Are you using the skeletons alone, or with Victoria 4, or have yu used AutoFit in Daz Studo to make them fit another figure?

Hi Richard, Indeed I am attempting to fit the V4 skeleton to a Genesis 8 Female (Victoria 8 to be precise) By using some of the few instructions I was able to find searching various forums on the subject. The method that I am following is to first fit teh skeleton to the regular Genesis 1 figure and then fit to Genesis 8 (in may case Victoris 8 which I am hoping woudl have the same results as Genesis 8 but am not sure) the results are so so but these does seem to be substantial distortion when reshaping the character's shape. I am quite good with Zbrush so I will be attempting to bring the skeleton into Zbrush to edit and fix distortion but my first attempt to do so was not successful. so I shall keep hammering away to get it right. (Wish there was an updated anatomical character or set of character's ala Zygote's offerings. This would substantially increase Daz's value as a valuable tool for medical simulation and studies. 

When you AutoFit the original bones are ignored, DS just projects the bones from the base figure into the model - as a result the helpers can no longer be switched off, and the bones cannot be posed individually. If your ZBrush skills are up to the job I'd just take the exported skeleton (hide the helprs and export as OBJ - then they will be gone), adjust it in ZBrush to fit inside the Genesis 8 figure, export the result as OBJ from ZBrush, import that into DS (making sure that you use the same preset in the options dialogue, so everything is scaled correctly) and then use Edit>Figure>Transfer Utility to rig the model (set the Source to Genesis 8 female, the target to your imported OBJ). It won't be perfect, and you may want to use the rigging tools in DS to enhance it, but it should be better than the AutoFit.

Happy New year and thanks for the views, 10, 600 K as of January 2020.

Special thanks to mcasual for fixing the sitting issue Aiko 3 had @

 https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/39618/ready-a-morph-and-a-d-form-to-address-aiko3-s-flat-thigh-top-issue

Mcasual has fix most of Aiko 3 error morphs you can see his stuff on his personal site or his thread.

I have been trying to manually convert a M5 UV tattoo to G8M. I have the Cayman Studios geografts to get the UVs to use map transfer, but trying to edit the shoulders is a pain. I see that such a method also won't quite work out well with Tigerlily because she's got shoulder and thigh stripes.

I agree on a new tiger/striped skin or Diffuse Overlay or LIE product for this.

This is common for all the utilities available for quickly creating look-a-likes from photos. All such utilies rely heavily on the textures created from the photos to achieve likenesses. Although the base model's mesh will be adjusted so that the main facial features fit the proportions of the photos (i.e. size and position of eyes, nose, mouth, etc), the subtle things that give the individual recognizable characteristics exist only in the texture, not the mesh. That is why the likeness is lost when you change to a different texture. What such utilities are doing, more than anything else, is creating a 3D version of the 2D images you started with - they are just 3D photographs essentially. By contrast, characters that you may purchase (or make) are based, first and foremost, on morphing the mesh, then adding an appropriate texture. As a consequence, such character morphs will still retain the features of the character regardless of the texture used, although changing textures can influence the "look" of the character. The only way that the utilities for quick look-a-like creation could produce results, insofar as the mesh is concerned, similar to characters produced using morph sliders or a modelling program, would be if far more features, particularly the many subtle ones, were identified and used to modify the mesh during the creation process. Alas, they are not designed to do that, since that would defeat the quick-and-easy character creation feature that is the main selling point of such utilities.

You can, of course, take the results from such utilities and manually tweak or add features that make the mesh more closely resemble the intended character if you wish.

I just saw my post now and realised that the images I had added are no longer there somehow and this post makes a lot less sense without the images :).

You are right about the result of such quick programs.

I have been reading lately on face recognition and 3d imaging though and it is very advanced. They could be making a lot more advanced software but I imagine it would have a different price as well.

I have tried to do exactly, what you are saying, taking the results and tweaking them with morphs and even Blender and the result is still so far off what it should be. The side of the face at least is corrected, while with the face generation it is almost always flat and not human looking at all.

