Quote - You're evading, joequick.

Not intentionally.  In my mind, your argument goes "the third generation daz figures have the optimal topology among what's available to us".  You post images to support that argument. To my eye, those images don't prove your point.  So I respond. 

Generally, in terms of the sharpness of detail achieved, if it's that sharpness that matters to you, I see no real difference between 3rd gen figures and even a mapless Freak 5.  Mallenlane's might be a bit ambiguous in the serratus anterior compared to what I assume was Creek's, but I feel that that definition could be gained with small tweaks to the topology, and not by driving the polycount towards 100,000.  You show me an M2 muscleman, I counter that Mallen is sculpting more believable muscle anatomy with fewer polygons than what we saw dominating Millennium family figures generations 1-3.  You disagree.

You ask "why not multiply the polycount by three, our computers can handle it". I agree that more detail could be sculpted into those meshes. There's a lot more subtle detail sculpted into those faces than what I could do with the 4th and 5th gen figures.  But  the way that that detail distorted when combined with other morphs or when posed.  What seemed superior in a t-pose quickly deteriorated when other variables were added. I would think that it would only be worse with your 100,000 poly figure.  And with that hypothetical 100,000 poly figure I wonder if we would lose all sense of topology dictating form, which in my mind is useful, as it insures that my breast morph will jive with your breast morph, and no one will wind up with quadroboob or eighteen and half abs simply because one morph artist sculpted those details in a location that contradicts rather than compliments the work of another.  In my experience, the lower res figure with form defined by the topology, and detail defined by the mapping, just behaves better when posed and when combined with other morphs. Beyond that, I defer to the experts.  If this is what Mallenlane and Teyon are both advocating, if this is what we're seeing on cghub et all, then I'm fine with accepting that these professionals are wiser than me and adapting my workflow towards their idea of best practice.  An answer that I can't imagine is very satisfactory for you, but I feel no need to prove that I know more than the people who do this for a living. 

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