So... decimator, how to actually make it work?

Eric Lagel

I've followed the instructions and videos, but there's still something that doesn't work:

I use a Genesis typical model, Candace for instance, and a typical shirt cloth.

If I decimate the shirt, the skin texture appears through the cloth very quickly (around 50% decimation), typically at the breasts level. This is the same problem if I use Michael 5 for info, so while the problem is more obvious on female models, it does exist on male models.

It seems to be because the smoothing feature (the one that allows the shirt to stick to the Genesis body) doesn't work as well if the triangle number goes down. So, if I follow the decimator tutorials that I can find on videos (which are all based on v4 btw), I can't have an acceptable result.

I have thought of some workarounds, but hopefully someone can help me do them, because I am not sure how to:

I wonder if there are ways to merge Genesis and the cloth into a unique mesh, so that Decimator thinks its only one mesh. When decimating, there wouldn't be any issue with the Genesis mesh intersecting with the cloth mesh, because it's essentially the same mesh. I have tried to export to obj (but it loses the rigging) or fbx (but it doesn't merge) and reimport, but so far I haven't achieved the results I expect. Any idea how to achieve this?

I also have tried to bake the Smoothing morphs (In the edit/object/geometry menu), so that once the cloth has smoothed on the body, its shape becomes fixed. While I see that something has computed when I use that option, the baking doesn't seem to hold, and as soon as I move the decimator cursor, the skin reappears through the cloth.

If anyone has managed to decimate Genesis-based figures satisfyingly, I'd appreciate any support.

ToKoMotion

Hi Eric.

I was facing the same problem, but I think I found a solution:

1. Create your character (shaping) and add clothes.
2. Export as fbx
3. Import the fbx file to DAZ Studio again
4. Use the Decimator - it will list each cloth shape and you should decimate each shape separately to the desired polygon count
5. Press "Create LOD" in the Decimator at first and then "Done"
6. Export again as fbx (the exporter will show the original polygon count in the "Info" tab, but you will export the decimated version)

I´ve checked my decimated fbx-character-file and it worked fine. I could reduce it from 296.000 to 56.000 faces. Hope this helps.

Greetings,
Tobias

skinwalker

Thanks for this I was having the same problem. You can also set weights in the decimator, so keep the eyes / face / nails at 100 and you can lower the torso / legs / genitalia.

The only thing I don't understand is how the LOD works, basically when you click "Create LOD" does it take a snapshot of the current optimized model, so you can keep reducing the polygons count and keep making LODs?