Genesis 3 GoZ with HD
manuel.essmeister_c71d7d5af8
Posts: 24
Hi,
i just tried to create some custom morphs for Genesis 3 and I never did that before. What is the proper workflow for this? I tried the obvious by increasing the mesh resolution in DAT Studio and then hitting the "send to ZBrush" button. The following dialogue asks me if I want to export at current resolution and because the base resolution is waaayyy too low I check both "Export at current resolution" and "Export with deformers".
So now in ZBrush it looks nice and I start sculpting (without adding more subdivisions). After my work is done I hit the GoZ button again at ZBrush and my already open DAZ Studio pops up again.
Now the problem: DAZ Studio gives me a dialog with the message "The topology of the object has changed. The object cannot be updated. Select the action you want to perform" and I can only choose between "create a new object" or "update existing object" but the latter is disabled, so I have to go with the first choice. Then it imports a very new figure and it is not rigged or anything. Just a plain mesh. Completely useless.
Second option: GoZ without the option "Export at current resolution" checked: I get a very very low resolution mesh into ZBrush and need to subdivide it a couple of times to be able to sculpt on it. After I did that I hit the GoZ button again to bring the new Morphs back to DAZ Studio. Now I get another dialogue "GoZ Update Options". Which I leave at default options and name my new morph "test1" (see screenshot attached").
OK, it seems to work. I can set the new Morph to 100% but all details are lost. As if it just transferred the base mesh information but no details are here.
What am I doing wrong? What is the proper workflow for this?
Thank you for your help and have a nice day!
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Comments
You can't create a morph from a subdivided object, or add polygons to the base object. Well, at least not with the tools included in DS. There's a way to produce HD morphs, but it's only available to DAZ PAs currently.
What you could try is creating displacement or normal maps from your high-res sculpt to add the details to the base morph.
HD morphs can only be created by Daz PAs because it requires a tool which is NDA in order to import the HD morph back to Studio. Only PAs have access to the tool.
You can work on higher geometry, but the changes may only be reflected in Studio via displacement or normals. The geometry itself is not re-importable as a morph.
Seriously?! Are those guys crazy?? The base mesh of Genesis 3 is even lower than Victoria 4 O.o Also Daz Studio has no built in morphing tool like Smith Micro's Poser does, doesn't it? (i'm quite new to DAZ Studio). Sure, dispacement maps are a good idea for details but way more hard to manage when single poses need some sculpting refinement to look great (and most of them do).
How to become a DAZ AP and get access to those tools? What exactly is a DAZ PA anyways?
Thank you very much for your answer!
PA = Published Artist, a store vendor, and the plug-in is for making store content.
I see... I always had the impression that it is more important for DAZ to create new content than to using it...
How do you do high quality renders then? With Victoria 4 and Smith Micro's Poser i was able to use the Morph Tool to change the mesh according to the pose (for example to simulate preassure of the skin from cloth) but because of V4's low resolution it was hard to get it right. Now with Genesis 3 the resolution is even lower which makes it simply impossible to do that. Does that mean we simply cannot create high quality renders with Genesis 3? Is not even Hexagon able to do that? It would be such a shame if all that money would be wasted on Genesis 3 stuff...
Thanks again for any help! Thank you thank you!
Ps.: Is it complicated/possible to become a PA for just getting the plugin to create art?
To become a PA you need to create a product to sell, and have it accepted by DAZ. If you don't have anything to sell then you obviously can't be one.
As for adjusting the mesh for a pose, you can always use Dformer (= equivalent to Poser magnets). Another possibility could be to export your posed figure as .obj once you've decided your pose is final, edit that directly and replace your posed figure with the edited prop rather than creating a morph for the figure.
Hey Manuel,
just read this thread and mybe i can help you. Just started with daz and zbrush (nice trial!!) a week ago and it took me some nights to figure out the workflow but now it works for me and maybe it is what you are looking for :-)
1.load genesis 3 to daz, if necessary pose into best position for morph (e.g. lift arms to morph underneath and so on)
2. reduce "Mesh resolution to base" and "subdivison level off"
3. "send to zbrush" via goz (if your figure is in high res + subdivision it will automatically reduce those if you do not check the resolution box.. .. as you already noticed)
4. pull the figure into the window, hit the" edit button", move and scale it
5. in tool pane go to "morph target" und press "StoreMT" (now the base mesh polygons are saved as they are - in the ONLY possible resolution to get them back to daz correctly)
6. go to Geometry and switch to "Higher Res" (as you notice Dynamic Subdiv will activate automatically) - the resolution is way better now and general morphs should work fine
7. if necessary hit the "Divide button" for more details (the Mesh Resolution shoud rise and the slider with position SDiv 2 activates)
8. if necessary hit the divide button again (i did not check limits on that, SDiv 3 worked well for me in regards of detail and no problems back in daz, maybe, only maybe it works with higher numbers also)
9. morph and get desired shape (this is where i am hanging at the moment - not so easy to deal all these brushes and settings in zbrush)
10. now the trick :-) after finishing your morph - move the "SDiv Slider to the left (value 1)"
11. go to "Morph Target" and hit "CreateDiff Mesh" and push the "switch" button (your figure should switch back to lower resolution and the morph gos on and off as you keep hitting the button :-)
12. finally hit the" GoZ button", name your morph in daz, put in desired path, (nothing else changed), and "Accept"
13. test your morph in "base Mesh Settings" and then switch to "high res" and "SubDivision Level 2" - everything should be great now :-)
Hope this helped and works for you and others, best regards, Christoph
Hi!!
