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Decimator

arrjeearrjee Posts: 41
in The Commons

https://www.daz3d.com/decimator-for-daz-studio

I came across it in someone's essential tools post, but then realized it was an old list.  Is this still useful with gen 8 and 9 products? Do newer products like https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer pretty much perform the same role but better?

Comments

  • LeanaLeana Posts: 11,812
    edited December 2022

    Scene optimizer and decimator don't do the same things at all.

    Decimator will modify the geometry of your figure to reduce the number of polygons, lower than base resolution.

    Scene optimizer includes actions about mesh resolution among other things, but they control the subD level, so above base resolution.

    So yes, decimator is still relevant.

    Post edited by Leana on
  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,392

    I own both, but I use Scene Optimizer far more than I use Decimator. That fact is that reducing the poly count is really not that important compared to decreasing texture sizes when it comes to the usage of both RAM and VRAM, which are the main considerations when optimising a scene pre-render.

    Most modern renderers and game engines can efficently handle huge poly counts now, which was less true in the past. Scenes which needed a lot of polys, like nature scenes with a lot of trees, grass etc, will use instancing to reduce resource usage.

    I sometimes use decimator to reduce the poly count of an outfit I have converted to dForce (ie one that was not created as a dForce item). I find that high poly clothing can take a long time to simulate, particularly anything with more than 30K polys. Decimator can reduce the poly count in this case, and help speed up the simulation.

  • Llola LaneLlola Lane Posts: 9,428
    edited January 2023

    I just bought the Decimator... Great price I couldn't pass it up.  I'm thinking it will be useful for crowds of peeps.. etc... and I'm getting some pretty unusual shapes on figures.  We shall see.. ENJOY this sample... it's https://www.daz3d.com/twiggant-for-genesis-9 with Decimator at 10%... It takes away a lot of the detail but for a far away render I kinda like it :)

    Ultra-Scenery is the background and terrain... Decimator at 25%... Since I use DOF a lot I figure the loss of poly's doesn't matter much. 

    sorry... uploads acting up.. again.. I'll try again later/tomorrow... sorry.

    https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/user/5888571185561600#gallery=newest&page=1&image=1267916

     

    Post edited by Llola Lane on
  • PerttiAPerttiA Posts: 10,024

    Llola Lane said:

    I just bought the Decimator... Great price I couldn't pass it up. 

    Couldn't pass either, has been on my wishlist for a 'while' smiley 

  • Korpin.SulatKorpin.Sulat Posts: 414

    Decimator had been included in those super-cheap bundle deals with Pixie at the beginning of December. Got it for five bucks and couldn't have been more stoked.

  • McGyverMcGyver Posts: 7,066

    $5?... Yeesh, I've never seen it for less than $100... That's a great price indeed.

  • PerttiAPerttiA Posts: 10,024

    McGyver said:

    $5?... Yeesh, I've never seen it for less than $100... That's a great price indeed.

    I got it last week in one of those $10 bundle offers, still a great price

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,284

    I got it years ago cheap too and it's pretty decent at what it does.

  • McGyverMcGyver Posts: 7,066

    PerttiA said:

    McGyver said:

    $5?... Yeesh, I've never seen it for less than $100... That's a great price indeed.

    I got it last week in one of those $10 bundle offers, still a great price

    Last week... in a $10 bundle... Sure... rub it in... would you like some salt too?...

    You have a choice of Himalayan Pink or Road Salt... technically it's Calcium Chloride so it burns more.

    I never catch any good sales... no matter what, I find out the day after or in a thread where people are celebrating their good fortune and I'm the sad vagrant looking in through the restaurant window at them feasting...

    Envying their good fortune... plotting my revenge...

    Ignore that last part.

    There will be no revenge or hard feelings.

    I'm good...

    Just fine...

    $10 freakin' dollars...

    Unbelievable...

    Gagh.

  • fred9803fred9803 Posts: 1,564

    Havos said:

    ... reducing the poly count is really not that important compared to decreasing texture sizes when it comes to the usage of both RAM and VRAM, which are the main considerations when optimising a scene pre-render.

    Absolutely correct. The same way that instancing will lower the amount of resources used, not so much through geometry duplication but texture duplication. Comparatively, texture load is by far and away the major GPU hog compared to geometry.

