Daz characters and system resources?
cobusp
Posts: 303
Has anyone done tests to determine how computer intensive newer figures like the Genesis 2 ones are?
I am a bit on the slow side - I'm starting to play with the Genesis 2 characters only now and plan to make a switch from Michael and Vicki 4 (I still use them quite a lot because I have so much clothing and hair for them). I know about Genesis 3 - but I have more available resources for Gen 2 (got several nice ones when I upgraded to Carrara 8.5 too)
Thanks
Post edited by cobusp on
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Comments
It depends a little on what you mean.
V4/M4 have pretty high base reolution and use a lot of ram as is.
Gensis 1 have a smaller mesh and higher subdivided resolution
Genesis 2 and 3 continues that path with even lower resolution before subdivided and silly high with HD morphs (G2 had a little bigger mesh, G3 was going back smaller again).
With subdivision the mesh get more and more dense, and with HD morphs it's getting close to silly.
In DAZ Studio you can convert most G3 cloth to be used on G2 for small money, this works pretty well, G3 on the other hand may not be the best choice for Carrara.
With the lower base resolution it is to be noted that exporting FBX from DAZ Studio get more and more crappy with later version of the characters as it only export the base resolution.
Even though I don't use Carrara any more (slow slow slow loading and saving) I don't use G3 characters at all, only G1 and G2 and sometimes V4/M4, but I do use a lot of G3 assets on G2 characters.
If I remember correct M4/V4 have around 80000 polygons and G1 have around 20000 base mesh, G2 21000 and G3 around 18000.
I used to use Genesis 2 all the time in Carrara but noticed that my save files, uncompressed were getting huge 2 GB+
I have on occasion had the situation (especially on an iMac - 32gb memory) where the file would save ok but then not load if the file was over 2GB - it goes down with 'there was an error loading the file' and I'd loose the lot!
As a result, I've abandoned my Genesis 2 figures in favour of returning to V4/M4 and keep under the 2gb file limit - stil lget fabulous results in Carrara using them.
A real shame as I have loads of Genesis 2 resources purchased from DAZ.
For the current Carrara Challenge I was experiencing rather long load/save times even keeping everything external with a G2 character. Then I noticed that the file was 865mb large with hair and clothing. The other night I started over with a different different G2 char... it is 43.7mb with no hair or clothing.
I've only been using G2 and have had no problems. Note neither are HD.
Wow - that's huge! Would that be for one character, or a complete scene? Also, were the textures embbedded or still linked externally?
Sorry, but what do youe mean here - that neither the G2 male or female have high definition meshes?
Thanks for that info! Excuse my ignorance - when referring to HD morphs, are these specified as HD in the morph dials for Poser or Carrara, or does it simply mean that the character mesh needs to be subdivided before the morphs work well? I suppose that if I work in Carrara, I should just apply subdivision to my G2 character to obtain the same effect?
Lasty, you said that G3 assets like clotging mostly convert well for G2 characters. If I work in Poser or Carrara, can the same thing be done there?
I am not sure that HD morphs work in Carrara, they increase resolution/subdivision levels locally like in face and so on.
In theory the DSON importer for poser should work with everything G2 but once again, I have not tried with HD morphs, I never got it (DSON importer) working well with Poser 11 PRO anyway, it's a bit like loading G2 into Carrara, sometimes it works, sometimes it's crap.
The .car file format is what makes Carrara useless to me, it would take 5-6 minutes to save or load a scene and as C do crash sometimes it's good to make a backup, but if you make a backup every 10 minutes and it takes 5 minutes to save the file, you don't get much done, but maybe just me having those problems, it's obvious that many people are happy with Carrara, not sure how they manage.
2GB+
Complete scene. 1 female Genesis 2 figure + clothing + shoes + house setting. All textures stored locally, never use compressed or internal.
If you exceed the 2GB limit then although it says its saved ok, it doesnt always load. I have lost loads of work due to this and now try to store scene elements as individual .CAR files.
I do not think that Daz's HD morphs work in Carrara at all. As far as I know, it doesn't matter which resolution of smoothness is used in Carrara, the Daz HD morphs do not work. Smilarly, geograft does not work, although Misty may have found a limited work around involving some UV references in the file structures.
I use Geneses 2 often - but I also use other figures at will, including older figures such as Victoria 3 and Poser 7 Simon. When using Genesis 2, I tend to save the components of the scene rather than the entire scene. This economizes on time. In case that did not make sense, if I have the foreground figures the way I want, I can save them, bite the bullet on the time, but then not include them in the save when I am tweaking the lights, or adjusting the stuff in the background. Not appropriate for every project, to be sure. But then again, I don't always use G2. There is another recent thread on Genesis and Genesis 2 file sizes and save times. Worth skimming.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/173071/how-to-reduce-ridiculous-genesis-file-sizes-in-carrara#latest
I'm pleased to say that I was able to import my Gen2 Male flawlessly from Poser Pro 2012. The morphs also work fine.
