Renderotica

Now retired with a lot of time on my perverted little hands, I'm leaping into building my line of truly sick and twisted items.  I hope to follow in the footsteps of the greats and pay tribute to a fellow Canuck, Dolcett, with a line of Art-Deco/Retro-futuristic execution 'toys'.  I have considerable experience in commercial graphics and some in 3D, and am working in the new Blender 2.8 Beta.  I've exchanged some emails with one of the R'otica testers but am looking for broader input on this since modeling standards (seemingly) vary considerably.

I've been looking at the mesh of other established creators to come to some consensus of how dense the mesh should be. I assumed there would be a standard, or a range of sizes depending on how close people would be expected to see the item. Unfortunately I find that meshes are all over the place. I opened a bunch of items in Studio then exported them as .obj files, which where then opened in Blender. The two dildos are very dense with a close-nit mesh. The chairs where, to my mind, not dense enough. I played with Sub-D settings in Studio but am stymied because I thought that selecting increased levels of resolution in the items properties would show as smoothing in the viewport. I had to select Sub-D in the menu for the items geometry before anything happened. The item then looked smoother but there was no corresponding increase in the mesh density. My questions are...
 

1. Does Sub-D need to be selected in 'Edit'- 'Object' ---- (see screenshot) by the user in order to see results in the viewport AND have the choice in the item's Parameters panel? You can select higher levels of resolution in the Parameters panel but nothing seems to happen in the viewport until after you've selected it in Edit-object-Geometry-Sub-D.
2. Selecting Sub-D doesn't actually add any new geometry, it's just 'faked'(?). If there is new geometry added, it's not displayed in the viewport.

You can see a perfect example in the two shots of the chair from the 'Reading Room' set. The one displayed as Texture wire shaded shows noticeable hard edges on the front of the seat cushion. After selecting Sub-D via the Edit menu AND selecting a higher display resolution in the chair's Parameters panel, the front of the cushion is much smoother but there's no additional geometry displayed.
Oh ya, the one pillow is all triangles. This wouldn't subdivide would it? So triangles are fine IF you have no intention of it being subdivided(?)

Thanks for any insight into this.

 

 

Thanks a bunch for that link. I've read the Daz3D forums daily for many years and saved anything remotely topical on content creation but somehow missed that one. It's interesting (or pathetic) that all the expensive tutorials billed as "Complete guides to content creation" from Esha, Dark Edge Design, Dreamlight and a few others either ignore this subject or gloss over it. Daz3D and it's locked-in core of content creators don't want people to know how to do this. I feel that they're desperately afraid of folks making their own stuff and/or selling somewhere else...like here.

Something I noticed while looking at various meshes is that the polygon count has been creeping up over the years. Items from many years ago have much bigger quads than stuff made recently.
Thanks again.

I've spent the last day and evening following a bunch of search results from Google's advanced search in the Daz forums. I also found a few excellent blogs and personal sites with information. It's obvious that Daz3D doesn't want people knowing this stuff so that they (we) can make our own items and sell them in other sites. Getting and sharing information is like pulling teeth. This is what I've learned so far....

1) Sub division in Studio enables extra details and allows smoothing of mesh for close ups.
2) An item's (object, figure or clothing) mesh must be built with sub-D in mind if the CC (content creator) wants the end user to be able to use it. It generally means that quads of a fairly consistent size must be used, as other forms of geometry don't always sub divide predictably or properly.
3) There is no standard for initial mesh density (size of individual quadrangles). They have gotten smaller over the years as computers have gotten more powerful. This should mean that there's less of a need for subdivision when rendering, however, there's more of a demand for bigger and more detailed renders so sub division is still used.
4) I'm going to stick with a mesh size of about 1 cm square as this is sorta-kinda what I'm seeing in most meshes from established CC's. Items that are predominantly square/blocky/angled (machines and mechanical stuff) can get away with larger and simpler meshes since sub dividing them is of no use as the item will look the same. If the CC has included surface details, sub-D may still be needed.
5) The end user must first select the item, then enable Sub-D in the 'Edit - Object - Geometry - Convert to Sub-D' dialogue. They can then choose a level of sub division for both the viewport and the final render.
The view must be set to 'Lit Wireframe', Wire Shaded', or 'Wire Texture Shaded' to see this extra geometry (and the resulting smoothing) in the viewport.
6) The level of sub division selected for the viewport changes the mesh density on the model. If you export the sub divided model as an obj. file, that file will contain the level of sub division selected.
7) The level of sub division selected for use during rendering does not change the mesh density. it's all done internally in the render engine.
8) The smoothing seen when an item is sub divided is done by the sub division algorithm used by Studio.
9) You can't sub divide only part of a model, it's all or nothing
10) Triangles may(?) be used on items that will not be subdivided, and need to be draped or D-formed. This type of uneven geometry lends itself to realistic draping. Quads can look too regular. There is a lot of work and research being done in this area for animation and cloth simulation. I read several PDF's on this that got heavy into math. In a nutshell it seems that irregular sized triangles work best for cloth draping. There's also an irregular arrangement of quads called 'Quadrangular' which has the advantage of lending itself to being sub divided.

Thanks for that link. I'd already found it (and saved it) but the help is always appreciated.
I was looking for an old forum post on Daz3D (maybe?) that talked about different types of geometry specifically for
use in dynamic items but couldn't find it. It might have some bearing on sub-D for items that are going to be
draped in D-force.