Correction: until Daz gives us proper dynamic tools you probably won't get one.  If they do ever give us proper dynamics you'll very likely get one from me, and an ao dai and hanbok are also on my list.  I make what I like, not what popular culture decides I should like.  There is an Indian female main character in a video game (Uncharted), she even made the front page of Game Informer magazine which made me very happy. Not wearing a sari as far as I know, probably for the same reason I haven't made one yet.. absolute hell to rig properly.  I'm anal retentive about rigging, if I don't think I can rig something with near perfection I don't do it.  It took me 3 solid weeks to rig one little mid-thigh length egyptian skirt.. 47 custom JCMs just for the thighs.  Now make that floor length and with flowing cloth across the most lumpy and morph-changing part of a woman's body..  Could I model one?  Sure, would only take me a couple days to make one that worked nicely in Marvelous Designer..  However rigging it would take way more time than I would ever get compensated for (like litterally more than a month) if I priced it low enough to actually sell (IE: not more than about $20 before sales)

Thanks Fisty, I should put a disclaimer in my footer. I am not, nor have I ever been a gamer. I couldn't even master Mario Cart back in the 90s.  My issue around the frequency with which models offered are heavily inspired by a game, movie, or graphic novel (or, all of the above, often). A case in point, I spent over a week creating a mock-up of a National Geographic cover using a lovely alien girl (Dariofish's product). It garnered no, 0, zilch, notice because it was basically a piece of fan art to everyone else. I only found out when I Googled the Dariofish's race-name for it and found all the game references. Obviously, this is not always the case, but happens often with characters and vehicles. My rambling point is, I wish more PAs created original works or more obviously stated from where they were inspired.

I love this! Very cool piece of artwork. I don't game much either. Not because I don't like them. I actually LOVE them. If I gamed, I would fall down a black hole, never to return. My family would starve to death waiting for me to get off the computer. Art and writing are safer, LOL.

And when you're dealing with real advanced features, like shaders that implement bump, diffuse, and displacement to create special effects - maybe indicating that being competent with advanced DAZ surfaces features and techniques is critical to being able to fully utilize the product - if there isn't a built in tutorial?
​I mean, some vendors are great about this - and their tutorial on how to use their product helps you learn how to use these techniques in general to make better renders. Zev0 is one example of a vendor like this that springs to mind. Cayman Studios is another.
​Others, not so much. Part of the problem is one that exists in technology and art circles in general... the people who create aren't always the best at communicating and teaching. Great artists who don't have talents that transfer to making actual, complete content packages. Which is too bad. Sometimes there seems to be language barriers at play, too.
Anyhow after working with this all day yesterday, I finally got a rough render I'm pretty happy with. There are still some details that could use postwork or some more props to hide things that are going on - but overall - this is the rabbit hole Novica sent me down yesterday when s/he suggested using instances ot make wide angle backgrounds.

 

a carrara dynamic skirt for G3, but don't know which body shape morph before hand.

so like, the softbody attached part would be the waist band?  but the waistband part would be conforming ...

or make it conforming skirt to start with, then remove the skeleton to turn into a morphless prop?

dizzifying conundrums

>.< carrara (not responding).  think i made a mistake turning johnathon into a softbody, wanted to see him deflate to the ground.  the unflateable Johnathon

This may be more trouble than its worth, but what if PAs began including a "tied-back" morph with loose, long-hair models?

Correction: until Daz gives us proper dynamic tools you probably won't get one.  If they do ever give us proper dynamics you'll very likely get one from me, and an ao dai and hanbok are also on my list.  I make what I like, not what popular culture decides I should like.  There is an Indian female main character in a video game (Uncharted), she even made the front page of Game Informer magazine which made me very happy. Not wearing a sari as far as I know, probably for the same reason I haven't made one yet.. absolute hell to rig properly.  I'm anal retentive about rigging, if I don't think I can rig something with near perfection I don't do it.  It took me 3 solid weeks to rig one little mid-thigh length egyptian skirt.. 47 custom JCMs just for the thighs.  Now make that floor length and with flowing cloth across the most lumpy and morph-changing part of a woman's body..  Could I model one?  Sure, would only take me a couple days to make one that worked nicely in Marvelous Designer..  However rigging it would take way more time than I would ever get compensated for (like litterally more than a month) if I priced it low enough to actually sell (IE: not more than about $20 before sales)

