It's really cool to see how advanced Daz Studio has grown over a few short years. It's an amazing toolkit for realizing most any dream into a 3d scene for rendering, animating, or even exporting to other software or other things, like 3d printers. But there's another incredible suite of amazing tools I'd like to remind every aspiring artist and animator about:

Carrara 8.5 and Carrara 8.5 Pro!

I came to Carrara from using Poser, and was delighted at the similarities in the interface, and even more delighted that those similarities were only the parts that I liked, while the rest was a marvel of fast and easy-to-use 3d animation/rendering Powerhouse!

I've loved working in Carrara so much that, even though I'm very excited about and interested in Daz Studio and all of its modern advances, I simply have a hard time putting aside Carrara long enough to really get to know DS. So I know Daz Studio as an amazing suite for creating content from transfering common rigging from figures to new models, adding new morphs to DAZ 3D's incredible figures, editing variables of content and saving anew to get better compatibility with other software, tweaking aniBlocks and reading animated files into aniBlocks using aniMate 2, and stuff like that. Iray came along and gave us the truly wonderful world of PBR-based rendering, now there's D-Force, and that's not to mention the world's top-technology in fully rigged Human assets in Genesis 3 and 8 figures.

There are folks doing PBR-based rendering using Carrara too, but that requires additional plugins and third-party render engines. I happen to be entirely content with Carrara's native Raytrace render engine. Coming from Poser back in 2010, I was completely awe-struck at the speed of Carrara's render possibilities. Even more, Carrara is utterly easy to use after a short period of looking around and getting to know the interface a bit. 

The main reason I switched to Carrara is the fact that it is a 3d modeling software that can load Poser/DAZ 3D figures with working morphs and rigging. In my animation endeavors, it was always commonplace to have poke-through and other issues. I wanted a modeling option without having to become a profesional figure maker. I needed to tweak, not to perform complete overhauls. I did some internet searches - only to find that some folks were struggling with trying to get Poser/DAZ 3D figures into LightWave, but it was a major workflow thing. When I saw a person in a hospital waiting room playing with a Victoria 3 figure in a strange, poser-esque 3d application, my jaw dropped! "Carrara 5 Pro", he said. I started saving immediately. By the time I was ready to buy, Eovia no longer owned Carrara - it was now at DAZ 3D!!! Joy!!!

It's been a blissful bunch of years. I've never been trained in 3D art. I went from drawing and painting to sculpting - first from clay, then alabaster stone with hammer and chisel. GMax was a free, watered down version of 3DS Max back when it was owned by Discreet, and I learned just a bit of that to perform some 3d edits to game assets. I basically just tweaked existing models. Texturing became my thing. My mentor bought a copy of Poser 5 for me, then he upgraded it to Poser 7 when that came out - skipping on Poser 6. I loved creating characters from premade assets, assembling scenes, posing everyone, etc., and finally animating them. Loved it! Still do, but now it's a whole lot easier for me!

Carrara has an actual full-blown vertex (polygon) modeler built in, also including a spline modeler, metaballs, terrain modeler, plant modeler and a whole lot of various types of primitive objects - each one being fully and easily animated, often simply by setting values or dragging sliders! So cool! Carrara Pro has an amazing Ocean primitive - set the wind direction, set the size of the waves and resolution of the detail... let the render engine take it from there! 

Powerful lighting options, Carrara has its own build in skies - basic and realistic. In both, we just drop in a Sun light and either rotate the light to set where the sun is in the sky as well as the direction of the sun's light, or go into the sky editor and drag the sun to the position we want (which will set the rotation of the Sun light) or we can enter in the time, date, and location and let history set how the sky looks. And, yes... it also includes a moon and Moon light, atmospheric effects, like fog, haze, clouds and god rays.

Spot lights with volumetric options and other realistic and non-realistic effects, directional lights, bulb, tube and shape lights, "anything glows", which can make glowing objects also cast light, and we can also use (and create) Image Based Lighting (IBL), use and create spherical maps with global illumination, and load HDR images for use with global illumination. There's also more options to explore with lighting.

