primorge posted at 1:27 PM Tue, 18 January 2022 - #4433468

The fact that we now have LOD morphs, which, thanks to ODF, can be created in virtually any sculpting software, can be previewed real time and also mixed in real time via dials to arrive at results that aren't specifically planned (eg. Improv) is just additional flexibility in such a workflow. It's gravy.

Exactly how I see it.

I thought maybe I'd summarize the method I ended up with for making the morph, just in case someone's interested.

1) Starting with preparations: in addition to loading the hi-res OBJ file with the morph, I grab two "base" meshes from Poser, both at subD 0, an unwelded one with all the relevant actors and a welded one with isolated vertices intact, so that the numbering between the two meshes matches. Then I do some renumbering on the hi-res mesh to ensure it has the isolated vertices at the same indices as the welded base mesh.

2) Next I bake down the morph to subD 0. Let's say the morphed hi-res mesh is at subD level N, then I subdivide the welded base mesh N times and compare the positions of the subD 0 vertices in the two subD N meshes I now have. These differences provide my level 0 deltas.

3) The next step is just a regular FBM construction using the deltas from step 2. I get the actor information from the unwelded base mesh. That's not the optimal way of doing it, but since I started with a command line script that uses an actual mesh loaded from an OBJ file to get actor information from, it was the most straightforward way.

(... and my lunch just arrived, so I'll leave step 4 - the actual subd part of the process - as a cliffhanger.)

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.