I think there are 2 improvements that would not be hard to add and would improve the result a lot:

1. Add the possibility to add a side picture as well. The side picture would be mostly for geometry, but it would do so much for the face generation. Optionally, maybe they could allow you to tick off use texture from side picture as well and combine both, if you have a side picture from the same set like the front one, like the ones 3dsk is providing for example.

2. Let you place some main points on the face. With a perfect image, the result is decent, but if the person has hair on the side of his/her face a lot of the time, you get some ugly faces, not real looking at all. There are also some features that are not recognized perfectly. instead of working on improving the algorithm, which could prove to be very hard, they could just allow the users to place the main points of the face on the photo, maybe even some more, if you want very precise detail. Those points could be like corner of lips, middle of lips, a few on the chin and jaw for defining a correct face shape (which is almost never the case), a few on the nose (which also rarely looks similar to the picture). These points would allow for a still fast generation, without too much hassle on the user's part, and without a lot of programming hassle on their part. I mean they already have to recognize those points anyways, why not let the user provide them if they want additional accuracy.

This is common for all the utilities available for quickly creating look-a-likes from photos. All such utilies rely heavily on the textures created from the photos to achieve likenesses. Although the base model's mesh will be adjusted so that the main facial features fit the proportions of the photos (i.e. size and position of eyes, nose, mouth, etc), the subtle things that give the individual recognizable characteristics exist only in the texture, not the mesh. That is why the likeness is lost when you change to a different texture. What such utilities are doing, more than anything else, is creating a 3D version of the 2D images you started with - they are just 3D photographs essentially. By contrast, characters that you may purchase (or make) are based, first and foremost, on morphing the mesh, then adding an appropriate texture. As a consequence, such character morphs will still retain the features of the character regardless of the texture used, although changing textures can influence the "look" of the character. The only way that the utilities for quick look-a-like creation could produce results, insofar as the mesh is concerned, similar to characters produced using morph sliders or a modelling program, would be if far more features, particularly the many subtle ones, were identified and used to modify the mesh during the creation process. Alas, they are not designed to do that, since that would defeat the quick-and-easy character creation feature that is the main selling point of such utilities.

You can, of course, take the results from such utilities and manually tweak or add features that make the mesh more closely resemble the intended character if you wish.

Unfortunately, the machine is Win7 & the vram isn't shown in task manager. 

I suppose that means I'll have to do the simulation for each separately and save as an object file and reload as a morph.  No, that won't work, as it has the pose in the object file.

Oh, how frustrating.

Richard.

Edited to add: Think I now know how to get the morph into the model properly. Will try it next year (ie tomorrow!)

Here is a new render I made last week. This one took all week to put together, because I had to port all the props and most of the items in the scene to Daz myself, since there is a lack of historically accurate Norse items in Daz Studio as of now. The character uses a custom full-body morph that I built, and her helmet, type H Viking sword, and Viking shield are all models I ported to Daz from other sources. Her house in the background is also a custom model that I partially built myself, using components from models I bought on the CGTrader 3d market. The trees and rocks are from various tree and woods prop packs for Daz, and the other Norse items I ported from other sources to Daz as well. The environment and lighting source is a 16k HDR image I found on HDRIHaven, which pretty accurately matches the foggy pine forests of Norway. Obviously her outfit itsn't historically accurate, but I couldn't find a proper Norse shieldmaiden outfit at the time, so I gave her a shamanistic look, to add some spice to the render. The render was done using the Iray renderer, in Ultra HD resolution. Feel free to download it and enjoy it as a desktop or what have you!

For morph sets, I like to use Victoria 7/8 with a modified shader.

Those brows were from a freebie set by AprilYSH "fleek"
 

Thank you so much! ♥♥♥

Thank you to all other who answered, too!

All the best and keep rendering vor 2020!

I am new to daz3d and i am trying to use the face transfer unlimited. I get the program to transfer my face but when i go to save i get an error and it closes the program down. Anyone have any idea to what may be the problem?

