hey guys i'm thinking in buying victoria 8, but i really want to know what are really the difference aside morphs and skin?? like her mesh have more poly???, i can use any genesis 8 morphs which i had bought on her???, to be clear i means in meshe quality, what her mesh have better than genesis 8 base??? or they are the same??? just with a "victoria morph" and some physical elements??? talking about "bending" when animating her she have better "bending"? like more realistic bendings than genesis 8??, how exactly she is better???

"Moon, Take Thy Flight"

RiverSoft Art Products used:

1. dForce The Striga Ensemble for Genesis 3 and 8 Female(s)
2. Pose Blender
3. Eye Clock Pose Control

Description of how products were used:

I have a love-hate relationship with dForce (although "terrified" is more accurate than "hate"). I love what it can do - it opens up so many new options for artists - and I love looking at all the amazing work people have done using dForce. At the same time, I'm totally intimidated by the mechanics of using dForce, and I'm working on an older laptop that was intended for word processing. It doesn't really get along with dForce. So when I saw the dForce Striga Outfit had hierarchical pose presets that emulated dForce, I snapped it up!

The best part of the preset poses, in my opinion, is that they work really well as a place to start - I'm not just limited to the poses provided. For this piece, I used RiverSoft's Pose Blender to mix the "Looking Back" pose with a walking pose, and I depended quite heavily on the selective pose blender option to mix in some of the other presets as well. The left arm is mixed with the spellcasting preset pose, while the right arm has a little bit of the "sitting" and "standing" poses blended in. I barely needed to use the morph dials to fix the fabric after she was posed. And because I used the pose blender, all the different poses look natural blended together - nothing tries to stick out at odd angles, as often happens when I try to combine partial poses. Pose blender really is my secret weapon - using it is the best trick for keeping posed figures from looking stiff and frozen.

You can use dForms to create a morph on the tank top. You'll need to set the dForm Influence to Weight Map for better control. And you may want to use more than one dForm to fine tune the changes. Once you've got it looking how you want, you can "spawn" the morph and remove the dForms.

Here are a couple of videos on using dForms to get you started:

• DAZ Studio - The D-Form Tool - YouTube
• Posing, Shaping and Deforming

Hey all, I'm playing around with Headshop and having fun, but wow, the skin color on the imported head looks NOOOOOTHING like the skin on the rest of the Gen8 body. (For some context, I've used Daz off and on for a long time, but I always end up having to take long breaks, so I never feel like I know enough about what I'm doing. There might be an easy answer, and this might be a dumb question!!) I can post a pic of my result later.. when the computer decides to cooperate.... But for now, what have people done to try to match those skin colors/tones when they end up being radically different for the head/face and body?

I would open up the face texture file with Photoshop and change the overall hue in the many tools Photoshop provides. Then apply the newly saved texture faile to the face in DAZ Studio

Photoshop is not a free program, and many users may not know how to use it, either. Its strange that you market Headshop as being very easy to use with its one click ability, yet also expect those customers to know how to use external software to solve problems like this. I have used GIMP for years, and even though I consider myself "ok" at it, the task of fixing these textures can take some time to get right with lots of trial and error. Facegen handles this better, it is certainly not perfect, but it makes an attempt at it and it works alright.

I want to like Headshop, I really really do. It has promise, and it does do some unique things. But it still has some really glaring issues. You still have not directly addressed some of the issues I raised in my last review after the update, they are right here on page 3 of this thread. There are still UV problems where the texture leaves a nasty line at the seam. The morph can actually effect the entire body. This is somewhat subtle, but it gets worse as the morph gets dialed up higher. Regardless of how subtle it is, this should not happen, period.

World's_Edge said they didn't notice this, but I can see it quite clearly. Look at this pic:

Notice the gap between the front teeth, and how strange and goofy the teeth look in general. That is because the teeth are actually shrinking and deforming with the head morph shape! The more it gets dialed in, the more noticeable this gets. I have also seen that the eyelashes on Genesis 8 do not conform to the face morph at all. The eyelashes do not move with morph, and this winds up messing things up bad. You MUST turn the eyelashes off as a result. And if you look at this man close, you will notice he has no eyelashes at all. They are painted on by the texture.