>> Just one annoying thing: The morph categories as they are neatly broken down in Poser (and Daz, I suppose) are lost - one only gets one extremely long list of morphs in Carrara's Parameter list. And the strange thing is, when one goes into mesh edit mode for the character, in the Morph tab, all those categories are still intact!
If there's anyone who could write a plugin that can correctly ranslate the categories in the Parameter tab - I'd be fisrt in line to buy it! I wonder, is Fenric still around?
yes we need Fenric badly, I think he could solve a lot of these issues with the DAZ genesis onwards figures but apparently he has not cared to embrace them or anything DAZ studio either, think he has gone to Poser for good.
Actually the HD morphs do work in Poser DSON imports for what it's worth in Poser.
Sadly they do not export to Carrara.
That is unfortunate. You know if Fenric is still on the Forums, or did he make a clean cut from Daz, you think?
he made a post possibly on the old forum when DAZ stopped him linking his commercial site.
Was pretty annoyed with DAZ in general.
been rather absent since.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/962368/#Comment_962368
one I found
and a helpful discussion on this topic here
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/962346/#Comment_962346
I've never saved a file which was UNcompressed,. Never,. ..I've also never had any issues opening those compressed files,.
one thing I always do,. is make sure that i clear out any unused objects / shaders etc,. clear out any junk,..
,. then save compressed,. locally
At the top of the parameters panel,. there's a seach/filter option,. there's also a little blue button, (Root) which opens pop-out where you can select the morph area you want to work with.
Hope it helps :)
Thank you 3dAge!! New horizons have opened up for me with that teeny weeny bit of info - The blue button!! Hahaha. I wish I posted this a long time ago - oit would have made my life so mushc easier with other characters.
I also lost a file once after checking the Compression option, and decided to never do it again. But your advice is noted - cleaning all obsolete assets before savinf the fle. How much do you reckon a file size is reduced with compression activeated?
th3Digit - thanks also for the lnks. Let's hope Fenric misses us too much and deecides to return to the forum.
I am so close now - but o-dear! Something new came up!
The geometry gets totalle wacky when a try to pose any limb.I remember this used to happen long ago when I woked with Animation groups, but there's none here!
What gives??!!!
The Genesis 2 instances tree looks alien to me.
It should look like this:
I am unclear why you are jumping through hoops (importing from poser) to load Genesis 2. Why not load directly within Carrara? The above file was only 8.5 MB
that looks like a Poser companion file Cobusp
Carrara needs the duf versions
My reason for loading the Poser file, is that I intially loaded it via Carrara's Smart Content tab (that's what you refer to right?) Yes, the structure looked like your screen shot. But, for some reason, every bloody time the Gen2 male's eye textures are messed up or completely lost when loaded this way.
Ironically, the texture files remain intact when loading the Poser file. A bit of a catch-22 - isn't it?
But thanks for you clarification on this.
You mean that the eyes are black? That's a pretty easy fix.
BTW - in posting the following, I'm not picking on you, I promise. It's just that you made a similar comment back in 2015.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/56594/carrara-8-5-newbie-gen-character-eyes-messed-up
If I am still misunderstanding, please let me know!
Hi - now I can see why your name is "UnifiedBrain" - heck you DO have an immense memory! ;-) Yes, I brough it up then - and the forum response was satisfactory, although it still looked like a bit of work to fix it manually. SInce I did not yet have a desperate need to work with Genesis at shat stage, I canned the idea and continued with my older characters. And I did not work with Genesis again until now (or been on the forums that much).
But yeah - now it is becoming more serious for me to migrate to Genesis (and for this thread, I just brought the black eye issue up again as my reason for importing the Poser version directly). But since this is clearly not an option, I'll take the time to go through the process as suggested by several of this forum's fine members.
Thanks!
Ha, I wish my memory was that good. What I did was google "Carrara black eyes." I knew that it was a common issue, and discussed many times before (saving me time in explaing it again). Your old post was the first thing that popped up.
What I REALLY wanted to do was steer you towards a video tutorial from Dartanbeck, where he covered the subject in great detail. But alas, he deleted it.
If you need more specific information about the "black eye syndrome," just ask. Much easier dealing with that than with poser rigging issues.
AH, ok so you're still human, then! Pity< I wonder why Dartanbeck deleted his video. But anyway, I'll try to figure it ou over the weekend, and if i get stuck, I'll certainly get back to you.
Thank you so much!
Here are Dart's instructions from a thread:
"Simply open some of those shaders for the eyes - particularly those the cover the whole surface. Look for channels that have more than one source, as I think that some of them are being multiplied by a black color chip. Where this is the case, simply drag the source (likely source 1) directly onto that channel, basically omitting the multiplication or mixer.
For example, if the "Color" channel is set to "Multiply" or some other mixer, look at the two sources. One will likely be an image and the other is black. If this is the case, drag the source that is the texture map directly onto the "Color" channel in the list of channels on the left."
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/743139/#Comment_743139
Basically, just drag the "source 1" channel up into the "shader" channel just above it. That will cancel out the multiply function, and just leave the sclera texture map.
Thank you so much for this!