They use H.Materials, and some Hieratical hair and materials don't transfer between sexes. But if they did work why not just package them for both since the cloak is for both sexes and why have an entry on the pages saying for G8F only. I can test when I get home from work.

Yea thats a really bizarre way to do it. Thanks for pointing it out.

They use H.Materials, and some Hieratical hair and materials don't transfer between sexes. But if they did work why not just package them for both since the cloak is for both sexes and why have an entry on the pages saying for G8F only. I can test when I get home from work.

Two open tech support questions directed at the vendor and he’s been AWOL since October (aside from never providing the promised manual). I for one won’t be buying anything from him again, as the documentation is (as others have stated) wholly lacking. This problem is *not* going to happen to me again.

That's your right. Your problem isn't a technical issue that the vendor needs to patch; it's a rather brash request for a personalized tutorial within a 4 day time frame during the holidays. It seems like most people in this thread have tinkered and found out how to use this product to make some amazing things. The documentation cannot cover step-by-step every permutation of vertex/bone/plane splitting for edge cases. Hobbyist software or not, some trial and error goes a long way. 

No step by step screenshots here, just good old reading and deduction using what we know of Daz figures in general. This product assumes the user knows a thing or two about that.

I assume by "morph creation of a character’s feet" you want to separate the feet morphs from a character to use elsewhere. First load in a default G8 and run the script. In Step 1,  the product needs a way to know how to divide a character. Right away when we launch the script, we see the Easy panel doesn't divide the target part; we want the feet only, not the entire legs. The Material panel also doesn't do what we want because the feet don't have their own material surface zone (check it). But in the Bones panel we can scroll down and see that, lo and behold, there is a heirarchy for the feet bones (left and right feet). Select all the child bones for the left and right feet (including all the toes).

In Step 2, click where it says "Select a property..." and start typing the morph you want to separate. So if you like Victoria 8's feet, you would write "Victoria 8" and choose FBMVictoria8 (Victoria 8 Body). FBM = female body morph. Don't choose FHM as that's the head only.

The video then clearly shows how to preview and save out the morph for use with other characters. You can tinker with including more bones when transplanting the feet, as some characters are taller than their base counterparts, so the ankles can get distorted if you don't also include the shin bones. Victoria 8, for example, has this problem.

There are more advanced uses of this product to do the same thing, but this is the quick and dirty, figure-it-out-in-15-minutes method of transplanting feet. 

Very useful tips. I like them.

@Dartanbeck

So, what add-ons would be good to get with Carrara if I wanted to use it for animation? That tutorial looks good that you shared up above. Anything else, I'm pretty sure I don't have any Carrara specific add-ons.

I'm not really going for realistic, would love to get a more graphic novel quality to my renders/animation.

Thanks for any advice and keep on with they updates!

It's a bummer that you don't have any of Fenric's plugins, because I think Daz3d dropped his store and I'm not sure if those will become available again, but I use his all the time for helping with various tasks in preparation and throughout the animation process - that a whole other discussion. But maybe see if there's a way to find plugins from Fenric. His site used to be Fox's Den, I think. Awesome stuff.

All of our tastes vary immensely - especially mine. I think I tend to do things a lot different than most Carrara artists I know. So I'm just going to list some plugins here and let you have a look at them - see what you like.

Jay Nola made this awesome Index/FAQ of Carrara plugins at the time of his writing. He also inspired me to by Jeremy Birn's amazing book, Digital Lighting and Rendering. Just keep in mind that many of the plugins mentioned are now unavailable through the links provided by him. Whether you can find them now, I'm not sure. DCG plugins are now Open Source, so no need for trial versions as mentioned in Jay's article, and below this link I'll continue on, because we have new plugins that ARE available that I know about.

► Carrara Plugins FAQ & Information - By Jay_NOLA
Jay compilled and organized a great measure of info regarding Plugins specific to our
beloved Carrara. FAQ, Information and Links to help you determine which are right for you. Thank You Jay_NOLA!

