I would like to see a G8 centaur BUT only if they design it differently and change the transition area bewteen the horse body and the figure. The G3 version is way to high in the front, I finally picked up the GF3 version on sale awhile after it was released thinking I could change this, but no luck and I still haven't done a render with it. Rawarts Rheena for Centaur 7 Female is so much closer to how it should be, but I remember reading a forum post that you couldn't use any other skins on that one and that was a deal breaker for me.

I actually almost bought that myself only reason I didn't .. and don't get me wrong... I own alot of Raw's stuff.  It looked too much like Patrick Sawyse in drag.  Actually hoping he puts the dog world foxes out in  his G8 rebuilds truthfully.  Been wanting to do redo the gryphon I did with his morpohs.  

 

 

BTW. The way around the G8 to G3 is using a morph transfer script.  Example with the male..

 

 

You don't have to use the Rheena morph, I didn't since I didn't care for the way Rheena looked either, but I got it just for the transition from GF3 to the body that DAZ neglected to do.

This is the closest shape I could get to what I like using Rheena and my own and other morphs, but the downside is I am stuck using the Rheena textures and the horse textures without some heavy photoshop work because the top GF3 texture is also on the bottom part, so any edits affcts the whole figure unnfortunately.

I wish talented PAs would create options packages more instead of single vision creations since they are very limiting to many artists

the PA who creates the deheeler utility will do very well financially indeed.

Considering footwear all have different geometry I doubt that such a product is possible.

I asked a PA who's very good at make-this-fit-that add-ons, and she assured me it was beyond impractical, leaning toward all but impossible.

Sickleyield? :D

And yeah, I figured it might be out of the range of possibility - or at least highly difficult and not likely to happen. 

Yes, my Patchwork Shoes are for Genesis 3 and 8 (I have an older version for G2, too, but without Iray materials).

https://www.daz3d.com/patchwork-shoes-sandals-1-2-for-genesis-3-female-s-and-genesis-8-female-s

https://www.daz3d.com/patchwork-shoes-boots-3-and-4-for-genesis-3-and-8-female-s

Texture addons: https://www.daz3d.com/fun-textures-for-patchwork-shoes-1-2

https://www.daz3d.com/fun-textures-for-patchwork-shoes-3-and-4

These are for G8, but they can be morphed between flat, medium and high heels: https://www.daz3d.com/all-season-shoes-for-genesis-8-females

with texture addon: https://www.daz3d.com/all-season-shoes-texture-add-on

And my Summer Dream Dress also includes shoes that can morph between high heels and flat: https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-summer-dream-for-genesis-8-female-s

plus texture addon: https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-summer-dream-addon-textures

 

That said, it is a pain to make shoes with morphing heel shapes, because the heels (and also the soles, if they're not super thin) need also to change their UV mapping when you morph them from high to flat. It requires a lot of planning and fiddling in all stages of production and I wouldn't want to do that for each single shoe product.

Your Patchwork Sandals for G8 are my favorite shoes product. They are so versatile and work well with just about any type of outfit. I very much appreciate all the effort that must have gone into creating shoes that can do what they do. :) 

I'm always impressed with the high level of quality and "bang for your buck" that one gets with your products. It feels like getting several great products in one! :D

I somehow missed the "All Seasons Shoes" - so thank you for pointing those out. With all the material zones and heal options, it looks like you're getting like a dozen shoes in one product! Outstanding! I've wishlisted them and will be getting them once I stock up on store credit. :)

I'll point out that Daz Horse 2 has a cloven hoof morph, so you can rather easily replicate that without any extra anything.

(Also a bunch of other morphs that can help make a horse look more slender and graceful)

As for that, Sparky, who is a PA over on Hivewire has some 3rd-party morphs for the Hivewire horse. The Kirin one also has cloven hooves, as, I think, does the unicorn. The hoof morphs are optional. But the deer will add a lot of aditional possibilities.

I'd forgotton that the Unicorn had the cloven hoof morph, and Kirin is the only one I don't have. So yes the cloven hoof can already be done with the Hivewire Horse no need to wait for the Deer.

This was the sort of discussion I was hoping to spark. Nice and friendly!

I'll have to hunt down that morph transfer script. My main thing is I already have so many lovely Gen 8 ladies.

