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Decimator questions

paul_ae567ab9paul_ae567ab9 Posts: 231
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

I am a bit confused by Decimator. Instructions are poor.  It is okay up to the point of decimating a figure but then what?

I am trying to make a set of people to use in crowd situations and I can decimate okay but when I save those figures as an asset and load them they seem to have lost all the reductions from Decimator.  It is asking for a LOD name, okay? But is that a file being saved somewhere and if so where and what do I do with it?

Given the price of the program it seems very inadequately documented and flaky?  While it seems to function on the face of things, it does not seem to save what you do in any manner I can see.  So what's the point?

What I want to do is:  Load individual people and make decimated versions and save each as scene subset for later insertion into groups of people.

Thanks.

Comments

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,320

    Well I think, and DAZ model experts please correct me if I'm wrong, but you'd be better off using LOD (level of detail) for those crowd scenes.

    Don't all the DAZ character models have LOD? I've never tried to use it so I'm not sure although I recall reading of posts where others have mentioned it.

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,837
    edited May 2017

    Hi 
    I have the decimator plugin
    and it seems the decimation is only "Live" for each session
    and is not saved with the figure.

     I immediately export my low res figures to another pro application so it is not a problem for me but I have not been able to save a permanently decimated figure to my DAZ content library for later re-use.

    Post edited by wolf359 on
  • paul_ae567ab9paul_ae567ab9 Posts: 231
    wolf359 said:

    Hi 
    I have the decimator plugin
    and it seems the decimation is only "Live" for each session
    and is not saved with the figure.

     I immediately export my low res figures to another pro application so it is not a problem for me but I have not been able to save a permanently decimated figure to my DAZ content library for later re-use.

    Seems to me then it is an over-priced and probably mostly useless plugin at that rate.  It would seem to be useful only if you simply dont have memory enough to hold a scene for render.  The time it takes to make all the adjustments to individual actors etc. just to throw the work away if you can't save it makes no sense.

     

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,837
    edited May 2017

    "Seems to me then it is an over-priced and probably mostly useless plugin at that rate.  It would seem to be useful only if you simply dont have memory enough to hold a scene for render.  The time it takes to make all the adjustments to individual actors etc. just to throw the work away if you can't save it makes no sense."

    The decimator was created as part of a Game developer package
    I imagine the assumption was that we would only be interested in 
    using our lowpoly triangulated figure in whatever game engine we were exporting them to.

    At any rate this Bug has been reported nearly two years ago
    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/54246/decimator-lod-not-saved-in-scene-daz3d-crash

     

     

    "

    DSF/DUF doesn't have facilities to store LOD information.

    To my understanding it would require to split what's currently called "geometry" into "vertices" and "topology" and have multiple "topologies" for different LODs. This is major change in file format. And then to make it to play nicely with switchable UVs and geografts :) I doubt it will happen any time soon or even "DAZ soon" :)

    As a possible workaround you can save decimated figure as new 'figure' or conformer."

    Post edited by wolf359 on
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