Alvin Bémar and Philemo have now joined our ranks in developing new plugins for Carrara - and as far as I can tell... they're still working on creating more(?) and Sparrowhawke has added stuff not mentioned in Jay's article.

I don't have much time, so you'll have to search for info on these plugins. I think it might be easier to search using a search engine than to use the forum search. Google will lead you to specific threads within the forum about what you're searching for, where I haven't had that same experience using the forum's search. Maybe it's better now... just saying.

Alvin Bémar makes plugins like Fluidos (fluid simulation), LightX (new light/shadow features) and Genesis Morph Eraser (remove unused morphs before you save). His are Free and available at his ShareCG Gallery

Philemo makes plugins like (just to name a few) HD Morph Support for Carrara, PBR Lighting, Hair Convertor and much more. His Phong Tesselation plugin, for example, is for adding microdisplacement (I think?) instead of just using Bump or Displacement. GMIC is a collection of post effect filters like you'd expect to use in an image editor - directly in Carrara during the render process. His plugins are Free and available at his Carrara Time Savers shop.

Sparrowhawke3d has his own site with brief descriptions, some video tutorials, example... even an experimental lab for trying other fun plugins. His are Free too, but he also has a well-deserved Patreon Project going to help fund more in the future. He has really cool plugins like Belt drives, extra primitive shapes, dynamic cloth, jiggle deformer and a whole lot more.

Digital Carver's Guild (DCG) is now Open Source! These plugins have been highly sought after as long as I've known Carrara to exist! DCG Carrara Plugins

Argh... I type too slowly and I'm out of time. I'll try to get back with more - especially if you have specific questions about any of these. 

So with my time limited right now, I've found a list of links to threads in the forum you might find interesting, but I haven't visited some of these for quite some time, so I can't recall what's in them anymore:

Plugins
* How does one learn to be a Carrara programmer?
* texture from camera (solved using DCG Shader Ops 2 and Inagoni's Baker)
* Sparrowhawke3D Plugins for Carrara 8/8.5 for Mac (and some updates)
* After Effects plugin still work?
* PySwarm for PyCarrara
* PyCarrara question
* aniBlock importer failed to load (in Carrara 8)
* Oh yea. Octane for Carrara
* Skin Settings for Luxus for Carrara
* Simulating Realistic Flocking Behavior in Carrara using PyCarrara
* Exploration into PyCarrara Plug-In
* soundwaves and py Carrara
* Want fluids for Carrara? Try PyCloid!!! If you like it, please don't forget to Donate!
* Luxus for Carrara released!
* Luxus: IBL and Background
* Genesis 2 basic female Mimic lipsync tute
* soundwaves and py Carrara
 

That was just copied and pasted from my ► Forum Help Links  - The Plugins area. I want to work on this when/if I get the chance. How it was supposed to work is that we could visit threads that were already created, so that anyone following the thread would get notified of something new (comment, answer, question, etc.,) and check it out, so that each one could grow with more info, etc.,

Frederick Ribble (links in Jay's article above) has toiled away and brought to us the wonderful PyCarrara and PyCloid. With his permission, I've compiled a playlist of his brief and wonderful demo videos. Enjoy!

PyCloid Demos

Here's the first video in the list, just as a teaser

With all respect, f1oat3d, I love you man!

Finally before I go, I made this thing to help folks as much as I can. It began with the indexing of  (the late ) Cripeman's tutorial videos (Awesome!!!). I'm sure that a lot of it is feeling its age - I had quite a long period of no communication with this forum, and just recently got back home. But it does have some fun stuff:

                            ►►► Carrara Information Manual ◄◄◄

This is what I do:

1. Quadrangulate the garment in MD.
2. Export the garment from MD as OBJ.
3. Import the OBJ into Daz Studio. 
4. Use Transfer Utility to rig to figure (not strictly necessary for dForce, I believe).
5. Add dForce Dynamic Surface Modifier to garment.
6. Simulate.