Thanks Fisty, I should put a disclaimer in my footer. I am not, nor have I ever been a gamer. I couldn't even master Mario Cart back in the 90s.  My issue around the frequency with which models offered are heavily inspired by a game, movie, or graphic novel (or, all of the above, often). A case in point, I spent over a week creating a mock-up of a National Geographic cover using a lovely alien girl (Dariofish's product). It garnered no, 0, zilch, notice because it was basically a piece of fan art to everyone else. I only found out when I Googled the Dariofish's race-name for it and found all the game references. Obviously, this is not always the case, but happens often with characters and vehicles. My rambling point is, I wish more PAs created original works or more obviously stated from where they were inspired.

The ones that I've seen had an updated lashes morph and metadata updates.

You're welcome! You would have to save as a material preset to bring them over anyhow. Just have to apply Anagenessis beforehand and you're good to go. 

Is there anything special you have to do when applying Anagenessis to V4? 

No, nothing special. The Genesis script works perfectly on V4 and M4. I'm assuming it will work fine on the other Generation 4 characters as well. Here it is in a WIP- this is my part of a cover redo for my first novel, Crazy in the Heart. That's M4 with default skin and some morph tweaks. The V4 is Sabine by Vyktoria (that characters is in her Rendo store.)

Generation 3 is an entirely different story. They have to be done manually. I have a lot of notes on my art thread about my experiments with them. I think I finally got V3 and M3 right though. Here's one with them. Aiko 3 is next. (click for bigger pic)

http://www.freewebs.com/akinastar07/freebies.htm

my freebie website. Not updated in ages, but here is a *Penny* morph / (kayley) form the BB Theory :D 

Transfer utility is for weightmapped figures. Mil Cat is not weightmapped, it uses parametric rigging. You'd need to convert the figure to weightmapping if you want to use Transfer utility with it.

I have a few ideas:  First, get Daz Studio 4.9 (free).  It comes with content too.  For generics get Genesis Female (most of the clothes are made for females.  Genesis 3 is the best to have since many new products are made for it.  Get the genesis Morph packages for face and body, this will allow you to make many changes to your character.  Note that each genesis package comes with lots of clothes, hair, morph, etc.  Make sure you get at least one character with it's own skin/ texture to be able to put some realism in your image.  You may also want at least one prop building or landscape so you can put something behind your character.  A render without a background shows a checker board if there is nothing to render.in that spot.

When you have those basics, think about what kind of images you are going to make.  This will allow you to really focus on what you want to get for your library.  No sense getting modern clothes and accessories if you want to do sci-fi.  Also, Daz products, for the most part, are really good quality.  However the things can be very expensive.  Even frugal people can wind up spending a lot of money!

There are websites with free content that can help you get enough things for your library to do images without being heavily invested in it.  Two sites I like:  Renderosity, items for sale and freebies.  When you considering free stuff, keep a mind on what quality you want, but free is good when you start out.  Many of their for sale items can be quite good.  ShareGC is another good one for free content so you can learn before committing too much.  The free sites have poses for characters too.  Make sure to get poses for sale or from free sites.  You won't be able to do it on your own and will get too frustrated.

I think there are lists in the forum that show you where freebie sites can be found.  After that give it a try.  Note that your first renders will be bad until you get a handle on it..  Just be patient.  I hope you enjoy doing computer graphics, I know I do!

Have you got something else in cart to get the $8.98 price? 

Twilight hair (all three) cost me $7.53 total

Dolly hair is in my cart, now for $8.98

no, not returning it. You guys had my panicking for a second.

I'm returning the halo vehicle. I'd like to support, but I know my gut will never let me use it.

Even that WALKER figure- I out him back in the cart and said 'maybe I'll morph him with someone els" but then saw that he's Genesis. Ouch.

Deleted from cart.

Twilight hair (all three) cost me $7.53 total

Dolly hair is in my cart, now for $8.98

no, not returning it. You guys had my panicking for a second.

I'm returning the halo vehicle. I'd like to support, but I know my gut will never let me use it.

