Headshop 12, Face Transfer, Face Transfer plus FTS @ 100%

No textures applied. G8F Base included as comparison.

Ok, so I rendered the ones I had from that list. A few things of note:

• Used the same head morph & light conditions (an HDRI map) for better comparison.
• I let them render for the exact same time.
• Check a hi-res version here or click on the image to get there.
• BTW, I think Bridget 8 looks the most youthful.

The Exp system ia more memory efficient.  instead of loading all morphs, can load just the morphs you want to use.

 

character creators used readscript lines in the file to loadup just the required morphs.  in 4.1 they loaded the whole ++ set.  slowed her down in the preview window (poser)

Plain Morph Injection worked to save resources, the benefit of ExP is that it doesn't need a separate CR2 for each additional large set of morphs and small morph sets/individual characters are not fighting for a limited number of free channels.

Check your content library manager settings, the error sounds like the data folder is not in the mapped directory tree.

Thank you for the feedback - I did check these and all is OK.  The error finding the file based on its location is the issue as the duf is in the right location and I can launch Girl 7 from My DAZ Library file folder directly on my Hard Drive.   If it was a preferences error for CLM or CL issue exclusively then my multitude of other figures would give the same error and the Girl 7 morph characters would also not load as they need the "Girl 7.duf" file as well.  It's all simply an inconvenience - just wish there was a simple way to overwrite/correct the asset location script for the shortcut icon in the Content Library pane as this most likely is where the problem lies.  I ws also wondering if anyone else with a Mac had the same issue.  Cheers!

I have some of those characters. Give me some time and I'll render them using the same face morph and light conditions. That way you can better compare which one would serve your character first.

So I took a stab at Mattifying Dain 8...

Still working on the nose and such with my various morph packs, but this is probably the closest I've ever gotten to accurately replicating a face.  Figured that some of the ladies around here might appreciate the underwear model theme...  Still tweaking away at this one.

I'm looking into finding more asymmetrical face morphs for G8M at the moment.  Mesh grabber tends to grab everything in it's sphere of influence, so trying to bump up/down part of an eyelid and such is problematic.  As you can see from the comparison pic, Matt's face has a bit of assymetry to it, which makes this more of a challenge.  BTW, I swapped out Dain's textures for default G8M textures, which seems to work pretty well with some translucency and color parameter adjustments.

Matt has a bit of a dad bod, so dialing Dain's body down to 50 doesn't look too bad at all.

This is probably a bit too close to Matt, so I might run into issues if I were to share this morph.  Not sure if I should or how I would best go about it, as there's the 'base' figure to take into account.  In any case, if others are thinking of 'Mattifying' Dain 8, consider this a test case.

Wow, that looks great! I did end up getting the bundle just for the freebies but haven't tried anything yet, so at least this is promising.

Nikolai for Dain 8 and Genesis 8 Males is a broody, handsome fellow for any type of render.  With a facial morph made in Hexagon, and the body/head HD Details sculpted in Zbrush, he can be used with or without Dain 8 (for different morphs in the final set up).

Nikolai comes with Fibermesh brows, two sets of Lash Opacity Maps, several colors to mix/match between the lashes and brows, Tattoos drawn in Blacksmith 3D and CS5, three texture based brows with a no brow set and scruff versions to match.

I have separated his morphs for the base figure (without Daine 8), the complete figure (with Daine 8) and head/body HD Details to accentuate the morphs that are best seen at subD2. Anatomical Materials included. Materials are Iray only.

So I took a stab at Mattifying Dain 8...

Still working on the nose and such with my various morph packs, but this is probably the closest I've ever gotten to accurately replicating a face.  Figured that some of the ladies around here might appreciate the underwear model theme...  Still tweaking away at this one.

I'm looking into finding more asymmetrical face morphs for G8M at the moment.  Mesh grabber tends to grab everything in it's sphere of influence, so trying to bump up/down part of an eyelid and such is problematic.  As you can see from the comparison pic, Matt's face has a bit of assymetry to it, which makes this more of a challenge.  BTW, I swapped out Dain's textures for default G8M textures, which seems to work pretty well with some translucency and color parameter adjustments.

Matt has a bit of a dad bod, so dialing Dain's body down to 50 doesn't look too bad at all.

