Is DAZ Studio's Decimator useful to a Carrarartist?

Inkubo

What sorts of things would the Decimator be useful for in conjunction with Carrara? Is it worth having?

I have one figure that uses the curly "Jonas" hair. It takes what seems like 30 minutes for Carrara to save the figure (but in reality it may be more like 10 minutes). I was thinking about running Decimator on that hair to make it simpler and hopefully quicker to save, but I'm not sure what I'd really get--does Decimator work its magic but keep UVs so you can still apply the same textures?

Dartanbeck

I'm not sure how well it would work on your idea.

I actually bought it to make full characters with hair and clothing all decimated together for a lower-res character solution, but have yet to try it even though I've had Decimator for Years!

The thing is, I have to peel myself away from Carrara to use it. I'll have to try my idea one of these days.

It's pretty cool how it works - I think. It's been a long time since I've checked out how it works. But for my idea (above) it will rid me of uneccessary hidden polygons, which is nice. First it triangulates everything, then decimates it to the values we give it.

Carrara has a built-in Decimator in the model room too.

3DAGE

Although hair prop figures tend to be high poly,.  It's probably not the mesh itself that's the issue in loading/saving times

it's the morph adjustments fittings etc,.. which allow the model to be shaped posed and animated a little

It should retin th UV's so the textures will work,.

but,.

if you change a single vertex on an object,. morphs won't work.

so I would doubt that decimating a model would produce a finished product which would work with any of it's morphs

Try exporting the Hair model,. as an OBJ

Load that OBJ into carrara (see how long it takes to load)  ...realistically it should only take a few seconds.

the problem now is that you have a static model with no "fit to" or adjustment morphs

You can grab the model ,. drag it into the figure hierarchy (instance list) and drag it to the Head of the figure to "Parent" it in place

then you can pose /animate your figure

Inkubo

3DAGE said:

if you change a single vertex on an object,. morphs won't work.

so I would doubt that decimating a model would produce a finished product which would work with any of it's morphs

Oh, yeah. Darn. And I bet if I fit it first and save it as an .OBJ, it will lose its fitted shape anyway. Well, scenes with this character only take a couple of minutes to load. It's really only the long save time that gets me. I always begin to wonder if Carrara has locked up and lost my work

Dartanbeck

Good call 3DAGE!

mindsong

question: although the morphs will be lost in a decimated item (because by definition, vertecies change, as 3DAGE indicated), and although the UV maps will be adjusted correctly to the newly decimated item if the tool is any good..., do the rigging relationships (bones to meshes) still hold up after decimation?

E.g. will M4/V4 pose presets work on decimated M4/V4 figures and/or their decimated clothing items (if conforming...)? I'm thinking of using low-poly animated background characters made from decimated versions of M4/V4, but still using my bone-based animations (bvh, etc.) that I know work on the default M4/V4s... should this work? (I could use predatron's cool lo-rez dude and dudette, but curious about options)

I suppose this all assumes we're talking about the DAZ decimator product, because I know for certain that another free tool (instant meshes) works well for certain mesh manipulations/decimations, but completely drops UVs and bones... (still good for mesh polygon size normalization on non-figure objs...)

thoughts?

--ms

 

Diomede

Are there multiple tutorials available for Instant Meshes?  If it is the program I am thinking of, I never did get the hang of it from the academic article that accompanied it.  Been a while, so I might be confusing with another program.

.

mindsong said:

 

I suppose this all assumes we're talking about the DAZ decimator product, because I know for certain that another free tool (instant meshes) works well for certain mesh manipulations/decimations, but completely drops UVs and bones... (still good for mesh polygon size normalization on non-figure objs...)

thoughts?

--ms

 

 

3DAGE

Decimating effects the mesh,. changing the mesh wont change the skeleton controlling the mesh.

Poses and animation will still work because they all function on the skeleton,. not the mesh

There are already (LOD) "Level Of Detail" versions of V4/M4,.. they should be in your library under,.. My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime\Geometries\DAZPeople\blMilMan_m4b_LOD and blMilWoman_v4b_LOD

you should have 1k / 2k / 4k / 17k versions and you can set those up to work as you need.

In Carrara,. you'd load an M4 or V4 figure,. then load in an LOD version for that figure,.

When the figure is far away,. carrara automagically uses the Lower resolution LOD figure.