And if they did a Gen 9 this year... Yeah, I'd be one of those that stuck to gen 8. Unless it was a vast improvement AND came with all the clones for clothing. I totally get the whole "invested" thing. That's the primary reason I hesitate to grab the Centaur is because I'm already so heavily invested in gen 8. But hey, if I can transfer morphs...

For horse, I've got the HIvewire horse. I really liked the Fresian model. I have yet to explore whether or not the Daz Horse 2 stuff fits it.

One of my problems with PAs, and it was mentioned, is that they tend to build towards their own sense of style/vision. I feel as if I'm being shoehorned in creating *their* idea. I do like things I can kitbash, but somethings are difficult to do anything with other than the intended final result. There is a "Vampire Hunter" outfit that I liked the pants on, but when I took a closer look, it was sold as a one-piece outfit. Maybe top could be made transparent, maybe not, but I passed on the purchase because I didn't want to take the risk of not being able to use it for what I wanted it for.

I know rawart makes some nice stuff, but again, I've felt shoe-horned with some of the purchases. (And I'd really love an update to the Medusa hair so I can more easily apply it to a gen8.) I purchased the No Suit, and really wish it had better documentation. Can't figure out if it will actually work for what I want it for. Can't figure out how to apply skin mats to certain zones. Granted, I haven't put much time on it, but I still thought better documentation would go a long way. (And examples)

But that's true for many nifty PA tools/utilities/assets. I see that apparently I can load different base skins into skin builder 8, but I have yet to figure out HOW. (Just an example) So one thing Daz Original content generally has going for it is better documentation, or at least, better labels on things.

Anyway, there is a reason I spend good money on morph packs and converters. While there are a couple models I'll use as-is, (Rochelle is a doll) I like to customize to fit my vision of the character.

From what I can gather here, it looks like my best bet is to pick up C7 when it goes on sale again, and also keep an eye out on morphs for Genesis 3 male/female. And also pick up that morph transfer thing. Add to my shopping list, but I'm sure I'm not the only person looking at a wishlist of over 1,050+ items! I'd like to kitbash together an Orc Centaur, and I'd really love to figure out how to do an Andalite, though I'd think I'd need a deer morph of some kind to get the more elegant shape.

And while we're on the subject. Would really like a more graceful option for Unicorn, other than slapping a horn on a horse. In mythology they were described as having cloven hooves and a more graceful form. I just can't reconcile the current option with the more classic vision I want to use. : (

In the comic shared, yeah. That is a bit different because it's a dress that compliment the shape of the centaur. Those big hoop skirts work nicely, and I imagine there would be a cut-out for the hoop part to fit. I do think it would look nice if it had an expanse of fabric draped over the horse half, though. Being hand-drawn, the artist can reshape things so it looks "right." whereas the dress options I've seen for C7 just look wrong. Then again, it would be nice to have something to cover up the transition area. Maybe there are some wide belts I could use for the same purpose. (Or I suppose I just put on a full shirt instead of skimpy bikini top.)

I've been building a tabletop RPG, and that becomes my main reason for wanting centaurs. I want to incorporate them into one of the settings I'm designing. I'd love to do my own art. Glad we've got this discussion going, as I'm having a blast AND learning things.

The Hivewire horse has a unicorn morph and it has Whisper which is  a stylised unicorn, the different breed morphs can be mixed to get a shape you may like and the upcoming Deer (a morph of the horse)has a cloven hoof morph (separate I belive) so look out for its release.

Yes, my Patchwork Shoes are for Genesis 3 and 8 (I have an older version for G2, too, but without Iray materials).

https://www.daz3d.com/patchwork-shoes-sandals-1-2-for-genesis-3-female-s-and-genesis-8-female-s

https://www.daz3d.com/patchwork-shoes-boots-3-and-4-for-genesis-3-and-8-female-s

Texture addons: https://www.daz3d.com/fun-textures-for-patchwork-shoes-1-2

https://www.daz3d.com/fun-textures-for-patchwork-shoes-3-and-4

These are for G8, but they can be morphed between flat, medium and high heels: https://www.daz3d.com/all-season-shoes-for-genesis-8-females

with texture addon: https://www.daz3d.com/all-season-shoes-texture-add-on

And my Summer Dream Dress also includes shoes that can morph between high heels and flat: https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-summer-dream-for-genesis-8-female-s

plus texture addon: https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-summer-dream-addon-textures

That said, it is a pain to make shoes with morphing heel shapes, because the heels (and also the soles, if they're not super thin) need also to change their UV mapping when you morph them from high to flat. It requires a lot of planning and fiddling in all stages of production and I wouldn't want to do that for each single shoe product.