Thank you so much for your advice and the detailed description! I've tried it and I was able to sculpt with very high detailed mesh in ZBrush and bring the morph back to DAZ Studio but I was not able to bring the details of the morph back to DAZ.
I made a couple of screenshots to illustrate the workflow.
Am I doing something wrong or is is really just possible with the Plugin that is available only for PAs?
Thanks for any help!
It seems there was an issue when uploading the screenshots. I've attached screenshot 1, 3, 6 and 8.
In my original post i've uploaded screenshot 4 twice. Sorry about that. Please look at the filenames if you're confused about the order.
Yes, the PA plug-in is required to load HD detail as a morph. Only displacement/normals/convert to high-resolution prop are available to the rest of us.
Well what a shame.. after experimenting again and agin, losing a few days lifetime and after what i had to read tonight i give up on hd morphs and daz.. that is the way it has been for years and seems to go on.. Feels a bit like driving in your Ferrari in first gear all the time. Daz Studio is great but without optional HD morph buy-in, well I have no words to be honest..Felt stupid for days, why not label the product "it works only first gear.." fortunally i found a great tutorial from Richard on the Displacement Maps, the results are nice and maybe it helps you to achieve your goals. Thanks Richard for the great amount of help in this forum, I have read your name very often. Regards and good night.
http://it.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/23430/
I like the Ferrari analogy :)
Has Hexagon the same problems?
It isn't a problem, so much as an intentional restriction.
No morphs made on the subdivided mesh are importable, with Morph Loader, as morphs, no matter which program was used to make them.
You should be able to take the mesh to 3 levels of subd in ZBrush and do your morph. Then take it back down to no subd in zbrush and export it for return to Daz Studio. Use your high poly version in ZBrush to generate normals for details. Just make sure that the version you export from DS, for the morph, is the same poly count as the one you exported from Studio originally. Don't use anything that adds geometry as that will change the vertex count.
This is a great idea in principle but unfortunately it does not work very well in practice. When I tried this approach I found that the morphs I made to g3f in Zbrush were transfered to g3f in DS, but there were also some small movements of other non-morphed verts on the body resulting in distortion particularly visible in the face/head. When I contacted DAZ3d about this issue I was told that there was a tool for correctly transfering HD morphs from Zbrush to DS but it was only available to DAZ3d PAs (as has been mentioned above). Personally I think it is very disappointing that DAZ3d place this restriction on the software, but I suppose they want all good quality morphs to be sold only through DAZ3d. The inconvenience to us amateur modellers who would like to make HD morphs but not sell them is just.... collateral damage... tough luck.
I wrote a thread on making rib morphs (search for ribs) for g3f and the conclusion was that displacement mapping was the only viable alternative for us poor relations to the PAs, though I don't know if you could get such dramatic results as the morphs you show.
One thing you need to watch is the effect of the smoothing in ZBrush - even turning the resolution back to base before export leaves the smoothing effect in place, this badly broke the teeth and fingers on older figures at least. My suggested work-around was to load the base mesh into ZBrush, divide it, set it back to base, and then export as OBJ. Load that "do nothing but distort" shape as a new morph, set it to 1, then use Reverse Deformations when you load your real morph to cancel the ZBrush distortions.
Oh my, that takes me back a few years. We used to use that process to isolate morphs that were made on top of other morphs. I was hoping we had gone beyond that by now. Especially as the GoZ route does create a morph dial which gives the difference between the original figure shape and the new morphed shape.
I may be saying something stupid here, but cant you export the edited figure from Zbrush as .obj, then import it on DAZ and rig it? From what I`ve been reading to rig a figure isnt that hard.
http://www.daz3d.com/rigging-original-figures-in-ds4-pro
Or we can rig only simple figures and something like G3F would be very hard to rig properly?
Yea but your bends wouldn't work the same no matter what you did because the wieght map and the JCM (joint controled morphs). The JCM are at the very base of the OBJ mesh and it is why the figures look so good when bending arms and legs. I'm not saying its not posible but its alot of work and not worth the time involed....there are better things to do with your time
Make sense. Its really a shame...
Well... halve a year later now. Anybody knows anything new about this topic? I could not find any news on google.
The situation is as it was.
You still have the ability to use zbrush to create normal maps from your high poly sculpts and plug them into DAZ Studio. There should be plenty of videos on youtube and links from google on how to create them.
- displacement maps often result in artifacts with current GPU render engines
- normal maps do not cast proper shadows depending on light direction
- > modeled detail is recommended for GPU render engines
-> the recommended workflow for adding details with morphs is to adjust the required level of detail by using the proper subdivision level
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If DAZ3D is serious about Iray being the default render engine then it would be beneficial that artists finally adjust from working with normal and displacement maps to providing high level details at around 4'000'0000 vertices as morphs.