It depends on the source picture you use. Sometimes it blends ok, sometimes not (more often not). When it does not blend, there is no choice but to use an editor to try to fix it. There are numerous ways to tackle it, and these may not be the best ways. In GIMP or PS you can paint with low opacity over the face to get it to match, then use the heal tool to blend in the edges. Another way is to open the face twice as two layers, use any option to tint one image, and then copy or heal the altered portion over the original face image. Either way can work.

 

Could you also just apply another character's skin materials once you load the headshop character into Studio to start working on your scene?

Of course, you can apply any texture just like you can for any other Daz Genesis based character. But in doing so you probably create a whole different person. This may be ok if your goal is purely making unique characters, but if you are trying to capture a specific person's likeness, odds are you lose that.

I'm having a problem with the collar of this outfit. Is there a way to make RSSY "forget" to morph the collar when G8's neck twists?

No.  The conformer pulls the V4 clothes to where G8F would like them.  You can try different conformers (for example, cape) to see if that does a better job.

Do you (or anyone) know of a way in Daz to keep the collar from morphing/conforming to the movements of the character? I was able to edit the Twist on the collar of a V4 clothing item in Poser (moving its area of effect away from the collar, so that it was essentially "off") when I had a very similar problem, but not sure how to do it in Daz. Is there a way to "lock" the collar in place, or lock the rotation?

I don't know how.

It does not. I suspect it can, but I need to really study the format of the CR2 file, and generalized Poser-ness. I just don't know enough about it to be definitive. That said, The tools this product uses to work rely on Studio's internals, and I have noticed that there many cases where those tools do not like to work with legacy formats and post Genesis formats at the same time. So it might also not be possible.

Select the Victoria 4 or Michael 4 figure in the scene, go to Edit>Figure>Rigging>Convert Figure To Weight Map, now choose a weight map system you want to work with.

Once this is done with TriAx or General weights you can start to use for example the Node Weight Map Brush tool on those Legacy figures. Also more important the Transfer Utility will work on them.

Like always to transfer morphs they have to be once saved as Morph Assets go to File>Save As>Support Asset>Morph Asset.

But since the figure isn't saved yet as a Figure/Prop Asset you go here File>Save As>Support Asset>Figure/Prop Asset.

With this the morphs get saved along with it in the "data/Morphs/Base" folder. Now don't forget to delete the current Victoria 4 or Michael 4 figure from the scene because its still the old version. Restart DS and load your new V4 / M4 Figure/Prop Asset from the library to actualy use the new asset in the scene. Now try the Transfer Utility with them I'm pretty shure it will work.

I've heared the support team are bussy people. You could try Clear Selected Deltas from Favourites its a well hidden function that needs some preparation but it can help with those issues you descriped.

But wait - first I thought you where talking about Genesis 3 but by the morph names I see you are working with a genesis 8 figure. Since on G8 figures the eyelashes are seperate conforming items the morph shape does not include the eye lashes. Maybe you issue is more of an "autofollow" issue like descriped above.

Just in case I post what I was about to suggest anyway so here is the informations I can give.

This method descriped below I first saw in this video Cleaning Up Morphing Mistakes by Xenic101 that I post literally everytime this question comes up. Be careful with this and use it wisely there is no undo. Maybe thats the point why it is not that easy to find.

[Quote]:  How do I reset the eyes and mouth of a morph I'm making?

The command is called Clear Selected Deltas from Favourits and can be found in the Geometry Editor Tool if its switched to Vertex Edit mode (instead of default Face Edit mode).

The right-click menu looks different in Vertex Edit mode. I once had trouble to find this command see here: Clear Selected Deltas from Favourites - can't find this function anymore in the new DS version

As you already mentioned you would have to move the parts back into place, maybe you could use a DFormer with Weight Map influence for that.

