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Nihil-Novi-Sub-Sole β DAZ Female characters generations
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#dazstudio #genesis #tutorial #victoria #genesis2female #genesis3female #genesis8female
Published: 2018-05-05 03:54:41 +0000 UTC; Views: 4795; Favourites: 50; Downloads: 103
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Description
I was curious to compare the various generations of DAZ characters and, especially, their costs to be used inside a picture. On the contrary of the preconceived idea I had, idea justified by the growing size of new components (hairs, clothes, props) in terms of resources, the new generations are more resource-friendly than the old ones!By sharing what I noted down, I hope it can be useful for your works too!
Enjoy!
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Fascinating.Β
Most Daz hobbyists just do single chara portrait shots or short single animations. Genesis 8 with HD skins and photo quality clothing textures is fine for that.
I don't get the impression a lot of Daz users are that interested in multi-chara renders, otherwise they'd still be a market for Genesis items or something akin to V3 with autofit.
Genesis is pretty much the sweet spot for me just at the moment regarding multi-figure scenes. Easy fit clothes, look good, and relatively easy to pose (could be better re: head accessibility), able to get six or seven or more figures in without system and Studio choking. Being able to switch genders without deleting and loading a new figure is a huge plus.
I've been looking into texture reduction, but didn't know about sub manipulation Β
Still use V3 and her generation though - they load so fast, and, with the simpler textures and clothes of her era, still much lighter than the modern ultra optimised figures. And still looks good, even in Iray. Clothing fits are a pain, but not if you keep the clothing simple (or dynamic).
V3 RR doesn't accept morph channel loads, 'General' under Parameters has built in ethnicity morphs and the usual standard body types (French / Asian mix looks good).
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Wow, this is great information. Thanks for Sharing!
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You're welcome!
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You're welcome!
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Very interesting.Β I figured it was the opposite since the latter generation shapes seem more accurate.Β I have a script to reduce texture size, should I need it.Β But how do you reduce polygon count?Β Does sub d reduce it or add level of detail?
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I had the same preconceived idea but we were wrong. The new characters are basically less detailed and need subdivision to get more details. That's why the Genesis characters are by default loaded with one level of subdivision: to get at least the same level of details as the old V3/4 characters.
In fact, we don't reduce the polygon count, we are just playing with the subdivision level to tell the software (Daz Studio, IRay renderer, exportation to other software, etc.) how many polygons should be taken into account. And we should not forget there are 2 parameters: one for the subdivision displayed in Daz Studio and one for the subdivision level used for the rendering. Usually, it's a level above but we can decide otherwise: we can work with a subdivision of 1 and ask for a rendering with a subdivision of 4 for a portrait using a lot of details on the face (with bump maps, normal maps, displacement, etc.). Subdivision add polygons by subdividing the polygons (x4 every step of subdivision) and enable more details. But except for close-up, a 1-level sub-d with a good normal map can give the same picture. It is the trick used by games: low poly models with normal maps generating from a highly-detailed modelling. It's also the origin of the HD extension sold by DAZ and that require higher subdivision levels to be seen.
Reducing textures is another level of optimization. When I started 3D, I read that we usually need textures that are twice the size of the rendering size (it is a rule of thumb coming from ages when RAM and CPU when more expensive). So 4K textures (x by the shader: bump, SSS, specularity, etc.) for the face of a character that will appear as a 200 pixels picture on the render is really overkilling.
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Great information.
As DAZ characters become more "game development friendly", i.e., less polygon count, high resolution texture.Β They actually did a good job.Β This is why I switched from Aiko 3 to Genesis.Β I don't care about realistic textures.Β At the end, I can have more characters in my render.Β Β
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Some great information here. Hadn't considered playing with the SubD to get more figures on screen at once with less memory. Thanks!
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Yeah, also recently checked and quite surprised.. The truth is, we must not forget about the texture. They can radically change the situation.
If you look into the log file after the render, you can see this:
Victoria 4.2
9 textures, 512-1024
Geometry memory consumption: 57.0481 MiB
Texture memory consumption: 17.001 MiB
Victoria 4.2 + Victoria 4 GW 5 Female Texture
15 textures, 2048-4000
Geometry memory consumption: 57.0481 MiB
Texture memory consumption: 372.692 MiB
Victoria 8
27 textures, 2048-4096
Geometry memory consumption: 14.315 MiB
Texture memory consumption: 1.39478 GiB
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You're perfectly right and the mesh density can't be considered as the only way to optimize the computer's resources and get the best to make 3D pictures. But it's still a very easy trick (just some clicks in D/S) which is probably often overlooked if not ignored.
Considering texture optimization, the nature of the used shader, removing useless textures in some case (displacement, normal maps, SSS maps for a character of 200 pixels high is overkilling), or even doing a manual resizing of the maps are all ways to reduce memory consumption. But they require far more work and are only used by more seasoned users.
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The complexity of texture optimization may be unnecessarily exaggerated. For example, in my last render, simple resizing of textures took less than 5 minutes (though I don't use "optimizers"), and the win was about 2 gigabytes (and a few hours of rendering on my old laptop with GF540M/1GB). I am now preparing a small material for one site on this topic and I will probably post a summary here.
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That really puts things in a different perspective.
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Thank you! Hope it helps...
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I am sure it will! 
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You're welcome!
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