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GenX - Added information: How to Delete Unwanted Morphs!
Well, after all of my experimentation, I ended up with a lot of morphs that I didn't want or need. Some accidental individual morphs and some duplicate morphs of that obese panda for Genesis 2 Female. I mean who needs more than one obese panda morph anyway?
So, with a little help from MN_15374, here is how to delete those extra pesky morphs that you don't need anymore.
In the GenX Plugin:
At the top tabs where it offers: Transfer; Presets; Morphs, select the tab at the top that says Morphs.
Select the figure to which the unwanted morphs were added. In my case, I selected Genesis 2 Female.
Click on the 'GenX' button. This will load the morphs that were created for the selected figure. By default, all are selected.
Click on the arrows to deselect the morphs you want to keep so that all morphs still selected are the morphs you want to delete or remove.
At the bottom, you have several options:
Morphs: >Enable >Disable
Backup: >Restore >Remove
File: Delete
If you simply want to remove some morphs because of clutter, I suggest you try the back up options so they can be restored later. Since I wanted to completely get rid of morphs, I chose File>Delete. A box popped up asking if I actually wanted to delete the selected morphs and I hit ok. Make sure you actually want to delete said morphs as I'm not sure you can get them back if you delete by accident.
Thanks for that mini tute, I was never sure how to get rid of the morph mistakes. Does that also remove them in your data folder permanently?
I believe so, but I don't know for sure. I was curious about deleting, too, since I ended up with so many flop morphs littering my workspace. While I figured out how to hide morphs in DS, I wanted to actually delete the mistakes. Thanks for telling me how to delete goes to MN-150374 as he kindly told me when I asked if he knew how to delete morphs. I added it here because I figured others might want to know as well.
I haven't, as yet, figured out where GenX stores things in the directory. I'm looking, but so far no luck. I'm the kind of person who likes to know where things get put on my hard drive and why which is one reason the DS file structure drives me crazy. With multiple people imputing file names in the DS hierarchy, there are lot of duplicate folders that could be combined because of a difference in spelling. When, and if, I figure out where GenX puts things I'll test out what happens to the morphs it creates and if 'Delete' actually does get rid of it completely. It looks like it should 'Delete' since there are options for 'Backup' and 'Recovery'.
You will find them in your library under data/Daz3D/Genesis2/Female/Morphs/D3DGenX
of course substitute for whichever Base you are looking for Gen2 male or female
Thanks, Kharma. Probably the only place I hadn't looked yet. I'll check it out.
Delete a morph via the GenX2-Tab will delete the morph also from that data folder. But I prefer the GenX2-Tab, because there is also the possibility to disable morphs.
Keep in mind, every time you load a figure into your scene each single morph you have installed for that figure will be loaded with that figure. Now if you did a lot of morph conversion between figures, the increase of loading time is noticeable. Disable some of the transfered morphs you do not need all the time is very handy and can bring down the loading time.
Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. I haven't converted very many figures yet, but I'm sure I will in the future. I have a lot of morphs I'd like to convert to the G2 figures. I'll try to pay attention to loading times and plan accordingly.
This posting is going to be a little different and not quite an experiment, more of a process. But, bare with me and read to the end as there is a question at the end. I hope to get everyone's input that reads this thread. I've been driving myself crazy with a wolf render that I started in the New User contest for this past March. The theme was Posing. I got the first wolf pose done and then was fairly happy with it. I uploaded a finished render of that to my gallery and was surprised with the number of likes, 23 at this posting. He turned out really cute and I was please with the final image. However, I had something specific in mind for the contest so wasn't entering this render which is why I put it up in my gallery. Warning: lots of pictures. You should still be able to see full size by clicking on image if you wish.
First pose reference and finished pose:
Change the camera angle, add vignetting, adjust the lights and first pose, final render uploaded to gallery:
I procrastinated a bit and worked on a couple of other projects then toward the end of the month started working on pose number two that I had in mind. I finished that pose and uploaded the pose for critique, fixed some mistakes and had a final pose that I could add to the first pose. I should have had enough time to have a decent final render for the contest.
Second pose reference and final 'posted' pose:
Then the craziness started to happen.