I've been using 4.11. Beta since it came out, updating each time there is a new Beta release. It works fine with my GTX 980 Ti. I am very happy with it.

Edit: As Rich says, it runs fine on the same computer with 4.10.0.123, the last 4.10 release. I can run either 4.10 or 4.11, whichever I choose at the time.

Do you happen to use custom categories?  If so, did you have any problems importing your user data file and using it with 4.11?

I have a huge custom category structure and I have no problem using it with 4.11.  I will say, that if you add to your custom categories in 4.10 it will automatically show up in 4.11. However, if you add it in 4.11 it will NOT transfer automatically to 4.10

People seem confused,as I said origionly it is a prop and not a figure of a low poly person shaped prop.

The people props in Medina Cityscape Generator are for very long shots as they are very low poly allowing a lot of them to be rendered without much overhead.

            https://www.daz3d.com/medina-cityscape-generator

My attempt was to simply move the foot & hem of the prop person to fake a walk cycle with morphs. As there is no parenting, removal and or adding of vertices I cannot see why the geometry is an issue, all I did was move the vertices along a single axis.

At long distance for a large crowd shot the prop looks great but its just not intended for animation so its time I stopped and found a better solution.

As I said the problem must be me using morph loader as a hammer and I'll have to come back to this at a later stage ands figure out what went wrong.

I've included a screenshot of the prop person and the vertices I was moving circled.

Thanks again everyone.

Thanks, 0oseven for the virtual drink.  Since its all virtual I'll have a glass of the most expensive liqueur that virtual money can buy  ... as long as it wasn't lying below sea in a wrecked ship for 300 years!

I gave you a lot of guff to wade through - anyone who hadn't done your research into Reallusion products probably found my long post confusing and tedious to say the least and I'm sorry about that.  Reallusion itself has a sticky thread in their Forum entitled 'Confused about which product to buy?'  That tells us something!

Like Diomede, Wendy and many others I take an interest in the ways different software worlds can interact with each other.  When I first started looking (before DAZ3d) it seemed that Poser and Bryce together could do everything I would wish for.  To this day these can still be used for amazing images.  With the addition of Hexagon or Silo and a paint package, I think I'd still be happy if that was all that was around. Nowadays, however, there is so much available to tantalise us that it is difficult (for me anyway) to just stick with what I have and use it to the full.  There is always something else on the horizon.

Even so, time and again I find that Carrara is the stable centre of my own 3d world.  When I use DAZ Studio or the latest version of Poser or even Sculptris or 3dCoat, I have in mind Carrara interaction(with older figures, admittedly); my efforts can always be brought into Carrara for further work and rendering.

It is the same for Iclone, except it's the other way round.  I can bring DAZ products and all sorts of other assets into Iclone via 3dXchange and assemble a quick scene for quick animation.  The clothing tools for the comparatively crude early figures in Iclone were good for prototyping garment ideas as well as giving the user a quick way to create lots of simple and differently-dressed characters.

Since then Iclone has matured and is becoming something of a big player with associated big costs.  It is at the point for me where I would need to decide to spend a lot of money and time on it and on improved hardware in order to use it to the full.

I'm not ready/able to do that yet but I think I made a good choice in trying out CC3 pipeline.  I can use the supplied characters or import DAZ, Poser,and Hivewire figures and clothes.  I can import clothing meshes which I've bought or made myself and have them conformed/rigged easily to the character. I can morph away with them into all kinds of new sizes and shapes and (because I have motion assets in an older version of Iclone) I can export them with animation.  So, for me I think it was a good purchase (I got a deal on an add-on Skin and Morph package which greatly expands CC3 Pipeline's usefulness.  The deal was valid during the trial period).

Thank you for the advice on Carrara textures and key-frame handling.  These suggestions along with Wendy's practices are new to me.  There are still lot's of features in Carrara that I haven't used.

Finally !!!

In my previous long post I mentioned that I export from CC3 Pipeline as .FBX in Maya-compatible format.  This gives me a skeleton with tons of extra bones with names ending either in '...twist' or '...wireframe'  The twist bones will distort the mesh and lose IK but they can be selected and made invisible to get them out of the way.

