Warning….. Super long post:
I am going to respond to what I’ve seen, In order, thought I did edit some quotes to pick out the parts I would respond to:
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Just down loaded AdamR’s Proportion Morphs, will try them out a little later, while loading the OS on my new Workstation.
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I already responded about Thorne’s creation and we all seem to agree Thorne’s Teens are excellent.
And we want them and Thorne tells us they are coming ..... soon?
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Alisa Uh-Lisa I’m glad you are not a Golden Retriever Puppy. That said how about a Genesis Dog with Look at my hair fur.
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JOdel - 28 May 2012 12:05 PM
Basically we’ve got two different issues here. We’ve got filling the noticeable gaps in the age line-up of the Genesis figure, and we’ve got the porting of existing content for Genesis’s use.
I agree there are several issues here. The inclusion of the other Gen4 and Gen3 Actors into the Genesis universe, the addition of them into Auto-fit, and usable Genesis Children and Teen Shaping Targets.
On the first issue, having the remainder of the Gen3 family brought in would be great, there are some really nice things for Matt and Maddie that would be great to get updated.
On the Second issue, I’ve been playing with Cross Dresser and it gets close. If I export the item to Hexagon and put it on the Genesis Actor that has been morphed to Stephanie4 it fits great, but once Auto-fit get it’s hands on it, it seems to move the origin point. Also Auto-fit still doesn’t handle long dresses and for some reason it wants ankle length dresses to drag on the floor.
On the third point, I think to get the best scalability and look, we will need to create several character targets not just one. Baby and Toddler (Basic Child?) seem to be taken care of, though Basic Child could use some more sculpting. What is missing is the School Child Target and the Young Teen Target, both male and female. I am suggesting four because there are structural differences in the head and proportions of the bodies between these two age groups and of course girls and boys.
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DaWaterRat - 08 July 2012 11:00 AM
Here’s one I just finished, using a mishmash of morphs for Genesis (child, Basic female, Victoria 5, Aven, Stephanie 4, and Reby Sky, with breast small at 1). I haven’t picked up Oskarson’s morphs yet. Using the morphs, the figure was scaled down to 88%, so I had to scale her down a little more (aiming for 4’ 8, which may be a little shorter than my daughter currently)
It’s my daughter’s character for my current pirate game, and approved by her. Like her, the character is supposed to be 12, and I would trust her to know what 12 is “supposed” to look like. 
Oh My GAWD! What a Novel concept! How did you ever come up with the idea of getting a 12 year old to look at a character and say, “Yup looks like me and my friends.” Oh wait, you live with a twelve year old and I am guessing an artist. 
I said this before but that is pretty good looking young teen for just a using a mishmash of character shaping targets. But it also proves, this can be done without going out and spending thousands on a 3D sculpting tool. I won’t ask for the mixture, it is your daughters Character after all.
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Going to Respond to several Murgatroyd posts from page 4 together.
Murgatroyd - 07 July 2012 06:13 PM
So far, I’ve only found a few problems with Oskarsson’s preteens.
First, the scale setting is simply not right. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to change 92% to 83% (which gives a character the height of an average 12-year-old). See attached pictures with the preteen girl next to V5.
Second, the boy head morph has the mouth slightly open. I haven’t found a fix for this yet.
Murgatroyd - 12 July 2012 10:19 PM
This latest set is unrelated to the previous ones; I started with base Genesis and kept adding morphs until they looked right:…. The girl’s breasts are Hitomi Breasts Petite….
Actually I see quite a few off with Oskarsson’s preteens and most of them dealing with the over sized head, looks more like a toon child.
Looking at your two images, I am glad I didn’t get that set.
Conversely, your Genesis mixing clay looks much better. You are also using the same base morph sets I was and will again, after I get the last of this pesky project off my desk. When I find all my notes I’ll post my numbers for you to try. Oh and thank you for the small bust. Like I said it is easier to add bust size then to remove it and I always thought Laura was a bit busty for a preteen.
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JOdel - 12 July 2012 11:15 PM
So. An exercise in dial spinning, but you do need to invest in a number of new dials. Still, it’s clearly doable, without needing additional programs like ZBrush. I assume that it’s possible to save the result out as a character morph that can be applied, rather than have to save the scene file for merging or to use as a starting point for building new characters?
Yes it is very “Doable” and it is one of the great things about Genesis. You can toss things into the blender and make something unique by dial spinning. I should show you my Troll Child. Now you can see why I’m politely asking Thorne, who has a little more practice then most of us, to make a set of Male morphs like his female sets, it will give us more sliders to push and prod.
