Forum: DAZ|Studio


Subject: The different flavors of Eyebrows

DocPhoton opened this issue on Apr 30, 2024 ยท 4 posts


DocPhoton posted Tue, 30 April 2024 at 11:56 PM

No, I'm not into licking brows, but there's been a change from the G3/8 "flavor" and the G8.1's for eyebrows that I've come across.

Why does that matter?  Well, in Daz Studio not so much. They've a unique way in handling morphs (it's all Black Math to me in any regards), but the main difference is the morphs are separate from the geometry.

Why is that important?

Well, when you export out via FBX to retain morphs, it becomes a HUGE difference. It's not due to any extra geometry, but the morphs get embedded into the geometry as well, and that's what increases the file size. From the FBX, each extracted object has a 2Gb limit. Geometry X Morphs = File Size.

Eyebrows, Beards, and any facial hair that has expressions are the usual suspects of course as they often have a lot of geometry.

So, you make multiple exports (Wardrobe items don't need phonemes for example), and create various Export Rules CSV's over time to deal with that so of thing. Just part of the process.

For years, G3 and G8 characters used the "ribbon" style of geometry. Efficient on poly count usually, & looked great when mapped properly. Might not hold up to scrutiny when the camera is 10" away, but for the other 99.007% of cases, pretty darn good.

So with all the other changes to the 8.1 characters, it took me awhile to notice a few things. It wasn't until I got in & really looked at the geometry of the brows.

Here are two wire-frame views:



Wow. Look at all that extra geometry.  Hairs ON the eyeballs even! "Lil' tiny hairs".  Only around 3200 polys as it turns out & are easily deleted.

But wait, there's more!

I was finally getting into the swing of working with Gen8.1 so took advantage of some sales recently & picked up a few more G8.1 characters.

Wow. These look fantastic. Ooo. And these brows look clean and, ... almost too perfect.  Wait minute,...

Had to isolated a single brow hair to see what was actually going on; it wasn't a ribbon at all rather a long cone, with each segment having 12 sides, for 504 polys for this hair.

That's for one Brow hair.

180720 faces for 15K hairs total for the brows. I was lucky this time; the brows exported out to only 744Mb; well below the 2Gb limit of each object. After I trim the unneeded morphs, should be ~ 1/2-1/3 of that.

I can still use these for now, but still that's a LOT of extra geom just for eyebrows chewing up resources. Will probably swap them out when I revisit the character unless/until I can figure a technique to reduce the geom.

Found some newer Hair products that use cones too.

It's always something.


GGreen posted Wed, 01 May 2024 at 12:14 AM

I am curious, if you are purchasing Daz Studio products, why don't you just use them in Daz Studio.  It looks like you are using this product in LightWave. FYI I read all the posts that I get notifications for, always learning something new from these posts.

DocPhoton posted Wed, 01 May 2024 at 5:03 PM

Product wise I get some from Daz, some from here, but I export everything out of DS. I have WAY more control for lighting, camera, surfacing, etc.

I just can't do dForce hair. Exporting out of Daz using the bridge to Blender, then export that out to Lightwave will though, I just haven't put the gub to my head yet and learn Blender. I've a backlog of Alessandro's critters waiting.

https://www.daz3d.com/alessandroam

Also, I've no idea how to go about this with geometry in DS certainly. Had to do some tricks in Modeler even to see things.

But Newtek kinda blew the opportunity by not having a product line frankly. Back in Poser 6, probably Lightwave 5.6 days, one of Lightwave's still revered guru's Larry "Spinegod" Schultz was trying to rectify that by developing some scripts, and early Bridge if you will, so Lightwaver's could get some characters. Sadly, Larry's no longer with us.


GGreen posted Wed, 01 May 2024 at 6:34 PM

My goodness such a difficult work process.  Have you read any of the articles on lightwave and Daz in the Daz forum. Some are pretty interesting. I remember poser 6, I think my first 3D software was Poser 5. Poser has come a long way, yet in many ways it still hasn't changed much. There are things I like about Daz Studio and Poser and even Blender. At first Blender can be overwhelming, but the truth is the new version makes it easier to streamline the interface and even some of the processes.  There are many tools for Daz Studio to assist with just about anything you want to do. We have to remember there are many ways to accomplish what we want to do in Daz Studio.