Gallery link

Several tempting curvy morphs have been on sale lately - Boom Chica, Kingsley, Z Plus Size - but I decided to see how far I'd get without spending even more. I started with the body of Pix Twylite who isn't plus sized but has a slight pear shape and was a more interesting starting point than the G8F base figure. The face has some Ophelia 7 dialled in to get that round-ish shape.

Freebie credits:
Morph Preset by Alken: https://www.sharecg.com/v/88581/gallery/21/DAZ-Studio/Face-for-Genesis-8-Female
Pier by Adam Thwaites: https://www.most-digital-creations.com/dock.htm
Background by Networthy: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/networthys-2010-beach-backgrounds/61404
Wood Texture by Rob Tuytel: https://texturehaven.com/tex/?c=wood&t=brown_planks_03
Pose by Zeddicuss: https://www.zed3d.com/shop/pinup-pose-21-30-compiled-g3f/
Pose Converter by Agent Unawares: https://www.deviantart.com/agentunawares/art/G3F-to-G8F-World-s-Greatest-Pose-Converter-709591348

I've always been afraid ot messing with files, due to messing up the file paths. What can you move and what can't you? Sounds like data and runtime stay put?  @nath

I have a 'paltry' 412 pages.

With regards to moving and finding things, Nath pretty much covered it but I will say that I only have 2, maybe 3, products that cannot be moved. Apart from data and Runtime (although I do know enough to move folders in the Textures folder and repath to it) I move everything. I come from a Poser background in 2006 and organising Runtimes/Libraries is second nature. I often wonder how people find content when it is installed under so many different folders and vendor named folders. If I'm looking for a character called AAA how would I know to look under a folder beginning XXX because that's the vendors name? If I'm looking for a script that converts clothing why would I not have a folder called 'Clothing Converters'?

The picture attached shows my Library. Everything gets put under these main folders, but rest assured pretty much all the sub folders are non standard ;)

I have become really adept at hand editing duf, dsf and json files and if something needs repathing it takes me seconds in Notepad++. A small price to pay to find things where I'm looking for them. If I ever find a way to hand edit paths in dsa files I'll be all set.

That's a nicely elegant library, though it doesn't show how you deal with products that come formatted for Poser.     

I have 14 Poser runtimes, all organised, and added through the Content Directory Manager. Any Poser content installed via DIM gets moved out to the relevant Poser runtime :)

Yes, but when you install Poser content, the everything goes into the runtime folder, and there's very little consistency in where things go from vendor to vendor... ie textures may be under materials or poses, props and sets may be in Figures or Props... are you manually creating new presets for each and every asset?  If you only have a small number of assetss that don't come ready made in DAZ formats, I can see that as being something that's doable, but I have over somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000.

Custom Categories is how I make do at the moment, where, thankfully, you can have the same item listed several times in different places, and you can copy enitire folders with a few keystrokes.   

Wthout going into labourious detail, I have a set of folders setup in the Runtimes for characters/props and poses/materials. All content is moved into them. It sounds mad, which it is if you try and do it all at once in one go but I have had this system going since Poser 6 so it's only a few items a week, if that, for me since I mainly moved over to Studio. It's why sharing these content management schemes is fraught with peril, if you didn't start the scheme early then trying to implement one when you have masses of content is a task not to be taken on lightly.

Yeah, that's what I suspected.  If, as Cher said, I could turn back time... As it is, I'm going to be picking up a new render computer in the very near future and I may break down and install everything fresh except for a handful of favorite created characters and sets, while keeping everything else on the old machine as an archive.  I bought a program from Dimensnion 3D a while back that I THINK will let me pull just the assets needed for an existing scene and transfer them to a different machine... need to dig that up and find out. 

I'm planning on adding a feature to the DAZ Product Manager so if will generate a SKU string for DIM that can be used for installing/uninstalling a set of selected products. 

Othewise, if you have the DAZ installer zips downloaded already it can also be done automatically, without DIM, but that will be without CMS support (like installing the zips manually).

