Genesis 3 GoZ with HD

bluejaunte

I'm talking about the whole industry, movies and games alike. Of course, ZBrush is a specialised sculpting software that allows millions of of polygons, or rather voxels/pixols. It doesn't do animation. You can't compare this to Daz Studio or other production software liek Maya where the only way to get this detail is through maps.

linvanchene

I'm talking about the whole industry, movies and games alike. Of course, ZBrush is a specialised sculpting software that allows millions of of polygons, or rather voxels/pixols. It doesn't do animation. You can't compare this to Daz Studio or other production software liek Maya where the only way to get this detail is through maps.

Zbrush actually offers all the necessary tools to create animations with morphs.

-> You use Layers to blend different states of the mesh.

The source of the confusion may be that what DAZ 3D calls "morphs" is called "blend-shapes" by some people in "the industry".

Creating blend shapes in Zbrush to create an animation to move from one state of the mesh to another is quite a common practice for those who still animate "manually".

You can find many tutorials on the web that illustrate the workflow how to create blend-shapes in Zbrush.

And you can even find tutorials how to export the blend-shapes from Zbrush to Maya. (!)

 

One example:

http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/58-Using-the-Blend-Shapes-Plugin-for-ZBrush

and some other random ones on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zbrush+blend+shapes

All animations done with "morphs" not maps.

Exactly the same technique could be used in DAZ Studio if only DAZ 3D would have the courtesy to let us do so.

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bluejaunte

Yup, and blend shapes are a perfect example of what I was saying. You cannot sculpt with detail of a few million polys and then export that as a blend shape to Maya where you have the rigged model of say 100k polys. What actually happens is the higher subd levels will be lost in the process, only whatever sculpting information that exists on the same subd level as the model you exported out of Maya will transfer over. The finer detail past the base subd level can be established with a normal or displacement map.

Unless I somehow missed a major development in that area.

linvanchene

Yup, and blend shapes are a perfect example of what I was saying. You cannot sculpt with detail of a few million polys and then export that as a blend shape to Maya where you have the rigged model of say 100k polys. What actually happens is the higher subd levels will be lost in the process, only whatever sculpting information that exists on the same subd level as the model you exported out of Maya will transfer over. The finer detail past the base subd level can be established with a normal or displacement map.

Unless I somehow missed a major development in that area.

The major development some people on this forum seem to be talking about is that tool DAZ 3D published artists have and paying customers do not. If you put it that way it would actually be somewhat amazing if the DAZ Studio software would have a feature that not even software like Maya has!

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What seems still unclear is how much it would actually be possible to push the level of details.

Current HD morphs seem to be created at around 1'000'000 points. Would it be possible to  raise the DAZ Studio subdivision level from 3 to even 4?

Could published artists create a blend shape for Genesis 3 at a subdivision level at around 4'000'000 points in Zbrush and then import that into DAZ Studio as a HD morph without the higher subdivision levels lost in the process?

Or is the tool limited to work only up to around a subdivision level of around 1'000'000 points?

Or is the only limiting factor the computer setup of the user with the amount of RAM etc. installed?

Male-M3dia

linvanchene said:

The major development some people on this forum seem to be talking about is that tool DAZ 3D published artists have and paying customers do not. If you put it that way it would actually be somewhat amazing if the DAZ Studio software would have a feature that not even software like Maya has!

I'm not understanding this; no matter the industry, a company is not obligated to give out their internal tools to the public. In IOS, they have a toolkit they give out, but even that doesn't give you full control of everything, some things only Apple can do. Other companies have utilities that stay internal as well. DAZ3D is no different, particularly when in other programs you would have to use displacement and normal maps for detail because this tool doesn't exist in other fields.

- - -

What seems still unclear is how much it would actually be possible to push the level of details.

Current HD morphs seem to be created at around 1'000'000 points. Would it be possible to  raise the DAZ Studio subdivision level from 3 to even 4?

Depending on the mesh you subdivide, and this goes for any object, once you get past 3 or 4 subdivisions you'll probably lock up the program.

Could published artists create a blend shape for Genesis 3 at a subdivision level at around 4'000'000 points in Zbrush and then import that into DAZ Studio as a HD morph without the higher subdivision levels lost in the process?

This will probably be one of those things that won't be answered because of NDAs, but I imagine blend shapes are only native to zbrush. Most of the time you're working with objs for morphs when you load them into zbrush for it to be compatible among any program including DS. And for end users, normal or displacement maps that are baked in zbrush or another tool is what will be entered into DS.

bluejaunte

Blend shape is really just the Maya term for morph. Also possible to link it to other stuff, like a joint controlled morph (JCM) in Daz Studio. Say you bend the forearm and you want the bizeps to come out, you'd link the morph/blend shape to the elbow joint.

Male-M3dia

bluejaunte said:

Blend shape is really just the Maya term for morph. Also possible to link it to other stuff, like a joint controlled morph (JCM) in Daz Studio. Say you bend the forearm and you want the bizeps to come out, you'd link the morph/blend shape to the elbow joint.

I assumed that, but was filling out my answer to say you're only working with objs between apps and rules on poly count still applies when adding morphs.

Bopperthijs

I'm not understanding this; no matter the industry, a company is not obligated to give out their internal tools to the public. In IOS, they have a toolkit they give out, but even that doesn't give you full control of everything, some things only Apple can do. Other companies have utilities that stay internal as well. DAZ3D is no different, particularly when in other programs you would have to use displacement and normal maps for detail because this tool doesn't exist in other fields.

If you buy a content creation tool like autocad, you expect all the functions to create content are available. That's why daz-studio isn't a content creation tool, but a content selling tool. DAZ sells content and that is one of the reasons DAZ|studio is free (as a matter of fact I paid for it, that's why I'm so angry about your statement)

joeshelton0001_f3a8ae879b

Is there a possibility that Daz would consider licensing this tool out to non PAs on an individual basis?  It's a very attractive feature, and one that would surely save some power users a lot of time (to the extent that it would be, in my case, worth hundreds or more).

Singular3D

I do use Daz figures in another software like Cinema 4D. The FBX export only provides a low-res mesh, so I have to pose the Daz figure in Daz Studio and export it as OBJ to get all the details. The only way to make hi-res animations in Cinema 4D is, to use a series of OBJs. I can try to get the HD morphs out as displacement map, but this is also quite cumbersome when such a morph is a JCM and I may have to combine several displacement maps based on the state of the joint.

I'm aware of the limitations and I work on a way around it. Nevertheless it would be great to be able to export the HD mesh and morphs. It makes life so much easier... 

asymptote

However you look at it these are deliberate limitations that hinder creativity, just put it in the store and sell it as a product like Alembic, isn't that what this software is all about ?

chweintr

Since this doesn't look like it is going to be resolved anytime soon, would someone please post a link to a good tutorial on how to prepare a file in Zbrush for obj export with displacement, UV, and texture maps applied to a model?

As far as I can understand, the best method would involve importing via Goz or as obj import, dividing for better detail, sculpting a high poly model, switching back  to low poly to create UV maps, returning to high poly, projecting texture and displacement maps onto a somewhat  degraded geometry so that it can be exported and handled by other programs.That said, I have not found a single tutorial that demonstrates this process.