So, my second pose is done and I think I'm set. I, actually, still had the first wolf in the scene file with the second wolf image I uploaded. He was just hidden for that render. If you had seen my workspace you would have seen the second wolf standing on top of the first wolf if both were visible. Gotta love being able to do things like that in DS. So, I think I'm good and I close DS down for a short bit as I need to run some errands. At this point, it is the last day of the contest, but I'm almost done and none of the renders to date had taken longer than 2 and half hours. You would think after all these years as a die hard procrastinator that I would learn from previous mistakes never to wait until the last moment to do anything. Apparently, I haven't yet learned that lesson at the grand old age of 50 somethingish.
I try to open my scene and DS crashes when it gets to around 50% of opening. Just kaput, no DS, just a nice view of my desktop with no open applications. I think okay. I'm a smart lady. I backup things like crazy to the point of paranoia sometimes. So, I open the previously saved scene file. It crashes. Again... and again... and again. Finally the only saved scene file willing to take pity on me and open is the last scene file before I started the second wolf pose. So, I basically lost the second wolf pose and had to start from scratch as I, also, forgot to save the pose as a pose preset. At this point, I still have several hours to finish my contest entry. I redo the second pose and he goes much quicker than the first time as I know what to do to get the wolf into place. Then I save again. You know the phrase: Save and Save Often! I did.
I rework the scene, I change things around, lighting, camera angles, I get my wolves into position, I change the image on my background plane, all to give this final render a totally different look from the one uploaded to my gallery. Of course, everytime I start a render I find something I need to fix because the image is bigger and I didn't notice a mistake. I'm sure you ALL know that drill. So, finally, the contest deadline is looming and my render is still rendering. I finally stop my render early because I have no choice if I want to enter the contest. There are still sparkles and the wolves don't look as good as they should, but I enter it anyway even though I'm not happy with it. I should mention I think I ended up posting past deadline DAZ time. Not that it would have mattered as, with all of the outstanding pose entries, I have serious doubts even a good version of the render would have won. Competition was stiff again this month. It may be the New Users contest, but they are really talented new users.
In case anyone doesn't know, Iray has this cool feature where you can stop render, go under File>Save Last Render and save your current render and go back and start your render at the point where it left off when you stopped it. This is what I did for my contest entry. I wanted to let my wolves 'cook' so I restarted the render and went to bed. It was after 2 am my time by then. And, I get up to the following image. I'm actually astounded by how good it looks and quite pleased with myself. I'm thinking that even though I know I won't win the contest, I still got an awesome render. So I save my render. Make sure to save my scene file. I made sure to save my wolf pose as a preset because I did not want to take any chances of losing it. I then go off and do non DS related stuff. You know, the real life stuff that you need to do so you can play in DS. I'm happy and promptly share with @isidorn that I've finally finished my contest entry because he's a friend and he gives me honest input and advice. He likes it and tells me what he thinks is good about the render. Then he tells me that he thinks there is a paw unintentionally off the ground. I go look and, yes, he is right. There is a paw off the ground and, no, it wasn't intentional.
Now, at this point, I think everything will be okay and I can still save this render. I open DS back up and I am actually able to open the file at this point. I open the file, adjust the paw and save my file. Unfortunately, I needed to do something and I don't even remember what, but I close out DS without rendering the version with the fixed paw, positive that I could render it when I got back. Only, when I go back, my scene file won't open. That's okay, though, because I have all these scene files I saved just in case. Only none of them open now and I have no clue what I did that DS doesn't like. The upshot is that I can not duplicate my final image even though I have tried. I even thought if I could get something similar I could possibly work something in GIMP to fix the wolf paws, but nothing I tried works. My GIMP skills have gotten better, but I don't think they are good enough to fix this mess. I have managed to get everything almost exactly they way I had it except the lights. I even figured out that I could unzip a .duf file to read it thinking I could just read what the lights used were set at. Unfortunately, I don't have a degree in reading .duf files and while it helped me get some of the elements back to where they were, the lights are still a mystery.
For those who have stuck with me and read this far, here is that final image: both the version uploaded to the contest and the fully cooked version with my pathetic attempt to raise the ground level under that paw. I was not successful in any of my attempts. It either still looked raised in the air or it just looked obviously postworked and messy. Added note: I apologize if there are spelling errors as it seems Spell Check seems to have taken a vacation and isn't working.
So, if all of you are still with me, here are some questions for anyone who might have answers for me.
What would you do to fix a render like this, where you can't go back and open the scene file?
I have actually answered this for myself, but I would love to hear others' solutions before I post what my final solution to this problem was. If anyone actually wants to show an example with the actual render I've uploaded, please feel free to do so. I'm even attaching the original unpostworked fully cooked render in .png format if anyone wants to use it to show what they would have done to fix this problem.
