Hi,

I've got a question about using the Smoothing Modifier under Edit>Geometry. I was experimenting with it last night & found it does a great job on V4's entire body & would be useful for certain poses where her body gets kinda mangled or scrunched up.

But here's my problem, or question. How do apply it to just certain parts of her body? I tried selecting just particular parts like her back, belly area or thighs, but it kept applying it to her entire body.

That would be great if it left her face alone, but when it applies the smoothing head to toe, it changes the expression on her face, particularly around her eyes and in her eyes. I lose that special nuance in her smile, the naughty girl, mischievous look for instance that I want to keep. She goes from looking flirty to kinda glum or blank. Is there a way to mask off a certain body part or again, a way to selectively apply Smoothing Mod I don't know about?

 

I need to correct something above. When I apply the Smoothing Modifier, the overall effect is more problematic then I first thought. I've experimented with it some more and found that it almost completely removes her nipples. If all I need to do let's say is smooth her abdomen, it effects not only her abdomen, but also her facial expression, and significantly changes the shape around her breasts and on her breasts. Or if I select her shoulder & collar area, it once again smooths out her entire body. Is there a way to limit the Smoothing effect to just the selected area? 

There is no way to selectively assign it.  Furthermore it is primarily a collision function to eliminate poke through on clothing, it was not meant to be applied to a figure.  It can be usefull for 'toonifying' characters as it does smooth out details.

:-/ Hmmmm, that's too bad. Smoothing Modifier has the potential to be very useful for characters if implemented right. I'm sure it does help with clothing. I just wish DAZ gave us the ability to use it on character's bodies by allowing the selection of a specific part of the body, and only that part like the abdomen, shoulder, legs, arms, etc. That would work wonders! 

Have you tried converting the figure to SubD? Still a whole figure thing, or course.

Hi Richard,

Yes I have. I applied SubD early on. It helped with some things, like giving her breasts a smoother, more natural symmetry for instance, but there are poses I run across occasionally that twist & mess with her body's natural shape so it has that kinda scrunched up or slightly mangled look. I can clear that with the Zero pose of course, but then if I try that other pose again, the problem resurfaces. That's why I was hoping the Smoothing Modifier if it could be applied selectively would fix those problems. It would be cool if a future version of DAZ Studio could have a feature like that.

As I understand it, when DS4 first came out, the smoothing modifier COULD be limited to various nodes on a figure (say, just the knees, elbows, or shoulders), but that selective functionality was eliminated early on in DS4's development. It's been brought to DAZ's attention repeatedly, and hopefully it will be available again in DS5.

I think per-bone smoothing, or at least collision detection, may have been for legacy rigs only - but they were made to work in the same way as TriAx figures fairly early on (in the public beta stage, possibly).

Like Kevin, I would hope that feature will be available in a future DAZ version.