Hi,

I like the style of the Konrad's boardshorts, I created a morph to extend the legs to the knees but it would be nice to get a G8M version with several textures.

I run the Windows 10 and Daz Studio from a 512GB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD and the Daz Studio content from a second 512GB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD but as far as I can tell there is no benefitn the content may just as well be on a normal SATA3 SSD.
This appears to be a major limitation in Daz Studio's design.

The only way is to keep a base library of essential content and then switch in and out other librarys of content as you require them.

I am in a similar situation, and I commisserate with you LenioTG...
Back in January, I upgraded my system:
Ryzen 9 3900X + X570 + 32MB RAM (GTX 1060 6GB GC... holdover from previous system until my Daz-fu gets better)
Windows Drive is Sabrent NVMe 4.0 1TB  and  MY DAZ Library is on a 2TB Sabrent NVMe PCIE 3.0.     Download Drive is WD Black 6TB  
My G8F Load times are Horrendous (IMHO) probaby 5-7 Minutes.  Everything else loads quickly without issue.  I have a ton of characters and morphs.  My work flow sounds a lot like yours...  I have spent a HUGE amount of time in custom categories getting most of my assets where I can find them, and unistalling something I have is unappealing.... though I could probably unistall some G3 Morph assets (and as soon as I do, I am sure I will need them :( 
Point is, your hardware upgrade is not going to solve the G8 load bottleneck... it will help, but not solve it.
***NOTE***
My apologies.  I hit reply too quickly (I replied at the end of the first page, as I didn't see it went to 2 pages!)
Regardless, I finished reading the entire thread now, and especially your conclusion....
Sigh.... 
I think my only option is to follow your path and delete assets.  I don't want to tell tales, but I have A LOT of figures and Morphs...i am embarassed to type the actual number.  To get to  the 100 mark would mean a massacre took plass amongst my DAZ Library...
I won't name PA names, but a LOT of them are Similar And Suspiciously Equivelent to others in my collection... and they must go....

I had opened a new thread, with just the guide, to avoid this kind of confusion, but they deleted it and moved the post here, where I guess will be submerged by other comments, being much less helpful than it could have been, also given the time I've spent writing that.
In any case, people who are reading page 3, can find the guide at the bottom of page 2: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/411446/why-does-it-take-so-long-to-load-figures/p2

Your hardware is top of the notch! :O

Well, then it's confirmed that the most important factor is how many morphs you have installed.
I absolutely agree, only yesterday I have noticed how many figures looked exactly the same, and they probably were from the same PAs you're not mentioning.
Also, many products have morphs in them, and I hadn't even noticed that.

I have spend a whole day and a half rummaging through every single product I had, and deleting around 1/3 of those. But I went much heavier on figures and morphs.
For example, I had bought some packages with a ton of morphs, that I had never used. Now, only Zev0 and RareStone's remain basically.

It hurt to delete stuff I had paid for, but now I'm glad I did it. The overall experience is much smoother.

I have checked my old characters, and there's something missing in all of them.
When it's eye color, I can easily replace that.
When it's skin textures, I have a backup of all of those.
When it's morphs...well, that's a problem. But they look almost the same without a few morphs, because I combine a ton of them when I create a new character. There was just a single case, on an old character, that required me to reinstall a product, because it was composed by just three morphs, and she looked very different without that morph I had uninstalled.

Example is from  the normal version, but DQ version has same glitch.

Example has one simple color material only (skin textures have the same problem).

Do you know of any specific material settings or node setups, which could solve this? This is a general problem with morph targets, because makehuman characters have this as well.

Really no one has noticed it?

I run the Windows 10 and Daz Studio from a 512GB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD and the Daz Studio content from a second 512GB M.2 PCIe x4 SSD but as far as I can tell there is no benefitn the content may just as well be on a normal SATA3 SSD.
This appears to be a major limitation in Daz Studio's design.

The only way is to keep a base library of essential content and then switch in and out other librarys of content as you require them.

