The overall file size is 150 MB.

Note that the size of the scene file is misleading — all it contains is the settings for all the objects in the scene, and pointers to the data files that make up the object geometry, and to the texture files that are applied to the objects. It's a description of how to build the scene. The actual geometry and textures are external files, and they're almost always much larger in total than the scene file.

Did you create the scene by loading extra copies of building objects? There's a much more resource-efficient way of doing large scenes, by using instances. These are virtual copies, they still use up some memory, but a lot less than complete extra copies of an object. The only drawback with instances is that they're all the same object; you can move, rotate and scale each of your instances independently, but any changes to the textures or morph dial settings on the original object will also affect all the instances.

Brainfart one: It's _substance_ painter, not surface painter.

It's also $20/month, not $10/month.

 

Also also apparently I can't make monthly paypal payments from balance rather than an attached card, so... guess I'm not doing that.

 

I find myself tempted by it; I just wish there was an upgrade path from the Texture Transfer Item; Daz has nothing suitable (IMO) and without any support for Blender which would be my preferred option. I've done texture painting in Blender and it worked well, but the set up time was intensive; as it's a few years since I did that, I'm prepared to look at alternatives purely as time-wise I'm starting from scratch.

The morph assets should be self-contained, and certainly shouldn't refer back to user-facing files. Or do you mean you hadn't yet saved the figure as an asset, just the morphs? That would be a problem.

Thank you, yes.

I am using the Mec4d beard with Genesis 1.  I think there's a process I'm missing, because this doesn't always happen:  I use zbrush to make a custom morph for  my head, apply it to the head in daz studio 4.9, then load the beard and fit it to the character.  The beard does not seem to pick up my custom morph every time, although some times it does.  I try using the clothing fit control, but that doesn't appear to help.

AFAIK, every (G3F) character sold here has a custom head- and/or body morph, so every one adds to the 'gene-pool', just as morph-packs do. When loading G3F, base or preset, DS will also load the (references to) those morphs, so the more morph-packs and character-morphs installed, the longer the loading time.

So Rod is correct in that the morphs I have made are tailored to a specific outfit.  If the edges do not line up then things may not look right.  However, at Rod's insistence I am working on a more general package that might work on a wider array of items.  Although this morph was made for the skirt this gives an idea of what can be done by making RealFit morphs for more than just bikinis.

Cheers!

very cool--that's really something to look forward to...

i'd love to see a realfit bandeau top...maybe with options for variable width? that'd be something that would be really useful for contemporary and for historical and fantasy renders. 

j

I've been debating options to extend my tools, and there's this 'a bunch of hundred dollar' barrier I keep bouncing off of (for 3d Coat or Zbrush or whatever). I already have Hexagon and Carrara...

I've been looking at Surface Painter, which has a nice 'pay $10/month until you put in enough money to buy it outright' pay system. I REALLY like SP's system for generating textures, even better than some of the stuff I've seen elsewhere.

But Surface Painter is strangely incapable of managing seams, and it's not really a modeling app. (though, again, I have Hexagon and Carrara)

Which is where Blacksmith 3d comes in, with great 'paint across seams' elements, apparently. It's morph tools look like a great way to refine and polish the rough results I usually get out of Carrara. Also $9/month.

So, Hexagon + Carrara cost me about $80, and if I go with the other two apps that's $20 a month or so, vs. $380 for 3d Coat or $800 for Zbrush.

Seems a workable solution for the hobbyist without loads of money, and capable of doing cool stuff.

Thank you!

His name is Nikolas.  This morph will be the young version, and I plan to do a weathered, older, and scarred version like I did with William.  

this is one of the best things i've ever seen 'invented' for figures. Ive wanted this kind of effect forever - I first noticed it in smay's shorts outfit and love it. I'll be snapping up a package like this straightaway if you can do it. :) 

So Rod is correct in that the morphs I have made are tailored to a specific outfit.  If the edges do not line up then things may not look right.  However, at Rod's insistence I am working on a more general package that might work on a wider array of items.  Although this morph was made for the skirt this gives an idea of what can be done by making RealFit morphs for more than just bikinis.

Cheers!

The morph assets should be self-contained, and certainly shouldn't refer back to user-facing files. Or do you mean you hadn't yet saved the figure as an asset, just the morphs? That would be a problem.