This is probably a bit too close to Matt, so I might run into issues if I were to share this morph.  Not sure if I should or how I would best go about it, as there's the 'base' figure to take into account.  In any case, if others are thinking of 'Mattifying' Dain 8, consider this a test case.

Looks really good. Funny thing, it looks like a guy in one of my college classes. Now I'm going to be thinking Matt Damon when I see him...

@Leana and @nemesis10 thanks!

@Lindsey the render looks great but Dain looks really weird. What is up with those trap muscles. They look weird. The closest I found to that weird shape is this but even these muscles (as weird as they look) have a more natural shape and come on a much bigger body. They should go more towards the sides and not so much towards the top. Do we have morphs to change their shape?

@vwrangler Dain 8 and his pro bundle and now fantasy bundle look great to me but alsmot everything seems rushed. From some finishing touches to make the products great to the presentation and the missing promo images.

Did Daz ever release updates or corrections for already released products for free? Because it seems like there should be some for this pack.

+1 about those trap muscles!   That's a trend among the manufacturers, it seems, morphing up bigger and freakier traps/necks on models and I'm sooo hating it.  It's one thing for so many of the monster characters to have necks like pyramids or boat sails - hey, they're monsters, not humans! :)  -- but on actual human males these things look like carnival grotesques.  But, shape/morph aside, I'm thinking I will buy the Dain character just because the skin looks pretty realistic and well done in the promos.... and just use some other character's shape. :)     
    ~Gen

So I took a stab at Mattifying Dain 8...

Still working on the nose and such with my various morph packs, but this is probably the closest I've ever gotten to accurately replicating a face.  Figured that some of the ladies around here might appreciate the underwear model theme...  Still tweaking away at this one.

I'm looking into finding more asymmetrical face morphs for G8M at the moment.  Mesh grabber tends to grab everything in it's sphere of influence, so trying to bump up/down part of an eyelid and such is problematic.  As you can see from the comparison pic, Matt's face has a bit of assymetry to it, which makes this more of a challenge.  BTW, I swapped out Dain's textures for default G8M textures, which seems to work pretty well with some translucency and color parameter adjustments.

Matt has a bit of a dad bod, so dialing Dain's body down to 50 doesn't look too bad at all.

This is probably a bit too close to Matt, so I might run into issues if I were to share this morph.  Not sure if I should or how I would best go about it, as there's the 'base' figure to take into account.  In any case, if others are thinking of 'Mattifying' Dain 8, consider this a test case.

Funny, I am seeing comments about how many people disliked the Dain 8 Pro Bundle items, but do like today's Medieval items. I am the exact opposite! I preferred the military modern props, and had little to no interest in the medieval fantasy items! More interesting world when we have variety! 

I think it's gone from general dislike to utter disappointment with the poor quality of the items. I'm usually a positive person but even I'm severely disappointed with the pro bundle after trying to use items from it.

+1

Dain 8 looks good, a typical base figure with lots of material options, etc. But I'm dumbfounded Manu ever got past QA with the materials issue at his navel. And with no material options, these characters are little more than shape morphs, one per product. GyspyAngel did a shape morph pack of several males that Daz turned down, some time back, (they're available at the otheR store now,) then they turn around and feature these two figures in a Pro pack!?

Of the clothing, I've only tinkered with the mercenary and bouncer outfits. I went no further with the merc outfit than to come up with a work around for removing the smile button on the vest. I was more interested in the bouncer suit. And what a huge disappointment that one is. I've never seen mesh for a pair of pants before that was solid at the waist. My expectations have lowered considerably for the other two outfits.

I've yet to try either hair.

At this point, I'm wondering if the bundle was actually worth the price, in spite of the free products I also received… And I'm one of those always clamoring for more male content. I'd be delighted with this bundle, if the products lived up to a reasonable expectation of Daz quality.

Thanks.

The main delay (if you discount laziness, apathy, et al) is that I'm trying to set up scatter morphs that allow me to put multiple scatter props (e.g. two packs of cards, plus two sets of 50 casino chips) at the same location, and ensure that none of the scatters intersect. I've had several bad ideas of how best to do this, and several false starts - I've given up a few times. But I keep coming back with new, stupid ideas of how to do this. I think the latest one is probably the best so far, and I'm still plugging away at it.