Again Saving it out as a Character Shaping Target, that is pretty easy. The Great thing about that is then you can reapply some of the same morphs that you used to refine or distort the new Character.
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RCDeschene - 16 July 2012 07:38 AM
You know, I was I was looking through the Gen 4 Iconic Shapes just now and I remembered when I saw the Basic Child mixed morphs shots with the V4, M4 & S4 shapes. I’m not sure if these is supposed to be excuses not to support children-specific shaping anymore, but these are just something I thought were interesting enough to throw into this topic…
I think these were a quick mix to show the between stages were doable. I would say they were offered as a very rough starting point not as a final mix. Looking at the V4 version, the scale of the head and neck would have to be modified, like Murgatroyd did to make then look right. Also the faces just don’t seem right to me.
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Kaboom - 16 July 2012 01:13 PM
All(at least the ones I have seen) available child morphs/dials I have seen for genesis or kids4 have something about them that is not quite right. I cannot quite tell what. If I could I´d try and make my own morph. The closest I get to figuring it out is that they have a certain *sharpness* about them that makes them seem to be just a miniaturized adult.
Again, I need to state that I am looking for what might be called an idealized child/youth. Thorne’s seem to be very near to what I am looking for, though I would still want to see it as a *nude* clay render like the ones above.
These are just opinions, I wish I could do these myself, but I can´t so just trying to get my two cents to the people who can.
Kaboom: Well said. I agree there is something just not right with them. Thorne’s Face and Body Morphs do help with softening the look. The refined beauty or chiseled look of most of the Genesis models, doesn’t arrive until the end of the teen years.
As for building it yourself, it take time and pushing the sliders, the morphs are there you just have to find them and some are very subtle, but we are talking about Subtle things here. Once you get close, you can make a shaping target, which you can them refine some more.
What is also needed is a new Youth Skin, that is not a rework of an Adult Skin. Less and softer lines in the hand joints. Look at a Child’s hands next to yours and you can see what I mean. I am betting Thorne is using a custom skin and maybe that is why Thorne’s models look so right to our eyes.
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Murgatroyd - 05 August 2012 05:16 PM
Further adventures in dial-spinning. Ages are 8, 10, and 13, with V5 for scale.
Not bad dial spinning, but 13 looks to have much older face.
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Thorne you are killing us, I know it has to go through QC and like Fine Wine it will be release when it is ready.
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We are up to Page 7 if you are wondering.
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Murgatroyd - 11 August 2012 07:31 PM
And here are some male counterparts to my last set (with Genesis D3 for scale):
Not bad for the males and it is interesting you are using Thorne and Sickleyield’s Body morphs to slim down the Thunder Thighs of the Genesis mixing.
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Thank you Xena for weighing in on real clothes, and I agree there are a lot more.
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DaWaterRat - 19 August 2012 07:44 PM
As a mom, I can’t help myself.
Please indulge me in this quick reminder: While these scaling numbers are great starting points and “averages”, kids are not a “size = age” situation. Especially in the 8-18 range.
My advice would be to focus more on the face morphs and getting that to look the “right” age, and use the scaling as a base to start from, not an absolute.
As an example, my daughter is, like me, on the short side. Based on scaling Genesis to her height, she would be about 9 based on the scaling percentages Murgatroyd used. She’s 12. Her best friend would scale to about 14 (give or take, I don’t know exactly how tall she is)... she also is 12. I’d be 11 or 12 based strictly on Murgatroyd’s scaling. Needless to say, it’s been quite a while since I was 11.
I had to verbally smack down some kids on a field trip who were teasing another girl who is significantly shorter than my daughter about her height. The kids I had to correct were almost all taller than I am. They were all in my daughter’s class.
My point is not to discredit the work Murgatroyd has done, (which is great) but simply to point out that kids the same age can come in many heights, and especially if you’re going to do a picture with several kids, you don’t need to (and probably shouldn’t) make them all the same height to be the same age.
Very, Very True, we are all Prototypes, the closest we get to mass production is twins and triplets and even they have differences. Also just like the Eyes are the window to the soul, so it is the face that people look at to tell our age. There is a host of things that can change a face prematurely into a much older face. (A very Off topic discussion.) but for the most part DWG is right, even at 6’ a twelve year old boy still looks twelve, because of his youthful face.
That is why I posted the CDC Charts and suggest using a Ruler. And because DAZ Studio uses the Metric system, lets stick with that, it is a easy conversion. your 4’8” Character is 142.24cm. but there is even more too it.
While I am around 6’4” must of my height is in my Torso, Make it very hard to buy a nice small car, cause I don’t fit. Legs and arms grow before and after the torso. and like a Puppy our hands and feet get bigger first, so they can stabilize before the rest of us grows to match them. That’s the reason at 5’3” I could palm a basketball I had HUGE hands, still do.
