Using V4 and M4 facial expressions for Genesis

steggieav_d8c8461672

Genesis will accept general poses and hand poses that were made for Generation 4 characters, though not perfectly. Unfortunately, it won't accept legacy face expression poses. Is it possible to, say, convert the poses for use with Genesis?

fixmypcmike

Facial expressions aren't really poses, they're morphs. If you have GenX you could convert the facial expressions that way.

CypherFOX

Greetings,

fixmypcmike said:

Facial expressions aren't really poses, they're morphs. If you have GenX you could convert the facial expressions that way.

I...I did not realize that!

Thank you! I'm going to have to give that a try...

mutter, mutter...learn something new every day, if I'm not careful...

-- Morgan

vwrangler

Cypherfox said:

Greetings,

fixmypcmike said:

Facial expressions aren't really poses, they're morphs. If you have GenX you could convert the facial expressions that way.

I...I did not realize that!

Thank you! I'm going to have to give that a try...

mutter, mutter...learn something new every day, if I'm not careful...

-- Morgan

That works; however, the side effect is that a converted Gen4/GenX'd expression calls the appropriate V4/M4 shape. So if you try to use a GenX converted expression on a converted Gen3 character or on M5 or V5, the character will abruptly look somewhat different because the body base shape will change from whatever it was to M4/V4.

fixmypcmike

vwrangler said:

Cypherfox said:

Greetings,

fixmypcmike said:

Facial expressions aren't really poses, they're morphs. If you have GenX you could convert the facial expressions that way.

I...I did not realize that!

Thank you! I'm going to have to give that a try...

mutter, mutter...learn something new every day, if I'm not careful...

-- Morgan

That works; however, the side effect is that a converted Gen4/GenX'd expression calls the appropriate V4/M4 shape. So if you try to use a GenX converted expression on a converted Gen3 character or on M5 or V5, the character will abruptly look somewhat different because the body base shape will change from whatever it was to M4/V4.

Really? I thought you had to dial the V4/M4 shape separately.

vwrangler

fixmypcmike said:

vwrangler said:

That works; however, the side effect is that a converted Gen4/GenX'd expression calls the appropriate V4/M4 shape. So if you try to use a GenX converted expression on a converted Gen3 character or on M5 or V5, the character will abruptly look somewhat different because the body base shape will change from whatever it was to M4/V4.

Really? I thought you had to dial the V4/M4 shape separately.

GenX-generated presets call the shape automatically. I think most Genesis presets do, actually, but GenX-generated ones definitely do. I discovered this when I tried using a V4 expression on M4, just to see how it would look. The results were, shall we say, unexpectedly busty.

DWG

vwrangler said:

GenX-generated presets call the shape automatically. I think most Genesis presets do, actually, but GenX-generated ones definitely do. I discovered this when I tried using a V4 expression on M4, just to see how it would look. The results were, shall we say, unexpectedly busty.

If it's an actual call then it may be possible to edit it out of the .dsf.

phcriado_50d0961ab5

vwrangler said:

GenX-generated presets call the shape automatically. I think most Genesis presets do, actually, but GenX-generated ones definitely do. I discovered this when I tried using a V4 expression on M4, just to see how it would look. The results were, shall we say, unexpectedly busty.

If you load v4 on genx and apply the expression there, you can check only the face morphs you need to port, then select region face or head, no auto follow, and port them without the v4 body. Later when you use it on genesis you will need the v4 head morph applied though, otherwise it will look different. I'm assuming you won't click on the expression preset with genesis but rather dial in the newly created genx morph.

vwrangler

awz4158 said:

If you load v4 on genx and apply the expression there, you can check only the face morphs you need to port, then select region face or head, no auto follow, and port them without the v4 body. Later when you use it on genesis you will need the v4 head morph applied though, otherwise it will look different. I'm assuming you won't click on the expression preset with genesis but rather dial in the newly created genx morph.

True, but then you're adding the expressions morphs and facial controls to the Genesis genepool again, which a preset doesn't. A preset works with what's already there, and as far as I can tell, for facial expressions, if you're doing GenX transfers anyway, the underlying morphs already exist. Once you're doing any number of GenX conversions, Genesis is going to become large and slow to load/save (relatively speaking), so I'd like to restrict the additional morphs added to the genepool to the ones that are unavoidable. (The only thing I really miss about M4/V4 tech is the ability to add only those character morphs I wanted. On the other hand, I can do mixing and matching that I couldn't with Gen4. But still...)

I looked inside one of the expression presets that I'd transferred, and the top of the file looked like this:

{
 "file_version" : "0.5.0.0",
 "asset_info" : {
  "type" : "preset_pose"
 },
 "scene" : {
  "animations" : [
   {
    "url" : "#FBMMichael4?value",
    "keys" : [
     [ 0, 1 ]
    ]
   },
   {
    "url" : "#PBMNavel?value",
    "keys" : [
     [ 0, 1 ]
    ]
   },
   {
    "url" : "#M4_CTRL_JawFix?value",
    "keys" : [
     [ 0, 1 ]
    ]
   },

With the exception of the line about the PBMNavel?value, every URL in the file started with #M4. That said, it looks like, as long as you edit out that first section with #FBMMichael4?value (or #FBMVictoria4?value or whatever the actual shape is), the preset will load the expression without necessarily calling the shape itself; I was able to use the edited M4 expression on a V5 character, and she still looked like herself, didn't change shape or size or anything except her facial expression. I tried also editing out the #M4_ from each line with a search and replace, but because GenX transfers are shape-based, without that, the preset couldn't link to the appropriate structure to control.

That said, there are still some things to watch out for. I've got a few expression sets that came with characters, and it turns out when those are translated to Genesis by GenX, they not only call the shape, they call the complete character. I don't think there's any way to edit those so that they're not character specific; it's too embedded in the file in too many places.