I am in a similar situation, and I commisserate with you LenioTG...
Back in January, I upgraded my system:
Ryzen 9 3900X + X570 + 32MB RAM (GTX 1060 6GB GC... holdover from previous system until my Daz-fu gets better)
Windows Drive is Sabrent NVMe 4.0 1TB  and  MY DAZ Library is on a 2TB Sabrent NVMe PCIE 3.0.     Download Drive is WD Black 6TB  
My G8F Load times are Horrendous (IMHO) probaby 5-7 Minutes.  Everything else loads quickly without issue.  I have a ton of characters and morphs.  My work flow sounds a lot like yours...  I have spent a HUGE amount of time in custom categories getting most of my assets where I can find them, and unistalling something I have is unappealing.... though I could probably unistall some G3 Morph assets (and as soon as I do, I am sure I will need them :( 
Point is, your hardware upgrade is not going to solve the G8 load bottleneck... it will help, but not solve it.
***NOTE***
My apologies.  I hit reply too quickly (I replied at the end of the first page, as I didn't see it went to 2 pages!)
Regardless, I finished reading the entire thread now, and especially your conclusion....
Sigh.... 
I think my only option is to follow your path and delete assets.  I don't want to tell tales, but I have A LOT of figures and Morphs...i am embarassed to type the actual number.  To get to  the 100 mark would mean a massacre took plass amongst my DAZ Library...
I won't name PA names, but a LOT of them are Similar And Suspiciously Equivelent to others in my collection... and they must go....
 

Fot the last question, the animation is yours, but you cannot redistribute any part of the original mesh or textures, even if modofied. that is considered a derivitive work. the only way you could create a license to grant to anyone else is if you created everything from scratch.

The best way to do what you want, is to create a morph for your part and then you can share the morph for the other users who have Daz Studio and the genesis 8 and they can then apply the morph.

I tried out headshop 13 two times.  My first effort was a failed Barbara Eden, but the source picture was not great and I wasn’t expecting it to work.

This is my second effort using an image off the internet (I don’t know the model).  I found that in headshop, the model comes out ok/close, especially the eyes.  However, when transferred to Daz Studio, the eye shape became more generic.  The iris, however, was quite accurate.

One frustration I had is that I could not load any nice eyelashes onto the model.  The lashes kept getting applied to the middle of the eyes.  I don’t know what the problem might be – it could be user error.  I did give up.

Attached, in order, are:

The original model I tried to create using headshop.

The model when in headshop.

The model as transferred to Daz Studio.

The model’s skin edited using Altern8 no maps Charlotte.

The model using Albany Hd materials.

Finally, the model using Albany materials, make up and posed.

Conclusions - I did not achieve a good likeness of the original model (although I have done so in headshop 12).  The process is hit and miss, just like all of the other similar tools (face gen, face transfer).  Sometimes using several of the tools gets you closer to the original.  All that said, using another character’s materials, I think I got a pretty nice new model. 

Within the post, I am showing the model rendered (not fully) in Daz Studio, after transfer from Headshop.  The second image is the same character/final character but with materials changed.

Hi everyone! :D

I use Daz Studio to make comics.
That means that I often use characters after years. Probably on different hardware, with a formatted Operative System.
Needless to say, I often lose a lot of data, and I have to recreate my custom characters, at least in part.

With the years, I've learned to use mostly content from Daz Studio, so that it will tell me what's lacking, and install it.
But other times I need to create something myself, or to use other sources.
Plus, I've recently cleaned up my library, to make G8 figures load faster, and I don't want to slowly re-install everything as I check older characters where I've used that sclera or that morph.

So, what's the proper way to backup custom characters?

Is it enough to save the

• Character as a scene
• Shaping preset
• Material preset?

But I have the impression that those save files only work if you already have the related assets installed.
Does the scene file contain all those three data already?

What if I use Skin Builder 8 to backup the skin? What do I need to save exactly? Is the Full Body option enough?
(Of course it's for personal use only, and with assets I've bought).

Thank you in advance!