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I am going to pull a bunch of Male-M3dia’s Posts together hear and respond to them together:
Male-M3dia - 23 August 2012 07:37 AM
Was playing around with Ashley M5 and wondered if this would be something anyone would want added in an update… may add in another body shape as well.
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Ashley’s strength is the fact that he isn’t a strong male character like other M5s (or the M4s which he originally came from). And also he could be used as a younger male or teen character (Brady and Danny are the youngest ones used in conjunction with “body 01 young”.. .which is scaled much shorter than M5… just change out youthful hair and clothes and you got a younger character for your renders). He also can serve as a base for younger characters by mixing other morphs in as well. I played with mixing a portion of his morphs in with child and you get a much better child character because he doesn’t have the strong facial features you get when mixing in other male characters.
Also the body shape in the render above is the “body 01 young”... took a bit to take out a lot of M5’s muscularity.
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Here’s a comparison with the M5 height and the body shape 7 bonus shape. From here you can further adjust the body shape and size to suit your needs. The update is packed up (for DS 4.5), just waiting on bonus icons… (if i gotta do ‘em they’re really gonna be budget-lookin’
)
I like Ashley, Great Character, he is in my runtime, and he has all those chiseled good looks an Action Hero needs. I got him because I needed an actor like that and he is perfect for his Short but Glorious Roll.
So let’s take a real life Movie hero, Pick a young one, who has those same good looks as Ashley. Now go find a picture of him when he was twelve. I bet he wasn’t so chiseled, cause 12 year old boys aren’t. Twelve year old boys haven’t lost all their baby fat yet and they haven’t started building serious muscle mass, because they are still Children, even though two hundred years ago a 12yo boy was considered a Man, but they really weren’t. Woman get most of their height by 14, Men keep growing some of them well into their twenties. Some go from 5’3” to 6’3” seemingly over night or Nine months.
So I would soften up the youngster, take a sander to the sharp edges, make him the gangly youth that will grow into the chiseled man and become the Action Hero, who can slay the Evil King and save the Princess. We all go through that stage let Ashley go through it too.
Westland44 - 13 September 2012 10:17 PM
Children are not short adults but have different proportions.
I used average age versus height data to produce the following graph. It shows both height (red) and age (blue) as a function of the “Basic Child” value.
Thank you Westland44 for the Chart, but like DeWaterRat said, there is no hard set formula for age/height or even weight. That is why I posted the actual CDC charts so you can see the variance in age and height and how girls differ from boys.
And that brings us up to page eleven.
Where I’ve posted Comments and images.
So to Sum up:
We all seem to be looking for the same thing, a believable set of Child/Teen Shaping targets, which we can make believable renders from.
Some of us are more experienced at modeling then the rest and some will have a Actor for sale…. “Some Day… SOON?”
Let me bring this all together, so we can all work together.
The scale of the body is one thing, but we all seem to agree that most of the child characters we have seen, just seem wrong, so some of us have started mixing up shapes ourselves in hopes to find the fountain of youth.
We all seem to agree that while the eyes are the window to the soul and expression; it is the face which is gage of age.
And most of the Genesis faces are too aged for youth renders.
Our Bodies parts grow at different rates, and just like Alisa’s adorable puppy, our hands and feet lead the charge. So the youth who will be come the Super model or Action hero will have that gangly ugly duckling stage, or they will believe they are having it. DaWaterRat’s daughter is about at that stage, where my daughter believed nothing Fits!, everything is Wrong!, and life is just going to END! 
There are additional shaping tools out there which can be used inside DAZ Studio, without reverting to the Deformer tool or very expensive 3d sculpting programs. Partial Body Morphs like Thorne’s Facial and Body Morphs can be a wonderful help in our quest. For those looking for a Genesis/V4 solution, Thorne also makes those facial morphs for V4.
So my suggestion to you all: Go forth and push the sliders around and see what you can make. Then bring your creations back here and share. Those who do not push sliders can offer their constructive comments, both good and bad, as a way to speed the creation process.
Also lets keep this thread going, I don’t see a reason to create YAT on Genesis Children and Teens.
Having lived with six artists in my lifetime I have learn several things. One: everyone is an artist is some manner; Two: inside every artist is an art critic; and Three: You don’t need to be an Artist to know what is Truly Ugly or Just not right.
So my fellow Fronkensteens, Go froth, Push thy sliders for only you can say, “It’s Alive!” 
Haslor
Renders with Slider Numbers as soon as I have them.