Cameras are really (Really) easy to use - one of the hardest parts about me using Daz Studio is that Carrara's cameras and navigation is so fluid and simple. I set up several cameras to render each of my animations from several points of view for getting just that right edit in the final stages of making a movie. Carrara's Batch Queue Render makes this a breeze. Set the render engine to render as many saved scenes as we want in the Batch Queue, each instance allowing full control of every aspect of the render settings, then launch - it will render everything in the queue while we sleep, go to work, take the dog for a walk, etc.,  I love this feature!

Carrara's Spherical camera combines very well with Carrara's ability to handle incredibly vast scenes - so even if we prefer to work in Daz Studio, or like some of us, work in both, we can use the spherical camera to render multiple spherical images of the same scene with different lighting (exposures) for use in image editors to create HDR domes for use in Iray and/or Carrara. Likewise, these spherical images don't even have to be HDRI to work in either engine. I've tried using png, tga, tiff, and jpg spherical renders in Iray and it works fine, we'll just want to add some additional illumination.

I like to use Daz Studio as a toolkit for Carrara. Carrara only supports Genesis up to version 2. Misty from our Carrara Discussion Forum, here at DAZ 3D has working files to get Genesis 3 and 8 figures to work in Carrara with a small dose of work-around, but it only truly supports Genesis 2 and earlier figures. I still find a lot of life left in Genesis 1 and 2 and even still enjoy using generation 4 figures as well. 

With Genesis Generation X, by Dimension3D I add Genesis 2 and Generation 4 morphs to Genesis 1 figure and have a blast having compatibility (via auto-fit) from Generation 3 (V3, M3, A3, H3, etc.,) through Genesis 2 on my Genesis figures. A cool thing about Carrara: I can edit what is contained in my Genesis morphs directory and load in Genesis, set it up as the character I want and save it to my Carrara browser and then return my collection of Genesis morphs back to the directory. Unlike Daz Studio, this Carrara-saved Genesis figure will only retain the morphs I had in the morphs directory at the time of creation. So I can limit the number of shape dials, etc., on each figure I store!

With the aniBlocks plugin for Carrara, I love using aniMate 2! I went ahead and bought the actual aniMate 2 (for Daz Studio) instead of just using the free version that comes with Daz Studio, so now I can bake to and from the Daz Studio timeline as well as use all of the other functions that come in this amazing plugin.

Carrara's dynamic hair is some of the most realistic 3D hair I've ever seen without applying any post work to the render. It can take a bit to get used to, but there are some wonderful tutorials (free) available to get us up-and-running without headaches.

Carrara's Terrain modeler is not only really simple to use, it is also very powerful in very simplistic ways. Just dragging around a few sliders and adding, swapping, or removing a few simple drag n' drop parameters changes everything about the terrain. The possibilities truly are endless. I know its common to hear that, but it really is endless! Same with the plant editor - commonly known as the Tree modeler, since most people use it for making trees - as its default arrangement​ is based around tree structures. We have the ability to add multiple type of 'leaf' which doesn't have to be a leaf at all. It could be fruit or even a car, bicycle or spaceship! LOL   Carrara comes with a bunch of really nice presets for this plant editor, even actual preset, premade trees we can just drop into the scene without editing anything. Every one of Howie Farkes Carrara products that come with trees also includes new presets in the editor​ along with new materials that really make up some real-looking trees. Remember I said that most everything has animation built in? That also applies to the Plant editor! Wind direction, speed, rustle frequency... we can just set a few simple values to have our trees sway during our animations, and the settings are animate-able too.

Modifiers are really neat in Carrara. So simple. Just go to the (you guessed it) Modifier tab on the easy to use interface, click the + sign and select any from a large number of modifiers, a list that differs depending upon what i selected. Very powerful. Very easy.

Plugins Galore for Carrara, and some of our wonderful Carrara discussion forum frequent users are on the path of keeping this list growing! I have a LOT of plugins and Carrara's open architecture makes using these plugins a real breeze. Digital Carver's Guild (DCG) has now made all of their profesional plugins for Carrara Open Source - so they're absolutely Free! With all (or even just some) of the plugins available for Carrara, our suite has grown to a very formidable and complete CG VFX department all on its own!

There's a lot to talk about regarding Carrara. I've run out of time for now, but I'll be back!

