

Will have to remake a whole bunch of them into regular mats just so I can use them.

maikdecker

zombietaggerung said:

And this is why Hierarchical Materials need to die in a fire.

In several situations I thought the same about hierarchical poses, too...

Masterstroke

Sorry, what are hierarchical materials?

felis

Masterstroke said:

Sorry, what are hierarchical materials?

Materials you only can apply when selecting the character. And if the character is the wrong generation, e.g. if you have autofitted, then you can't apply the materails. 

plasma_ring

Masterstroke said:

Sorry, what are hierarchical materials?

Hierarchal materials (or poses) apply to multiple related objects in the scene. So you can apply a hierarchal material preset to one piece of clothing in a set, and if the other pieces are present in the scene it'll load the matching materials for those as well.

This can be super annoying if you're not doing exactly what the product expects you to, because you'll just get an error if you try to use it another way. If the vendor didn't include any other options, it can add multiple steps. There's one vendor I don't buy poses from despite liking their poses because they have a complicated hierarchal script setup that will not load the poses normally, so to use their G8 stuff on 8.1 characters I have to load G8 characters, set up the pose, save it out as a normal pose, and then apply it. 

lorraineopua

zombietaggerung said:

And this is why Hierarchical Materials need to die in a fire.

I'll bring the gas and the matches.

Richard Haseltine

Sevrin said:

It's important that outfits using hierarchical materials presets be labeled as such.  Even though most garments autofit G9 fine, hierarchical materials won't work.  You'd need to load a G8, fit the clothes to that, change materials, and then fit the clothing to G9 again.  For some users, that can add a long wait.

or, for fitted figures, load a Genesis 8 and parent the items to it while leaving them fitted to Genesis 9. Hierarchy cares about just that, the parent-child chain, not what things are fitted to.

Some outfits, like dForce Yuna Style Outfit for Genesis 8 Females, the latest one I came across, uses hierarchical materials, but that's not indicated on the product page.  In the case of this outfit, it wasn't even a matter of changing materials for the outfit at once.  Even the skirt with only 3 simple material zones has hierarchical materials.

Richard Haseltine

zombietaggerung said:

And this is why Hierarchical Materials need to die in a fire.

So with a dForce item you are happy to select the buttons and aply their materails directly, rather than having a single preset to do the job?

In my experience Hierarchical mats are used for full outfit presets (changing al the parts at once rather than doing each piece separately) or things like outfit plus attachments such as buttons. Most sets seem to coem with standard materials for the individual pieces if there ar no Rigid Follow Nodes involved.

Keiku

plasma_ring said:

Masterstroke said:

Sorry, what are hierarchical materials?

Hierarchal materials (or poses) apply to multiple related objects in the scene. So you can apply a hierarchal material preset to one piece of clothing in a set, and if the other pieces are present in the scene it'll load the matching materials for those as well.

This can be super annoying if you're not doing exactly what the product expects you to, because you'll just get an error if you try to use it another way. If the vendor didn't include any other options, it can add multiple steps. There's one vendor I don't buy poses from despite liking their poses because they have a complicated hierarchal script setup that will not load the poses normally, so to use their G8 stuff on 8.1 characters I have to load G8 characters, set up the pose, save it out as a normal pose, and then apply it. 

Yes. I just ran into this today trying to place a product on G9 made for G8. It was quite confusing as I'd never had that problem before. The work around was to load it on to G8, make my changes, then fit it on G9 and delete G8. More work, but it did what I needed.

It would be nice to know ahead of time what is and isn't using Hierarchial Materials. Granted, DAZ may avoid that as it could cost some sales. I for one would purposely avoid buying those products execpt in very specific cases as I usually aim to get the highest level of versitility I can out of any product.

Richard Haseltine

If the metadata was applied then the content type tag at top-right of the thumbnail will show H. materials (or H. pose for a pose).

zombietaggerung

Richard Haseltine said:

zombietaggerung said:

And this is why Hierarchical Materials need to die in a fire.

So with a dForce item you are happy to select the buttons and aply their materails directly, rather than having a single preset to do the job?

In my experience Hierarchical mats are used for full outfit presets (changing al the parts at once rather than doing each piece separately) or things like outfit plus attachments such as buttons. Most sets seem to coem with standard materials for the individual pieces if there ar no Rigid Follow Nodes involved.

Yes. Because maybe i don't want all the buttons to be the same color. Maybe I want to have a little control over my creativity. But I can only speak for myself.

Timotheus

 

In my experience Hierarchical mats are used for full outfit presets (changing al the parts at once rather than doing each piece separately) or things like outfit plus attachments such as buttons. Most sets seem to coem with standard materials for the individual pieces if there ar no Rigid Follow Nodes involved.