 

Here is a short instruction for how to use Clear Selected Deltas From Favorites:

1. have the dog figure selected and then go to the Parameters pane find your morph(s) and add them to "Favourits" by clicking the heart icon on the slider

2. switch to the Geometry Editor Tool - open the Tool Settings pane

3. add the Surfaces like eyes, gum and teeth to the 'geometry selection' with the plus icons behind the Surface Group list in the Tool Settings pane

4. right-click the viewport and choose Geometry Selection > Convert Selection > Convert to Vertex Selection

(the Geometry Editor in the Tool Settings pane now changes to Vertex Edit mode and shows the selected vertex dots)

5. right-click the viewport again and choose Clear Selected Deltas from Favourits (if you don't save those Morph Assets but the scene file now the morphs only exist in the scene file)

 

Here is a Tutorial video that descripes this method pretty well.

Cleaning Up Morphing Mistakes by Xenic101

I'm having a problem with the collar of this outfit. Is there a way to make RSSY "forget" to morph the collar when G8's neck twists?

No.  The conformer pulls the V4 clothes to where G8F would like them.  You can try different conformers (for example, cape) to see if that does a better job.

Do you (or anyone) know of a way in Daz to keep the collar from morphing/conforming to the movements of the character? I was able to edit the Twist on the collar of a V4 clothing item in Poser (moving its area of effect away from the collar, so that it was essentially "off") when I had a very similar problem, but not sure how to do it in Daz. Is there a way to "lock" the collar in place, or lock the rotation?

The modified mesh should be stored in the scene, but there can be issues over morphs that haven't been saved as assets (they work on the base but don't project into clothing - there was a note in the chnage log this week that may be related to that) - so I suppose it may also be that unsaved modifications to base mesh may have problems.

Richard, do you know if this will remain so or be changed in a later update?

I don't know what is happening, so I can't really offer any meaningful guess. The reference to the morph issue was just a very tentative "well, I suppose it could be related to this"

Are there any cloaks for G8 that have a face-covering morph like this one does?

https://www.daz3d.com/medieval-cloaks-for-genesis-3-females

Only reason why I don't buy this one is because I know it will get all crumpled up when conforming to G8, and parenting it will probably lead to a lot of posing issues. I'll try if there's no other way though.

DAZ has moved to a new paradigm for their characters. V4 was relatively high poly count and therefore amenable to morphing by almost anyone. Not so good for DAZ character/morph sales. The Genesis range seem to have less and less polygons on each successive generation; the characters rely on subdivision on the fly within DAZ Studio to achieve their high quality mesh appearence. The lower poly count of the Genesis series means making detailed mesh morphs is more difficult at best and impossible for some morphs, unless you are a DAZ PA, when you have access to DAZ propriety HD technology which enables making HD detailed morphs. This is better for DAZ sales of detailed morphs for their characters. Makes good business sense for DAZ. So DAZ upgrading the rigging of V4 is not very likely as V4++ would compete (rather well, IMO) with the Genesis series and risk losing character/morph sales to third parties.

That's not really correct - since the V4 mesh is used at its final esolution some of the extra is needed to smooth out those morphs, which on Genesises can be left to the SubD to smooth. Remember that Victoria 4 is roughly equivalent to one level of SubD on a Genesis. The idea that this is some kind of ply to boost sales is not really credible - most HD moprh need more resolution thanm the older figures ever offered.

Like with GenX will this allow us to transfer morphs between genders? 

Sorry cross posted with SB.

This is really remarkable work, Singular. I can't spot any differences.

Like with GenX will this allow us to transfer morphs between genders? 

(If not, I supposed I could use GenX to transfer to morph to G3 and then from G3 to G8 using your new tool)

Since I wasn't serious about the guess who game, I'll just answer. The first 4 are, as Divamakeup guessed, G1, G2F, G8F(the source), but not V4 for reasons as above. The last is G2M. She correctly identified not only who, but who was who for the 3 she got right.
Right to left in the all 7 image: Genesis, G2F, G3M, G8F, G8M, G3F, G2M.
Moreover, you don't have to make the figures look exactly like the source. This is the result of using an optional process. It should be noted that sending cross gender will likely require manual edits (Edit: IF and ONLY IF you don't use the option to make the result exactly match the source. Essentially baking the source figure shape into the FBM and FHM. If you do that, no other work is required), because man boobs and woman boobs just don't morph the same, which can result in very, very bad results. Everything else works fine, however. The down side of this method is that the odds of distortion when transfering big morphs have returned to normal. Unfortuantely trying to use the trick I used to prevent that distortion makes this method fail. I might be able to solve that, mind, but I don't mean to delay again looking for perfection. If I solve it, and Daz accepts it, it will go in an update.

