You can use the tail just by itself (yes, even without the end tail fins). There's a morph to smooth out the fin and antennae bases at the hip, so it will all be nice and sleek.
All the fins, antennae, webbing, etc are modular, so you can stick together your own "mermaid configuration".

You are missing some points in your statements, DS doesn't have any competitors, maybe poser or XNALara, Blender is a modeling app, DS is not, so it doesn't have to compete with it. you can't create content inside DS, hence the reason DAZ supplies assets you can purchase for use in DS. Blender allows you to create everything you need for use in Blender,no comparison. While i agree that DS could use some new features, it does what it is intended to do very well IMO. Personally I will never say import into another program, if a user isn't happy using DS, then get a full modeling app and create your own content. I fully endorse DAZ selling content for use in DS and DS only. There are plenty of other places to purchase 3D content for use in other apps, it's just users don't want to pay those prices.

I dunno, Reallusion iClone seems a pretty big compeditor lately 

Well mostly for animation I think, plus their characters are some years behind those from DAZ in quality, IMO.

You are missing some points in your statements, DS doesn't have any competitors, maybe poser or XNALara, Blender is a modeling app, DS is not, so it doesn't have to compete with it. you can't create content inside DS, hence the reason DAZ supplies assets you can purchase for use in DS. Blender allows you to create everything you need for use in Blender,no comparison. While i agree that DS could use some new features, it does what it is intended to do very well IMO. Personally I will never say import into another program, if a user isn't happy using DS, then get a full modeling app and create your own content. I fully endorse DAZ selling content for use in DS and DS only. There are plenty of other places to purchase 3D content for use in other apps, it's just users don't want to pay those prices.

I dunno, Reallusion iClone seems a pretty big compeditor lately 

Well mostly for animation I think, plus their characters are some years behind those from DAZ in quality, IMO.

Right now Daz's only competitor in the space is Reallusion Iclone pro.

Unlike Daz they have published a road Map for 2018.
This Fall ,the New  Character creator 3 will be a stand alone program
that will not require the purchase of Iclone itself  as one must do now to get Character creator 2.

CC3 will come bundled with Nvidia Iray (BIG mistake IMHO)
Here is a sample of the CCS figure rendered in Reallusion Iray.

And the  clothing content creation tool will be replaced with their equivalent of the DS transfer utility in terms of ease 

Many Iclone users still use Genesis models as they are supported in Iclone for animation.
however CC3 and the next generation of High quality Iclone figures may give more IClone users reason to use their native figure instead
We shall see.

As far as I can see, there isn't. I checked up and down through the Parameters tab and I am unable to find anything that would allow me to morph the head into an expression that I create. If you could point me towards where else I should look, I would much appreciate it.

Otherwise should I starte a new threat in the discussions?

There was a free morph on one of the other sites that would “flatten” a G3F.  With that, you could create an invisible “flat” character, have it wear the clothing (thus flattening the clothing), and then position the clothing on a hanger, which makes it look like it’s hanging on it.  You could probably get the same effect without the morph by showing the hidden transforms on a character and setting its Z scale (or X, I can’t remember) to near zero while leaving the other scales alone. Then hide the character, but not the clothing. 

I have tried dialing face with only morphs from RareStone too but I lost both my patience and confidence too quickly that I could do better than FaceGen. I did find though that the DAZ Originals and RareStone morphs were very useful in completing a celebrity morph that FaceGen got close but not quite.

I to avoid messing with likenesses too much because it is very timeconsuming.

I just checked and Akeytsu is $107 until July 5th as part of the summer steam sale (tons of games and software on sale).   If you google "Valve's steam intergalatic summer sale" you will find the sale.  I am being sure not to spend too much though so I have plenty of money to spend on Daz's great products.

I agree that Gen3/8 support would be great.  I currently work around it by transferring Gen 3/8 morphs and textures to Gen2.  I make use of Gen8's face rig to create morphs that I also transfer to Gen2.  I use Akeytsu only for body animation and use Daz for facial animation including lip sync.

I had sent the Akeytsu developers a request about handling the fbx pre rotation values but the latest version still brings in the joint rotations as 0,0,0.  So the key is to setup the figure in Daz so you do not have to adjust the bind pose in Akeytsu.  Nice thing is once you do it once and save the pose, it is a quick process to apply the pose and bake the joint rotations in Daz before exporting.  Then just use the same figure as the target for the imported bvh.

The akeytsu revese foot rig expects a joint structure of thigh>>shin>>foot>>toes.  It is not designed to handle the Gen3/8 structure of thigh bend>>thigh twist>>shin>>foot>>metatarsals>>toes.

Are you sure DIM is setup to install them in a directory recognized by DS?

How/where to check? To me the DIM setup dir is the one that DS recognizes since all other content (regular ones as well as the 'non base/morph' v4 content) is imported normally.

You can't install generation 4 base figures and morphs with Connect due to the morph system they use.

That explains one thing, but they're also not installing when using the Daz Installer. I have tried that a couple of times already without any luck either :'(

You can't install generation 4 base figures and morphs with Connect due to the morph system they use.

Whats the best way to remove poke through in clothing?  The piece I'm talking about has dforce but it does it in others as well.  Is there an easy fix?