This is exactly what I do. I provide hierarchical materials for a full outift, but I also always include individual materials for the individual items (whether garment or prop).

Tim

Richard Haseltine

zombietaggerung said:

Richard Haseltine said:

zombietaggerung said:

And this is why Hierarchical Materials need to die in a fire.

So with a dForce item you are happy to select the buttons and aply their materails directly, rather than having a single preset to do the job?

In my experience Hierarchical mats are used for full outfit presets (changing al the parts at once rather than doing each piece separately) or things like outfit plus attachments such as buttons. Most sets seem to coem with standard materials for the individual pieces if there ar no Rigid Follow Nodes involved.

Yes. Because maybe i don't want all the buttons to be the same color. Maybe I want to have a little control over my creativity. But I can only speak for myself.

Most sets will have a preset for the button materials that you can apply to change one or more particular buttons.

PerttiA

The biggest problem with hierarchial materials and poses, is that they don't tell anywhere, what is supposed to be the parent that needs to be selected. For clothing, is it the figure or the jacket with the buttons.
Gets even worse when talking about scenes, items, several characters and hierarchial poses, what is supposed to be parented to what in order to apply the pose?

esha

Hierarchical materials are extremely useful, but whether they can be used with converted clothing it depends very much on the way they are saved out.

When you unfit and unparent the clothing from the figure and then save out the hierarchical mat (with the clothing item selected), the presets will always work, no matter which figure (if any) the clothing is parented to. All my sets that use hier. mats were saved that way, so with my products you won't run into this problem

If the issue really annoys you, you could re-save the materials the way I described, so they can be used universally.

Diomede

esha said:

Hierarchical materials are extremely useful, but whether they can be used with converted clothing it depends very much on the way they are saved out.

When you unfit and unparent the clothing from the figure and then save out the hierarchical mat (with the clothing item selected), the presets will always work, no matter which figure (if any) the clothing is parented to. All my sets that use hier. mats were saved that way, so with my products you won't run into this problem

If the issue really annoys you, you could re-save the materials the way I described, so they can be used universally.

Good to know.  Thanks.  

Sevrin

esha said:

Hierarchical materials are extremely useful, but whether they can be used with converted clothing it depends very much on the way they are saved out.

When you unfit and unparent the clothing from the figure and then save out the hierarchical mat (with the clothing item selected), the presets will always work, no matter which figure (if any) the clothing is parented to. All my sets that use hier. mats were saved that way, so with my products you won't run into this problem

If the issue really annoys you, you could re-save the materials the way I described, so they can be used universally.

@esha Thank you for chiming in.  Can we save over the existing H.M.Preset, or will we need to create a new one? 

cridgit

esha said:

Hierarchical materials are extremely useful, but whether they can be used with converted clothing it depends very much on the way they are saved out.

When you unfit and unparent the clothing from the figure and then save out the hierarchical mat (with the clothing item selected), the presets will always work, no matter which figure (if any) the clothing is parented to. All my sets that use hier. mats were saved that way, so with my products you won't run into this problem

If the issue really annoys you, you could re-save the materials the way I described, so they can be used universally.

Thank you Esha. This is an excellent example of something that would eliminate customer friction if DAZ would provide some form of guideline to PAs when they invent something new. Otherwise the customer suffers if PAs don't know any better, or may not be as diligent as they shoudld be, or if on the very rare occasion a bug might slip through DAZ's watertight QA net.

Other examples that come to mind where some form of guideline would have reduced customer friction are metadata, vanity folders, shortcuts to the PA's store page, hierarchical poses, use of figure vs hip transforms when saving poses, exclusion of head morphs when saving expressions, not writing morphs to the default asset and the list goes on ...

 

apocalypse_cow

There's a workaround that I discovered for applying hirarchical material presets for Genesis 8 to Genesis 3 and I think it works in this case too.

Once you have fitted the item to your Genesis 9 character and want to apply the H.Material:

1) select Genesis 9 Figure and in the Scene Tab, click the options button (little triangle and 4 lines).

2) Go to Edit>Scene Identification.

3) In the Scene Identification Dialogue change Node Name (NOT Node Label) from Genesis9 to Genesis8Female or Genesis8Male (exactly like that, no spaces) and click accept.

4) Now, with Genesis 9 selected, apply your H.Material preset

5) do steps 2 and 3 again, but this time change Node Name back to Genesis9 (DO NOT FORGET THIS)

If the H.Material is from a Genesis 3 Item then in Step 3 you have to change the Node Name to Genesis3Female or Genesis3Male respectively

 

This Process is much faster then loading a G8F Figure to the scene, and you don't need to create your own material settings.