Related, slightly: I am iffy as to whether the next Genesis will be an update or addon. It's probably for the best, since this is a decision I should only take after I've actually seen Daz's next figure. However, I am solid on Legacy figure support. If I have a product, and I figure out how to do it, it will be an addon.

This is really remarkable work, Singular. I can't spot any differences.

Like with GenX will this allow us to transfer morphs between genders? 

(If not, I supposed I could use GenX to transfer to morph to G3 and then from G3 to G8 using your new tool)

nonesuch00 said:

You can't know if a smile is real without context so you can't judge a person's smile without knowing for a long time their 'typical smile'. Now if you want to say DAZ 3D model's smiles are fake because they don't involve all the muscle, connective joint & tissue & skin changes needed then you'd be on to something.

 

At the risk of singling out the confirmation bias answer, I guess this is the reaity of the situation.
Lots of helpful suggestions, and thanks for posting them, but without some major tweaking, none of them feel quite right. Strange how many female smiles were suggested, but I'm actually after a male one, pretty much leaving only "20 unique..."
 

Masterstroke said:
step 1: load a default Daz smile or every other smile, that looks useful to you.
step 2: tweak some of the facial bones
step 3: make a final touch up morph with zbrush
step 4: create a new controll slider using the ERC freeze option.
...
Might be a plan, thanks. I'll look into that.
Gonna look like a crazy person if I reply to every reply, but thanks everyone who contributed - some really nice points made!
 

DAZ has moved to a new paradigm for their characters. V4 was relatively high poly count and therefore amenable to morphing by almost anyone. Not so good for DAZ character/morph sales. The Genesis range seem to have less and less polygons on each successive generation; the characters rely on subdivision on the fly within DAZ Studio to achieve their high quality mesh appearence. The lower poly count of the Genesis series means making detailed mesh morphs is more difficult at best and impossible for some morphs, unless you are a DAZ PA, when you have access to DAZ propriety HD technology which enables making HD detailed morphs. This is better for DAZ sales of detailed morphs for their characters. Makes good business sense for DAZ. So DAZ upgrading the rigging of V4 is not very likely as V4++ would compete (rather well, IMO) with the Genesis series and risk losing character/morph sales to third parties.

 

is this still true about skylight or does the 8.5  "sunlight" change anything?

dunno if is my imagination but seems the bulb light much better quality than distant light

 

Sun light is a light, so you have shadow and specularity.

Skylight, HDRI are environement lighting, so no shadow and no specularity. I'm not sure there is a difference in quality between bulb and distant. If you set no range limit on a bulb and put it far enough, it acts exactly like a distant light.

The plugin to create lightdome is in alpha stage (on my computer :-) ). I'll finish and release as soon as I'm done with the HD Morph plugin.

It's super hard to tell from the small image and viewing the arms bends from this angle but I'll try and guess, just for fun - I could be WAY off though: G2F, G8F, V4, G1

I PMed you if you want another beta tester. :)

That was a remarkably good guess. Only one wrong. :)

I wonder if this product offers a solution to get V4 / M4 morphs straight to G8?

https://www.daz3d.com/sy-victoria-4-and-michael-4-clones-for-genesis-8

For my understanding the autofit clones can be used as morph shapes. This will turn a G8 figure into V4 / M5 shape right?

