Game Development Things that are needed or in need of Fixing.
Azure_Zero
Posts: 65
Hello
I'm currently working on a game and doing tests with Daz Content.
And I've noted things that make using Daz content for Game development very unlikable.
This is leading me to to thinking of abandoning Daz Content in my development and giving others a heads up.
1) the Polygon Count in the Decimator is wrong in Game engine terms, They are double what the Decimator says,
This is due to the fact that every piece of Daz Content has Front and Back Facing Polygons, not plain Front only Facing polygons.
2) Daz Studio has no functions to alter the facing of the Polygons to Front only Facing polygons.
3) The Decimator really messes up clothing, and the Mesh Smoother that could make the clothes look correct.
4) The Exporter needs fixing as Hair / Eye-lashes and possibly even props are in the wrong spot.
7) The Genesis Supersuit had Visiblity options for the Genesis base model, I would like to see these available for Genesis 2, V4, and M4.
And with more options for better results.
6) The adding of LODs for Genesis and Genesis 2,
and or Game Development Versions of 4th Gen to 6th Gen content. Front only Facing polygon versions
7) To avoid the hassle of is it Daz or Not, Daz studio can run in a Daz Content only mode.
I hope Daz takes my notes and fixes these problems and I may start recommending using Daz for game development as the models look great, has great variety, and way better pricing than real***ion for game development.
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Comments
You sure about that?
Almost every DAZ product is quads...if you triangulate it, you end up doubling the poly count. So could your application/game engine be triangulating the meshes?
Are you aware that you need a license to use DAZ 3D content for game development, and even then the license only covers Daz Originals and not PA items.
I know Daz uses Quads (a form of Polygon), and did confirmed the polygons in Daz Content as Front and Back Facing by increasing the scale of a character a lot and entered it from the front and saw the Back which is a sign of Front and Back Facing polygons, not Front only Facing polygons.
When any polygon is rendered it's facing properties determine render time and power needed, Front Only or Back Only polygons are only rendered once where as Front and Back Facing polygons are rendered twice.
To confirm the experiment I did, I would need to know if Daz uses Back Face Culling
I am aware that a license is needed and that it only covers items where Daz is listed as an author.
Look at point (7)
Edit: Fixed A format Error
1) Daz's viewport renders the backfacing polygons, but it does NOT export them. I have used the export functions extensively and never had an issue with doubled polygon counts.
2) Visibility options are already available in the scene tab. Clicking the eye icon will remove that body part from the scene, and any hidden objects will not be rendered or exported.
3) It is generally assumed that anyone who plans to use Genesis for game development would use Decimator to reduce the polygon counts, thereby creating their own LOD versions of the figures. The onus has always been on the developer to provide these, and I don't see that changing any time soon as the market is too niche for the work involved in making them optimized.
4) Defining 'Daz Content Only' would be a logistical nightmare. Daz purchases some products and produce their own, but they are a relatively small company. The large amount of work needed to label all of their content as 'Daz' whilst providing a method for Daz Studio to detect whether an item is or is not 'Daz Content' could never justify itself.
Forgive me for being candid here, but I'm going to give you my own personal views as a games programmer myself. It is not, and never has been Daz's goal to work with game developers in mind. Most of their sales comes from hobbyists who use the software to render stills and animations. The game developer license is there more as a legal formality to give some leeway to those who are interested in using the figures in their games.
As a game developer, I feel there should never be a 'quick fix' solution for game assets. It takes time and effort, and as a developer you'll realise that the best assets are the ones which are optimised for the platform. I'm sure as heck not going to use the 4+ texture files which came with that awesome desk prop, or the 30+ textures for that detailed outdoor scene. I'll take them, condense them into DDS files, and optimise them for the engine I'm using. The same applies to any and all 3D assets I use.
So, the answer to your decimator problem? Take it into a modeller and adjust it manually. Sometimes there really is no need to overcomplicate this stuff. Decimation will never be an exact science. You're taking an object with a very high polycount and reducing it down to a fraction of that. There's going to be clipping and overlaps, but it should be nothing an experienced modeller can't cope with.
