It's a good idea never to delete anything until you're sure things work. Rename the extension so Daz won't load it in, or drag out the file to a temporary folder outside of the data folder. Restart D|S and reload your character.

If you've already used "compound" morphs with duplicates, eliminating one of the morph files will change the shape you applied, since you effectively doubled-up on the strength of the morph. 

I can't remember the details, but there's some issue with position of objects and deformers.  Like you can't move it after deforming it, or before deforming it, or something or the field isn't where you expect it.  You could try a quick test with your object loaded at the default or zero position and see if that changes anything?

I was using D-Form just yesterday, in the current, 4.9.3 release. I was frustrated because the red-to-yellow dots indicating strength of the controller on the object wasn't displaying. I started moving the field around and discovered the dots were no longer centered in the field circles. They were above it. So when I moved the field below the object I was working on, I was able to position the dots where I needed them to be. Everything else worked as I expected, including spawning the morph by selecting the top level bone of the object, (i.e. Havoc Belt.)

I have no idea if this change is deliberate, in an attempt to make the tool easier to use, or if it's unintended and waiting upon a new release to be fixed. Just remember to center the field on the x and z axis then move it down (y axis) until those dots appear.

Also, I saved the scene I was working on and copied the duf file to my render computer. All the D-Form spawned morphs were right were I expected.

The field acts on the zeroed pose, so if the model is not in that state the field will not highlight as expected. This has been true, as far as I recall, for the whole 4.x series so far.

Skin I made. Woo.

The horse shape isn't a new morph, just some of the existing options.

 

That definitely looks alien...but believable as well! Add an estra pair of legs and is straight out of Avatar!

Skin I made. Woo.

The horse shape isn't a new morph, just some of the existing options.

A long long time ago I created "probably" the first correction morph for V4 clothing after using Autofit. I think its still on ShareCG.

Basically its the same process.....there has been threads discussing it.

1. Reposition the prop so its as close as possible to the default G3 pose by parenting it to the G3 hip, not the figure as it does by default and then Zero the translations and rotations of G3's Hip.

2. So you should have prop and G3 at a zero hip position. Now export these as individual objects or send to Hexagon and save as obj there which is my personal choice.

3.So The G3 object you have will be your Clone and should be sent back to Daz studio so you have the morph available on your G3 figure.

4. The prop obj you have should now be imported/sent to daz and will be the converted object(this step was needed to reset the position of the figure for using the transfer utility)

5.Transfer time. old way was use Autofit clone. Now we use Transfer utility. From G3 using the Morph shape to imported prop default shape.

4. So now whizz bang everything should be rigged but will probably look a bit rough.... time for a correction morph. Pose not morph G3 into the position it was in in part 2 just prior to exporting the clone.

5. With the rigged prop still fit to G3 Select the rigged prop and use morph loader pro (hexagon import morph fails here for some reason) to create a reverse deformation morph using the exported prop as the obj file.

6 After a short while The morph file should load to the rigged prop. Find it and dial it to 100 and everything will slide into place nicely.

7. Optional tartification ie remove bones/weight maps add rigidity maps or even add bones and weight maps.

This is a Quick and dirty way of getting use out of pretty much anything

Hope I havn't missed anything

I started only a few weeks ago, and I made some great purchases and some not so good purchases.

Apparantly choosing which genesis model to stick with is down to what you want to achieve. I wanted the most realistic renders and up to date figures so I chose Gensis 3, however, extra detail might not be as important for you as having lots of choice, and many more mods and things to choose from at a lower cost (sometimes).

Once you've chosen which to go for, You'll want to find a character you like. When you look at characters there will be a little note saying which other products are required. Sometimes, you only need a base genesis character and the body/face morph pack other times you may need to purchase an add-on like Victoria 7. These characters are more expensive because of this.

No matter what you will probably want to buy the face and body morphs.

After that I personally bought hair options, and a great pose/prop set that came with lighting setups. 

Aside from a few other accessories after that I was all set and created some really gorgeous renders very quickly. Having the premade set helped me to learn how to set a scene and light it correctly.

After that Ive puchased more detailed eyebrows, different characters, a lot more morphs, eye colour packs, shoes, more hair, beauty toes, sets, props, snakes... the list goes on lol.

tring01 asked:

Are you suggesting it is better/easier to create the texture in the modeling application and then export it to Daz?  I hadn't thought of that work flow...

