Zev0 opened this issue on May 18, 2011 ยท 171 posts
bagginsbill posted Sun, 22 May 2011 at 11:45 AM
Pretending for a moment that I know nothing, I'm curious about WM in the general non-hobbyist CG world, versus what we will have.
Please correct me if I've misunderstood some points.
Daz trademarked the name "Triax" (TM) in conjunction with DS4. It refers to having 3 independent rotational weights for each joint, one per axis. This implies that the larger CG world has always used only one weight per joint. Is that the case? Is using a separate vertex weight per joint*axis a new idea? If the rest of CG apps in the world use only one weight per joint, then doesn't this ensure that the Genesis figure is not compatibly rigged for apps like Maya, etc.? If it isn't a new idea, then what's the point of crowing about playing me too - like me giving a proprietary name to "glass of water".
Is "Triax" (TM) actually useful? Does it make a meaningful improvement over "Monax" (TM I made that up). And if it doesn't really make a difference, is it worth tripling the memory requirements to hold all that vertex weight data in memory? How often do you really want the weight of each axis to be different? If it's rare, I would think that it would be better to use Poser's strategy of multiple influencers per joint. This way, you start with a single weight map, and for the few joints where you need unique values for a second or third axis, you would then stack a single-axis weight.
Genesis seems to be one big mesh - no groups. Does this mean that each weight map (per joint) must include data for every single vertex in the whole figure? Isn't that horribly wasteful? Is it sensible to have influence data for every joint * every axis * every vertex? Let see - approximately 45 joints in a figure, times 3 axes, gives us 135 numbers that must be kept per vertex. Even if all that is kept in single precision floats, not doubles, that's around 38 megabytes of data! I hope to see some amazingly realistic human shapes for that cost.
SM is notorious for not knowing how to use its own tech to best effect, and therefore creating a community perception that the tech is far less than adequate. As far as I can tell, Miki3 does not demonstrate at all what is possible with the new multi-zone sphere+capsule system introduced in P8+PP2010, the system that Daz has refused to embrace. Instead, they claim that Poser tech is holding them back. Meanwhile, I notice also that last year, Maya (an app that is over $3000) just introduced the same or similar multi-zone capsule shape rigging that Poser did, and they talk about it as a way to seriously avoid having to weight map for realistic joints - that it is a step beyond painted weight mapping. What's the truth here? Any rigging experts care to comment?
Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)