loading character for base character
daveso
Posts: 7,770
in The Commons
is it necessary to load the base figure first, such as Victoria 7, prior to loading a character for the base?
as example, a new character will state April for Victoria 7. Can you just load April, or does V7 need to be loaded first?
How does the new figure April even know Victoria 7 is installed?
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Comments
Everything required, all morphs, textures, etc. are loaded by the character preset
I think it depends on how it's packaged. Sometimes all you get is a slider and the materials. In which case, you need to load the base, then apply the mats and slider.
Sometimes, like with Lucy for TJ8, there's a load character preset with the package so you can just load that and it will automatically load everything it can for that character.
the reason i asked this is that often my character does not appear like the promo images. I realize there are many factors though, hair, camera, lighting, etc etc. OR, perhaps the load does not include the base the character is meant for.
Victoria 7 isn't a base character.
Genesis 3 is the base character: Male and Female. A character that states 'April for Victoria 7', which you state above work with or without the 'required' character (as a rule); if you don't have the required character you get a slightly (or more so) different shape.
To see what I mean, load Genesis 3 Female, in Parameters, you can search for morphs, which includes any Character you have purchased for Genesis 3: Victoria 7, Olympia 7, and Lioness's Ly Gracie, to give 3 possible examples. Head and Body morphs are usually separate and can be dialled in as required. You can also apply a different Material than the shape you are dialling in.
That is normal in my experience. I can't count the times I saw a promo, bought the character and struggled to get it looking like they did in the promos. Which is why I prefer clay renders and non artistic renders, they tend to be misleading much of the time, but that is advertising for you.
Other way round — an April Character preset would load Genesis3 with the V7 morph dialled in, then add the April morph.
As for whether you'd need to load Genesis3 before applying April, it depends on how it was saved. A Shaping preset has to be applied to a figure already in the scene. A Character preset will load a new figure if there isn't one, or if there is, you'll get a dialog to select whether to replace the figure or apply the character to the existing figure. To check which type of preset you have, hover your mouse pointer over the thumbnail and look at the File Type in the info popup.
It doesn't. Think of April as a two-stage process; starting with Genesis3, first it reshapes to V7, then it reshapes to April. If you don't have V7, then all you get is the difference between V7 and April.
Close; generally, they will dial in whatever percentage of V7 is needed, since they are generally not using the entire shape for a new character.
Characters that require another figure, such as Victoria 7, will be saved to dial in both the Victoria 7 character morph (at whatever strength the character creator sets it at) as well as the other character's morph. If you load the character's preset it dials up both morphs together. If you don't have the "base character" like V7, then it only loads the second morph.
As for characters sometimes not looking like their promos - lighting, shadows, angles, render settings, etc all play really big roles in how a character looks. Think of how different the people you know look (or even how yourself looks) in different photos and different lighting, etc. Sometimes you look at a photo of yourself and are like "eww! What even? That doesn't even really look like me". lol Photos and renders can be pretty similar in that they are very dependent upon the angle they're taken from, lighting, and other settings.
It doesn't. It doesn't need to. All properties are independently loaded. They don't require the requirements, other than the base figure. So obviously what requires G8F or G2F needs those figures to work (leaving aside clothing and similar separate figures which could, in theory, be autofit to a different figure).
If you have a character that requires V7 but don't have V7, all of the settings will, basically, just ignore that V7 isn't there. It's slightly more complicated. Studio will really want V7 to be there and go looking for it, but all it will do is add a lot of warnings to the log saying it was unable to find this or that part of V7. The April files don't know what is installed. They just ask Studio, "Use this much of V7" and Studio makes the attempt, then sends a warning message if it fails. Pretty much all of that happens when the figure is loaded, at least with the Genesis line of figures, and is the lion's share of what studio is doing while it thinks about loading the figure.
ok .. thanks everyone...