It does not. I suspect it can, but I need to really study the format of the CR2 file, and generalized Poser-ness. I just don't know enough about it to be definitive. That said, The tools this product uses to work rely on Studio's internals, and I have noticed that there many cases where those tools do not like to work with legacy formats and post Genesis formats at the same time. So it might also not be possible. Thus:

GenX brings characters from V4 to G3

GenX is really the best solution for this issue. Yes, it makes it two step, but I can't begin to say if my methods can get near a single step solution. GenX is the only certain solution I am aware of. I wanted to prove this one way or the other, but I simply don't see taking anouther 2 years to figure that out, and learning the legacy format to my standards would mean that much additional trial and error, (given how my current life makes everything take longer). If I figure out how to do it, there will be an addon, but the basic product will be Genesis only. Because Studio does not really convert legacy figures to the same standard as Genesis at run time, I have to invent a new module to do transfers. It's not just getting the right shape.  If anyone know how to author Poser formats in Daz Studio 4, that would go a long way toward making this possible (not to say that I can't figure it out, if it can be done, just that it would save time). But it's definitely not as simple as getting the clone shapes. 

Here we have everyone. (View the attachment to embiggen.) All seven Genesis figures, all using the same morph as transfered by the tool. While getting the previous example done was good fun, I find that texture's make it too easy to figure out the differences AND it makes it look like there are differences that don't exist. So, this time, I just did them in stone. There remain solid clues as to who's who and there remains one mystery guest in the first image :P
I never got around to having G3 deactivate the navel and realism morphs before executing a transfer, so I'll  be doing that, then one more round of test transfers (so far, it's all been from G8, so I need to do some testing to make absolutely sure there remain no obvious issues. G8 to G8 was a thing that happened, otherwise there'd be six figures in the render, so I know it works for putting morphs on G8. I just need to make sure there are no gotchas). After that, I'll be releasing to beta. New tester hopefuls, if you PM'd, I will start contacting you as soon as it looks like I'm not getting enough feedback from existing testers. Or if I need specific tests run (I don't know that I will). 

@jeffam112368_9a28fbd572 Awesome. And others too! 

I'd like share couple of my renders in which I aimed for reality. First is Tasha 8. It's simple but I think it rendered well with a hdri (I don't remember which one it was). The other I don't remember who she was XD.

Those are both in that zone that's so close to something that passes as a photo, that I can't quite figure out what's keeping it from convincing me. This is where I often feel I'm stuck. With the first image, I think there's something not quite there with the skin. It needs more details—the little lines that somebody of that approximate age would have around the eyes, little folds around the armpits, etc. The texture is too smooth, as well. With the white dress image, the first thing that struck me is the texure on the corset is off. It's too metalic for a silk and probably needs a touch of SSS or translucency to capture the way light moves through fabric. Assuming they both use the same skin, it works better in this one, but when I study it, I still notice the lack of those details.

Another small thing is there aren't any fingerprints/smudges on the instruments. With such polished surfaces, there should be a little bit of surface grime and fingerprints even on a very clean surface, I'm not sure if that contributes to the uncanny valley effect, but it could be contributing in such well-light environments.

Aargh, having done that analysis, I can see how it would apply to my own work and how I don't have either the skill or the tools to fix it :(

 

This is about as close as I've gotten with a close up. Barring, of course, the sweater. That probably needs some  kind of hair system/fiber mesh to sell it. The glasses might help, since they hide the lack of detail around the nose.

Thanks for analysis! Very good points. I am lazy and I usually use characters and props straight from box without tweaking them or doing much postwork. I see the grime and imperfections would add a lot.
I like your render a lot, the overall composition and lighting looks really good. B&W always elevates the real feeling of a picture. Perhaps a little tighter DOF, so it slightly starts from the ears and back portion of the hair. Somehow I always find it adding reality while I think it comes from photos I've seen during my life. Well, the title of the thread says "photo"realism :)

I'll add one render I did with a trombone. It's a bit of an lighting accident how it came out but I liked it and took it as it came. It could use postwork and the guy on the background the same attention to detail than the main character. G8M base figure with Edward 8 skin, default age morph and George hair set, DarkEdge's glasses.

Tone mapping settings are what I'm going to dig into next.

Yeah I didn't mean this product is intended to do that morph transfer right out of the box. I just thought about to convert the clone shape it comes with back to a morph (that it originaly was - just saved as Clone Asset lateron) and see how close you can get the G8 figure to the V4/M4 shape. I think it should even work if it isn't aligned up perfectly. If its close enougth you could use the converted Clone Asset morph with the Transfer Utility to convert those figure morphs with this Reverse Source Shape from Target option checked - you know what I'm talking about right?