Cheers fellow artists and animators! I'll leave you with a few of my Carrara renders

Dartanbeck

Okay guys I'm not exactly a newbie to all of this however I have always had difficulty in getting clothing to fit exactly with characters that either I create or combined several different morphs to create or purchase from an existing vendor. is there an existing utility that will allow me to take a full body morph from a character that either I have created or a vendor has created and allow me to inject that into an existing article of clothing? Primarily I work with Victoria 4 and Michael 4. I have all of the base morphs plus the plus plus package and other bars that either I have created or have purchased from vendors to help change figure shapes looking for an easy way to add these combinations to clothing that won't leave me spinning dials for hours on end only to end up frustrated because they just don't work

It's been a long time (at least it feels that way) since I've disappeared. Things settling down on the home front now, so I'm slowly but surely getting back into things. I've been using Carrara in my free time all along, but I haven't been able to access the internet where I was, so I only got very limited strolls in and out during that whole period.

Anyway, during that whole time I've let my PC+ membership lapse - but I think I did so even a little earlier than that.

I was amazed at the difference the PC+ makes. Check Out what Platinum Club + can do for You! As a person who would rather spend more time assembling scenes to render and/or animate, I value the ability to beef up my content libraries by purchasing more than creating from scratch. It just gives me the opportunity (and stamina) to then create original assets when I want, how I want. Most importantly, I can still assemble, animate, and render without being hard-pressed to complete my assets first.

I mentioned all of this to Rosie, my reason for living, treasure of my heart, mother to my children, and she got me back onto the yearly PC+ plan, just like that. Again, Amazed at the price difference and the sheer amounts of stuff a person can collect with the coupons combined with the savings - savings that are still there after using the coupons.

Although I started back up toward the end of January, I didn't have to wait another thirty days for more coupons - they just get awarded at the beginning of each month. Makes sense - keeps things simple. Well after just spending my February coupons, I've already saved enough to pay for my PC+ membership twice over!

Why am I saying all of this? Well... because I consider you all to be my friends/family and, just in case there are others like myself whom might feel the need to collect a large library in a hurry by some of the industry's finest artists, I wanted to share the facts. 

PC+ items are NOT lower quality products on clearance. Quite the opposite. PC+ is loaded with truly amazing products across all genres in the store by some truly talented people, too many to name without my accidentally excluding someone, so I won't. But the product images I'm showing here are all content additions I've just added with two month's worth of coupons without spending more than a minimal amount to use the coupons - and I'm on a very (Very) tight budget right now as I need to build a new computer in order to use any of it - or I'd be showing renders instead of product page images. I didn't incude images of everything I got, and none of the content I got as Free PC+ items, which have also been pretty cool too.

I know it's valuable to learn the skills to build one's own content. It's just a healthy thing to know how to do. But in my case, I'm one guy trying to make a series of movies, all in 3DCG. Studios that do this stuff have many people, each making parts of one thing - most only responsible for one aspect: Conceptual Design or Modeling or UV Mapping or Texturing or Rigging or Animating or.... you get the idea, right? Well I've said this years ago: I consider DAZ 3D artists to be my studio of teammates doing their parts to get my assets ready for me to do my part - and my part is already taking on a LOT more than any one person in an animation house.

Besides, the more we buy - even at these insanely low price-points, the more we contribute to this whole marketplace cycle of life. I'm more than happy to help feed this amazingly talented artists! Truly! 

Check Out what Platinum Club + can do for You!

Something that I've also said a while back which no longer rings true with me: I used to look closely at each item before buying to see of it's DUF-Only. I never bought that stuff thinking that I'd have to jump through hoops to work with it in Carrara. Well, we have a "Buy Something that Doesn't Work in Carrara" thread, so it's obvious that not all content does work - and it's virtually impossible to know for sure unless we recognize it from such a thread. But since I've made those comments I've purchased quite a few DUF-Only products that work just fine in Carrara, and since I treat them the same as Poser items (Load them in, optimize them for Carrara, save to my Carrara Browser), I usually only have to load them as a DUF once. For products that don't work as expected in Carrara, and I don't have a convenient work-around for it, I can easily trade it back to DAZ 3D for a refund and just get something else. More than fair.

