Felicity HD morphs clarification requested

vwrangler

According to the product information, she should have

1 Custom HD Head Shape
1 Custom HD Body Shape
Head Preset for Victoria 6
Body Preset for Victoria 6

According to the product information and readme page, the only requirements are Victoria 6, Genesis 2 Female Head Morphs, not the V6 HD morphs add-on. Is that accurate? Or is there missing information on those pages? (If she doesn't need the V6 HD addon, all I can say is, she renders fast for an HD character.)

There are sliders for the head and body, but neither are labeled HD. There are no presets labeled HD. Are those sliders her HD morphs? If so, when we use the sliders, do we need to dial in the V6 base shape as well as the V6 HD morphs separately to use Felicity's HD morphs properly?

It's a bit confusing figuring out what's going on with her without anything being labeled, and with her product description being a bit terse.

Richard Haseltine

I'm pretty sure this was clarified and no, the V6HD morphs are not used - Felicity has her own HD morph.

vwrangler

Oh, OK. Thanks; I didn't remember to look for another thread.

Would it be possible to pass a suggestion up to DAZ that this be clarified in her product information and readme? Especially since "Required Products" in the store itself is still a bit flaky, being clear in the product description could only help.

I wonder what the difference is between her HD morph and Bjorn M6 HD and Anna V6 HD? A nude hairless render of Felicity takes about five minutes or so on my computer; the last time I tried with Bjorn and Anna, it took about an hour each. All of them have main textures at 4096px, so that's not it. Hmm.

barbult

Were you using the AoA SSS skin on Felicity? She comes with AoA SSS and HSS, I think. If so, maybe different shader settings?

vwrangler

barbult said:

Were you using the AoA SSS skin on Felicity? She comes with AoA SSS and HSS, I think. If so, maybe different shader settings?

Felicity comes with Studio Default and EHSS, but no Subsurface. Bjorn and Anna use Subsurface. That slows things down, but not to the extent that I was seeing with them.

Just to clarify: Felicity HD renders MUCH faster than Bjorn and Anna HD versions. I may try Bjorn and Anna with Studio Default shaders just to see how much of a performance hit the shaders might be responsible for, but I remember when HD first came out, DAZ said that it just takes longer to render because of the calculations. Felicity doesn't. It's wonderful, just weird.

barbult

I'm sorry for the misinformation. I guess I remembered incorrectly. I should have checked on my rendering machine before replying.

How about rendering each model without materials (use a shader cleaner) or with the same material to avoid differences in settings like displacement? I'm interested, because I had the same questions you asked about the Felicity "HD".

Also, did you find any icon to load Felicity as a character? I could only find materials and shaping separately. I had to load V6 first and then apply materials and shaping.

Serene Night

This is something I am curious about as well. I stopped buying hd content because some stuff renders so slowly. But not all things. Admit this confused me. I had th same experience with Bjorn. I bought felicity because of her great texture.. but I just can't tell which things will render slowly hd and which will not..

vwrangler

barbult said:

I'm sorry for the misinformation. I guess I remembered incorrectly. I should have checked on my rendering machine before replying.

How about rendering each model without materials (use a shader cleaner) or with the same material to avoid differences in settings like displacement? I'm interested, because I had the same questions you asked about the Felicity "HD".

Also, did you find any icon to load Felicity as a character? I could only find materials and shaping separately. I had to load V6 first and then apply materials and shaping.

Felicity doesn't have an actor icon, only shape and material presets. Her head and body sliders and presets invoke her custom HD morph, so all she needs is the general shape to look right.

I'll try applying the same materials later, when I'm at that computer, to see how that works.

Serene Night:
This is something I am curious about as well. I stopped buying hd content because some stuff renders so slowly. But not all things. Admit this confused me. I had th same experience with Bjorn. I bought felicity because of her great texture.. but I just can’t tell which things will render slowly hd and which will not.

I'm wondering if there was something in the update to 4.6.2.118 that very much improved how Studio handles HD morphs. Bjorn and Anna first came out before that update. I noticed that while things like the Veins HD slow down render processing a bit, it's not a huge amount slower. Noticeable, but not extreme. I haven't tried rendering the HD versions of Bjorn and Anna since the update, so maybe that's different.

barbult

I'm at my render computer now. I've done some tests and have convinced myself that Felicity has some small HD detail in the head (not as much as V6 HD adds), but I haven't found any HD detail in the Felicity body at all so far. I will post some images as soon as I get them properly labeled with Photoshop.

This is my examination method. Tell me if it is flawed.
Load model
Apply Shader Cleaner.
Set Diffuse Color to 192,192,192
Capture screenshot with Subdivision 1 (default)
Capture screenshot with subdivision 3 (limits changed in parameter settings to show HD in viewport)
Perform above steps with V6, V6 HD and Felicity
Flip back and fort between images to compare changes.

barbult

All images are screenshots captured on a monitor with resolution of 3840 by 2160. However, DAZ Forum won't accept an image over 2000 pixels, so I had to resize them down in Photoshop. Labels were added in Photoshop. All comments here are my interpretations of what I see, not "facts". Maybe you will see something I missed. Let me know.