Hi,

This is a 2 parts question. I understand that the interactive license allows me to use models for interactive 3d application, while non-license allows me to use models for images, renders and animations.

Question 1: Am I legally allowed to mess around with mix-and-match between models? Recently, I had a Daz original model with messed up teeth. I don't know why, and I don't care. It is too bothersome to ask support and wait for a potentially bizarre reply, so I just hacked the teeth from Genesis 8, and exchanged it with the teeth of this model. It sounds intuitively obvious, but is it fine to mix and match and mess around with multiple models, all of which are interactive licensed, and then use it for a game?

Question 2: I transfer DAZ models to other 3d softwares, mainly to produce animations. I'm still fighting the f*** of it cause I want to modify them. I don't like DAZ's eyes, so I modify a lot of what I get, mess with rigs, eyes, etc. If I had an interactive license, am I allowed to use modified model produced by DAZ, modify it, fix it, rig it, add to it, and then sell it as a rigged animated model on 3d model sites?

For example, Libby for Genesis 8, not much modification to the actual face, but fixing some stuff, modify eyes, hair, etc. 

I know this is a grey area, and it isn't something I'm planning to do anyway! But honestly, I spent over a week trying to figure out a reasonable workflow to get this done, and I assume there's market for it, provided I don't preach any copy right.

Let's say I can't just use ready models. What if I use the Genesis 8 as a base, modify it myself manually *either in 3d software, or using morphs*, create the hair myslef *as opposed to getting a ready made hair for gen 8*, create the clothes myself, and then produce it as a usable rigged characted in 3d marketplace. Would that clear me out, or am I still in the mud ?

Question 3: This is a REAL question, the previous ones I'm curious about, and they potentially could get me something. But This question is where it is at.

I'm serious about animation and producing content. So, I hire voice actors to voice my characters. I understand that I own the right to the animation I made, and can show it whenever. Granted, I can't give an interactive experience of the models themselves, I don't own them and I can't give them away. (Does that include ones I create based on Gen 8, but messed with morphs and almost looks nothing like gen 8 ?) However; does this give me a license to license it to others ? More practically, let's say the voice actor wants to use it in their reel, and want to include footage of the animation that was created. Is it legal for me to allow the voice actor to use this animation in their reel, or is it still a limited animation license to me, and I can't license it for others?

Legalese, I don't myself understand most of what I wrote .. lol

Please advice, Thanks,

I'm learning Blender because it does pretty much everything- but as a result, the learning curve is steep.  On the other hand, it's free. The big problem with it at this point is that it does not love all features of Daz, so you are limited to .OBJ or .FBX format to transfer files, and the FBX end- which can include clothes, poses, and animations- seems to have rigging issues, especially with G8. There is a free add-on, Diffeomorphic, which is supposed to translate everything from Daz to Blender, but I've been trying to make it work for the last 48 hours without success, so there's that.

If you're making clothes, though, that shouldn't be an issue- send an OBJ of your morphed character into Blender, make the clothes there- it has a clothing tool that works pretty well, though not as hot as Marvelous Designer (but again- free), and then you can send the clothing back as an OBJ into Daz. Making the clothing autofit might be more challenging, I haven't tried it.

Unfortunately, I want to render in Blender, because I can build everything there and it has beautiful, and fast, rendering, but apparently I won't be able to bring along the rigging or poses from Daz and will have to rebuild all that in Blender. So Diffeomorphic is making me cry...

@watchdog79 "Perhaps it is going to work better on core characters containing the Genesis 3 clones? As soon as I learn what that actually means"

I've been working with Studio for 15 years and I don't know what you mean, particularly about containg G3F clones. Nevertheless ths attached is LY Arden with Kadis.

This is a quote from the description of just about any core Genesis 8 figure I can think of:

Backward Compatibility (Read More)

The most backward compatibility ever, through included clones for Genesis, Genesis 2, & Genesis 3.

There are no "Core character who contain clones", the clones are part of the base figure. That promo line applies to G8, not to the specific character.

