Had a devil of a time with lighting (as I do with any scene) So using a mega cheat of speedlights. Hopefully its working.

I still have a few bits to sort out. The outfits are causing a bit of grief. Infamous and Steampunk lady, both for V4 are having a bit of a grump being parented to G2.

Both skins are V4s, so is the hair. Cannot morph G2 as i haven't got the body or head morphs for her.

Have attached the version I have done some postwork on just to hide the outfit grumps.

I was thinking about how people are complaining that Mec4Ds shaders, which are absolutely first class products, are only 70% off and not included in the 80% sales and thinking it was kind of insane.

Then I realised that all of us were sort of waffling over whether to go for a bunch of 80% products and wondered when I'd started evaluating things so differently here o.o

Also that I still have a full cart I'd actually forgotten about.

I suspect there would be less complaining about the discount on Mec4D's shaders if the Toon and Genesis flash-grabs didn't have a 12 product minimum to get the 80% discount. It wasn't all that long ago DAZ had  a promo where if you bought one of the new releases in that promo, select G3M, G2M and G1M were discounted 60%, 70% and 80% respectively. Not to mention other sales, without a minimum quantity required, that put Genesis products at 70% or even 80%. Some of the sales even had a 3 item limit! As they say, (quite frequently around here,) there's always another sale.

I removed all the Genesis stuff from my cart last night. And the only reason I'm still waffling on the Toons in my cart is I really do want the Little Ones bundle... But fifty bucks? Now? Oy vey...

buy cookie stuff, all those get to 1 dll each

lol. So I noticed.

I bought the Toon Generations Mega-Bundle a few months back, so I'm grabbing products that work with that, or kinda look like they do. And I've got five items that are only 60¢ each: Alien-Bot, The Cat, Wolf Boy, Frog Boy, and Turtle Boy. That really helps. I could drop two of them, as I now have 14 items in the cart, but $1.20 isn't enough to quibble over! So they all stay. I expect I'll checkout later today. Still waffling, but leaning strongly toward buying.

I really like the look of the Toon Generations Mega Bundle but it isn't in the sale :( and I've spoiled too many bundles by being some of the parts on sales sooo going to have to wait on the toons I guess. Ugh it's such a pain that toon stuff is so all over the place when it comes to which figures it works with and things. I love Cookie and Chip but it's kind of a pain for me to use completely separate figures, and then Star is finally getting a G3 version which is great but makes it not appealing to buy her older stuff right now... etc etc much rant.

Personally there are enough morph packs and overall things for Genesis I was missing to make up the 12 items and still be great value, so I'm happy enough with that, but I can definitely understand people's frustrations with it. 12 with such a small selection is going to shut out a lot of longer term users.

Taisha - Half Elf

Genesis - Rapture Morph and Mats

Mitsu Hair - UHT2 Hair Salon

MFD - Reign

She is a character for the story I am putting together - I will be posting the pictures with the very short stories that go with them on my deviant art account.

She looks great!  I really don't play with the MFD as much as I should considering all of the texture sets and differing looks that outfit can have.  I love the character.  Is she one of your Randomized characters?  She has an intriguing face.  Really nice render.

Thanks!  This character is Rapture - I picked her up in the Genesis sale yesterday for $2.60.  No changes its all her morphs and make up.  She has some lovely make up too including a full lacy eye mask.

Taisha - Half Elf

Genesis - Rapture Morph and Mats

Mitsu Hair - UHT2 Hair Salon

MFD - Reign

She is a character for the story I am putting together - I will be posting the pictures with the very short stories that go with them on my deviant art account.

She looks great!  I really don't play with the MFD as much as I should considering all of the texture sets and differing looks that outfit can have.  I love the character.  Is she one of your Randomized characters?  She has an intriguing face.  Really nice render.

"you added the morph area before attaching skeleton?"

Correct

"you just have to do that for the 1st morph?  the rest can be added after rigging is done?"

