Genesis in Carrara
Dartanbeck
Posts: 21,224
If you have something to say, let's hear it. Do you have a question? I'd love to find an answer. Having been away from any real fun time lately, I'm long overdue to get in some new experimentation, optimization, and real production time with the latest DAZ 3D figures, and I really hope to make up for that soon. I'll tell you a bit about what I really love about Genesis right now, with very little practical experience actually using it yet - just to start things off. It is already known to most that I believe strongly that Genesis and everything made to go with it should all be installed to the same library and prefer to have the unistall-ability that the DIM provides for its use - even if you only use the DIM for nothing but Genesis. So I won't go into my installation rants unless someone asks me to. Before I drop that subject entirely, I really should add that you really don't need to use the DIM for installing. Just keep in mind that if you run into one of those situations where things feel wrong and you're getting error after error, you may just need to save off a copy of your library and delete it and clean it entirely from your machine, and then reinstall the latest files for everything. Not a huge bummer for anyone whom truly wishes to not use the DIM.
Genesis 2
I haven't had a lot of experience with the latest Genesis. But the time that I did spend with it has completely blown me away - being the absolute most amazing human model I've ever rendered. The shapes and details are extraordinary. The hierarchy of morphs in the lists is vastly improved for efficient workflow. I feel that having the sexes individualized only makes perfect sense, and should make for great lines of apparel and other accessories for them. Even if you don't buy the Michael and Victoria and other incredible supplements, the basic Genesis with the added morph packages is absolutely delicious. I'm also impressed with all of the PA additions I've seen. Ringo's new M6 stuff is awesome! It's really cool how many excellent expressions are available, too. I've picked up most of the shaping and expression morphs available for GenFem2, and find them to be top-notch. This figure can tweak into nearly any female you need her to be. The creatures supplements are nothing short of killer-amazing! Really nice things going on around DAZ 3D surrounding that whole, new line up. I'm really pumped about it!
Genesis 1
A little different, coming to Genesis 1 after playing around with 2. It's not as neatly organized between shapes morphs and the pose morphs. Genesis 2 has all of the shaping morphs under Actor, while all of the pose dials for animation are under the character name. Genesis 1 isn't quite as elegant - but it's all there. The worries of Genesis being dead with the birth of Genesis 2, however, should start to prove relieved since there are loads of new supplements for Genesis 1 all the time. Genesis 1 is an amazing figure, capable of being V5 and M5 and anything in between, and far beyond that! Monstrosities are earth-shakingly HUGE, bad,, cool-looking monsters! Orcs, Goblins, Troll, Lycans, Zombies, little, little kids, teens, adults, elderly...
DAZ 3D has given a wealth of training regarding how to make additions to this incredible mesh - and it's certainly paying off. Seems to me that Z Brush is the most popular morph-creation tool for making new cool stuff for either version of Genesis - but most isn't all. Some folks use Hexagon, and we can certainly use Carrara. SubD is so cool to work with. You're using the Genesis model's resolution, and then cranking on the SubD to the detail needed. If I remember correctly, Smoothing level 1 is slightly higher resolution than Generation 4 - so you can truly make some extraordinary shapes without pushing hard at all! I really hope that the new HD morphs become compatible with Carrara. As it stands, you can use Carrara's ability to SubD model to high resolution to create HD morphs, but the plugin for how it truly works isn't made for Carrara yet. Still, we do have the ability to do amazing things with shaders.
I'm really happy that they've taken the idea of "Morphforms" and gone wild with them for Genesis. I love having the ability to change parts of the pose using a dial. This really comes in handy if your change comes in after already tweaking for hours on hundreds of key frames. These things let you apply bends and twists and in Genesis there's a whole slew of them. You can really get pretty individual with your tweaks - down to a single finger! Genesis 2 is really cool. Selecting the character's name, the second level in the main hierarchy, gives you all of the posing morphs. Then the filter at the top lets you narrow that down in many ways. For example, you can select "mouth" if you want all of the mouth and lip stuff, or just select lips. Expressions gives you all of the expressive shape combinations. The filter is really powerful, and very, very cool. Getting used to using Genesis 2 is much easier than learning how to leave it for something else.