First, some V6 images (V6 and V6 HD).

Compare V6 subdivision 1 and V6 Subdivision 3. Notice that on non-HD models, subdivision 3 just seems to add some additional smoothing caused by the subdivision. I don't see additional fine details. But we don't expect that on non HD models.

Compare V6 HD subdivision 1 and V6 HD Subdivision 3. I see additional detail in the subdivision 3 screenshot, as we would expect. with the HD. The details are most visible to me in the lips, ears, collar bones, shoulders.

Compare V6 subdivision 1 with v6 HD subdivision 1. I was surprised to see differences even at subdivision level 1. I guess the HD morphs start to kick in at all subdivision levels.

My understanding is that HD morphs always render at HD subdivision level, regardless of viewport subdivision setting, so I did not bother to compare renders with different viewport subdivision settings.

barbult

Now Felicity. I used the same viewport capture and Photoshop resize and label techniques.

Compare Felicity subdivision 1 with Felicity subdivision 3. There are some additional details in the head, but I don't see any in the body.

Compare Felicity images with V6 images. I see much more fine detail in V6 HD subdivision 3 than I see in Felicity. Felicity subdivision 3 body level of detail looks just like V6 (NON HD) subdivision 3 level of detail. In other words, I see no HD detail in Felicity body.

I have looked at more of the body than just what is shown here in the neck and shoulder. I looked in detail at the hands and feet, an area where V6 HD adds quite a bit of definition. There was none of that in Felicity.

So for my use, I think I will dial in V6 HD body details when I use Felicity head and body morphs, if I really want HD.

I'm interested to hear what the rest of you conclude after your own tests.

barbult

Here are the feet images. Felicity foot at subdivision 3 is identical to V6 (NON HD) foot at subdivision 3. i.e no HD in Felicity foot.
Compare Felicity foot with V6 HD foot. See the extra detail in V6 HD that is not in Felicity.

Now after all this, I better understand what I got with Felicity "HD" morphs. The morph is nice, but just not as HD as I expected. I think the Felicity skin is nice and I'm glad I purchased the product.

Yes, it is disappointing that DAZ did not clarify what we were really getting with Felicity. Since I own V6 HD morphs, I can dial in V6 HD body. If you don't own that and thought you were getting an HD body with Felicity, sorry, I think you are not getting what you expected.

Thank you, vwrangler, for asking the question and prompting me to examine these morphs.

barbult

I know I'm monopolizing the thread, sorry.

I looked at the Felicity materials. I do have AoA SSS materials for Felicity. They are in the folder Genesis 2 Female/Characters/Felicity/Materials.

I also have HSS (omHumanSurface) materials in folder Genesis 2 Female/Characters/Felicity/HSS Materials.

So I did remember correctly. vwrangler, do you have something different???

vwrangler

barbult said:

I know I'm monopolizing the thread, sorry.

I looked at the Felicity materials. I do have AoA SSS materials for Felicity. They are in the folder Genesis 2 Female/Characters/Felicity/Materials.

I also have HSS (omHumanSurface) materials in folder Genesis 2 Female/Characters/Felicity/HSS Materials.

So I did remember correctly. vwrangler, do you have something different???

I misread what I have. I'm still not quite used to default materials being AoA Subsurface instead of Studio Default. So I do have both EHSS and Subsurface, and not EHSS and Studio Default.

I did want to emphasize, I do like Felicity quite a lot. I'm guessing that the vendor was probably taking something like the same approach as Zev0, with the SHD version of the Aging Morphs -- something that gives at least some of the benefits of HD morphs without clobbering the processing and rendertimes the way full HD can. Which is a reasonable approach to take, and one I like, myself; it just makes things a bit confusing when nobody explicitly says what's going on. But yes, I can see using her a fair amount.

Serene Night

Thanks Barbult for telling us what was included!

I appreciate the screenies a lot.

I bought the character because she is a much needed black character and aside from Male-M3dia's morphs, I don't have any specific black characters for v6.

But until someone told me I could use her skin for other characters I was going to pass.

I just don't have the time for hour long renders of single characters, with in my opinion don't see too much difference.

Would be nice to somehow gauge what I was getting in the product info before purchasing to give me some idea whether I can run the character.

barbult

SereneNight said:

Thanks Barbult for telling us what was included!

I appreciate the screenies a lot.

I bought the character because she is a much needed black character and aside from Male-M3dia's morphs, I don't have any specific black characters for v6.

But until someone told me I could use her skin for other characters I was going to pass.

I just don't have the time for hour long renders of single characters, with in my opinion don't see too much difference.

Would be nice to somehow gauge what I was getting in the product info before purchasing to give me some idea whether I can run the character.

Yes, the skin is nice. It is V6 UV, so that limits it to G2 characters, I believe. Too bad it isn't V5, which would make it more versatile for use on G1, too.