Hi all - I've successfully imported a model into Unity and all is going well apart from one of my morphs that has negative values I would like to use in Unity. Do any of you know a way I can change the morphs manually in daz3d to use 0 - 200 for example and then reposition it myself. Or if there is a way to assign a negative value in Unity.

Thank you kindly for any and all advice on this!

Darren

Tate had Goodby kidnapped? And is now targeting his own grandfather for kidnapping? My, he changed over the years!

That will make for some terribly interesting family holidays afterward.

Tate chooses people with the maximum skills so more people don't suffer. If he didn't do this, the handlers on earth would take more than was actually needed and that would be worse. Tate has been trained that he must choose the lesser of two evils, and impact the fewest people as possible. He doesn't have a choice. Personnel is handled on Earth I. Someone was going to be snatched regardless, so it might as well be the most qualified person. 

Does the government actually release the people it's kidnapped once the grid is active and working? Suddenly releasing all of the scientists and trusting them all to say nothing seems like it would be an issue.

The Government planned to shut down the Retro World and either strand people there, or take them back, and put them in a detention center until the information they know, is of no use to anyone.  However, some people are needed to run the grid back home so a couple like Tate with highest clearence will be returning..  It is likely that they would strand those without sufficient knowledge of the grid, and take those in the know back- in case they might be needed. 

In general living in retro world is probably better than Earth. Think 60's Canada but with more racial harmony .  Many of the scientists,  if they have not gotten new bodies, are ready to retire by now. 

I like retro world, and so I think Earth will keep a base there, but after this, it will be manned by volunteers. 

nd is now targeting his own grandfather for kidnapping? My, he changed over the years!

Silas is Owen's grandfather. I think Boyd will have...Issues with how Tate has changed. 

On the other hand, once everything settles down, Goodby can get a zoomy younger body!

Goodby, and Grandfather will get new bodies.  Once Goodby drops charges against grandad, he will no longer be a felon, and can get a new younger body.  It is probably that since Goodby's company is quite prominent they will try to cover the whole matter up or even deny Goodby is even who he claims to be.

It wouldn't be the first time someone cloned a person, and then attempted to usurp an inheritence. Goodby for the most part, is a resilient young man, and will likely go into business with grandfather again- once he goes back to school. His skills are 35 years out of date and his wife had divorced him and remarried years ago. 

 

D.Master posted in their thread about saving as shape presets to make things work without the attachment (... I think) -- which actually makes much more sense than saving as material presets, since all of the details are morph sliders. I guess the attachment activates the sliders, and then they can be saved ... I have no clue.

By the by, I finally figured out what the attachment actually does. It provides fine skin details that are really only visible (a) if you're doing a portrait, and (b) with both Render SubD and View SubD on G8M set to at least SubD 3. (The attachment's own default SubD is level 4 for both.) You can use the morphs and presets on the character himself -- the morphs have been added to G8M by the product -- but you're just not going to get the fine details without the attachment. I've been testing on Gregory by Emrys, since I got him to be an older guy. Weirdly, with the attachment, some of the skin detail morphs get smoothed out a bit -- at a guess, because if you're doing the sort of portrait where the skin detail will be visible, the morphs may be too much.

Interesting. I will have to check that out.

I think FBM = Full Body Morph.

 

Hehe I was too cranky to realize that mistake. Nice catch

About your other comments (which feature a series of logical fallacies ... as well as better being addressed by the vendor himself, instead of  those who have no horse in the race), I've sent you a msg

I do hope the tips were useful. I know a couple other users were asking about how to do this (but they didn't know of this product's existence). Hopefully this will be viewable in the forum search so people can find it (and they can also learn what isn't a logical fallacy). 

I'd like to compare Zev0's character/morph conversion from G3 to G8... and I am inclined to think that as one package that works with both male and female - it probably has an edge on Riversoft's offerings. 

 

I had some initial trouble with Zev0’s XTransfer, but now that it’s working, it works so well that I’m not remotely tempted by Riversoft’s equivalent.