Even that WALKER figure- I out him back in the cart and said 'maybe I'll morph him with someone els" but then saw that he's Genesis. Ouch.

Deleted from cart.

Hello folks, about the "missing open mouth morph", I decided not to use morphs this time to simulate jaw movements but rather having a bone that you can use to Bend/Side-side/Twist it. For me it works much better like this than having a morph interpolation between open and close status that produces odd outputs at intermediate values, often deforming the mesh very bad. I'm sorry if some feels it's a bugger but in my opinion it's an improvement.

Perhaps an ERCed pose control on the figure to control the bend would be a compromise?

Yes, I used Create New Property to create a Mouth Open ERC control for the Jaw bone, and it works great.

Is there any way that could be added to the product itself? I have no idea how to this. And it would be great to have one for the tail.

Here, I'll attach the Mouth Open control I made. You (or anyone else who wants to use it) can manually install it and it "should" work for you. I offer it free with no strings attached. I am not a professional morph maker, so I can't guarantee that it will work for you or won't cause some other problem. If the product gets updated to add a control like this, mine may conflict. You can always just drag mine from the data folder to the trash if that happens.

 

Thanks, I will try it! In the meantime, I couldn't even get it to render correctly in 3Delight with the full version of LAMH installed... What am I doing wrong? Do you have to do special trickd in 3Delight too?

This is another quick experiment with animating "Look at my Hair" fur in DAZ Studio using Iray.  I was able to animate the hair by converting the "Look at my Hair" hair for Rawart's "Sasquatch" to an obj and then used the DAZ Studio's Transfer  Utility to make that object a conforming figure.  I used an old  Genesis walk cycle aniblock to see if the fur worked on a moving figure. I also tried a Boxing aniblock to explore how it worked on a more complex animation. 

It is rendered at 1920x1080 @ 30fps using 50 iterations with Iray in "Photoreal" mode and averaged 20 sec per frame to render.

You can apply it on G3M if you don't mind female nipples and anatomy details on the skin lol.

I thought we were gonna have a male version this time? I swear I remember you promising!

SkinBuilder 3 took around 6 months to create, a lot longer than expected. If I do a male version which will take around another +-3 months that is nearly a year gone on only two product releases. It is not financially viable to do a male version at this stage which will bring in much less revenue anyways. If I spend more time on this, that means my morph packages will never come out, and that is my primary business. Unfortunately I do not have a huge team at my disposal. That costs a hell of a lot of money. If I did have a team, and revenue streams catered for that maintenance then a male version would be a possibility. Unfortunately that is not the case. There is a lot of things I would like to do, but time and money dictates what is viable in order to survive.

Realistically, if you have the G3 UV swap add-on, the skins made for G3F should work fine on G3M, so what's really needed is just 1.) a overlay set to add more mascuiline body hair, which we already have in several forms such as RedStudio's G3M body hair add on at Rendo and the various Brow products now available, and 2.) support for the gens if required... and for that, there are the TAB and similar add-ons sold at that other Rendo site.  It's a bit of a sideways way of going at it, but I think it makes this new skinbuilder more than capable of creating male bases, especially for teens and kids.     

I just this morning bought that G3M Body Hair you mention as it is on sale. Very impressive as are the RedzStudio head hair products. I don't use the G3M male gens mainly because they are only available in Pro bundles so I'm still using the Jepe/M4 prop which is still pretty good and the skin (with a SickleYield freebie to convert to Iray) can be tweaked to a pretty close match (especially if there is hair to hide the join).

Yeah, one of the main reasons I stayed in Renderosity's version of the PC+, Prime, is that they keep serving as a launch point for amazing vendors like RedzStudio, Cayman Studios and this guy named Zevsomething.  As far as the Gens go, the probundle deal at DAZ is a royal pain, though the last couple of male bundles I've bought have been so cheap that it would have been worth it to buy them just for the gens if I didn't already have them.  Worst case scenario, Erogenesis' TAB system over at Renderotica is also a solid alternative, pun not intended, and works with both G3M and G3F out of the box, pun also not intended and I just realized that anything else I say on the subject is going to come out equally awkward so... byes!          

...if you are up to the challenge, it can be done with morphs, Dforms, and the various morph kits available.