I know that .duf can be viewed and I know I can read the 'broken' scene files. How would I go about understanding how to read a .duf to try to recreate that lighting?
I don't even know what a good scene file is suppose to look like so I'm not sure I would see what it is that caused the crash to start with, but I would love to know how to read the files.
As an added note: Since this was a scene with two wolves with LAMH, I did post to the LAMH thread and Kendall Sears had me send him my files and is looking into if the problem was LAMH related or not. I hope he can figure out the problem if it was on their end. It is always possible I did something I should NOT have and broke DS. He offered to help save my wolf pose, but I did have a useable preset for the wolf pose now. I plan to do some tests to make sure it isn't the pose itself causing problems or not when I get to the point that I can actually close out my current scene. I am NOT closing DS out in the near future until I have a final wolf pose that I'm completely happy uploading to the gallery.
In the meantime, I finally took the leap and upgraded to DS 4.9 and, so far, I don't see a difference in anything I'm doing other than I now have those nice Iray fixes. I have not done the Connect thing with it yet.
I'll reveal my final solution to this problem in a few days after I see if anyone was able to come up with a fix for this problem.
Knitting...? where is the question? You promised a question...
The dominance pose looks close to the one in the photo, though I would be interested to see what happens to the tail there. Porbably it would help if for the set of poses you are planning to make, to not rely on one single photo.
Ah, I was still working on the question part. It's now posted. I actually had another reference photo from a slightly different angle which I also used to help with this pose, plus @Kismet2012 uploaded another reference photo for me for the expression. Only one reference pose was needed to upload for the contest so I posted those images for this series of posts. For most poses, I have tried to get at a minimum two different views of similar poses. In some instances, I have been able to get shots of poses from multiple angles which really helps when trying to pose something like this. I, also, happen to have two husky mixes who are very wolf like in behavior and they have helped me in my poses. If anyone is interested in seeing all of the reference photos, I used I can link them to them in that last post.
Ok here is my version of "save the render". I unfortunately don't have an answer for the "read the duf files" question, that goes far beyond my current progamming knowledge.
What I did was to load the image in Gimp doublicate (always good to have an original close at hand) and hide original. make a transparent layer.
with the lasso tool I selected the shadow from the "floating paw and a good section of the lighter area in front (approximately to the little cut in the shadowcurve) copy and pase to the transparent layer, move as close to the paw as possible. With the pipette selct from the darkest colour in the shadow (I even turned it somewhat darker) and fill the space to make contact with the paw. do the same to reconstruct the littel peace of claw that got lost, and pick some light and dark tones from th bottom place to cover the borders between the moved selection and the original ground. For the finish I used a lighter tone from the ground and ths spraycan tool at 70 percent opacity and went over the moved section and the adjacent original coloursto blurr borders, done. Here is the result
Oh, that looks brilliant! I can honestly say I had not tried that technique. I'll have to see if I can duplicate what you've done because it looks really good. I may have to look up how to do a couple of those things because I don't think I've learned any of those skills in GIMIP yet. Except I do know how to use the pipette thing to pick a color from my image. That I'm sure I've done. It is really hard to tell that your version of the image was even postworked, though. Thank you for telling me what you did in GIMP to achieve it as I'm definitely going to try that out.
So, I'm still working on my wolves. Both my take on what I did with the wolves when I figured out that I couldn't resurrect my last scene file and the GIMP fix that Linwelly did. I haven't managed to duplicate her results yet, but I'm getting close. I'll post my version when I finish both my final render of the new wolves and the GIMPed version when they are done. And, gees, I really hope I'm done soon. These wolves have been on my DS workspace for almost a week now. I can't close out for fear I'd have to start all over and if that happens, I'm not starting these wolves again!
So, until I'm done with that I thought I would give a preview of a long term project. I have been wanting to learn animation since I first started using DS almost 2 years ago now. I've been playing around with aniblocks and Puppeteer and a few other things. One thing that stumped me was the camera work. How the heck do I get the camera to go where I want it to go and record what I want it to record? Luckily, DAZ has their own DAZ YouTube channel and they have been uploading a lot of new content in the form of mini tutorials and some have been on animation. I've learned a lot. This one on cameras and nulls was especially enlightening and I learned a few steps that I was missing. I've never linked videos before, but Chohole says this should work. Keeping my fingers crossed.
If you are interested in animation in DS, you should seriously check out the DAZ YouTube channel as they have put up some really good mini tutorials of late to get people started.