CG elements in movies and prerendered game cinematics set the level of expectations. Still, it cannot be expected that all DAZ3D artists are able or willing to provide the required level of detail to meet those expectations.
But then DAZ3D should at least have the insight to provide a solution that customers interested in creating high resolution morphs can do the required workflow steps on their own in a time efficient way.
This will not happen as it would effectively kill their exclusive HD market, so it kind of makes sense, though there SHOULD be an acceptable alternative to the artifacts and engine specific limitations.
And thanks for that bit of info, as I was wondering why shadows and D-Maps were glitching out...That, and the fact that all ground shadows are rendered in greyscale rather than environmental lighting (You have to have a prop/plane in order to use it) is an irritating detail that they permanently neglected, just like when they screwed up the docking interface to accommodate 4k monitor users, it's not getting fixed which is infuriating to say the least!
Normal maps, despite the explanation, are perfectly acceptable, otherwise that would not be an accepted industry standard. That's an important thing to remember.
As far as killing the HD market, you probably should take a look at Josh and my posts on Normal maps, and 1000 feet process for HD morphs. It's not to protect a market, the process to make HD is complicated and if not done correctly and put out in the wild, it would creata a cascading problem of end user issues. The process is not create a high poly sculpt and you're done; it is far easier for an end user to create the normal map and plug it into their characters.
Good info, thanks a lot, I was actually hoping you would shed some light on this! As a non-PA I'm at the default of my own speculation.
Great info, Bookmarked that thread!
You can do things with morphs that you simply cannot do with maps. Please do not assume that there is just one way of doing things.
The reason why some people are upset is that with DAZ Studio they do not have a CHOICE to choose the proper workflow of their personal preference.
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@ morphs can be used for animation. Normal maps can not be used
- Facial movements:
When a happy face turns angry lines form around the mouth, the nose and the forehead.
As far as I know DAZ Studio does not have the ability to animate maps for that purpose.
-> With morphs you can dial in those finer face lines so they appear at the proper moment in an animation.
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@ higher level detail for the visible (!) areas
What would be the point of creating fine detail in zbrush to hide them below clothing?
What I want to do is create fine detail like lines, scars, moles and pores in Zbrush in that area of the mesh that is visible.
Then I want to import that detail into DAZ Studio and dial it in as a morph.
@ morphs can be used for multiple characters.
Maps are custom created for just one character.
Mixing two different normal maps with different detail for the same surface area is not a working solution.
Detail created with morphs nevertheless can be applied to any character you want.
DAZ Studio has parameter and shaping tabs.
What users want to do is save their morphs created for higher subdivion levels so they can reapply them in just a second on the next project again.
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@ customers who want to create images have different needs then artists who want to sell content
Obviously what customers want to do is not the same as what artists need to do who want to sell content.
As a customer I do not need to worry about if that product is ready to sell.
All I want to do is create an image with a character that has more detail in the visible face and body parts and the detail casting proper shadows.
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@ customers are asking for a solution to have a choice to work based on their personal preferences
Can you imagine that some customers deal with very complex problems on a daily basis? Please let the customers deceide on their own if a workflow is to complicated for them.
I do not expect 3d workflows to be "easy".
What I do expect is to have a CHOICE in choosing the best tool for the task based on my own opinion and preferences.
And for me that would be creating a higher subdivision level morph and NOT a normal map.
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Not sure you're all aware that this technology doesn't even exist in other software as far as I know? Just mentioning it because some comments here seem to suggest that since other 3D software has this capability, Daz should enable it for everyone and that is simply not true. In other software I guess if you have a rigged character you could just subdivide it and the rig stays intact, but that comes with a whole bunch of problems. Things not deforming correctly anymore, horrible viewport perfomance etc. There's a reason that normal maps (or sometimes displacement maps for closeups) are the industry standard for achieving fine details like skin pores and such.
Really the main reason for the existence of HD morphs it seems to me is that indeed PA's have a way of distributing medium detail morphs (forget skin pores) in a user friendly way, meaning a slider than can be dialed up like any other morph. As end user you could of course argue that you want this for yourself as well, but this is not a feature that should ever make you go 'oh I can't do this because I don't have access to HD morphs'. If you're advanced enough to even create such fine details then surely you know your way around normal maps. That is how the industry has done in it in like forever.
Which industry are you talking about?
Games? 3D content optimized for real time rendering?
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Please have a look at the Zbrush User Gallery:
One reason why those images look so great is because everything is modeled geometry.
http://pixologic.com/zbrush/gallery/
In most cases no maps are used at all!!!
Just one of the latest examples:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?204023-Invincible-Eastern
But it does on a daily basis.
In many cases when I have a look at the DAZ3D store I am faced with some advertisement about HD morphs.
Each time I get so many ideas what I could do if I had access to the same technology.
A core business idea is that customers should feel good about their purchases.
Now when I spend money at the DAZ3D store I do it with feelings of anger and frustration.