A clone is a special type of morph used by autofit to convert clothes from a source figure to the figure which has the clone. DS uses it to compute how to adjust the mesh of the clothes so they fit the target figure.

Thank you.

The Kadis armour fits Genesis 8 quite fine, but the problem with the product is, that some parts of it simply do not work with Genesis 8, such as the poses, which is a real pity.

I would really love to see it remade to prtoperly work for Genesis 8.

Not to take anything away from the Bone Breaker Fantasy Armor - which looks great and which I am excited for - but I, too, would really love to see a version of Kadis Armor for Genesis 8 at some point - was one of my favorite outfits for Gen3 and I have been missing it sorely for my Genesis 8 scenes ^^;

No matter environments or outfits, your stuff is always quite amazing!

Exp files are files used by the morph system for figures like M4 and V4. 
Anything specific you need to know about them?

The OBJ needs to have been created by moving existng vertices of the Daz Studio figure at Base resolution. You cannot import just any arbitrary OBJ file as a Daz Studio character morph. You cannot add or delete vertices. You cannot change the order of vertices. You cannot start with a High Resolution vertex set.

AHh glad its not just me or something wrong with my new GPU then. I've asked Daz for version 4.12.0.86 as that is what's currently on my old PC and doesn't have the newly introduced animation bugs but I can't find a way to transfer it to my new PC, I unfortunately had "delete package" ticked on DIM when I initially installed it. Its been nearly a week and no response from them yet though.

Go to "C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D" on the machine with the older relase and copy the folder "DAZStudio4" onto a flash drive (I suggest also compressing/backing it up to a more permanent location with a name like "DAZ Studio Pro 4.12.0.086.zip" or something for future use.) Plug the flash drive into the machine with the newer relase and overwrite the "DAZStudio4" folder found in the same place with the folder copy you just made.

Alternatively, you can also just copy that folder to any location on the other machine and run the previous DS version simply by double-clicking "DAZStudio.exe" found inside the folder. That way you don't have to worry about possibly breaking the newer installation or DIM overwriting it without your knowledge.

Sorry I missed this, didn't get a notification for some reason. I ended up getting an earlier version of Daz but I've been in Blender so much recently I haven't even installed it, that E-Cycles render engine leaves iray for dead.

Hi, 

I am new to DAZ so please bear with me. I am trying to save a .obj file as a head morph but I recieve the response of "Warning: Geometry did not match, failed to create morph."

I was able to save as a shape preset but ithe figure fails to apply to the head. 

How can I go about putting this .obj head on a figure in DAZ?

Thanks in advance, 

 

Facegen and face transfer both look better to me, and they both provide demos so I actually know what kind of results I can get 

Here's a White Paper about the pros and cons of three face software products: https://printahead.net/white-paper-working-difficult-photos-daz-studio/

I've seen that, but it doesn't tell you which software achieved which result. It doesn't even tell you which version of Genesis was used. Which one is head shop? It also isn't updated for the most recent version.

It's not very exhaustive either, just based on one photo. If I'm potentially dropping $60+ I would like some ability to try the software a bit (with a watermark on both the mesh and texture like facegen does makes sense), or at least see a good amount of video footage showing off the performance and workflow.

I feel bad because you keep putting me in a position to further bash your product, which I haven't even used. Seriously, you're designing software for artists. Please hire an artist to help you bridge the gap between developer brain and the interests and needs of end users.

 

Facegen and face transfer both look better to me, and they both provide demos so I actually know what kind of results I can get 

Here's a White Paper about the pros and cons of three face software products: https://printahead.net/white-paper-working-difficult-photos-daz-studio/

Think of stuff you like but doesn't seem to be much of. Like think of really cool creatures and humanoids especially with great texture packs so if you use an alien morph don't have to use a leather shader on them 

Also think about what there seems very little of especially if you want it like specific city aesthetics like parts of Shibuya or Tokyo in general with walkable overpasses and trees. The cyberpunk cities we have are great and seem covered pretty well. While there are lots of really cool robots there's still so much potential there too. I'll recommend searching for futuristic, Singapore, sustainable, organic, or blob architecture on pinterest and google images since there's so much to be inspired by

For clothes customization options like different lengths or necklines and underrepresented styles 

Promo art's very important too especially for a character. Have at least one pic with turn arounds in a bathing suit (goes for men too) in the same lighting and for environments at least one overhead. And of course include the character with great hair and clothes too and model the character without using sliders unless they come with them. Something optional but helpful is showing how the character mixes with other characters like character's head 100% with another character's head at 50% or whatever. 