There were a lot of good tips that I didn't know about pertaining to getting the camera to do what you wanted. So, I used those tips and made my first actual animation. Coincidentally, Sloshworks came out with a new set that gave me ideas immediately of an animation I'd love to do so I used Chez Lucille Hair Salon as my guinea pig animation project. So sorry, @Slosh! I warn everyone who decides to view the video that it is your typically bad first animation! I hope to get better as I figure things out. I'll post successive attempts at getting better and tell you what I learn along the way. Hopefully, someone can learn from my many mistakes that I'm sure to make.
So, here is my first animation. The camera goes where I want it to go, but I need to work on fixing it so the camera stays all on the same Y Translation and doesn't move up and down so much. I wasn't sure what the resolution for the video should be and I didn't know what size to make it so I definitely have some work ahead of me trying to figure that part out. For anyone interested, this was rendered in Iray at a very low resolution. Too low I think, but it was just a first run as I didn't even know for sure if the camera stuff was actually going to work when I recorded it.
I have ideas of what the characters will be doing when I add them, but I want to get the beginning camera work all set up and correct before I start adding them. I will also need to model a hair and a few props that I haven't managed to find either pay or free so that will a project all by itself as I've only tried modeling one or two outfits up to now.
Yikes! That sounds like a serious exercise in frustration! Were you using a preset light set? (There is a reason I'm asking I promise lol).The poses look fantastic (cause you are a perfectionist and it shows) I would have done something similar as Linwelly did but using photoshop. Or maybe slid a rock under his paw partially in the ground like a buried boulder then added the shadow.
I can't even wrap my brain around animation yet. It literally makes my head hurt. I admire those that can do it though! I just recently realized I could save my poses as presets (ya, its been a rough month lol). I absolutely know that I have seen people talking about it and know that I have been in conversations where its been mentioned but it literally did not occur to me that I could do it too. I think its mostly brain overload, there is SOOOO much to learn and keep track of and figure out that there isn't much room left..... lol.
Sonja
I'm almost 99.9% positive I was using just Render Studio for Iray, but I modified one or two of the light settings. I'm pretty sure I started with their Multi Light FX Scene. But, as I said, I modified a couple of the colors and changed intensity and other things from the original and now I don't know what I did so I can't get back that light set up. I like Linwelly's fix, though. When I originally tried doing some postwork in GIMP, I tried using the cloning tool and trying to grab a section of rock and trying to make it look like the ground was under his paw. I wasn't very successful and the shadows that I added were horrible. When I showed it to @isidorn, he agreed with my thoughts that it looked obviously postworked which is not the look I was going for.
I love being able to save my own presets and that is what I'm doing with all of my wolf poses. Saving them and trying to make sure that I have both 'couple' poses for the submissive and dominant wolf pairs as well as a few other surprises where the poses put the wolves in their proper positions, but also single poses for each one that stays where the user has the wolf. I hate those poses that end up putting the figure all the way back at zero center which not usually where I have my figures. I very rarely pose my figures at zero center and then move them into position elsewhere in the scene. I don't know why vendors do that and most don't, but I've run across a few that I've used where I go to the trouble of moving my figure where I want it then hit the pose button and suddenly I can't find my figure because it is all the way across the room! I can understand it if the pose is for a specific set and the poses match up with a prop in certain position. But it doesn't take that long to save a pose as a preset and just strip out the translations for position having a similar pose be used where the figure is actually standing when you click on the pose button.
That is one of the things you'll have to check out when you test them out for me if you are still willing when I'm done. I'll also probably put a notice in the Freebies section to see if I can get some more volunteer testers when I'm actually ready to distribute the pose set. I want to make sure that none of the poses I make interfere with the LAMH Fiberhair and there are no glitching problems like I'm currently having. At this point, I don't know what the problem is and I can't close out my scene file in DS until I'm sure I'm done with these wolves. I'm still working on my current version of the wolf pair. I'm close to finishing and I don't want to jinx anything now. But, when you and anyone else tests the poses, we'll need to make sure that all of the single poses let the wolf stay in place where the artist has him placed. Also, that none of the wolf poses themselves are causing this glitching problem that won't let the scene file load back into DS successfully. I never thought I would have so much hassle with a simple pose. This one pose is the only one I've had problems with and I'm stumped.
I am looking forward to trying them out! I asked because there was a particular light set that was having some issues for people who had one of the hair scripts, I can't remember if it was LAMH or Ghiribaldi. Wasn't the set you are using though so thats not it. And it does drive me a bit crazy when I have the whole thing set up just right and the person disappears inside a building or something lol.