I've tested this with some items, dforce hair mostly, and it seems to work, let me know if it works for other items as well..

(Note, unlike the trick to fit G3 hair to G8 and vice versa, you don't need to change Preferred base, in case you're confused)

nonesuch00

esha said:

Hierarchical materials are extremely useful, but whether they can be used with converted clothing it depends very much on the way they are saved out.

When you unfit and unparent the clothing from the figure and then save out the hierarchical mat (with the clothing item selected), the presets will always work, no matter which figure (if any) the clothing is parented to. All my sets that use hier. mats were saved that way, so with my products you won't run into this problem

If the issue really annoys you, you could re-save the materials the way I described, so they can be used universally.

Thanks for the information.

Richard Haseltine

cridgit said:

esha said:

Hierarchical materials are extremely useful, but whether they can be used with converted clothing it depends very much on the way they are saved out.

When you unfit and unparent the clothing from the figure and then save out the hierarchical mat (with the clothing item selected), the presets will always work, no matter which figure (if any) the clothing is parented to. All my sets that use hier. mats were saved that way, so with my products you won't run into this problem

If the issue really annoys you, you could re-save the materials the way I described, so they can be used universally.

Thank you Esha. This is an excellent example of something that would eliminate customer friction if DAZ would provide some form of guideline to PAs when they invent something new. Otherwise the customer suffers if PAs don't know any better, or may not be as diligent as they shoudld be, or if on the very rare occasion a bug might slip through DAZ's watertight QA net.

Other examples that come to mind where some form of guideline would have reduced customer friction are metadata,

Meaning? Most emtadata isa dded in QA, not by the PAs.

vanity folders,

Those are a matter of taste, soem people are going to be unhappy whichever is done

shortcuts to the PA's store page,

meaning? You want, you don't want? Matter of taste either way

hierarchical poses,

I assuem not wanted by you, but that doesn't mean others don't want them.

use of figure vs hip transforms when saving poses,

Alreadya  QA requirement, but soemtimes they slip through

exclusion of head morphs when saving expressions, not writing morphs to the default asset

I don't know what you mean about writing morphs - are you meaning not saving witha  non-zero value? if so that shouldn't happen, but sometimes slips through

and the list goes on ...

 

NorthOf45

apocalypse_cow said:

There's a workaround that I discovered for applying hirarchical material presets for Genesis 8 to Genesis 3 and I think it works in this case too.

Once you have fitted the item to your Genesis 9 character and want to apply the H.Material:

1) select Genesis 9 Figure and in the Scene Tab, click the options button (little triangle and 4 lines).

2) Go to Edit>Scene Identification.

3) In the Scene Identification Dialogue change Node Name (NOT Node Label) from Genesis9 to Genesis8Female or Genesis8Male (exactly like that, no spaces) and click accept.

4) Now, with Genesis 9 selected, apply your H.Material preset

5) do steps 2 and 3 again, but this time change Node Name back to Genesis9 (DO NOT FORGET THIS)

If the H.Material is from a Genesis 3 Item then in Step 3 you have to change the Node Name to Genesis3Female or Genesis3Male respectively

 

This Process is much faster then loading a G8F Figure to the scene, and you don't need to create your own material settings.

I've tested this with some items, dforce hair mostly, and it seems to work, let me know if it works for other items as well..

(Note, unlike the trick to fit G3 hair to G8 and vice versa, you don't need to change Preferred base, in case you're confused)

Yes, that will do it. First understanding how the hierarchical presets work, and how they get created, will help de-mystify the process. I have discussed this before, so I will quote myself from another thread (PRIMAVERA HAIR Colour Problem)

NorthOf45 said:

A Hierachical Material Preset allows you to have one preset to apply to a number of items in a hierachical structure (i.e., parented one to the other), instead of having one for each object (think of a vest with 12 buttons on Rigid Follow Nodes). dForce hair always has a base and then the actual hair is parented to it. You do have control over which objects' materials are included by selecting/deselecting them in the Save Options dialog, but the hierarchy used goes all the way to the root element, even if no materials are saved for it. Since the base figure usually has the various parts parented to it, it will always be included in the hierarchy when saving the preset.

It does not matter what you use, or how you try to load it later, the Hierachical Material preset will always want the base it was saved with to be present, or at least something with the same ID. This is, to me, a weakness in the way it is implemented, but it can be worked around. You can define a null or a group with the same Name as the original figure (i.e., Genesis8Female, Genesis8_1Female, etc.) and a Label (what is shown in the scene tab, eg., "Genesis 8 Female Proxy") to help distinguish it in the scene, and parent the objects to it instead. They will remain fit to the original figure, so there will be no loss of functionality. No need to re-save all the existing presets.