When the figure is close the higher poly verison is used

you can also set a figure level to show in the main Viewport ,. rather than the base figure.

 

There's also Predatron; low res figures which (I think) use the same rigging as M4 V4.

Hope it helps :)

mindsong

Diomede said:

Are there multiple tutorials available for Instant Meshes?  If it is the program I am thinking of, I never did get the hang of it from the academic article that accompanied it.  Been a while, so I might be confusing with another program.

.

mindsong said:

 

I suppose this all assumes we're talking about the DAZ decimator product, because I know for certain that another free tool (instant meshes) works well for certain mesh manipulations/decimations, but completely drops UVs and bones... (still good for mesh polygon size normalization on non-figure objs...)

thoughts?

--ms

 

 

I missed this... sorry.

Yes, it is the same program. I was trying to generate a 'regular' polygon density across some clothing meshes (like marvelous designer produces), and I was able to prove to myself that it worked in a very general way by trying the most obvious settings as I went through the tool options and steps. Nothing near what it looks like the tools can ultimately do - I just slected all, set to triangles, set the rough density 10k?, applied the changes and exported the mesh as obj. It did work (lots of regularly sized/spaced ploygons), but edges of the output mesh would need manual tweaks in a mesh editor, and materials would need to be re-applied, etc.

Again, yes, same tool, worked as advertised, but not a silver bullet at first glance, but maybe if we can decipher the docs//videos, there's more use than I was able to leverage.

cheers and let me/us know what you learn if you play with it!

--ms

mindsong

3DAGE said:

Decimating effects the mesh,. changing the mesh wont change the skeleton controlling the mesh.

Poses and animation will still work because they all function on the skeleton,. not the mesh

Thanks! That's what I hoped/assumed was the case!

But I can't imagine morphs (facial/body) are preserved with that sort of radical mesh change... Even if morphs could be 'mapped', it couldn't be very accurate, as the decimation is so arbitrary, relative to the user's needs... (thinking out loud here).

3DAGE said:

There are already (LOD) "Level Of Detail" versions of V4/M4,.. they should be in your library under,.. My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime\Geometries\DAZPeople\blMilMan_m4b_LOD and blMilWoman_v4b_LOD

you should have 1k / 2k / 4k / 17k versions and you can set those up to work as you need.

In Carrara,. you'd load an M4 or V4 figure,. then load in an LOD version for that figure,.

When the figure is far away,. carrara automagically uses the Lower resolution LOD figure.

When the figure is close the higher poly verison is used

you can also set a figure level to show in the main Viewport ,. rather than the base figure.

I've seen these while browsing the runtimes. Now I know to pursue the idea, thanks. Do you happen to know if these 'factory' LOD versions preserve any of the mentioned morphing (body or face) of the original characters, or just the skeleton and UVs?

3DAGE said:

There's also Predatron; low res figures which (I think) use the same rigging as M4 V4.

I've got and tested (loretta and lorenzo?) them, but didn't think to compare skeletons for pose and animation purposes at the time. Even if not exact, remapping is probably a viable option. I like that they have a lot of character options (skin/hair/clothes) as past of the base package, and they actually bend pretty well for as few polys as they have. I recall being really impressed when I played with them.

3DAGE said:

Hope it helps :)

indeed it does!

--ms

mindsong

3DAGE said:

Decimating effects the mesh,. changing the mesh wont change the skeleton controlling the mesh.

Poses and animation will still work because they all function on the skeleton,. not the mesh

Thanks! That's what I hoped/assumed was the case!

But I can't imagine morphs (facial/body) are preserved with that sort of radical mesh change... Even if morphs could be 'mapped', it couldn't be very accurate, as the decimation is so arbitrary, relative to the user's needs... (thinking out loud here).

3DAGE said:

There are already (LOD) "Level Of Detail" versions of V4/M4,.. they should be in your library under,.. My DAZ 3D Library\Runtime\Geometries\DAZPeople\blMilMan_m4b_LOD and blMilWoman_v4b_LOD

you should have 1k / 2k / 4k / 17k versions and you can set those up to work as you need.

In Carrara,. you'd load an M4 or V4 figure,. then load in an LOD version for that figure,.

When the figure is far away,. carrara automagically uses the Lower resolution LOD figure.

