How many Poser folks have heard of this? Got an email from a friend who bought this yesterday and he says he's shrinking 250k polys V4 figures down to a 25k poly count and no major loss in quality!

How many of us could benefit from having an M3/M4 or V3/V4 files that size so we don't have to worry about overloading our PC?? The only catch it they're not making it for Poser so I contacted Daz about that and they suggested making a feature request on the forum (probably to gauge the response)

Here's a link, I suggest anyone who'd like to be able to reduce the poly count on the excessively large M4/V4 models to make your voices heard. It's a pain in the @ss importing figures into Daz Studio and back (I haven't figured out how to do it yet) so why not make a version for Poser?? 

Check the Forum Link HERE

Help out... send it to friends, family... whoever!! This suck a tool like this can't be used with Poser... with all the Poser Users out here making their art!!

Peace

PS: and for anyone who doesn't know what 'Decimator' is, here's a link: ** HERE**

Why bother, why not just stick with remapped Posette?

Blender has had some tolerably decent decimation scripts, at least in the past.  I'm not sure about the current version of Blender.

The main problem with most decimation techniques seems to be the quality of the resulting reduced mesh.  The poly count may be reduced and the basic shape may be retained (minus some detail), but for Poser figures (specifically for the joints) you'd really want a method which would create a mesh which wasn't messy, with irregular polygons.  Preserving the edges of actors could be a problem, if an entire figure .obj is reduced.  The methods I've seen invariably create all tri meshes which are very messy and require a lot of manual cleanup.  In some cases, UV mapping is lost or damaged by the decimation.  I've never seen a decimation tool which would retain groups, as far as I can recall.

Remeshing processes, with more user control or input into the process, would probably be more promising for figures than the usual automatic mesh decimator.  I keep waiting for quad-meshing techniques to start appearing in the 3D programs which are affordable on a hobbyist's budget, but I haven't seen any yet.  :sad:

A figure can be successfully reduced and remain usable, apparently, but the process isn't easy, as I understand it.  JoePublic once created a reduced version of Miki.

You can use MeshLab and is open source.

ZBrush has one too it mostly comes out quads,  like a delauney mesh but as Cage mentioned the resulting mesh is not anything I would try to bend. I suppose if all you were trying to do is reduce the poly's in a scene and already had the figures posed, it may be of benefit. I'm with DPH use lower poly figures to begin with, that way you can still repose them.

PolyTrans is actually brilliant at doing this, you can reduce a model, yet keep seams/joins intact.  For instance, if I wish I can load up the V4 obj, reduce it by 50%, save it, then load poser and just add V4 into the scene and the new reduced model will be used, bones still work fine, dont know about morphs tho :p

 templar.. could you please post a pic of a reduced model done this way? It sounds interesting! Also the wireframe? PLEASE?! :)

Is Atangeo Balancer good too?

@ttheterr

I too would love a Poser decimator... a poser figure blender for that matter too. Don't see it happening though. There are some cool d/s tools but I just can't grasp the GUI. Anyway... although it will not help with other figures but here at RMP there have been threads explaining how to make 17K or even 4K V4 and M4 figures from the V4 LOD geometry included in the free d/s download.

Mainly you export the 17K LOD figure and applie the rigging from the standard in the Set Up room. All that is required is a morph transfer tool such as Clothes Morph. If you don't want to transfer morphs then Most Digital Creations has a face magnet set for V4 and kaposer here at RMP has magnet control tools such as Xanna that can be used in place of morphs.

I use both a 17K V4 and M4 and they are indistinguishable from the standard figures in any of my renders. I only use the standard figures for product testing now.

**
**

I don't think DAZ is going to support poser because... you know they make DAZ studio.

I have the non-commercial version of Atangeo Balancer ( $26) . It works very well for me. The picture is a V4 reduced to 10% of the original vertices count. The texture mapping is retained and the groups are maintained and welded. Pointing a copy of the original V4 Cr2 at the new mesh gives a good low resolution useable figure. The swimsuit and hair in this picture are unmodified. Note that Balancer has maintained the volume of the figure so the swimsuit still fits as good as ever. A downside to reducing the mesh vertices of a figure is that morphs won't work. The latest version of Balancer has a feature which can maintain the verticies at a boundary, so I think it would be possible, for instance, to make a low resolution body which can weld to the original head. That would allow the original head morphs to work. I haven't tried that myself as yet. I have no connection to Atangeo other than as a satisfied customer

Yeap, those other tools are available - based on what I've heard from Daz Studio users Decimator kicks ass.. but that's just what I heard. Thought it might be of interest to Poser Users so I 'attempted' to help out and help to raise a stink about getting it for Poser (who wouldn't more tools to choose from??) but alas, doesn't appear to be much interest. Fair enough.