  • Llola LaneLlola Lane Posts: 9,428

    I didn't get it as cheap as you all .. but I feel I'll get my money's worth out of it... One way or another... LOL

  • Llola LaneLlola Lane Posts: 9,428

    fred9803 said:

    Havos said:

    ... reducing the poly count is really not that important compared to decreasing texture sizes when it comes to the usage of both RAM and VRAM, which are the main considerations when optimising a scene pre-render.

    Absolutely correct. The same way that instancing will lower the amount of resources used, not so much through geometry duplication but texture duplication. Comparatively, texture load is by far and away the major GPU hog compared to geometry.

    I figure I can try both... geometry AND texures... :)  Can't hurt!

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,495

    it's good on a few incredibly highpoly sets where you see little difference in the results but a huge one in VRAM and render times

  • PerttiAPerttiA Posts: 10,024

    fred9803 said:

    Havos said:

    ... reducing the poly count is really not that important compared to decreasing texture sizes when it comes to the usage of both RAM and VRAM, which are the main considerations when optimising a scene pre-render.

    Absolutely correct. The same way that instancing will lower the amount of resources used, not so much through geometry duplication but texture duplication. Comparatively, texture load is by far and away the major GPU hog compared to geometry.

    Depends on the item, usually and for most of the assets, there is no need for the Decimator, but... Then there are items with astronomical vertex counts, talking about millions of vertices for something insignificant and relatively small.
    Decimator can fix these items, otherwise the only real option is to remove them from the library.

    The two problems user cannot fix by oneself (or it takes way too much time and effort), are too dense geometry and inefficient UV mapping - The latter is still a problem searching for THE solution.

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,866

    Yeah. Inefficient UV mapping is a problem and sometimes inefficient UV mapping can be caused by an effort to efficiently use small texture sizes. The one situation I'm particularly thinking of is my little arch bridge (https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/589656/arch-bridge/p1) To get small textures, I had to tile the texture. To avoid distortion of the texture I had to do a planar UV map of the side of the bridge meaning it was much wider than it was high. Basically the side profile of the bridge in UV co-ordinates was 0to1 in X and 0 to 0.3 in Y. Seems highly inefficient, but would be difficult to counteract texture distortion completely correctly if I did it 0 to 1 in Y. 

    Did manage to find a way to use the same straight block texture used on the sides around the arch and underside of the arch, so that felt moderately efficient. And I think the bridge only had 150 facets or so.

    Regards,

    Richard

  • PerttiAPerttiA Posts: 10,024

    richardandtracy said:

    Yeah. Inefficient UV mapping is a problem and sometimes inefficient UV mapping can be caused by an effort to efficiently use small texture sizes. The one situation I'm particularly thinking of is my little arch bridge (https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/589656/arch-bridge/p1) To get small textures, I had to tile the texture. To avoid distortion of the texture I had to do a planar UV map of the side of the bridge meaning it was much wider than it was high. Basically the side profile of the bridge in UV co-ordinates was 0to1 in X and 0 to 0.3 in Y. Seems highly inefficient, but would be difficult to counteract texture distortion completely correctly if I did it 0 to 1 in Y. 

    Did manage to find a way to use the same straight block texture used on the sides around the arch and underside of the arch, so that felt moderately efficient. And I think the bridge only had 150 facets or so.

    Regards,

    Richard

    Don't be too hard on yourself wink

    If the image size of the textures using the UV are relatively small, the unused area on that texture image is not that big of a problem, but when the product starts using 8192x8192x24bit images which eat 192MB's of RAM per each image (irrespective of the file format or the size of the file on disk), that is when the unused area of the images quickly becomes a problem.

    The worst case (so far) that I have seen, was a surface that had five images attached to at 8192x8192x24bit per image => Total usage of RAM was 960MB's (and 480MB's of VRAM)
    When I looked at the UV mapping of the surface, only a tiny fraction of the image s were used anywhere on the model, and the RAM usage for that part of the images would have been 20MB's combined for all of the five images.

    In general, it is not hard to find 50-60% of image area wasted on texture files and related maps.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,495

    the worst one I saw was an obviously tiled 8K texture 

    the image itself 

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