Platinum Club (back then there was no +) was one of my first purchases from DAZ 3D. I started the yearly membership since I knew I needed to build a content library to get going. I used the membership's savings to buy Carrara and a huge pile of goodies to get me started - again, thanks to my beautiful, sweet and wonderful Rosie, and I've been a member all the way up until that dark and silent time of recent. It's really neat to go back through my Product Library in my DAZ 3D account and look at the purchases I've made from being a total newbie, and still using Millenium Environment to flesh out my scenes, to becoming more inquisitive about certain aspects of Carrara by making specific purchases to learn from, and then growing from there. Purchase habits have changed quite a bit over the years and, all the while I've built an incredible library of assets to animate and render!

Heh, I remember when I bought "Advanced Carrara Techniques", a video learning course through Infinite Skills by PhilW. I had the audacity to actually believe that I was even too advanced for that course! I had learned a lot by then, and could only by one of the video courses, so I skipped the Basic one. I actually bought the Advanced course as enjoyable entertainment. I wanted a sort of Carrara TV. Well, I still refer to that course when I want to pick up on doing something that I don't ordinarily do - and that course taught me an awful lot! Did I still use it as "Educucational Entertainment", "Carrara TV"? Yes I did! Still do! But I also use it as a way to go in and learn amazing new things about Carrara - it's such a vast software. So I went back later and bought the Basic Learning course - and learned a LOT from that as well. Then he came out with more, so I bought those too. I love PhilW TV! 

Mmoir, GKDantas, MAT Creator, Dimension Theory, Howie Farkes, 3DLust, 3dage, Magaremoto, Ringo Monfort, Tim Payne, Phillip Drawbridge, Larsen, (I'm sure I'm missing some) - I've learned a LOT from buying products from these folks who have made Carrara-specific products and included wonderful ReadMe files and/or tutorials. It's a shame to see that many of them have been culled (no longer have a store) from DAZ 3D, but being a culled PA myself, I completely understand and agree with the process. Just that I feel sorry for all of the Carrara users who will never have the opportunity to purchase these wonderful products anymore. They were great products in their own right, but also fun and valuable to take apart, bit by bit, and learn from how they were put together, etc.,

But the amazing magic of Carrara includes the fact that it can work with files specific to Poser and Daz Studio. Most other 3d suites cannot do that - especially as well as Carrara can!

So my PC+ membership continues to grow my collection of DS and Poser products along with new Carrara material.

TangoAlpha - I remember when he first came to the forum asking for opinions on the start he had for a 3D project he was planning on submitting to DAZ 3D. Now DAZ 3D has purchased some of his items and made them PC+! Bravo! He has an amazing store filled with content that works in both Daz Studio and Carrara! Boon to all, I say!

I remember when Vyusur first stopped into the forum. Amazing renders! Amazing! Little did I know she was such an amazing, talented modeler/photographer. Now she has a store here at DAZ 3D with amazing realistic content!  Bravo!

Some of the Carrara-specific content creators are still with us making things for Daz Studio, some for both Daz Studio and Carrara. Some artists have always made content for Poser and other software, but still made a thing or two for Carrara as well. Keep an eye open... you may find Carrara products that you haven't seen before - or even Poser or daz Studio products that include Carrara-specific files, like Stonemason's first Greeble City Blocks product, which includes Carrara shaders.

So I tend to babble off the main topic a bit... I always have and likely always will. I think I was born this way. But the point is, I just want people to know that, even though Carrara is a formidable modeling software, we don't have to feel obligated to use it as one. Carrara is also an amazing content using facility, and there's nothing wrong with using the wonderful store to gain amazing content. 

I'm so glad to see threads regarding building models in Carrara. When I first started, the vertex modeler in Carrara was really quite shunned by many. I bought Carrara in the first place because I wanted to be able to tweak the mesh of content that I bought. I did that right from the start and never had issues doing it. But somehow I let the negativity get into my head and never really used it as a start-from-scratch modeler. It wasn't until I posted a thread asking what modeler I should get (which was answered with many suggestions from Blender to Modo, and beyond) when 3dage came in with the wonderful advice of just trying Carrara, since I already own it!