The 'Maya' .FBX' files don't work in Poser or Bryce, I found. 

Is it possible to put Poser clothing on Genesis figures without having to transfer Genesis figures into Poser?

Sorry, I don't have off road car so can't help with that.

Hair

I will chip in my two cents on hair.  These are just my random thoughts on some approaches.  Your mileage may vary.  For me, hair is a series of compromises.  Attempts to create realistic hair by modeling a mesh either rely on transmapped alpha maps to create the illusion of detail or have extremely high polygon counts, or both.  The poly counts of fiber mesh hair models in particular strain my computer's resources.  Dynamic hair native to Carrara is great, but its appearance is very sensitive to changes in lighting. Although the dynamic hair renders as expected with the standard Carrara renderer, it does some unexpected things with the Toon filter and with the NPR render engine, both of which I like.  Fortunately, the ever generous and amazing Philemo has created a plugin to convert dynamic hair to mesh, which can help with the rarely used by others Carrara NPR render engine.

- classic approach - conforming figures and parented props made from relatively simple meshes that are parented/conformed to the head.  These rely on transmaps for details like hair fringe.  This type of hair is very common.  A Poser artist named Kazaburo was making great transmapped hair decades ago.  Some current hair figures are essentially still this same approach.  I have a whole folder of this type of hair that was made for V4 that I have converted for use with Genesis and Genesis 2 using the transfer utility in Studio.  In Carrara, they load and conform/parent like any other figure or prop.  Load times and conforming times (morph projection) are directly related to the complexity of the underlying mesh, but many of these have relatively simple meshes and load/morph relatively quickly.  Like any other item made for Poser or Studio, some tweaks have to be done for the shaders.  Generally, only have to tweak once and then save a global Carrara shader to the broser.

Here is an example of Daz's fairytale hair that was made for V4.  It is a conforming figure, relatively high density as these things go, but loads and performs well in Carrara.  

- Once a conforming/pareted hair (in this case converted from V4 to Genesis 2 using Studio) is loaded and conformed to Genesis 2 in Carrara like any other item, you can change the hair color using the Daz material pose presets.  Highlight the hair figure subfolder (not actor) and double click the material preset in your content folder.  In the attached, I changed from the default color to blonde by using this selection and double click method.

- Like any other item designed for either Poser or Daz Studio, it is best to tweak the shaders for Carrara.  Here you can see that the default materials for the Fairytale hair look too smooth plasti, and shiny.  

- To tweak for Carrara, now select the actor level of the hair model, and go to the shader room and check the settings.  For this hair model, the default load has white highlights (equal to 100%), almost zero shiny, and the default bump actually is zero.  You can confirm that a transmap did load in the alpha channel and other settings as desired. 

- For this example, I adjusted the shaders for the front right strands of hair.  I decreased the highlight and increased shiny and bump.  In this test render, compare the adjusted hair tothe unadjusted.

- Once satisfied with your Carrara tweaks for all sections of hair, you can save the global settings for all sections by clicking and dragging from the multicolored sphere to the shader folder of your lower browser.

Even though that example was for V4 hair, the same principles apply to transmapped mesh hair designed for Genesis, Genesis 2, etc.

 

I can recall one speciifc person who dislikes the HD and announces they won’t buy it even if it is free as part of a bundle offer.

 But most people I think seem to want it. I think the reason it isn't included is because its a cash grab. People will pay extra for it, so they sell it as a different product.

Tha actually why I usually don't get the HD morphs. I'm not against selling products - no profit means no Daz, no Daz means I'm risking my credit card on other sites again - but my refusal to get them has to do with the pricing. Taking Zelara, for instance, the base figure with PC comes to $31.47. The HD morph for Zelara is $27.97. That's less than a 4 dollar difference. I'm not a modeler by any stretch so I don't know the work involved, but I can't justify buying the figure a second time to get some wrinkles on the knees and ankles when for that same amount I can pick up an OutOfTouch bundle with an HD character that comes with hair and outfit, especially when all but the skimpiest outfits are going to cover up the HD zones anyway!