An added property does nothing. Adding a property to the bones or figure is useful only if you use it to load a morph or link it to other properties via ERC so that it acts as a cotnroller (or you may delibrately add a proeprty to a fitted item to stop it from geenrating a morph). What you want to do is beyond adding a property - you want to change the way the shader behaves, which requires a much deeper level of change.

I created some morphs and UVs for a product.

I saved them as morph assets, but if I delete the .duf scene-subset file I saved and then reloaded to continue the process, I get an error.

I presume I have to save them as something else, so they end up in one of Daz's library folders, and it's so long since I did I can't remember; and i also don't remember having to do this when I created some morphs not long ago - just saving as morph assets was enough.

Edit:

Unless I am misremembering and it is just as Figure/Prop Asset as Well?

 

Redfern said:

Yeah, I've been trying to avoid spoilers as best I can, so I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

 

But what good is a thread like this without art of some kind. So here's something I put together a few weeks ago. It’s Scott Ayers’ “Final Wars” Godzilla with my custom morph and procedural material set listed in the opening post. The “water” is one of the “toppers” from AntFarm’s display stands. I doubled the “Y” scale and plugged the watery “foam” into the displacement channel. The threatening sky is from AntFarm’s “Twister”.

Sincerely,

Bill

 

Nice job! That's a very similar face and body shape to the one they went with for the new film.

Needs a couple of destroyers and battleships being tossed about in the water to give a sense of scale, perhaps. :)

As for the puppetry, there's a long tradition of complex puppets in Japanese theater, so I'm not surprised that technique was used in Kaiju films.

And I definitely prefer subs to dubs, whether for anime or live action. Even if the anime is technically adjusted to match mouth movements, I can count the "good" dubs I've seen on one hand. Voice acting in the US just isn't taken seriously enough-- the actors are alone in a booth, fast-forwarding to their isolated lines, rather than interacting with the rest of the cast (as they would in Japan), and the style is usually goofy and exaggerated. I'd rather watch video "raw" (no translation) than put up with a bad dub.

This Godzilla movie gets around the sub problem by having Americans interacting with English-speaking Japanese characters in most of the story, but several of the American characters also speak Japanese. I was interested to see that the Japanese dialogue wasn't subtitled. There isn't a lot of it, the content isn't critical and is easily inferred by context, but still, I think it was fairly brave move, and a nice touch.

Lisa Ortiz is whom I'd call one of the better voice actors, since she puts a lot more effort into her work, her work on Slayers, for example, she does a lot to match the original voice actress for Lena Inverse.  In Lodos Wars, the person who created the series, at a convention, saw Lisa, who did Deedlit, and went to prasie her for her efforft on the character.

Here's a draft of my guide to using the free Mixamo motion capture animations with DAZ. Hopefully, I can upload this as a .PDF.  Arnold C was instrumental in me getting past the first hurdles of using Mixamo, because I just couldn't get the settings right and the directions on Mixamo were incorrect. He was kind enough to explain things and post screenshots. He gave me permission to use that info in my guide, which I then expanded upon and added even more screenshots.

Mixamo animations are great - professional quality motion capture - and are pretty easy to use. My problem is that if I go a few months without using them, it takes me an import or two to get back in the swing of it. But then it goes really quickly. This guide covers everything from exporting your character and uploading it to Mixamo, downloading and importing animations to use in DAZ Studio, how to download the thousands of animations from the mixamo.com website, etc.

It'd be great if someone would run through and test this to make sure I haven't made assumptions, errors, etc. I'll proof it tomorrow after I've slept for a while. ;)

Great tutorial, I read through but haven't tested it yet. One question I have. Have you found that the animations you make aniblocks out using Mixamo, transfer well to other characters? In other word, if I downloaded all the animations, I tend to think it would be best to probably use a Genesis 1 base, in my own experience, those animations transfer best to a wide range of both male and female G1 G2F G2M. This way I wouldn't have to transfer the same animations for multiple characters.

@DSDT

Animations do transfer to the different characters. I felt as if I had to do less correction if I used the same character, but I didn't test it enough to tell if that were a misperception, a misunderstanding/mistake on my part, or only on more extreme morphs. It really would take some benchmark type comparisons which I didn't bother to do, as I was rushing on a deadline.  

But a base G2F definitely worked for all G2F morphs, base G2M for all G2M, with the exception that when I hit Darius and a muscular morph, I felt I had to throw in a correction aniblock to move his hands out away from his legs so his fingers wouldn't go through his thighs. A quick fix. But if that happens you can also just upload Darius, adjust the animation, and download it specifically for him if you don't want to do an adjustment aniblock. I also did some G2M to G2F and those seemed to work okay as well.

