Blender Beginner question about how Daz3d and Blender works

[anne O'nymous]

In general the surfaces suck because they are just diffuse layer, no normals or bumps.

Try

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. It's free and can generate bump map as well as normal map, among others.

Unless you want to explicitly enforce a relief, you don't use the diffuse texture to generate the map, but an image that match more the structure of the material without the detail you added. If by example you want painted wood, you use the picture of a plank (preferably uniform in color to not have parasites), then in Daz Studio you apply the generated bump/normal map with the painted wood as diffuse.

 

[TDoddery]

I'm curious why there are bumps and normals, they mostly seem to achieve the same thing but I imagine there's some reason for having both. Bumps seem easier to make, I know that much.

 

[drapak12]

I'm curious why there are bumps and normals, they mostly seem to achieve the same thing but I imagine there's some reason for having both. Bumps seem easier to make, I know that much.

Normals shows light angle on surface, bump light intensity. Effects are similar but normals are better to show bigger disortion (crease, wrinkle), bump is better for microdetails (skin imperfection, age spots).

sample01 - just texture without any normal nor bump maps

sample02 - bump map - effect goosebumps

sample03 - bump map+ normal map - effect goosebumps + cellulite/glute crease

 

[TDoddery]

I see, thanks for the clarification.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Normals shows light angle on surface, bump light intensity. Effects are similar but normals are better to show bigger disortion (crease, wrinkle), bump is better for microdetails (skin imperfection, age spots).

More precisely, bump maps are one dimensional, changing the "point" position on the relative Z axis. This while normal maps are three dimensional, changing the "point" position on the three relative axes.
This also make them distinguishable by eyes, bump map being black and white, while normal map are colored (generally massively light blue). More globally, the visual difference apply to all one dimensional versus three dimensional maps.

Side note:
A relative axes is an axes expressed relatively to a point effective position on space, assuming that whatever is directly facing it is Z positive. So, for a human body, a point on the top of the head will have a Z axis which is be purely vertical, while the same Z axis, but for a point on the top of the nose, would be purely horizontal.

 

[no_more_name]

But to sculpt something with the level of details needed (especially with Genesis 9), it would be too limited. Not that Blender isn't capable to do it, but it would be less easy, and way longer, than with purely dedicated software.

Not anymore ihmo. Since at least 3.0. Trendamous works been done (a responsive UI with relative high polys, >1~10M).

an unbearable User Interface that turn its use into a pain in the ass.

It's fully custmizable. And Hexagon going nowhere, it's just way too weak.

I'm curious why there are bumps and normals

Take 2 meshes, one with 500'000 polys, one with 1'000'000. You scult the intricate details on of the 1M one and "bake it" (apply to some extend, with some 'fakery') to the 500k one, that's a normal map. Bump maps are way different, they are greyscale map that interpret details by black/white range difference.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Not anymore ihmo. [...]

Thanks god, it was about time...




And I'm not talking about Blender.

 

[no_more_name]

Thanks god, it was about time...




And I'm not talking about Blender.

In all seriousness, Blender (maybe around 2.9, 2.8?) had a nasty bug when sculting high poly mesh. Every change would overload the undo stack to the the point UI froze for few seconds each time you scult. Trick was to make a 1px change inbetween to 'purge' the memory stack. Madness.