I love modeling from scratch in Carrara! It rocks! Its plethora of tools, modifiers and operations makes it pretty darned easy for me to realize my needs directly in my favorite tool.

So I shop with confidence. Back in the Victoria/Michael 3 days, poke through, especially for animators, was commonplace. It became second nature for me to enter modeling mode and tweak clothing to fit. Nowadays, with the advent of Genesis and the legacy shape clone products, I'll buy generation 3, 4, 5 (Genesis 1) and 6 (Genesis 2) products knowing that I can make them work. GenX made that even better for me. 

PC+ is going to help me even more with that now. I am so glad to be back to PC+, and I'm so glad to be back home... here in the Carrara Discussion Forum!

Cheers all!

Check Out what Platinum Club + can do for You!

I like Tasha 8 because she looks quite different from the typical Daz female (which are great, but I don't need the same kinds of facial types) a group including Penny, Stephanie, Olympia, & Victoria 8---Gia is on the cusp. I hope Daz will give us at least two more women in this generation that break the mold like Tasha does, but most people want the same thing, then more of the same thing, then some more. There seem to be two main camps: Those who ask, "Why is it different?!" and those who ask, "Why is it the same?!" I'm the latter.

I put Tasha 8's morph under Gia 7's skin and got a Hispanic or light-skinned Black woman. So, those who are pegging her as just another skinny white girl should give her another look.

OT, I was wondering why someone doesn't make a breasts morph with a natural bridge between them for shirts that need it, as well as a uni-buttocks morph with an indentation instead of a cleft. Zev0's and SickleYield's fixes don't always work the way I'd like.

Thanks again for your service, Divamakeup. I always look forward to your renders to see the characters out-of-the-box and with Altern8 (which has so many options that it triggers OCD for me, and 3 hours later I know which one to use---and don't let me start futzing with the Girl 8 version or I'll never get renders done.

Awww Thank you! 

And yeah, I have to agree, to me she's definitely doesn't look like "just another white girl".

I like Tasha 8 because she looks quite different from the typical Daz female (which are great, but I don't need the same kinds of facial types) a group including Penny, Stephanie, Olympia, & Victoria 8---Gia is on the cusp. I hope Daz will give us at least two more women in this generation that break the mold like Tasha does, but most people want the same thing, then more of the same thing, then some more. There seem to be two main camps: Those who ask, "Why is it different?!" and those who ask, "Why is it the same?!" I'm the latter.

I put Tasha 8's morph under Gia 7's skin and got a Hispanic or light-skinned Black woman. So, those who are pegging her as just another skinny white girl should give her another look.

OT, I was wondering why someone doesn't make a breasts morph with a natural bridge between them for shirts that need it, as well as a uni-buttocks morph with an indentation instead of a cleft. Zev0's and SickleYield's fixes don't always work the way I'd like.

Thanks again for your service, Divamakeup. I always look forward to your renders to see the characters out-of-the-box and with Altern8 (which has so many options that it triggers OCD for me, and 3 hours later I know which one to use---and don't let me start futzing with the Girl 8 version or I'll never get renders done.

For the shirts, how about using Hongyu's Shirt for Victoria 7 and applying a plaid or denim shader to it?

Yup, that's a good idea. Thanks for that one!

For the shirts, how about using Hongyu's Shirt for Victoria 7 and applying a plaid or denim shader to it?

Little tipp for anybody making use of the Tasha 8 promotion. If you get the Pro Bundle together with at least 2 Add-Ons to make us of that extra discount be aware that those new releases also count for the "Free Victoria & Micheal 4 content" promotion. So don't forget to go to that promotion page as well and pick those 5 freebies. I chose clothing items which hopefully RiverSoft Arts converter will port over to G8F.

What bothers me most about Tasha is the same marketing strategy I keep complaining about which started sometime between the G3 & G8 debuts. For the longest time, Daz would offer the base model/s that you could buy solo or in starter and pro bundle offers, plus a handful of other characters that also had starter and pro bundle options. All the other named morph/texture characters of that generation were sold alone, but for less than a base model. There would be a few that were also available bundled with a hair and an outfit. Now the vast majority are put out like new models with prices to match -- $30+ for base, $60+ starter, $90+ - $100+ pro.  Whether it's something really different like Centaurs, Floyd and Edie, or just-another-supermodel.