Basically, everything I tested worked on every character. So if I downloaded a walk, it worked on Genesis, G2M, and G2F. I think I did V4/M4 at the beginning, but deleted them. I might test that more in the future. Depends if life slows down. Since I ended up using on G2M/G2F, with one Genesis figure, I quit testing.

I need to go back and make it clear that while you "grab" all the animations with the script to add them to your assets, that doesn't download them. The benefit of adding the animations to your owned assets is that you actually do own them at that point and you can download them at your leisure. (I was really getting sleepy during that last part and can't recall if I put that correctly; I may have mixed my thoughts together. I'll check it) I only download as I need each specific animation, since right now, packaging the animations in lots doesn't seem to work with DAZ characters because the Mixamo pack download settings are different than those offered when you process a download for a single animation. That said, I haven't tested it for several months to see if they changed that. (It was totally illogical.)

Even though I grabbed all the animations for my basic characters, I'm only using probably 20 basic ones at the most. I'm doing a high volume of rendering because I have a large number of characters doing the same things, walking, idling, reaching for things, kneeling, etc., in different outfits. If that makes sense. I'll be adding a lot more variety, I hope, here in a month or so.

And I'm not sure ever I tried starting with Genesis and applying the animation to G2M/G2F. I went the other way, creating the animation for G2M and applying it to a Genesis figure, because I was using all G2, except the one character.

Hope that makes sense. 

So Rod is correct in that the morphs I have made are tailored to a specific outfit.  If the edges do not line up then things may not look right.  However, at Rod's insistence I am working on a more general package that might work on a wider array of items.  Although this morph was made for the skirt this gives an idea of what can be done by making RealFit morphs for more than just bikinis.

Cheers!

We are not worthy. We are not worthy. (Gosh darnit, I need to stop referencing movies I haven't seen.)

Here's a draft of my guide to using the free Mixamo motion capture animations with DAZ. ...

Great tutorial, I read through but haven't tested it yet. One question I have. Have you found that the animations you make aniblocks out using Mixamo, transfer well to other characters? In other word, if I downloaded all the animations, I tend to think it would be best to probably use a Genesis 1 base, in my own experience, those animations transfer best to a wide range of both male and female G1 G2F G2M. This way I wouldn't have to transfer the same animations for multiple characters.

I'm having an issue with warrior wet hair.  In general I love it but I can not get it to cover the scalp enough.  I think maybe this was done on purpose to emulate an older man however it looks almost like the hair is coming out of the forehead of the genesis 3 male, and it is coming out of the forehead of the genesis 2 male.  I've searched for a cap in all the files and can't find one.  I also went through both the smart content clickables, as well as went through all the options in the paramaters tab and the shaping tab.  While there is a button to show more roots it did not seem to do much, especially on the genesis 2 guy.  If needed I'll fix it in photoshop but I'm hoping someone can tell me what to do.  I've even cinsidered loading an extra one, unparenting it and hiding almost all the layers then just placing a piece on the forehead.  I also tried to find a way to make Gabriels head smaller but that was a total fail.  i honestly thought I had every head morph availaible for genesis 2 males.  Is there no way to reduce the height  of a forehead? 

your tracking looks good, though i wonder if a stabilized-image or anti-shake version of that clip wouldnt track better ...probably!

It's also possible to transfer a Blender camera to Daz, but that's was a little janky last time I tried.

I've been wanting to get a planar tracker like Mocha to work with Daz.

 

Here's a second test I did.  I didn't make a proper shadow plane. Messed that up in the compositor. But VooCat/mCasual's script got the track done well.

 

actually didnt i make a blender-to-daz camera animation exporter? ... hmm

YES! i even made a camera prop for the logo ... which i shall put on my web site when i remember 

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts2/mcjexportblendercam

It's also possible to transfer a Blender camera to Daz, but that's was a little janky last time I tried.

I've been wanting to get a planar tracker like Mocha to work with Daz.

 

Here's a second test I did.  I didn't make a proper shadow plane. Messed that up in the compositor. But VooCat/mCasual's script got the track done well.

 

It's also possible to transfer a Blender camera to Daz, but that's was a little janky last time I tried.

I've been wanting to get a planar tracker like Mocha to work with Daz.

Here's a second test I did.  I didn't make a proper shadow plane. Messed that up in the compositor. But VooCat/mCasual's script got the track done well.