Hello folks, about the "missing open mouth morph", I decided not to use morphs this time to simulate jaw movements but rather having a bone that you can use to Bend/Side-side/Twist it. For me it works much better like this than having a morph interpolation between open and close status that produces odd outputs at intermediate values, often deforming the mesh very bad. I'm sorry if some feels it's a bugger but in my opinion it's an improvement.

About the tail missing poses or controls, probably it wouldn't have hurt to make some extra poses; besides that, you can still multi-select multiple tail bones and apply the transformation sliders right? Shouldn't be too much work.

Iray materials provided are there only for the base model surfaces; they do not load or produce any furred squirrel model for Iray. Unfortunately Iray is a work in progress render engine, lacking several features like a hair primitive; reason why there is need to convert LAMH fur to OBJ before being able to render with Iray.

I already had this grudge that doing furred models to be used this way on an incomplete render engine is not viable, and given that most users do use Iray today, I believe this will be one of my last animal models until there is a Iray fur solution working out of the box for it (that nvidia or I can provide somehow).

The current Iray fur problems are mostly an issue of user expectations and lack of readily available, up to date, documentation. The product page says it has Iray presets, but it doesn't explain what is involved in using the product in Iray. The product page has no link to your video about Iray. The video does not even explain Kendall's crucial tip about how to save and reload the Fiberhair. The latest LAMH manual I have is for version 1.5, with no mention of Iray. The LAMH blog at furrythings.com (linked in your signature) appears to have been abandoned, with only one update since 2014; it has no current information about the plug in at all.

I agree with your observation that most Daz Studio users are using Iray now. In the forum you mentioned an effort to make the current fur easier to use in Iray. I think that is a good place to concentrate your effort in the immediate future, before making more animals. I understand your frustration with Iray not having all the features you need to implement a robust fur solution. I think you can ease users' frustration with the current solution by making sure accurate and complete Iray usage information is available and linked from the product page.

I will see about updating the docs with some of the "Tips & Tricks",

Kendall

Correction: until Daz gives us proper dynamic tools you probably won't get one.  If they do ever give us proper dynamics you'll very likely get one from me, and an ao dai and hanbok are also on my list.  I make what I like, not what popular culture decides I should like.  There is an Indian female main character in a video game (Uncharted), she even made the front page of Game Informer magazine which made me very happy. Not wearing a sari as far as I know, probably for the same reason I haven't made one yet.. absolute hell to rig properly.  I'm anal retentive about rigging, if I don't think I can rig something with near perfection I don't do it.  It took me 3 solid weeks to rig one little mid-thigh length egyptian skirt.. 47 custom JCMs just for the thighs.  Now make that floor length and with flowing cloth across the most lumpy and morph-changing part of a woman's body..  Could I model one?  Sure, would only take me a couple days to make one that worked nicely in Marvelous Designer..  However rigging it would take way more time than I would ever get compensated for (like litterally more than a month) if I priced it low enough to actually sell (IE: not more than about $20 before sales)

yes... a Scrat morph would be awesome +1

Carrara render using Carrara hair.

Thanks, Diomede the Venerable, for your comments.  I was happy to change the aspect ratio and I moved the figure around a few times as well as the bulb.  The pitfall of shining the bulb on the figure only is that it can look as though it is a different image pasted over the background.  I thought of covering her feet to diminish this effect.

UnifiedBrain, I'm happy that you have your preference.  I made so many adjustments along the way that I've lost any feeling of seeing an image that might evoke a story or sense atmosphere (which it may or may not be capable of doing - that's the elusive magic I think I'm striving to achieve).

I'm attaching an image of one change of composition.

Your hints about the forthcoming challenge make me hesitate to show what became of the image when passed through Fotosketcher (!) but maybe it makes the figure prominent again.

I agree that the hair (and skin) are plastic-looking.  That's something I need to address in my general knowledge.

I case it is of interest, the figure and clothing are called Thistledown.  The short skirt shown in the store image has a morph to make it longer.

The rest of the scene is called Celestial Fountain.  I'll follow up in a new post with far-off views of the scene showing the lights.

EDIT: I should have said Celestial POOL https://www.daz3d.com/celestial-pool

The waterlilys weren't included.