For an example of great promo art here's one 

https://www.daz3d.com/stepanida-hd-for-genesis-8-female

And this too

https://www.daz3d.com/young-minto-and-dforce-minto-outfit-for-genesis-8-females

I say all this as a buyer I don't make anything 

To be honest I can't imagine ever paying even the sale price for what it appears to offer, considering there are already other apps that seem to work better.

In every single one of their promo images you can see misaligned nostrils and areas of hair that didn't blend out properly and one very odd instance of an african face projected onto a white texture map (do they not offer different skin tones?).

It's really bad when the makers of the product can't even reach acceptable results.

Having never used any previous version of HeadShop, am I missing something? I'm geniunely wondering because this seems like it should be a $20 plug-in at full price at best.

what are the better working apps? I need to check them out. thanks

Facegen and face transfer both look better to me, and they both provide demos so I actually know what kind of results I can get 

To be honest I can't imagine ever paying even the sale price for what it appears to offer, considering there are already other apps that seem to work better.

In every single one of their promo images you can see misaligned nostrils and areas of hair that didn't blend out properly and one very odd instance of an african face projected onto a white texture map (do they not offer different skin tones?).

It's really bad when the makers of the product can't even reach acceptable results.

Having never used any previous version of HeadShop, am I missing something? I'm geniunely wondering because this seems like it should be a $20 plug-in at full price at best.

I think the misunderstanding is that these images are NOT rendered  but RAW screen captures (notice the DAZ grid behind the promo image). We decided to capture promotional images raw, as they are handed from HeadShop to Studio BEFORE RENDERING. We did this for two reason: because this represents a starting point after which artists would add lights, set up skins and other things that are outside the scope of what we deliver - and because as software developers we don't posses the rending skills that many DAZ artists have.

I mean, it's quite obvious these aren't rendered. That isn't the issue. You can see multiple instanced where the texture and the morph do not line up. You weren't able to capture a-single transfer where the nostrils (both inside and the outer crevice) are lined up to the texture, and there are some shots that show hair artifacts that haven't blended out. In a promo you typically want to show off the full capabilities of your software. I'm not trying to be rude, this is just the truth. And considering the price point here, you should be able to afford to hire an artist who can show off the capabilities in a way that will be interesting for the end user, even if they are still just viewport screenshots you clearly need someone with a more artistic eye. That said, you've obviously been at this for a while, so you probably know your market better than I do, but for me personally this is not an appealing product based on the presentation. 
 

edit: I just want to quickly add as a piece of advice, you really should hire an artist to work on your advertising for you. I can guarantee that if this is a product that artists can make good work with, the amount of additional revenue you'll make from sales will far exceed the cost of hiring an artist. 

The glitch looks like in the attachment: (standard gen 8 character with jcms, skin material just color, arms up pose)

Left image: with support compute skincache

Right image: without support compute skincache

The problem lies clearly with Unreal Engine as it became even buggier with the new official 4.25.1 update.

Has anyone found any workarounds to remove this shading/seam glitch, because aby new update will take several months?

are you using the "dual quartenion" version of unreal??? if yes try to test the same with a "normal version" non dual quartenion", the jcm still "works" because it's is a morph", the bend not gonna just work good as if it have the "DQ" but gonna still work, if you are not using the DQ then it could be really related to daz, you have all the "maps" proper applied, i means, normal, Ambient occlusion and Specular map" normally they are the ones to deal with the "light" then you also have the rebuild the light, because i's seens related to some "light configurations".