I don't remember reading about that. I do have both LAMH and Ghiribaldi, but I admit, I haven't used the latter much. I actually kind of like LAMH better. I'll probably try to figure it out at some point, but I like the results I get with Kendall and Am's product.
They both have pros and cons. I haven't had much chance to work with either lately. I need to play with both a bit more before I decide which works best for me. Or if i want to continue using both which is entirely within the realm of possibility lol.
@Knittingmommy I understand your frustration with the poses that transport characters back to zero centre, used to bug me until someone on here pointed out the Ctrl click application of poses:)
Actually I have been told by a mod (I believe it was Frank) that poses that move people around (away from the place they are) are a bug and should be reported.
I'm still trying to duplicate Linwelly's masterful postwork on my image. She made it sound so easy, but with everything else it does take practice. I'll get there. However, I have uploaded my reworking of my wolf scene to my gallery. I thought I would post it here so you guys can see what I finally ended up with as a final image. I've given up trying to point to my gallery as when I do it some days it works and some days it doesn't. So, if you wish to go to see it in my gallery just click on the link in my signature. The image is the newest in this year's gallery folder. I'm closing DS and taking a break from wolves for at least a week! Then, I'll consider working on the rest of the poses I still need to do for my Wolf Pose pack that I plan to share as a freebie when it is done.
So here is my final render.
No postwork done. I had changed the lighting so my original image didn't quite work with the new set up so I changed it. For this one version, I used a free stock image from Malleni on Deviant Art and you can click on that link and it will take you directly to the image I used if you want to see the full image or browse her other works. She is an amazing photographer. I love that there are photographers on DA that are willing to let others use their stock for just the simple courtesy of giving them credit. It is a great resource and there are some amazing images that can easily be used for backdrops inside DS.
For lighting, I still used Render Studio for Iray by Colm Jackson, but with different settings. The ground is still @FirstBastion's Rocky Flats. It's a great land prop and while he says it is an older model, it still works great and is easily updated for Iray.
So, what do you think? Was the final image worth all the hassle? I hope so. I think it turned out great. And, while I loved the first image, I honestly think this version might be my favorite. Of course, that opinion may change if I can figure out Linwelly's postwork and manage to fix the first version as well as she did. They both have different looks and I'm really too close to both images to say for sure which is my favorite version.
Looks fantastic to me! Awesome job showing off the wolf. I may have to go and pick him up now - thanks alot!
- Greg
Thanks, Greg. I'm pretty happy with the pair now that I consider them done and finished! I hope you like working with him. I should have my free poses all finished by the end of the month of next month then I'll be posting in the Freebies section asking for volunteers to test out all of the poses before I officially post them on ShareCG as freebies. There will be a mix of poses meant to be used as pairs and groupings and all poses will also have presets for use as a single pose. So, keep a watch out for that. I'll post here in my thread, as well, when I'm ready to have others test out all of the poses.
Sweet, and thanks in advance. The poses are great and really make the image (along with the fur).
- Greg
Ah, well the fur and how I did that is a post all on it's own. I'll go into a little more detail on that tomorrow. I need a break from wolves tonight. But there is a process to getting it so it looks nicer than straight out of the box. I'll also be giving everyone my surface settings to getting the fur to look the way it does, as well, so no Iray sparkles!
I took a stab at correcting your wolf image that Linwelly fixed.
I didn't to a lot of cutting and pasting, etc; I just took a brush and darkened the area underneath the paw. I tried to match it up with the other front paw. After darkening it, I tried to soften the edges a bit by using the eraser tool at about 25%. All this took about 2 minutes. If I took more time, I think I could have blended it a little better.
Is this anything like your solution?
Nope. I'm terrible at postwork. I haven't even been able to duplicate Linwelly's fix yet. My solution was to redo the lights, and fix that paw from the last good scene file I had that would load. I couldn't replicate the old lighting so I had to come up with new and I changed the background image to end up with this:
@dHandle your postwork is better than what I was able to do. So, in essence, I ended up with a totally different picture with the same poses, but a different feel to the whole image.
edit: I also ended up changing the camera angle, too.
So, I thought I would share the process of getting the fur to look the way I did. However, DIM is still downloading everything I bought, but refused to install for fear of messing up the wolves. I may not get to this until the weekend as I wanted to include screen shots. So, stay tuned...