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224 S 200 W, Suite #250
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DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
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© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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HD outside of the Daz store usually is higher level of detail achieved with normalmaps and/or displacement maps. No HD morphs.
I wish Daz wasn't so secretive with HD morphs so, for an example, old G3 characters could be fully converted to G8. At this point I'd even pay full price for G8 versions of Sachra, Damien, Anneke or Sative even if they were exactly the same characters down to all extures only re-released as G8. For their morphs only.
Edit: I was going to include Rune 7 on this list too, but then I recalled someone had the idea of complementing her body type with permanent silicone endownements clashing with the rest so meh. This one I could skip.
But! Bethany 7!
I really hope ALL the content is released somewhere! Especially the characters. I'm getting elder Minto right now. This is better than the Superbowl.
Well, from my pov out there's more asian looking figures coming up for DAZ all the time and there's only one Superbowl each year... so.. nope...
If anyone is still following this a Classic Remaster of Fredda has been released at another store.
This is a rework, obviously not HD, and without the hair.
The hair has been available seperately there for a while...
So it has, thanks, I'll update the list accordingly.
Thanks for the heads up!
I have no experience with it, but @Wolf359 has been saying for a long time that he obtains the same kind of detail with normal maps. I can confirm that his results are pretty darned good.
I believe it. I've seen some terrific models on other stores. I was thoroughly impressed by how much detail could be retained through normal maps.
Clothing does not conform to normal maps. For example if you put a tight bodysuit on a character with strong veins from normal maps, you will very likely have poke through from the normal maps. If the character shape is true HD and not normal mapped, you will not have this problem. What good does that normal map detail do you if it pokes through your desired costume? So HD mesh absolutely can matter, though that is another topic, and I don't want to go on another rant about how anti consumer this truly awful practice is.
That said, I honestly think that Rarestone's characters look better without the HD mesh. IMO the HD details were too strong for her stylized characters. So in this situation I wouldn't be at all upset about the lack of HD in these characters.
Normal maps is similar to bump maps an optical illusion, and there is no change of geometry.
Would I want to see strong veins showing on the surface of a bodysuit anyway? From my experience, limited as it is of course, normal maps are used mostly for quite small modifications, which shouldn't be visible through most closing anyway.
And if there is the rare occasion that a normal map would interfere by being visible through - maybe - some bathing trunks or a swimming suit, wouldn't the application of a geoshell to the figure and adding a smoothing modifier to the clothes that would be set to act on that - invisible - geoshell solve that problem? It's something that I have done before to solve poke-through issues.
Right, I suspect the point was meant to be about displacement maps.
Makes me glad I got the Gou Luk Bundle when I did it's still one of my favourites and Grace Yong is a great character that morphs pretty good for custom characters and there are always lots of good makeup options too
I have middle schooler Minto but still want to get high schooler Minto too you can never have enough characters
And it's really nice.
Some of the guys like Darius can do this when using their normal map versions instead of HD. It depends on what the normal map is used for. But either way, both displacement and normals are ways of cheating true geometry. That is why normal maps are popular in video games, because they can save on geometry.
Now why would somebody want to have the normal map on with clothing? Well what if the clothing doesn't cover the entire body? This doesn't have to be a super hero suit, that was simply an example, it can be other forms of clothing. Any time a piece of clothing makes contact with the skin can result in a situation where a normal map causes poke through. It can be from draping or conforming clothing.
Geoshells in my experience kill the normal map details. So not really a suitable replacement, IMO.
Additionally, because normal maps are essentially faking this detail, the detail they create is not physically accurate. It may be passable to the observer, but that doesn't mean it is accuarate. And that can be ok, the result is what matters. But if a user's goal is physical accuracy then they require HD mesh, period.
Normal maps exist as a comprimise solution to the problem of rendering complex geometry. They are a substitue for the real thing, but they are not to be confused with the real thing. The thing is we are reaching a point to where computer hardware can render crazy amounts of geometry. Yet Daz Studio is still stuck on limiting users to only modify base meshes that are less than 18,000 vertices. Meanwhile many modern video games can pump far more than that into a character on screen. This threshold was passed years ago. Unreal 5 can push many millions of vertices at once with even modest hardware. But yet here we are, and we the customers can only hope that Daz releases HD meshes that we like. We have no way to create our own, even just for personal use. Sure, we can use normal maps to cheat this, but I just covered that.
A great example was Tara 8. Tara released with a facial scar built into her HD mesh. With a base mesh users can smooth such a scar out (ignoring the fact that a base mesh cannot even do a proper scar in the first place). But with a HD mesh there was no way for any customer to remove this scar on her face. It was pretty annoying! We the customers had BEG Daz to update the product with a version that made the scar optional. Now while Daz did comply with this, the fact remains that they could have chosen not to. And then all the customers would be stuck with this scar on Tara's face with absolutely no way to remove it themselves.
And that is just one example. There are plenty of examples where I would personally like to alter a HD mesh. I can't. There countless examples of users posting in this forum wishing they could transfer a HD morph from a past Genesis to the current one. They can't. The Creature Creator HD pack in particular is frequently mentioned in these forums.
How is this a good thing? How is it even a good thing for Daz for that matter? I would argue that at this point it is doing more harm than good to keep HD meshes exclusive to certain PAs.
Out of the box comparison. Fredda HD on the right, adjusted on the Y axis as Fredda Classic Remaster, on the left, is considerably taller.
I regret not getting the new girl over there as it seems everything but the freebies are gone again as well as a hanbok I was waiting to get until I was ready to use it. T_T
Wow, that's crazy, but true!
Edit: Even the product page is gone, which is unusual...
You can always try to contact the vendors directly over at Rendo and ask whether they're interested in a private sale. Some are very cooperative!
Fingers crossed on the hanbok! Hopefully the creator has it for sale somewhere and messages back. Still half hoping Rare/Ravenstone just pops back up again as I think this happened before over there once or twice. The freebies still being available gives me some hope :)
I just saw that and came here wondering if anyone had heard anything. Maybe they're coming back to Daz?
This is one vendor that keeps us on our toes.
I asked jennblake about it and she said that Ravenstone had not logged in for about a month and thus there was no support for their products
I hope they're okay
Oh wow. That's not good news. I sent a sitemail, but they'll probably never see it. They haven't been active on Twitter since June, either.
Thanks for the update, will keep an eye open for any activity around. I too hope they're OK.
With the state of the world these days that's always my concern too especially when really active PAs suddenly stop putting out stuff or their stuff just goes PUFF. At least we have some history of it with Rare/Ravenstone so can hope he'll be back but artists like Peache, who's stuff I really love, no clue if they'll be back or are ok
I just acquired Parah and she is almost a re-release of Rarestone's Judy. The body shape is the same. Head scale slightly different. Lips less puffy. Exact same skin texture, slightly paler.
And yeah Ravenstone's store just dissapeared from Rendo recently :-(