A dforce simulation turns off the mesh smoothing of the clothes. Try turning it on again. If it's on, just dial down the nipple morph.

Well, it looks wonderful. But the thing is, what happens when Genesis 9 (or whatever) comes along? Will we be able to transfer the skins? What about the body morphs? I wish someone would work on a body morph transfer product. But, yes, he looks great.

Well, if you have genesis 8, you can continue to render him untill the cows come home; generally, if you have a scene with a mixed population of the current generation and the previous generation, most viewers would be had pressed to tell them apart...

Thanks. 

Here is a simplified overview.

It works best with Gen 1 and Gen 2 because its reverse foot rig relies on a joint structure without the twist joints that are in Gen 3 and Gen 8.   You morph and cloth your Gen 2 figure in Daz then export as fbx.  Import the fbx into Akeytsu then select each toe joint and click the reverse foot rig button and you are ready to animate.   After animating, export as fbx and then import back into Daz.    Daz does not handle the fbx import cleanly so the workaround is to then export back out of Daz as bvh then load a Gen 2 and reimport the bvh onto the figure including only rotations and only on the hip to you apply translation.

There are a few additional steps to take advantage of Akeytsu's very powerful pose and animation mirroring features but this gives you the basic workflow.   The additional steps are to export the fbx as ascii then do a search and replace to rename the nodes so the right limbs use "right" as the prefix and the left limbs use "left" as a prefix.  Currently the nodes just use "l" and "r" as the prefix for the node names in the fbx exported from Daz.  Also when importing back in the bvh, you then make sure the left and right nodes are correctly mapped.   

There is also a workaround to address the fact that Akeytsu does not read the pre rotation values in the fbx export out of Daz so all joint rotations are 0,0,0 on the intial bind pose which can cause issues like the joints are not aligned along the fingers.  The trick is to create a pose preset in Daz that straightens the hand and fingers and thigh then bake the joint rotations.   Save that character and use that character as the source for the fbx export and the target for the bvh import.

Here is a run cycle that I threw together.  It's mirroring features allow you to animate the first step and let it generate the second step and cycle.  It has a cool feature for keyframe management that is setup like a traditional x-sheet.  It also has animation layers but currently they are not additive.

Dial the nipple morph down to zero, under the Parameters tab. Hide the breast area, unless the clothing is low cut. Expand the clothing item, either with scaling, or using in-built morphs. It would help if you could tell us what figure and clothing you are using, then we can be more specific 

Why has no one really done a true anime figure...a good one.  Aiko and Hero really don't cut it for anime figures.  I mean they are great but not as anime as they probably could be.    

Look up the term Anime Figures and you'd see what I'm talking about.   You can use those types of figures for reference.  

And what would be cool is if you had them morph between style types.   DBZ, OnePiece, FATE and sell those morphs.   

Maybe something at least on par with Black Desert

And if you do a girl version you need a boy version.  It is really sad to see characters that have no match.   I love the Cartoon versions of Genesis 3 but there is really no equivalent female version.  If you release please do both at the same time.  

Ok, parenting to the hip seems to leave all the poses intact, so that's cool.  A little resizing makes it look believable.  I'll have to work on fixing the texture where the torso meets the tail, if that's even possible.  

I don't know anything about transfer utility, is there a good tutorial on that?  Would there be an advantage to using that over just parenting to hip?

If you're comfortable parenting to the hip and everything works the way you want, then I'd keep working with that.

I don't know if there's a good tutorial for what you need. This one describes the process for going from Genesis 2 to original flavor Genesis, but I don't know how well it will work to reverse the process from G2 to G3: https://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Custom-Bone-Rigs-G2F-to-Genesis-Convert-398192766

As I say, if parenting and postwork give you results you're happy with, I might just stick with that workflow.

beaut hair!!

@PhilW trick is to add a bone to the object before exporting the obj 

except I note the poly count is different (simple sphere was test obj)

edit i reran test again

this time I centred bone and object before attaching skeleton

I attached bone before making my morph (previpusly I added a morph before boning object)

I then exported with all first four options ticked (in export window)

when I bring morphed obj back it has correct number of polys 

 I assume attach bone before making  morph was the winner step

I figured it out. I'm not sure exactly how I did it, but essentially it's the same as above without converting the morph and eyeballs to polymesh tools and then just merging them down. Worked like a charm.

Ok, parenting to the hip seems to leave all the poses intact, so that's cool.  A little resizing makes it look believable.  I'll have to work on fixing the texture where the torso meets the tail, if that's even possible.  

I don't know anything about transfer utility, is there a good tutorial on that?  Would there be an advantage to using that over just parenting to hip?

Well, it looks wonderful. But the thing is, what happens when Genesis 9 (or whatever) comes along? Will we be able to transfer the skins? What about the body morphs? I wish someone would work on a body morph transfer product. But, yes, he looks great.

Are you planning any version for male hair?

yeah, it would be really cool if the new hair would also support males and have like Morena hair a short to long morph. But I don't see both coming ;)
I think it's female only and proable the length from shoulder/neck to bladebones. Which is still a good thing. ;) But Morena hair was genius with it's short to shoulder length morph. I wished we have more such hair products like Morena hair