When the figure is close the higher poly verison is used

you can also set a figure level to show in the main Viewport ,. rather than the base figure.

I've seen these while browsing the runtimes. Now I know to pursue the idea, thanks. Do you happen to know if these 'factory' LOD versions preserve any of the mentioned morphing (body or face) of the original characters, or just the skeleton and UVs?

3DAGE said:

There's also Predatron; low res figures which (I think) use the same rigging as M4 V4.

I've got and tested (loretta and lorenzo?) them, but didn't think to compare skeletons for pose and animation purposes at the time. Even if not exact, remapping is probably a viable option. I like that they have a lot of character options (skin/hair/clothes) as part of the base package, and they actually bend pretty well for as few polys as they have. I recall being really impressed when I played with them.

3DAGE said:

Hope it helps :)

indeed it does!

--ms

3DAGE

Decimating or adding/deleting vertices on a model will destroy any morphs,. since those are alternative positions for those existing vertices,. (which after decimation may not exist)

Normallly,. decimation is done from a high poly mesh to create a lower resolution figure which the user (or someone else) will then Rig for animation.

I don't believe it's something which should be part of your work flow if you're using a Purchased model,. (which should be "ready to use") in any 3D software

if you're at that point,. you may as well be building your own low resource figure.

 

Carrara is pretty good at handling multiple figures,. especially when you're using replicators,.

realistically you should be able to work with four or five (full res) figures,. or more,.. depending on your system.

that should be enough for most scenes where those figures are the focus (most of the time the focus is on one or two figures with supporting actors in attendance)

you should be able to generate hundreds of thousands of figures using replication,. for really large crowds

When you include compositing ,.or even using Billboards/ Planes (a plane with your animated figure rendered and applied to it).

for background and distant figures, the sky's the limit

 

think of the LOD figures as temporary "stand in's" for the main actor.

the way LOD works is like this,...

You load up a V4,. go to the LOD settings,. then you can load up one or several LOD figures,.

you can also set which figure you view in the viewport.

While you're working,. Carrara will show the LOD figure.

When you render,. (depending on the distance you set up,. from the camera) Carrara will load and render the full figure. or one of the LOD's

If you select your figure,. and go to Parameters,. all your morphs will be available,. since you're still using the full V4 figure,. ..plus it's LOD versions.

the LOD versions will work with the figures morph's for body shapes/ expressions.

to see any facial expressions clearly ,. you'd need to be close enough for Carrara to be using the Full figure at render time.

mindsong

3DAGE said:

Decimating or adding/deleting vertices on a model will destroy any morphs,. since those are alternative positions for those existing vertices,. (which after decimation may not exist)

Normallly,. decimation is done from a high poly mesh to create a lower resolution figure which the user (or someone else) will then Rig for animation.

I don't believe it's something which should be part of your work flow if you're using a Purchased model,. (which should be "ready to use") in any 3D software

if you're at that point,. you may as well be building your own low resource figure.

 

Carrara is pretty good at handling multiple figures,. especially when you're using replicators,.

realistically you should be able to work with four or five (full res) figures,. or more,.. depending on your system.

that should be enough for most scenes where those figures are the focus (most of the time the focus is on one or two figures with supporting actors in attendance)

you should be able to generate hundreds of thousands of figures using replication,. for really large crowds

When you include compositing ,.or even using Billboards/ Planes (a plane with your animated figure rendered and applied to it).

for background and distant figures, the sky's the limit

 

think of the LOD figures as temporary "stand in's" for the main actor.

the way LOD works is like this,...

You load up a V4,. go to the LOD settings,. then you can load up one or several LOD figures,.

you can also set which figure you view in the viewport.

While you're working,. Carrara will show the LOD figure.

When you render,. (depending on the distance you set up,. from the camera) Carrara will load and render the full figure. or one of the LOD's

If you select your figure,. and go to Parameters,. all your morphs will be available,. since you're still using the full V4 figure,. ..plus it's LOD versions.

the LOD versions will work with the figures morph's for body shapes/ expressions.

to see any facial expressions clearly ,. you'd need to be close enough for Carrara to be using the Full figure at render time.

perfect! I just saved this to my 'priceles tibits' collection!

It answers a couple of questions I've had for a while and am soon-to-be-needing-to-know.

much thanks!

--ms