A related option is to use the Daz Studio geometry editor to delete faces or vertices to, for example, “unzip” a zipper or open a shirt front and then save the modified garment as a new asset. This shouldn’t affect the existing rigging or weight mapping. From there, you can either move things around by using deformer, or else create a morph on the modified mesh using the normal techniques.  Might save some hassles by doing the mesh modifications in DS rather than externally. 

Hey this sounds exactly like what I’m after. 

Is there any chance you could elaborate a bit further on these processes and maybe a guide or tutorial please?

Well

Theres no parenting

Exported & Imported as Daz Studio, Poser, Blender no change.

I have Lightwave & Hexagon as well but I've been hitting this for days and I need to move forward.

So I'm dumping this and using Predatrons low poly arabs instead.

Since others are using Morph Loader & Blender okay I'm taking that its me.

I'll have to investigate solving this when I have spare time.

Thank you everyone for the advise.

No, Morph Loader Pro is not "busted". It works fine. Be sure ONLY the ONE object you are going to morph is visible in the scene when you export to OBJ. Hide everything else before export. The exported object must not have anything fit to it or parented to it. It must be at base resolution (no SubD). Be sure you export and import with the same scale factor. In Blender, be sure you "keep vertex order" on import and export. These are the Blender settings I use for import and export.

Hi I am morphing a low poly prop (not a figure), one of the low poly Medina City Scape characters to give the illusion of a walk cycle at a distance.

This is a simple one plane shuffle (left right etc) of the feet & hem of the cloths in Blender, nothing super complicated.

Unfortunatly I am getting a Geometry does not match error when I load the modified file.

I thought this was me so I restarted from scratch making sure I didnt screw the mesh up but with same result.

As a sanity check I deleted everything and imported the prop and saved it un-altered (so the geometry is unchanged) to a new folder and then again loaded the new file with Morph Loader Pro, same result.

As a further sanity check I repeated this with Wings3d with the same result.

Q: Is Morph Loader Pro busted?

Or have I missed something?

I've done morphs for PoserPro no problems for years but DS seems a bit fussy.

Nice work for your first character! When I purchase a character the first thing I look at is the head morph and I really liked Carly's. I never use the body morph on any character because I haven't found any that fit my tastes and I have several custom shapes I use all the time. No offense, Carly was to normal, dumpy looking for my tastes, but luckily there are morphs to make any character closer to each users tastes.

Next up is the skin and I liked the quality of what I saw in the promos, even though I normally gravitate twords darker, tanned, less freckled skintones

Next up are any extras that other characters don't have and the fibermesh options sealed the deal for me, especially the peach fuzz.

Been playing around with Carly for the last few hours and overall I'm happy with my purchase and the thought of you doing an "older, more 'weathered' male" is intriquing even though I rarely use male figures, so keep up the great work.

Here is a quick render. I did give her skin some sun, changed the makeup and the eyes, but the face and skin is still 100% Carly

damn I wish I had the time to prove you wrong, I barely have time at the moment to start up my PC (on ipad typing this), a dollar the number of times people have told me something is impossible because they cannot think outside the box would make me wealthy enough to retire.

I would create at least 3 child bones on my wedge heeled shoe base that using it as the source for the transfer utility on heeled shoes would transfer the weightmapping to.

I could then rescale those child bones to shorten or zero any mesh assigned to them

my issues are I am not a DAZ studio user in general so never really got into all the joint controlled morphs and fancy stuff that WONT WORK in my app of choice Carrara!

doesn't mean I couldn't learn to do them or geografts another thing Carrara incompatible, I just so far have spent my energy finding workarounds against these DAZ studio features.

 

That's exactly why eGPU's are so useful: they have their own power suppply and ventilation, so you don't need to rebuild half your computer if you want to add a GPU it was not intended for. Beware on purchase though, some units sold as eGPU's do NOT come with a graphics card, but are only a case with ventilation, powersupply and the appropriate slot to insert a graphicscard. On top of that, your laptop or desktop or whatever you want to use it for will need a USB-3 port, for the higher data transfer speed. Some older rigs still have USB-2 instead of USB-3, so make sure you have the right one, they look similar at first glance.

So let me get this straight - the GPU actually DOES the IRAY render?  It's the graphics card that does the render?  Or is the graphics card just showing you the render as it's being done?

SOLVED - never mind

Question - the conforming tin man suit did not port with the tin man morph.  Is that normal?  (EDIT - solved by sending through separately, pic above substituted)