? about Smoothing Modifier

e-bahr_b0b4c77606

I am assuming the smoothing tool in Daz|Studio works like a smart push tool, forcing faces to the surface and breaking some polygons when needed, and not like a shrink wrap or mesh matcher tool. Am I correct in this?

The reason why I ask: I've recently been working on making myself a new starter suit in Hexagon, full bodied so I can cut it up, make other clothing from it, and maybe distribute. When I brought in the mid-resolution to D|S for a test fitting, it worked well on the male, but developed poke through on the Basic Female setting. I applied a smoothing modifier, fixed it right up perfect for me, then exported. I reopened in Hexagon, deleted the Genesis figure, and took a look at the changes in my mesh created by the smoothing mod. It does not apear that the smoothing copied any verts over, and in wireframe the meshes do not match up, so I am still ok to distribute clothing made with my mesh, correct?

I know it may seem silly to ask, but better safe then sorry, since I'm not completely sure on what exactly the Smoothing Modifier does. :)
Thank you.

Richard Haseltine

I hesitate to answer, since my grasp of the principles is shaky, but the actual smoothing has nothing to do with matching shapes - it's more a matter of relaxing the mesh, removing bumps and dips from the shape. If you mean the collision detection, which is built into the Smoothing Modifier but is off by default, then I don't know what algorithm it uses. However, as for legally distributing, anything which uses an automated transfer from a DAZ figure to a new mesh is regarded as creating a derivative work and would not normally be OK to distribute; it is true that in the case of final clothing (not a quick suit) that you can bake morphs from smoothing, and that DAZ has suggested this as a method, which does imply that that is a legitimate use of the tools (and of course the same applies to using Morph Transfer as the basis for a custom morph, which DAZ has actively recommended).

Would there actually be any point in including a quick suit made for the female shape? Since the mesh would need to be modified it wouldn't form the basis for a morph for a piece of clothing made from the plain suit (certainly not in Hexagon), and in general it's best to model to the base shape rather than a morph.

adamr001

I'm a little lost as well, hence why I asked Richard to reply. Can you maybe explain to us again what you're trying to do?

e-bahr_b0b4c77606

Thank you very much for the reply. I don't feel quite so silly in asking now, afterall, either. Ok, I'll walk you through a basic workflow on this one, since it is the clearest way I can think of to explain my question. My end result is to create a quicksuit for myself to use, in order to use it as a base to create freebies and distribute items. To do this, I'm being extremely careful not to use extracts or mesh matchers at all. Once complete, I'll use the quick suit myself to make clothing items instead, not putting the suit itself out- It's lower res, so not much use.
Ok, I started in Daz, exported Genesis to Hexagon. Using primitives (cube and cyl ) I formed the very basic shape, sub-divided and refined, etc. As I got to the third sub-d and had a general shape, I tested the suit in Daz to make sure everything was fitting in alright. Imported, used the transfer utility (no template) to convert the prop. It fit rough to the male, but alright, and when changed to female had poke through. I clicked the Edit menu, and applied the smoothing modifer in Daz|Studio. It did wonderful shaping the rough object to the model, so I exported the suit out again. In Hexagon, I deleted the Genesis that exported out with the suit and checked the mesh. Checking closer, though, it doesn't appear it changed the actual poly's afterall. Just the posistioning of the verts in order to make it fit properly. (in my first try, I thought it had subdivided some spots, but in checking the backup I had made, I had already altered those before importing the obj into D|S)
Since it does change the meshes overall shape though, my question really is- does it changing the mesh's shape so to match Genesis disqualify items made from it from being able to be given out publicly. I've noticed in later experiments that if I take a rough quicksuit, shrink it just under Genesis's form and apply a smoothing mod at about 20 interations, it can form a nearly perfect tight fitting suit to Gen's form, including the face. So with it being able to do that that powerfully, I became a bit concerned.
Here's an example using a suit brought down to just under Gen's skin, and the results on a lower res and med res version (med res was sub-divided in Hexagon, not D|S, btw). Of course, the higher the poly's, the more defined it becomes. Second image is just to show detail in the midres:

Richard Haseltine

I think this would be going beyond what DAZ allows, certainly in the example in the images. You need to get pretty well there by direct mesh manipulation, with the smoothing and morph transfer used on the mesh to deal with morphs but not to get the basic fit.

e-bahr_b0b4c77606

Thank you very much- I am glad I asked then before proceeding. :) It is, admittedly, an interesting use of the tool and not something I expected, but my gut feeling had told me this really shouldn't be that easy, LOL.
Thank you for your time and assistance.