Correct

"to do it in poser, used to create morphs for a few body parts, then would create 'full body morph' to dial them in all at once."

If you wish, you can still model your mesh in any program (Carrara, Wings, Hexagon, Blender,...).  And, you can still rig it in Poser or Daz Studio.  Then you would have the options and limitations of Poser or Daz style rigs.

- For Carrara-style, plenty of functions, but a few limitations.  Remember to create a full-body morph for the object mesh before attaching the bone skeleton to the mesh.  That is needed to add new morph dials which is very helpful for editing in the posed position.  If you need to detach the skeleton to edit the mesh you may lose a lot of your bone weight adjustments when you re-attach.

Grateful I am that you mentioned the above... I would have gone off adding bones first... good to know I need a FBM before hand.

I imagine that would be true for anything intended to have bones ie, a leaf or character etc.

http://www.daz3d.com/thorne for morph resource kits which would be merchant resources (read the details on kits pages)

WOW! talk about stubborn.

I decided to take what should have been a couple of minutes to try something, and hex is not liking it at all. It refuses to select loops when more then two faces are selected to extrude them inward, and all the other ways to get there it just crashes. I take it there is no easy way to make a simple four toothed gear with a cylindrical outer surface on the gear teeth in hex?

Yea, that's just not going to happen today. I'll need to sit down and calculate the XYZ locations of all the points around two cylinders and morph a cube by moving points around to get that done, **** that. lol.

And on that note of Hex being stubborn, how do you twist something without it turning into an hour glass shape.

I'll check that out later on.

Thanks!

you added the morph area before attaching skeleton?

you just have to do that for the 1st morph?  the rest can be added after rigging is done?

to do it in poser, used to create morphs for a few body parts, then would create 'full body morph' to dial them in all at once.

Have you tried freezing the simulation (which creates a morph per frame) so that you're bypassing the dynamic aspect?

I really don't plan to sell anything, but I really would only like to buy merchant resources for morphs and textures, just in case I change my mind. I'd really hate to sitting there with a great character if only I hadn't used ......So in an effort not go into debt too much I want to stick to merchant resources for G3F. Help please. I tried searching but couldn't tell what was ok to use as a merchant resource or not. I am just assuming unless it says merchant resource, its not one.

I put the steps for adding a morph for a Carrara-rigged mesh in its own thread.  It will also be useful for adding morphs to other objects and meshes.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/107081/creating-a-custom-carrara-character-and-morphing-in-posed-position

Stupid question, but how do you make an extra dial? Can you also make separate head/body dials from a single character morph?

There is a tutorial here:

http://www.digi-dotz.com/index.php/free-poses/tutorials/daz-studio-tutorials/47-morph-in-daz-studio

And AFAIR you can't make e.g. a head morph from a single character morph that way (I think you have to mess with the mesh to do that).

Was going to put this as a reply in another thread but think it is worth its own.  The original question had to do with creating morphs for Daz and Poser figures, but then the question of all-Carrara figures came up.  Here is the bare bones basics of creating morphs for a custom Carrara figure in the posed position.  I begin with creating the character because adding an initial morph is important.

For fun, I am going to start with a low poly toon ChickenAlien. 

1)  I modeled a simple chicken alien toon mesh in the vertex modeler.  Standard stuff - like creating material zones, etc.  This isn't a modeling tutorial so I will just show the initial mesh. Yuck!  But it will suffice.

2)  I created and saved an initial full body morph (FBM).  To do so, I entered the modeling room and the morph tab. The first thing I had to do was create a morph area for the morph.  In this case, I selected the entire chicken alien mesh.  I clicked "create" and a dialog came up prompting me to name the morph area.  By default, it was "morph area 0."  I renamed it "all" and saved.  Once the morph area was ready, I used the drop down menu to the right of the current morph area (All) and selected "create target."  A dialog appears prompting for a name.  I chose FBM All Edit for the name.  Click "Edit" next to the empty morph name (FBM All Edit or whatever) and the mesh will turn green.  Use the vertex modeling tools to adjust the mesh as desired.  Remember to save and validate the morph so that it is properly stored.  Once saved and validated, a new morph channel appears with the slider set to zero.  You can return to the assemble room and test your new morph.  The morph will appear in a list under the "general" tab.