There's a reason the big name games take years to develop, and that's because there is a LOT of work involved in their creation. Given the shortcuts Daz offers to developers, a few extra minutes per model shouldn't be such a time drain as to prevent progress.
On your above points
1) I did export the test model to 3Dsmax, and it does show the signs of front and back faced Polygons,
I'll be doing another test in a few nights to confirm the results. Using max and a game engine (it shows the poly count rendered)
2) The Decimator has the remove invisible Polygons which was used before export
3) Daz oddly has LODs for 4th gen models, but none for 5th or 6th gen models (genesis 1+2)?
4) It could be a nightmare, as there could be code behind the scenes that could make the tags a quick thing or something that could take months.
While I can agree with you on DAZ being more for hobbyist artists, the second DAZ put forth the game license they should have been prepared to support game development.
The quick fix comment I can also agree with, but when your working on pre-alpha builds, not a 3D artist, suck at skinning and rigging (vertex weights to bones), a one man team, and using an early sample build (as a video) to possibly recruit help and set the style and theme of the game world.
I as a one man team who is very programming heavy want it to work out of the box. This holds true for any one man team or an indie developer who does not know a modeller, or has no cash to spend on a modeller.
And yes I know games take years to be developed pending on various factors
I can make a console version of black jack in a day, tough a FPS would likely take a year or two.
My initial interest in 3D artistry was spurred on by my work in games development. Much like yourself, I was looking towards other mediums to provide simple models and figures for my early work as placeholders. I soon discovered there was a glut of already optimised game avatars and models which could be adapted to suit my various needs.
My original goal was simply to be in a position where I could create any of the models I needed for my work. When I realised I could make pretty pictures at the same time, well the rest is history...
My honest recommendation is that if you're going to use placeholders, then simply use placeholders. If the game mechanics are solid enough, you'll get the warranted attention no matter how it looks. If you're aiming for something you can release to the general public for consumption then it needs polish. Joe public can be BRUTAL, so be thick skinned. Take it from experience that every little bug or hint of ugliness often gets pounced on by testers like ravenous wolves fighting over meaty scraps. I don't exaggerate when I say I've received personal attacks over certain projects.
As for me, I hands-up admit to cheating a little by using concept images. I'll use a pre-rendered image of what I expect the game to look like and use it to fuel interest. As long as it's clearly cited as being a sample, few should complain. At the very least it may get you some interest from an artist willing to help you develop some figures for your project.
If you're set on using Daz figures then all I can suggest is perseverance. Export the figures, fix any issues and optimise them as much as you're able. At the end of the day, it's your project and no one knows better than yourself what will work for it. I wouldn't expect any dramatic turnarounds from Daz though. It's likely they already have their hands full from the hobbyist crowds.
There will be no LOD for the Genesis figures for one simple reason. The figures are already one fourth the Mesh rez of all previous generation figure meshes.
Headless Genesis in Blender3D with Backface Culling switched on. Backface culling and doublesided faces are function of the program used not the model.
Same as above...except before/after triangulation...(top = after)
G2M is the model.
The only way I know of to get a doubled poly count is to actually double them...and 'facing' doesn't count. Making Genesis a 'front only' figure doesn't drop it's poly count down to 10,000-ish.
But if you want to save a ton of polys and aren't showing the mouth open...remove the teeth and tongue...that trims around 3K...BEFORE decimation!
And if poly count is that critical...remove the eyes and replace them too...that will probably be at least another 1k before decimating.
Removing the inside of the mouth parts and the eyes brings it down to an even 17K...before decimating.
Here's a nice, simple graphic showing the difference in count between a modeling app and a game...
http://www.vigville.com/forum_images/PolygonsExplained.jpg
OK that definitely would work,
Though I'm assuming it's better to do the polygon removal in DAZ, so as not damage the Skinning data of the model itself.
And that PolygonsExplained image tells me that when a game says polygons they mean triangles, why the heck don't they just report it as triangles.