Even if you plan to use DAZ shaders, it's better to assign material zones in your modeling app (such as Blender). When you import the obj into DAZ, those material zones will appear in the Surfaces tab. You can create new material zones within DAZ by using the Geometry Editor, but it's much easier to assign them as you do your modeling.

You can assign bump maps in Blender, but I wouldn't bother. I do texturing in Substance Painter, so I just assign a base color for visual reference while I work in Blender. I also do a separate UV map for each material zone, although Blender has a limit of 8 UV maps per obj file. My typical workflow is:

In Blender:

1. Create a low-res model with material zones and UV maps. If the model will be a rigged figure and you won't be using DAZ's Transfer Utility, you'll also need to designate vertex groups that will become bones. If you use vertex groups, every vertex in the model must be assigned to at least one group. The easiest way to check that is to select all vertices, then go through your vertex group list and Deselect each group. When you've deselected all groups, there should be no vertices still selected.
2. Duplicate that mesh, move it to another layer (to avoid confusion), and subdivide twice to create a high-res mesh. For an organic model or clothing, I'll use the Subdivision Surface Modifier (which applies smoothing). For an architectural model, I'll do it with the Mesh>Subdivide command. I may also use Blender's Sculpt mode to add wrinkles, dents, and other fine details.
3. Export the low resolution mesh as ModelName_low.obj, and export the high resolution mesh as ModelName_high.obj.

In Substance Painter:

1. Start a new project with ModelName_low. Select Open GL as your Normal map option, as DAZ uses that format. SP will create a separate Layer Stack for each material zone, and ultimately export a separate set of texture files for each Layer Stack.
2. Bake Textures with ModelName_high. Deselect the ID option when you do this, unless you exported ID maps (I don't). This will create a set of analytical textures -- normal, world normal, position, curvature, ambient occlusion -- that SP uses for Smart Materials and Smart Masks. If you sculpted wrinkles and other details in your high-res mesh, they will be baked into your analytical textures.
3. Create Height layers and add extra surface details, if necessary. This is very useful for rivets, bolts, laces, and other details that would have been too fiddly to sculpt into the high-res model. I use PowerPoint and/or GIMP to create grayscale height maps for screw and bolt heads, lacing, etc. I then import those as Alphas (like brushes) and stamp them onto surfaces, using either positive or negative height.
4. Export a normal map for each Layer Stack that you added Height detail, import the normal into your SP project Textures shelf, and assign it as the Layer Stack's new normal map. It will include any sculpting that you baked in Step 2, plus the Height details you painted in SP. Bake Textures from that normal map to update the other analytical textures (world normal, position, curvature, ambient occlusion). Then turn off the Height layers, as their information is already baked into the project.
5. Add paint or fill layers and apply Materials or Smart Materials to each Layer Stack. This is where SP really shines, as you can use Smart Masks to automate rust, dirt, wear, and other fine details. SP's Smart Masks use the analytical textures and random functions to place these details, so you get very detailed surfaces with little or no hand-painting.
6. Export the textures. I create a separate texture file folder for each model, and select that folder in the Export dialogue. I also select "Dilation + Transparent" as the Common Padding, with the Padding set to 4 pixels. That puts each texture file on a black background, which I find helpful when selecting them in DAZ.
7. By default, you will get a Base Color, Height, Metalicity, Mixed A/O, Normal, Normal Open GL, and Roughness map for each Layer Stack. Use File Manager to delete the Normal (but NOT the Normal Open GL) as you won't be using it.

In DAZ:

1. If the model will be a simple prop or if you'll be rigging it with the Transfer Utility, import the obj file. If you'll hand-rig it, use Figure Setup and Add Geometry to import the obj file.
2. If it will be a rigged figure, rig it with the Transfer Utility or by hand with the Joint Editor and Weight Map Node Brush tools. Once the rigging is what you want, Memorize Rigging and Save As>Figure/Prop Asset.
3. Go to the Surfaces tab and select all, then go to Presets>Shaders>Iray and apply the Iray Uber Base shader.
4. Go back to Surfaces>Editor, select all, and set their Base Colors to White. (Each material zone will initially be whatever reference color you used in Blender. You don't want that.) Also set their Metalicity, Glossy Layer Weight, and Glossy Roughness sliders to 1 (all the way to the right).
5. For each material zone, apply the maps you exported from SP: Metalicity to Metallic, Base Color to Base Color, Roughness to Glossy Layer Weight and Glossy Roughness, Height to Bump (set the slider to 1), and Normal Open GL to Normal (it will autoset to 1).
6. I rarely use the Mixed A/O map, but you can use it in the Diffuse Overlay channel to put extra 'dinge' in corners and crevices, or in the Top Coat channel with Top Coat IOR at 1.33 to put moisture in corners and crevices. You may need to invert the Mixed A/O map (in GIMP or Photoshop) to get the effect where you want it.
7. Select the object in the Scene List and Save As>Materials Preset. I also do another Save As>Figure/Prop Asset, overwriting the original, so it will load with the textures already assigned.

