Creating content... to SubD or not?

AlienRenders

Suppose I create a new clothing item. I usually use subpatch in Lightwave. I use the built-in one, but could use Catmull-Clark that is also used by DAZ (what is Catmark BTW?). So my question is this. Since the item looks fine subpatched, should I leave the item like that? It's really low poly so the save files are MUCH smaller. If I need to update something, it's really easy since I can still use my original model. Or do I "freeze" the object to create the subdivided polygons and save that out? This method will work no matter what since it creates the geometry it's supposed to. But I'd rather save the low poly version if I can for making updates easier. 

Anyone have any experience with this? Any drawbacks to saving a figure that requires 2 levels of subdivisions for it to look like what you want? I suppose morphs might be a bit trickier.

 

larsmidnatt

What is the polycount of the low poly version?

My guess is PA's typicallly go ahead and collapse the mesh before shipping it most of the time. Most new items are fairly high poly at base resolution, and most don't seem to have sub-d enabled in DS by default. This means they did not expect the user to use any addtional sub-d on the item.

If you have some time it may be worth seeing if you can find any items you got actually require sub-d to be enabled. I dont think most do. And if they do, I bet it is only 1 level. 

AlienRenders

One item I'm working on is about 10K polygons before "freezing" with SubD. It's 22K after freezing the mesh. By today's standards, that's not so bad. But one small part is "frozen" no matter what. Actually, I just noticed it's taking up 8K polygons. Without that, my mesh is 2654 polygons. So I can fix that to use fewer polygons. Regardless, my question is for the future because when it's in SubD (before freezing), I'm able to create some really low polygon stuff that look really good. I guess it doesn't matter because the new polygons need to be there before rendering anyhow SubD or not. It's only a matter of ease of use for updates.

I'll freeze it for now. And I may create something else for fun and leave it for SubD and see what I get. Can't use the current figure because it wasn't made for Catmull-Clark.

I'll take a look at some of my items. If it's only requiring 1 level, it doesn't say much because if they created the mesh with SubD in the first place, another level is just going to smooth it a little more. In contrast, I once created a mesh that looked like a complete and total mess if SubD was off and was extremely low poly. But turn it on with 2 levels and it looked great.

Richard Haseltine

Where do you anticipate using the items? Poser and DAZ Studio both support SubD in their current versions, though Poser doesn't currently support edge weighting to control the smoothing (and DS doesn't support smoothing groups) so if you want to have your content work in both you are limited to basic SubD.