As for the 90/10 quote

Quote - I don't think DAZ is going to support poser because... you know they make DAZ studio.

 
Uh, I uh... contacted Daz and the engineers over there said uh.. if there's enough interest they uh, would do something like that even though they... you know make DAZ studio and not POSER... hence this post....

(yep, we can all be smart @sses but what would it prove?)

Quote - I have the non-commercial version of Atangeo Balancer ( $26) . It works very well for me. The picture is a V4 reduced to 10% of the original vertices count. The texture mapping is retained and the groups are maintained and welded. Pointing a copy of the original V4 Cr2 at the new mesh gives a good low resolution useable figure. The swimsuit and hair in this picture are unmodified. Note that Balancer has maintained the volume of the figure so the swimsuit still fits as good as ever.
A downside to reducing the mesh vertices of a figure is that morphs won't work. The latest version of Balancer has a feature which can maintain the verticies at a boundary, so I think it would be possible, for instance, to make a low resolution body which can weld to the original head. That would allow the original head morphs to work. I haven't tried that myself as yet.
I have no connection to Atangeo other than as a satisfied customer

NICE... have you tried animating any of the models you've reduced? I'm really curious about that aspect.
Does it keep the rigging etc... for adding BVH files to the "shrunken" model.

They aren't going to do it.  All they have to do is say there isn't enough interest and they've got an out.  The people at daz aren't supporting all of the products they sell now, so they sure aren't going to put the effort into a decimator for poser.

DAZ cares about 3 things.

1.  Their "free" figures and the profits their figures generate (addons and clothing).
2.  Their free DS and the profits the DS addons generate.
3.  Carrara, which is expensive. 

Anything else is trivial to them.  That means your poser decimator probably isn't going to happen.  It doesn't fit into what they do.  Maybe if you'd stop assuming people are being a smartass and stop out smartassing them, maybe you could understand the situation a little better.

The people at daz are greedy.  If what you ask for isn't in their plans for greed, they probably aren't going to do it.  Plus you shouldn't assume what a company says is true or the whole story.

Hi,

No I haven't tried animating but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.  The V4 above is properly welded so it bends without splitting at the seams. I found clothes and hair can be more difficult to reduce while keeping an acceptable result, but I guess if things are moving around in an animation it might be less noticable than in a still.

 I took a look at the DAZ decimator and it looks good. Since I already have Balancer I wouldn't buy another mesh reduction program unless it had major advantages. I see DAZ are offering a bundle with a program to reduce texture resolution. That raises a good point, that there is little value in reducing a figure mesh if you are going to use a high resolution texture on it. For animations I think thet would be even more relevant.

The rigging is in the CR2 file. So long as the resulting reduced mesh has the same group names it will basically work. What I did for the above figure was reduced V4 in Balancer, save the resulting .obj file as V4lores.obj, in the geometries directory. Then take the DAZ V4 Cr2 and modify it to point to my new V4lores.obj file instead of the original .obj file. This now works as a figure, although as noted above the morphs no longer work ( but magnets will still work ). 

Clothes Morph by Dimension3D here at the RMP can transfer morphs from a figure to its low res version in less than a minute. Only trouble is open mouth morphs. If Wardrobe Wizard wasn't hobbled it could do the same I'm sure.

Quote - They aren't going to do it.  All they have to do is say there isn't enough interest and they've got an out.  The people at daz aren't supporting all of the products they sell now, so they sure aren't going to put the effort into a decimator for poser.

DAZ cares about 3 things.

1.  Their "free" figures and the profits their figures generate (addons and clothing).
2.  Their free DS and the profits the DS addons generate.
3.  Carrara, which is expensive. 

Anything else is trivial to them.  That means your poser decimator probably isn't going to happen.  It doesn't fit into what they do.  Maybe if you'd stop assuming people are being a smartass and stop out smartassing them, maybe you could understand the situation a little better.