Again, I haven't had much practical experience yet. From what I understand, the IK is a bit to get used to for posing and animating. We'll see how well I deal with that. I know that I've done a bit of things with it, and was fine with how it behaves... but I'll report more as I play.
Auto-fit doesn't seem very good for Genesis 2 Female. I really hope that this is a bug that will be fixed. My next step in that regard is to try auto-fit in DS and then saving it to DUF. I'd be fine with that if it works across the save into Carrara.
I'll be adding more to this very soon. At least the ball is rolling, and I want you to feel free to report, ask, whatever Genesis in Carrara related.
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Comments
Not specifically for Carrara, but in making some clothing for G2F in D/S I've also encountered that the auto-fit doesn't appear to work as well as, or at least how I was expecting/hoping it would [like it does for Genesis]. But yes, love the highres.
Yes with respect to Autofit and Gen 2 I have had the same problem with cloths not fitting even in they are for that specific model. Also, I used to use hide feet and legs to remove poke throught, but DAZ has somehow disabled it in render mode in Carrara which is really annoying to me and I cant see a reason why.
According to Daz, Genesis 2 is not fulling supported in Carrara, neither female or male. Specifically, the Autofit is not supported yet. That is noted in the known issues under features at http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-8-5-pro under the Autofit section where it says:
Native AutoFit Functionality
Conversion of legacy parametric clothing to TriAx™ weight mapped figures
Automatic Morph Projection
Automatic Weight Map Projection
Morph Preservation
AutoFit does not currently work on Genesis 2
I can't say for sure, but I think that they're working on 8.5 issues.
I hope so. And if so, I hope that this is one of them. I really, Really like the new Genesis 2 models.
One nice thing:
With the instructions they give on how to model for Genesis, the stuff I make for Genesis 2 works great in Carrara and DS! Fits beautifully! So that might be okay for now - but I sure hope they fix it for 8.5 and release an update.
Still not a party popper for me, though. I still find 8.5 Pro to be the best Carrara I've ever used!
Does anyone know if clothing made for Genesis 2 female works with Genesis 2 male and vice a versa? That was one of the things I loved about the original Genesis was being able to use clothing I bought for one gender on the other.
Boojum the brown bunny
Hi,
the Genesis 2 Male Starter Essentials includes a clone shape.
rk.
Oh? I didn't know that. How is cloneshape used?
Boojum
Ah, I think I found it. The Genesis 2 Basic Male. It does have both the M4 and M6 morphs for it, at least. However, it looks like autofit is still borked for Genesis 2 Male in Carrara. Here are my test steps:
1. Load Genesis 2 Basic Male.
2. Set Genesis 2 Basic Male Parameters to Michael 6 with Gentital Bulge 1 on.
3. Load a part of pants into the scene.
4. Autofit the pants to Genesis 2 Male.
I did this with M4 Pirate Pants, Genesis 1 LeathredUp pants, and Genesis 1 Ranger pants. The results are attached. As you can see, the autofitting is really not working very well yet.
Boojum the brown bunny
Hi,
here you find the documentation for Auto-Fit:
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/carrara/8_5/userguide/finding_loading_and_organizing_content/tutorials/auto_fit/start
It is the same way for Genesis to Genesis 2.
rk.
Bummer that Genesis 2 isn't fully supported yet :(
I am busy working on non-Genesis stuff right now, but has anyone tried auto-fitting to Genesis 2 in DS, saving the duf and then loading that into Carrara yet? I'm curious on how that works out.
I tried that on the movie render contest. I had 2 GF2s in the scene. I clothed them in Studio, and saved as a scene. When the scene was imported into Carrara, the clothes were wonky. I ungrouped the scene. Each item of clothing had to be fit to None and then back to the appropriate GF2 figure. The autofit routine did not run (well, they may have been GF2 clothes), but they almost fit. A couple of minutes in the modeling room soft selecting and moving vertexes fixed the problem (well, at least where the Camera was looking).
In all honesty, I had to do the same amount of work (if not more) on the two Genesis figures in the scene. On one of the genesis (not GF2), I finally had to swap out some hair because it would not fit correctly on the A5 morph. Genesis hair on a genesis model.
In any case, play around with it and see.
ncamp