Plus I just don't do glamour vampires.

Victoria 4 and Michael 4 were free, with add-on name characters as we have now., and the Genesis series has followed the same pattern. Before that the Name characters were new figures rather than add-ons anyway. I'm not, therefore, sure what you are thinking of here.

Big thanks for the setting Sven. May I know where did you get the model of severed head, or is there any way to detach a head from for example Victoria 8 model? :)

If you pose the head as Sven did, without the severed end being visible, you can just use a regular G8F and just turn visibility off for everything below the neck.

If you want something more sophisticated, there's a product over at Rendo that does it.

Thanks, I also found this "amputee" morph set also on rendo :

Click!

Looks really legit, I'm gonna try it out :)

3dcheapskate #6:

The Millenium Flamingo

#1:  LilianBikini for Victoria 4 and Aiko 4
#2: Michael's Changing Fantasy Suit
#3:  Stellar
#4:  RDNA Sluggians
LB1:  Fantasy Camp
Chain items: Loading Dock, London Eclectic Breakfast Nook stuff, backpack from Ace Of Spades Jack, Decorative Boxes, and Lovey Bear. No  flamingos, no windmills.

Unbeknownst to her husband Dan (pronounced Darn) and daughters Jan and Fran (pronounced Jarn and Frarn), Ann (pronounced Arn) Solo had a lucrative little sideline - moving things for Jabberjabber The Wutt. What ? The Big J was in the removals business. Removing other peoples things without their permission.
But on that last job she'd been forced to ditch his consignment of windmills due to nosey Imperial Windmill Inspectors, and The Big J was very unhappy. He'd obviously sent his goons to her new place, and they'd taken her prized possession, The Millenium Flamingo.
Even with Chewcalyptus her Ewookie buddy to back her up this was going to be an awkward negotiation...

 

This is a newer post than the one about the ears

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/42412/

However, the ears is where I have a problem, too.  

I applied:  https://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-for-genesis-2-female

Then, I double click the icon for: https://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-for-genesis-2-female

I am just learning DS and have been collecting a few products over the years while still spending a lot of money on V4.  I have some wonderful textures and clothes for her, however I am tired of her eyes not closing and wanting a shorter figure.  I love the Genesis 2 characters.

Anyway, I would love for the ears, which are not seperate material zones to work properly.  I can always use hair that covers or correct in Paint Shop Pro.  However, if there is a work around, I would love it!!

 

 

Another one not for me. I think her head is way too big and her features unattractive and over-exaggerated. I guess I’m one of the few really looking for drop dead beauty. I have a ton of morphs and usually beautify the Daz Originals but why should I have to do that work? It’s much easier to make a model unattractive and I could create Tasha’s morphs in seconds. I have really not been impressed with most Daz O females (except older and toon ones) for a while. Victoria 7 was so beautiful and unique (maybe too unique though...) and I would love to see more models with true beauty, not something anyone could make easily with existing morphs... Although I always change the characters with my own morphs to make them unique, this model doesn’t seem to add anything to the gene pool I don’t already have...

That said, I do like some of the PA items but the deal for the bundle doesn’t seem that great, so I’m still on the fence. It wouldn’t kill me to wait a year for this...

We are in agreement. I don't want "normal" looking characters, I want glamorous, interesting model types. Tasha just looks too plain for my tastes and I really can't see what she would bring to the gene pool in G8 for me.

On the other hand, there are those of us who appreciate not everything conforming to the same form of beauty. (And the community can't even agree whether Tasha is too plain or too glamourous! I've already seen her criticised for being both). There's some PAs who, while they produce high quality characters, I generally now overlook them because there's very strong similarities from one character to the next; buying more from them doesn't really add much utility to my collection.