Since most of the ways of setting things invisible in DS will drop the invisible items on export, yeah...that's probably going to be the best way to remove them.
Any chance Daz could enhance the editing power of Daz Studio by adding a Edge and or Vertex within.
So that some of us could lower the poly count of some areas by hand, by removing complete edge loops or creating new edge loops by changing what vertices connect to each other, while removing the excess.
Studio is not a modelling program and is not meant to be. It has a few limited tools for direct mesh manipulation. like DeFormer and Polygon Editor (which does need better selection), and some 'tricks' like hiding nodes before exporting.
True it is more of a scene creation and rendering program.
I suppose this is where Hexagon and Carrara come in.
And I hope they can maintain the skin modifier data of the vertices as I edit the mesh layout.
And I did not know about the Node hiding,
And I'm not sure If I completely know what a node is, though I have a vague idea
As far as every major 3D program on the planet is concerned, everything is a triangle, or at least those not using point-clouds which is a subject entirely in its own category. Quads are still considered to be 2 triangles at it's most basic level. However, quads have huge benefits in how you can handle mesh topology. You can follow the edge loops on quad-based figures very easily, but they will stop when they hit a triangle because there's no vertex to continue with. With smoothed surfaces, triangles are often responsible for pinching effects in the mesh as well.
That's not to say that triangles are evil, but they're certainly not ideal for working with smoother meshes. In game design, I'll largely work with quads and then bring it backwards into triangles simply because it's easier to get the topology correct. It's also far easier in terms of mapping UV's since it gives me half the total number of polygons to arrange, which is a time consuming process in itself.
Triangles are the ones used in games simply because they're fast. They're the most simple 2-Dimensional shape you can create, and since everything is ultimately 2-Dimensional when it's rendered to the display it means you can create any shape, transform and rotate them with ease and generally do what you like with them.
Few people these days develop their own drawing routines from scratch, often employing OpenGL or DirectX routines to do most of the work for them. Some systems make it even easier to develop games for by removing the need to even deal with your own 3D matrices, entirely avoiding issues such as gimble lock. That said, knowing about how it works internally can help a great deal with optimizing the program overall.
What DAZ really need to do is change their license agreement, because at the moment it is completely useless to any 3D game developer, as you would need to encode the mesh into the game engines binary code to comply with the license, and I don't know of any game engine that you can do that with.
That basically means your wasting your time even looking at the content in this community, unless of coarse your a 2D or Isometric game developer as they don't even need a license.
Time for all you wannabe game developers to do what I did when I started modding games, and that is learn how to make your own models, that way you don't need to worry about a license, and game publishers are more likely to buy the rights to your game as they wont have a 3rd party mesh license getting in the way.
Programmers these days tend to rely more on standardized methods of importing models into their work, which is what makes breaking them out of the code so much easier. That said, there's very little you can do to prevent a determined individual from stealing game assets. At the most advanced level you can simply pluck the raw data out of RAM and build an interpreter to convert that into a file. That said, I'm fairly sure Daz will accept it if you at least take the necessary precautions to ensure it's not easily accessed.
Yes, this has been confirmed.
A few engines do offer taking the model converting it and then you have the option of putting it into a encrypted file file when the game is published/ goes gold.
Since I asked that question, of how protected are the model files, to a few companies selling/licensing their engines.
I found one that offers the most protection against unauthorised use, and it's on Steam right now, and a better version is coming this March.
You can find it in the software section, under Animation & Modeling or Design & Illustration
Yeahh, another game dev thread. It would be nice if we would have a game dev forum like earlier. Daz, please???
The "what could DAZ do to make game developers happy" Thread
- LOD: it's no problem if DAZ does not provide those, but it should allow game devs to share them in some way such that not everyone has to create their own (auto generated ones s#ck)
- Exporters: please improve them, there are many bugs and you know it
I do agree that a game dev forum would be nice to have.
But there must of been a reason WHY they closed it down.
few people used it - maybe 1 human a week .;-)