3)  Rig your mesh.  This isn't a rigging tutorial but the basic work flow is to use the directional cameras in the assemble room (and select the mesh and hit "0" as needed to zoom properly) to place the diamonds where you want joints (knees, wrists etc.).  You can just rig one side (ams and legs) then use duplicate with symmetry for the other side.

4)  Use the "animation group" under the animation tab, not the normal group under the edit tab.  I group my mesh and my skeleton and save to the browser without attaching, but that is personal preference.

5) Once the mesh and bones are ready, click Animation from the top menu of the Assemble Room and choose attach skeleton.  You can now pose your figure.  Normally, you would want to edit the joints, weight maps, etc..

6)  Adding morphs in general.  Even when the skeleton is attached, you can select the mesh, enter the vertex modeler, and add new morphs to any existing morph area under the "model" tab.

7)  Editing morphs in the posed position.  If the figure is posed, you can select the mesh, enter the vertex modeler, choose animation mode, and edit morphs.  Very handy!

8)  You can also edit bone influences and weightmaps in the posed position.

OK I TRIED SAVING FIGURES AS SCENE SUBSETS ALSO SAVING poses as presets and still when I re open the file none of the hands are correctly positioned. and I have to re position then all over again. Its a real pain taking ages each time i want to use the scene. Why isnt the pose being saved accuratly  ? I dont get it, I m guessing its something to do with the rigging. Like I said everytime I load one of the Genesis 3 female figures that had a youth morph appled it loads with wierd mishaped hands and eye sockets and I have to apply the adjust rigging to shape to make them work normaly, saving doesnt save the rigging so I guess thats why the pose gets alll messed up. Is there any way to save a figure with all the shaping morphs applied and not have to ajust the rigging every time it loads? Im going to try saving the figures as character presets and see if they retian the rigging info

There is a body & head dial for The Little Ones  here is another image

V7 100% G3 50% G3 25%

Ah, I just couldn't find it then.  I ended up making another dial.  I'll have to see about undoing my dial in the morning then.  Yours came out rather cute, too!

 

Stupid question, but how do you make an extra dial? Can you also make separate head/body dials from a single character morph?

+1

Okay, I did some more head banging on the thumb issue, I think I've figured it out.  It looks like intended values for the "x-orientation" of each of the thumb bones was inserted into the morph, instead of the difference values.  So, for example, on lthumb1 the value stored in the file is 27.1542, when in reality it should have been the value -10.1142 (which, incidentally, ends up being the final value of the x-orientation on the unmodified figure).

To clarify; for both lthumb1 and rthumb1, the fixed value should be -10.1142; for lthumb2 and rthumb2, the fixed value should be -6.87205; for lthumb3 and rthumb3, the fixed value should be -6.98508.

Looks pretty good there Nightwolf, though kinda have a gap between the finger and thumbs. I may apply those values you have to the Olivette FBM to see if that improves hers just a bit more. But the Victoria 7 values that I used seem to work for me on Julie and all hand poses.

Not sure on the Brita one since I didn't get the pro pack. So I don't know if she is just a modifier or has her own FBM with hand values.

For me, I have found that I use a slightly different work flow depending on how the figure was rigged. 