That's a streamlined summary of my typical Blender-Substance Painter-DAZ workflow.

Crissie

with the mouth thing be cool to have a fully functiong one like that for other sections too like palms of the hands or chest and so on as well as fully functioning heads/faces in other areas yeah guess that part we could do ourselves fairly easily with a second figure positioned and other parts hidden just the blending part gotta do extra work on oh there is one morph no one has done yet which you see a lot in tv and movies and that is the huge wide open mouth 

I was actually thinking of a 'face is a big mouth' type of thing at one point. I've poked at doing it as a morph, but the usual issues of 'what do you do with the eye area' is always annoying, plus then you have to figure out how to place and scale jaws/teeth/tongue etc...

 

 

Best way would probably be a geograft that replaces the head entirely... could do it as a morph too, but it would be tricky for sure.

The transition certainly looks nice in your render.  but perhaps it is less obvious with a darker skin that matches the horse's hide. 

To me, I think it is a bit too high for me.Especially when not covered by clothing. 

I don't think it's bad. A google image search shows a lot of variation, from quite low to even higher than C7. But I admit it would have been nice to have a morph to raise or lower the transition. Probably not feasible, though.

The belly hair, (from Redz Oh My Body Hair,) actually goes below the transition area. I originally had removed it using the geometry editor, but later I just applied the same shaders as the rest of the hair and left it in place. I think it helps with the transition a bit, too.

Make sure "Reverse Deformations" is ticked.

I don't see that option under the Transfer Utility.

I haven't had a chance to do much rendering over the past couple of months, but I promised Novica to share something here when I got the chance...

I mixed a number of G3M products to get the human half of the centaur. The body is Darius 7 at 100%, the head is Awan at 100% and Gianni 7 at 36.2%. then to really confuse things, I used the materials from Anicinabe. The body hair is RedzStudio Oh My Body Hair. The clothing is kit-bashed: Leather Warrior for G3M on the arms, and Havoc Outfit for G3M for the rest. I used d-forms to make the belt and vest expand to reach around the join to the horse body. It's not perfect, but looks good facing the camera. The forest is Forest Superior with the Iray Uber Base applied, with a stone shader on the rocks and one of DA's Stonework and Masonry shaders on the ground. The centaur body coat uses a normal map I'd created from a horse 2 texture last year. The weapons, belt and necklace received a liberal dose of Iray shaders from Mec4D's iray shaders vols 2 & 3. I used TerraDome 3 for the first time, using the Bzone to create the mountains in the background and the atmosphere prop to add the haze. The hdr lighting the scene and providing the sky is also from TD3.

ETA, the review: After all the hullabaloo over the "abrupt" transition between man and horse, I was delighted to find the transition works very well in the latest released version of Daz Studio. I started the scene on this computer, using an older beta install, and there was no transtion. I've read where others had issues with the geoshell showing up. The only time I saw the untextured geoshell, or the hidden parts of G3M, was when I had the Geometry Editor tool active. The biggest problems with Horse 2, imo, were the mane and tail. As the centaur uses the horse 2 mesh and textures, the tail has the same issues. It would have been nice if they could have redesigned the tail. It's also a shame not all the Horse 2 morphs came with the centaur. I tried unsuccessfully to add the Horse 2 Mare morph by adding it to the directory with the other morphs. I found the centaur product to be relatively easy to work with, and a lot of fun.

I'm trying to create a limb cap for an amputee.  I've exported Kalea 7 with the forearm invisible, and used dynamesh to close the hole in the arm. I then create a fitting cap for the limb, and export that.
I send that back into Daz studio, and use the Transfer Utility to use Kalea 7 as the source and the limb cap object as the destination.  The cap then drops off the arm by about 6 inches, and stays there.  It will follow the limb if I pose Kalea, but it won't stay in the correct spot and is therefore useless to me.
Can someone give me an idea of what I'm doing wrong, and how to fix it?

