DTHUREGRIF opened this issue on Sep 22, 2001 ยท 111 posts
dcort posted Sun, 23 September 2001 at 4:43 AM
Jaager, since you mentioned mapping, Dina's head is basically cylinder mapped, which is why the scalp is mapped separately, otherwise there would be strange distortions at the top of the head. The alternative is front-back mapping, but as you pointed out that has its drawbacks as well. The general feeling was that the scalp is usually under hair anyway, and having the head cylinder mapped pretty well eliminates any seams otherwise. The polygon density may seem a bit high in some non-critical areas, but this was done to avoid any abrupt changes in polygon density. I have found in making morphs for Natalia and other models (and maybe this is just a Lightwave issue, since that's what I use), trying to use the Smooth command over an area where the polygon density is very different tends to have poor results. Also, we have been getting feedback from users, and the high poly count hasn't really proven to be an issue. One user reported that she could use Dina on her PC with only 64 megs of RAM. She said it was a little slow, but still workable. More is better, of course, but this hasn't been as big of a problem as even we thought it might be. We will also soon be releasing a lower-res version of Dina which has the identical head, but a lower-res body mesh. This will be made available at no charge to everyone who has purchased Dina. I am working on a new area of my website which will have more qualitative information regarding Dina, in a format similar to the illustration above. I hope to get this online within a few days.