Background.  I am going to use the terms "Poser-style" for the old rigging system even though Poser itself has since moved on, "Daz-style" for the Genesis figures (sometimes called the triax system) and Dragon 3 even though Daz has since moved on, and "Carrara-style" for figures rigged using Carrara's bones and weightmaps.  Carrara can read the old Poser style and we can see the bones and edit the weightmaps of V1-4, Aiko3, etc, but Carrara has trouble with the newer Poser weightmap system used by Miki4, Tyler, Rex, Roxy, Dawn, etc., although there is a plugin attempt to use the newer Poser figures (inconsistent success).  Carrara can read the old Daz-style Genesis and Genesis 2 figures including seeing the bones but some of the editing functions are disabled.  Carrara can't use the newer Daz-style Genesis 3.  Obviously, Carrara can use Carrara's own bone/weight system.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind, independently of the rigging system. 1st - Carrara can edit the object mesh directly even if no morphs exist, with a few caveats discussed below.  2nd, to add an adjustable morph dial, as opposed to editing the general mesh, the object needs to have a morph zone defined before the mesh is attached to the bone skeleton.

- For Poser-style rigged figures, such as Vicky 1-4, Michael 1-4, Aiko 1-4, Star stand alone, etc., Carrara has a lot of great options and functions.  First, as mentioned above, you can load the figure in Carrara, edit the mesh directly, and save the result for future use without ever adding morphs.  Carrara has the magnet tool and the displacement painting brush for loaded figures.  Second, you can load the figure and create and save new dial morphs.  A morph zone must aready exist to add a new morph dial.  Here, I loaded Aiko 3 and note that under the morph tab of the vertex modeler (model level) there are already morph zones by body part.  Third, you can actually make the morphs in another program (such as hexagon) and load them in the appropriate morph channel.  The weightzones figure can be edited in the posed position, which is a great help.  Similarly, a new morph can be added in the posed position as long as a morph zone already exists.

Aiko 3 loaded and already has morph zones so that morph dials can be customized (see below)

- For Genesis and Genesis 2, Carrara still has some good functions but there are some limitations.  First, you can still edit the mesh directly but Carrara wil give you a "protected topology" warning.  I just ignore it. I have not been able to add morphs within Carrara for these figures, I've had to use Daz Studio's morph loader, but maybe Dart's workflow above changes that.  I defer to Dart.

Genesis 2 character Riven loaded and then the displacement brush used ignoring protect topology and without creating a moph zone.  (see below)

- For Carrara-style, plenty of functions, but a few limitations.  Remember to create a full-body morph for the object mesh before attaching the bone skeleton to the mesh.  That is needed to add new morph dials which is very helpful for editing in the posed position.  If you need to detach the skeleton to edit the mesh you may lose a lot of your bone weight adjustments when you re-attach.

Carrara custom figure already has a morph zone (all) and a placeholder morph.  (see below)

Carrara custom figure capable of editing vertex mesh in the posed position.  (see below)

When you say you are attaching, do you mean fitting (assuming this is DS) or only parenting? If you are fitting, try right-clicking on the Michael 4 figure and from the menu selecting Transfer Active Morphs.

Taisha - Half Elf

Genesis - Rapture Morph and Mats

Mitsu Hair - UHT2 Hair Salon

MFD - Reign

She is a character for the story I am putting together - I will be posting the pictures with the very short stories that go with them on my deviant art account.

That looks lovely! What a pretty character and outfit! :D

What are the stories about?

Sorry!  I meant to finish my sentence and my husband was hollering it was time for bed (I have a bad tendency to stay up way too late on a work night if I am working on art lol)
 The stories are under this folder http://icedragonart.deviantart.com/gallery/59725557/1-The-World-of-Akasa-Gahari ; on my Deviant art account which is in my signature line as well.  I will probably be changing the world name and making this name the name of the cloud kingdom. Very very much a a work in progress, I just started this idea, we will see how it works out lol.  I wanted to tell short little stories that link together one way or the other inside a fantasy world. (I suck at writing so short little blurbs are about all I can handle lol) I have all these stories and characters in my head and the only real way for me to get them out is through pictures.  But I wanted to flesh it out just a bit, and link them all together.

That sounds like a good idea. I've subbed and I'm looking forward to the stories. Your Kimina character is AWESOME! I read a little of her bio and she sounds really cool. Do you have any stories of her up? :)