The people at daz are greedy.  If what you ask for isn't in their plans for greed, they probably aren't going to do it.  Plus you shouldn't assume what a company says is true or the whole story.

right

Quote - Hi,

No I haven't tried animating but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.  The V4 above is properly welded so it bends without splitting at the seams. I found clothes and hair can be more difficult to reduce while keeping an acceptable result, but I guess if things are moving around in an animation it might be less noticable than in a still.

 I took a look at the DAZ decimator and it looks good. Since I already have Balancer I wouldn't buy another mesh reduction program unless it had major advantages. I see DAZ are offering a bundle with a program to reduce texture resolution. That raises a good point, that there is little value in reducing a figure mesh if you are going to use a high resolution texture on it. For animations I think thet would be even more relevant.

The rigging is in the CR2 file. So long as the resulting reduced mesh has the same group names it will basically work. What I did for the above figure was reduced V4 in Balancer, save the resulting .obj file as V4lores.obj, in the geometries directory. Then take the DAZ V4 Cr2 and modify it to point to my new V4lores.obj file instead of the original .obj file. This now works as a figure, although as noted above the morphs no longer work ( but magnets will still work ). 

Yes, a good point indeed. Low res models with high rez maps could cause a bit of a hassle... which is why I thought this was a good tool to begin with... the tool you suggested seemed pretty cool but the texturing thing was also a concern... and a pretty big one.

I checked out the one you suggested and it seems interesting - maybe worth the $26 to check it out.  Thanks.  :)

Attached Link: NewSkin

Good tools for reducing textures are the combo of Free IrfanView to down-sample and NewSkin to create the new matposes for the smaller textures.

Still I very much miss the max texture size setting from Poser 5.

I agree with winterclaw Except I dont consider it "GREED"for DAZ or any company to:

Develop a product
Make it Affordable
Nurture a Market for it
Keep the market "Active" with new releases.

Frankly I am just as guilty as anyone here of criticizing  the repetitive "V-chick hookerware" etc from DAZ.
But at least they are Actually Selling  products (3Dmodels&Applications),
for thier money and not just stealing peoples wealth like Insurance companies and Banks.

On the Decitmator thingy
I also Agree that Asking DAZ to Make poser versions
of Things Built for their D/S Market Paradigm
is probably Wishful thinking at best.

I think it  is obvious by now that the poser market carries very little weight for them and this is NOT a criticism
of DAZ just an Observation of Reality.

Cheers

it's not bad - v4 is the disease and decimator is the cure :lol:

Quote - Clothes Morph by Dimension3D here at the RMP can transfer morphs from a figure to its low res version in less than a minute. Only trouble is open mouth morphs. If Wardrobe Wizard wasn't hobbled it could do the same I'm sure.

Gee! Last time I said you could trasnfer morphs to a modified figure using those programs. A certain merchant came along telling me I didn't know what I was talking about.

The technology itself is nothing earthshaking - PolyTrans, Vizup etc. have been around for a long time. I'm more interested in their emphasis on gaming. One might suspect that Daz has a vision on where they're going with 3D that goes far beyond the Poser/DS type of application. I'm sure the Gizmodo thing probably wasn't just a whim. In their view of the future, Poser may simply be irrelevant. At any rate, the markets for the two products seem to remain pretty separate. I'm not sure that making something like this available for Poser would necessarily be a financial negative for them. On the contrary, they might make some money from people who were never going to buy DS anyway. Of course whether they see it that way is another matter.

"I'm sure the Gizmodo thing probably wasn't just a whim."

erm Gizmodo is a tech blog with nothing to do with 3Dgraphics ;)

Quote - it's not bad - v4 is the disease and decimator is the cure :lol:

Indeed.

Has anyone used any of these poly reducing softwares with animation? If so, which ones and how'd they come out?

"Gizmodo is a tech blog with nothing to do with 3Dgraphics ;)" 

Gizmoz Should have checked the spelling first at least I got the G right instead of using J :-)

Interesting concept - actually, the original decimation was a Roman military punishment, where they offed  every 10th man...;)

Why do I have a feeling that this kwel little tool will bring about a mass of copyright infringement ?
I know I must sound like Eeyore here but this opens a little can of worms that has yet to be understood.