It's basically a spreadsheet into which I've entering pseudo-random x/y/z offsets (all integers 1-50 ) for 200 items.I let the spreadsheet calculate the distance between each pair of items (i.e. SQRT((Xa-Xb)^2 + (Ya-Yb)^2 + (Za-Zb)^2), and indicate which are the closest. Then I manually twiddle some of the x/y/z values to try and increase the minimum separattion - I've almost got it up to 5.0...

I've had to use the '=indirect(address(4,5))' type formulae - that had me banging my head against the air* for a while

P.S. My base models for the decks of cards and bunch of chips have all 52/54 50 items at exactly the same location,so I didn't bother pseudo-randomizing the x offset,just used 1,2,3,4...49,50.
That may have been a mistake.

~ ~ ~

Edit (after FaerylWomyn's subsequent post):

First set of  results from my spreadsheet (this is mostly for my own backupin case I lose the values!
I decided to increase the number of items (casino chips, cards) per prop/set from 50 to 54 - 50 was arbitrary, whereas 54 is the number of items in a standard deck of playing cards (4 suits, 13 cards per suit, plus 2 jokers).
I also decided to make the X offset values random too, rather than sequential.

The base mesh for a prop (or 'set') will consist of 54 'items' all located at exactly the same position (centred at the world origin) - so a deck of cards will look like a single card, and a bunch of chips will look like a single chip.
The 'items' will each fit inside a 0.5 unit radius sphere centred on the origin for any rotation.
I plan to have a set of 'scatter the 54 items in a pseudo-random manner along the X-axis' type morphs. By pseudo random I mean sort of linear-congruential-generator type random, but done manually. What on earth do I mean by that ? After applying the morph at 100% the items (which were all co-located) will be spaced at exactly 1 unit intervals along the axis, but not in sequential order (look at the tables below - that's what I mean)
Thus with a single morph applied at 100% none of the 54 items in a single prop will intersect.

Now...

I plan to have separate 'Scatter X (A), Scatter Y (A), Scatter Z (A), Scatter X (B) ... Scatter Z (D) morphs for each prop (i.e. prop 1 = set of 54 cards, prop 2 = set of 54 casino hips, prop 3 = set of 54 coins, prop 4 =set of 54 banknotes, etc). There'll also be master parameters 'Scatter (Set A)', 'Scatter (Set B)' etc which simply set the appropriate X/Y/Z scatter morphs to the same value.
My upgraded spreadsheet plus some manual tinkering has now given me a first set of results that have (assuming everything in the spreadsheet is working correctly, and that I haven't overlooked something important. So a rather big assumption!) a minimum separation of 5 units between any pair out of the 216 items, when four props are loaded and a different 'Scatter(Set #)' morph is applied at 100% to each prop.

Which should mean that Icould apply 'Scatter (Set A)' at 20% to one prop, 'Scatter (Set B)' at 20% to another, 'Scatter (Set C)' at 20% to another, and 'Scatter (Set D)' at 20% to another, without any pair out of the whole 216 intersecting.

So that's the theory...

And here are the values...

So now all I need to do is modify my base meshes, create 12 morph targets, load 'em all up, and try 'em out.
What do you think the oddsare that it'll work ? ...

*hurts less than a wall or desk, and if you're playing some heavy metal people don't bat an eyelid...

Note to self since I always forget what the pseudo-random number generation is called - Linear Congruential Generator, Xn+1 = ( (a* Xn) + c) mod m , produces X values in range 0 to (m-1). Trial and error to get parameters that have the desired repeat cycle, i.e. m)

As stated before, with the texture on, face transfer always does good.

I think you should also compare without texture, just the shape, to see how good the shape itself resembles the photo, and how much is the texture in there.

For what it's worth here are Headshop 12 and Face Transfer rendered straight out the box on G8F Base both using the same source face photo. Plus Face Transfer with PhilW's Face Transfer Shapes base morph at 100%. I don't have FaceGen so cant compare that.

We need the original photo to make a fair comparison. We need a point of reference, and also which light did you use? I have Facegen, so if you upload a pic I can try it out. If you don't want to upload that pic, then we can find a pic online that can be used by us all. How does that sound?

I have made comparison shots to Headshop in the past. They are somewhere in this forum. I have not done the Face Transfer. I actually do own it, but I just never bothered. I do not have PhilW's add on.