If it were to be done properly, the preset would start at the base object of those to which the materials are meant to apply, with no other higher nodes included. To do this with the current system, the target hierarchy would need to be un-parented from the base figure (again, it will still be fit to it) and then saved as a hierarchical material preset. This will ensure that the root element is the actual object of interest.

The target object can then be loaded as intended (which normally parents it to the base figure), and the hierarchical material presets will work properly regardless of what it is attached to, since it will not try to look any farther than the hierarchy it was saved with.

nakamuram002

apocalypse_cow said:

There's a workaround that I discovered for applying hirarchical material presets for Genesis 8 to Genesis 3 and I think it works in this case too.

Once you have fitted the item to your Genesis 9 character and want to apply the H.Material:

1) select Genesis 9 Figure and in the Scene Tab, click the options button (little triangle and 4 lines).

2) Go to Edit>Scene Identification.

3) In the Scene Identification Dialogue change Node Name (NOT Node Label) from Genesis9 to Genesis8Female or Genesis8Male (exactly like that, no spaces) and click accept.

4) Now, with Genesis 9 selected, apply your H.Material preset

5) do steps 2 and 3 again, but this time change Node Name back to Genesis9 (DO NOT FORGET THIS)

If the H.Material is from a Genesis 3 Item then in Step 3 you have to change the Node Name to Genesis3Female or Genesis3Male respectively

 

This Process is much faster then loading a G8F Figure to the scene, and you don't need to create your own material settings.

I've tested this with some items, dforce hair mostly, and it seems to work, let me know if it works for other items as well..

(Note, unlike the trick to fit G3 hair to G8 and vice versa, you don't need to change Preferred base, in case you're confused)

Thanks Apocalypse_Cow.  Your suggestion has solved the materials problem I have been having with some strand-based hairs. 

apocalypse_cow

Thanks NorthOf45, using a null or group as the base for a H.Material is a very good suggestion. Very informative comment.

cridgit

Thank you Richard for your thoughtful and helpful response.

[goes off to do something else like sitting in the garden]

maikdecker

esha said:

Hierarchical materials are extremely useful, but whether they can be used with converted clothing it depends very much on the way they are saved out.

When you unfit and unparent the clothing from the figure and then save out the hierarchical mat (with the clothing item selected), the presets will always work, no matter which figure (if any) the clothing is parented to. All my sets that use hier. mats were saved that way, so with my products you won't run into this problem

If the issue really annoys you, you could re-save the materials the way I described, so they can be used universally.

Thanks for this unusually constructive semi-official answer to some customer's complaint. It's honestly greatly appreciated, as imho we see so little of these by other semi-official posters sometimes.

Novbre

zombietaggerung said:

And this is why Hierarchical Materials need to die in a fire.

 

/em hands zombietaggerung a blow torch.

 

How can a simple text file be causing so much grief!   Could someone write a script that would duplicate the H. Material (and H. Poses!) file and just sub in the base node of choice?   Like, have a script that would re-create all the H. Materials/poses in a folder or directory but change the base figure from G8M To G9?   Then another for the G8F to G9, etc etc back through whatever generation was patient zero for this evilness?   I don't know a single thing about scripts except they are magical so forgive me if this is a stupid question!

 

I lived through the original single base mesh solution fiasco,  I'm not in a big hurry to repeat the performance.  Now, looking at my mountain of characters and poses for G8, and calculating how long it would take me to "work around" the Hierarchical issue I'm shifting wildly between an OCD melt down and a very real desire to go bawl in my closet for a week.

Or a month.

Or until G10M and G10F are released....

 

~ Novbre

kyoto kid

zombietaggerung said:

And this is why Hierarchical Materials need to die in a fire.

...or a vat of fluoroantimonic acid.

that also goes for Hierarchical Poses and Presets.

For hair UI just use Slosh's UHT2 much faster and I can tweak the results as I like.  I also use it a lot on hair that has baked in highlights.

AllenArt

esha said:

Hierarchical materials are extremely useful, but whether they can be used with converted clothing it depends very much on the way they are saved out.

When you unfit and unparent the clothing from the figure and then save out the hierarchical mat (with the clothing item selected), the presets will always work, no matter which figure (if any) the clothing is parented to. All my sets that use hier. mats were saved that way, so with my products you won't run into this problem

If the issue really annoys you, you could re-save the materials the way I described, so they can be used universally.

Thanks for this! I'll try it next time on one of my freebies :)