This set of 30 original expressions is going to help you making funny faces and extreme expressions.

They are based on the many facial bones of Genesis 3 figure.

The expressions will work on other Genesis 3 Female based figures like Victoria7, Monique 7, Olympia 7, etc.

They are One-Click and Morph Dial expressions. So you can adjust as you like as well as you can mix them creating, even more, faces without altering your poses.

It was very fun to make it. Hope you enjoy it!

Available here: https://www.daz3d.com/grimaces-morph-dial-one-click-expressions-for-genesis-3-female

Well, some users seem to have problems with distortions caused by the Beautiful Bends products: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2190171/#Comment_2190171

But thats all I know, I have never experienced GenX overwritting original V4/M4 or any Genesis Generation files.

I have seen your post in the GenX commercial thread. Hope you get your problems solved.

For future use you may find this GenX Tutorial List helpful: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2178136/#Comment_2178136

Thanks for that link.  I'll be bookmarking it to look through this next week.  Reinstalling everything broke most of what I had made so allmost everything I made either has to be remade or I have to find the new place the files are.  I had some genx files it is looking for that have both female and male attached to them.  All kind of confusing and weirding me out.

By default GenX puts its morphs into its own folder hierarchy, so it won't overwrite other files. But naming collisions can occur, where if you activate a morph from a top level, you could actually be applying two or even more "copies" of that morph. The strengths of the morph are additive.

You know if there's more than one morph with that name is there's a (2) or (3) or some other number beside its name. This tells you that you should drill down the tree and find the specific morph you want to apply.

I used to get fancy and put the GenX morphs into custom folders, but then next time I'd import some I'd forget where I put the originals, and I'd then get duplicate morphs. There is an option in GenX where it'll make a backup of any previous copy of that morph within the same data folder, so if you do make a mistake, you can always delete the newer file, and rename the BAK file to its original.

I never knew that.  Good information.  I did end up with duplicates and tried to delete them but that seemed to compound my problems.  lol  I really think this is all me not knowing what I was doing.

It would be cool if someone posted the next 'useful tip' to this thread. :)

The bake smooth morphs is awesome, but the way it's being saved (morph asset) makes me think it's altering the original clothing, which I'm ususally hesitant to do.

I can't remember the details, but there's some issue with position of objects and deformers.  Like you can't move it after deforming it, or before deforming it, or something or the field isn't where you expect it.  You could try a quick test with your object loaded at the default or zero position and see if that changes anything?

I was using D-Form just yesterday, in the current, 4.9.3 release. I was frustrated because the red-to-yellow dots indicating strength of the controller on the object wasn't displaying. I started moving the field around and discovered the dots were no longer centered in the field circles. They were above it. So when I moved the field below the object I was working on, I was able to position the dots where I needed them to be. Everything else worked as I expected, including spawning the morph by selecting the top level bone of the object, (i.e. Havoc Belt.)

I have no idea if this change is deliberate, in an attempt to make the tool easier to use, or if it's unintended and waiting upon a new release to be fixed. Just remember to center the field on the x and z axis then move it down (y axis) until those dots appear.

Also, I saved the scene I was working on and copied the duf file to my render computer. All the D-Form spawned morphs were right were I expected.

Modelled my Supreme Ruler morph in Carrara then imported to DS to save as DUF morph for Genesis.

Imported the background which I created and will share for anyone who would like to use it.

Modelled the fuse and images for a plane for the lit fuse.. made the soldiers hat bigger with magnets. Used glow shaders and light effects for the street light, lighter & fuse.

Heh heh heh!!  So much for "not expecting anything good," as you wrongly predicted in the other thread.

Yeah, I have that and enjoyed it, though the ability to transfer zebra skin to Daz Horse 2 is a bit hampered by not actually having a Daz Horse 2 zebra morph (or straight upright mane)

I was hoping to grab all those free milhorse skins and make use of them broadly, except for the aforementioned problem. (IE: many of them aren't actually that good)

The problem is trying to get the geograft to work with any morphs the figure might have. I mean, if the monster is muscular, and everything from the neck up looks the same, that might look weird. Worse, there might be weird artifacts where the body joins with the new head.

If you morph the head, on the other hand, it's already set up how the morphs will affect the head (though it might not always work right).

Also, if you morph the head, all the rigging and other stuff is already there, plus it can be combined with other stuff (like all the facial morphs, horns, etc)