I am testing Manu right now. I honestly do not see a reason this character was included in this set. He doesn't use the Dain morph at all and his textures are a mess. His navel texture appears to be in the wrong place and there are places where seams show. He alao renders slowly with textures that are a gig. 

He does look better with some DAIN dialed in, so I am wondering why they didn't bother, seems strange to me. 

Use Blender or Hexagon and make a cyclider add circle to both ends and join small circles at both ends together. Now you have corndog without the hotdog. bring in the dog 8 and fit your corndog to leg and morph as you wish and deform so it is not smooth. UV map and import to daz studio. You can use textures to make it look more like plaster but this is extra work. This is oversimplifed but that is quick and dirty method of making a static prop.

@ladair  You mentioned you had the baby from another site.  I used content package assist to load it, and when I go to the Genesis 8 Female Characters, I can find the Sixus1 folder but it just leads to materials. When I check the readme, it has those exact same files under Characters>Genesis 8 Female> Sixus1  so I put them there too. I only get the materials, nothing is turning Genesis 8 into a baby. Can you check and see where you have the baby files in the character section? Can't figure out what is going wrong, because I am manually checking every file path too. But nothing is transforming G8F, just her materials, as expected. :( 

I have it but haven't installed it yet. From the file structure it looks like it is just a morph for G8F. Did you try loading G8F and look at the morphs for it in the shaping tab?

For what it's worth here are Headshop 12 and Face Transfer rendered straight out the box on G8F Base both using the same source face photo. Plus Face Transfer with PhilW's Face Transfer Shapes base morph at 100%. I don't have FaceGen so cant compare that.

Thanks for the comparison!

What's going on with the Headshop face textures?  The 'fade to white' is rather disconcerting...

All right. The only outfit I have tested so far is the merc one. I am a little disappointed.

First off, there is no wearable preset to apply the entire outfit. A dealbreaker? No, but since that option seems to be the norm these days, it's absence is very noticeable. As someone else already pointed out, there is no easy way to hide the smiley Watchman button. The geometry editor tool just doesn't seem to be able to grab it. The vest's materials are also weirdly broken down. The vest base, button, tops of the magazines and one of the poskets are all one surface. The other three pockest each have their own material zone.

Most of the pieces have some morphs and, interestingly enough, all of them have a "Dain Body Fix" one. The parameters are not locked at 100% max value or a 0% min one, either. And at least using a character based off of Michael 8, when choosing the "Tuck Boots" morph at 100% on the pants, you get an incredible amount of poke-thru. Cranking it up higher simply shrinks the pants into the figure's legs, exposing the skin. The boots have no morphs.

Lastly, for an outfit with ammo everywhere, no holster or weapon is also a glaring absence.

The Bouncer Outfit (and one of the Bouncer poses) on a Michael 8 body.

There are only 4 parts to this outfit: pants, shoes, an(other) earpiece and a "suit" (jacket/shirt/tie combo). No morphs to speak of, so what you see is what you get. I tried to dforce the pants and they exploded. I'm not even going to try the "suit" portion because I know that won't end well. This item did have a wearable preset for the whole outfit, unlike the merc one.

The ReadMe incorrectly lists where the item is located and also mistakenly says there is a materials folder, when there isn't one. I had to look at DIM to find it was nested under the PA's name.

Like @memcneil70 mentioned, I'm not too sure about the overall shaping to this one.

 

Goodness gracious. Man those are really clingy outfits

All right. The only outfit I have tested so far is the merc one. I am a little disappointed.

First off, there is no wearable preset to apply the entire outfit. A dealbreaker? No, but since that option seems to be the norm these days, it's absence is very noticeable. As someone else already pointed out, there is no easy way to hide the smiley Watchman button. The geometry editor tool just doesn't seem to be able to grab it. The vest's materials are also weirdly broken down. The vest base, button, tops of the magazines and one of the pockets are all one surface. The other three pockets each have their own material zone.

Most of the pieces have some morphs and, interestingly enough, all of them have a "Dain Body Fix" one. The parameters are not locked at 100% max value or a 0% min one, either. And at least using a character based off of Michael 8, when choosing the "Tuck Boots" morph at 100% on the pants, you get an incredible amount of poke-thru. Cranking it up higher simply shrinks the pants into the figure's legs, exposing the skin. The boots have no morphs.

Lastly, for an outfit with ammo everywhere, no holster or weapon is also a glaring absence.