Another one not for me. I think her head is way too big and her features unattractive and over-exaggerated. I guess I’m one of the few really looking for drop dead beauty. I have a ton of morphs and usually beautify the Daz Originals but why should I have to do that work? It’s much easier to make a model unattractive and I could create Tasha’s morphs in seconds. I have really not been impressed with most Daz O females (except older and toon ones) for a while. Victoria 7 was so beautiful and unique (maybe too unique though...) and I would love to see more models with true beauty, not something anyone could make easily with existing morphs... Although I always change the characters with my own morphs to make them unique, this model doesn’t seem to add anything to the gene pool I don’t already have...

That said, I do like some of the PA items but the deal for the bundle doesn’t seem that great, so I’m still on the fence. It wouldn’t kill me to wait a year for this...

We are in agreement. I don't want "normal" looking characters, I want glamorous, interesting model types. Tasha just looks too plain for my tastes and I really can't see what she would bring to the gene pool in G8 for me.

Hello !

 

I work with Poser 11 and Genesis 2 characters

Since yesterday I get the following message when loading the Genesis 2 figures:
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0xed in position 19: unexpected end of data
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "G:\My Daz Libray\Runtime\libraries\Character\DAZ People\Victoria 6.py", line 2, in <module>
    dson.dzdsonimporter.loadCompanionDSONFile( sys.argv[0] );

SystemError: NULL result without error in PyObject_Call

I installed everything again, it worked first and now the same problem again.

Thanks in advance for your assistance

Another one not for me. I think her head is way too big and her features unattractive and over-exaggerated. I guess I’m one of the few really looking for drop dead beauty. I have a ton of morphs and usually beautify the Daz Originals but why should I have to do that work? It’s much easier to make a model unattractive and I could create Tasha’s morphs in seconds. I have really not been impressed with most Daz O females (except older and toon ones) for a while. Victoria 7 was so beautiful and unique (maybe too unique though...) and I would love to see more models with true beauty, not something anyone could make easily with existing morphs... Although I always change the characters with my own morphs to make them unique, this model doesn’t seem to add anything to the gene pool I don’t already have...

That said, I do like some of the PA items but the deal for the bundle doesn’t seem that great, so I’m still on the fence. It wouldn’t kill me to wait a year for this...

Totte#2: I wonder what he's listening to - Aztec Camera's 'Oblivious' perhaps ?
Totte#3: I think that granny needs an old-fashioned ear-trumpet. Either that or an EMP device strong to knock out every IoT-thing in a 1km radius.
luci45 #4: Judging by the other passengers Ronnie and Dum-Dum should blend in nicely...

Here's my pull #6:
#1 - 848 - LilianBikini for Victoria 4 and Aiko 4
#2 - 969 - Michael's Changing Fantasy Suit
#3b - 1367 - Stellar
#4e - 1197 - RDNA Sluggians
LB1 - 538 - Fantasy Camp

Thank you. So you don't need G2 Base figures in the scene, just in the content library.

Right. And here's a really cool thing about that:

Genesis 2 Female base figure uses UV mapping of Victoria 5. This means that, by loading the Genesis 2 Female base figure into Carrara, we may use any character texture packs we may have bought for Victoria 5. Then, after Genesis 2 Base Female is loaded, and we have that V5 mapping, we can then change her shape to anything we want. 

Not a silly question (few questions are).

The genesis 2 generation of Daz figures purposefully made uvmaps incompatible.  What I mean by that is that the uvmaps among genesis 2 characters are tailored to the specific morphed shape.  Thus, the uvmap for genesis 2's "Victoria 6" character does not exactly match the uvmap for genesis 2's "The Girl 6" character.  On the one hand, that means that there is less distortion caused by "The Girl 6"'s extreme proportions.  On the other hand, that means you have to keep track of which figure you have loaded when applying genesis 2 texture sets such as Victoria 6, Aiko 6, the Girl 6 etc.  

 

So, unfortunately, yes, when using genesis 2 characters (the "6" series), pay attention to how you have loaded the figure.  If the texture maps appear all wrong, it my be that the UVMap has been tailored to another shape.

 

In general, other generations are easier and a texture set will apply to all characters for that base generation.

Hi, FSMCDesigns.

For me such a converters are a big time savers.

I accept, that not always all work, like you describe, but I have hundreds of items for V4,

that otherways would become obsolete and I would not use them at all.

After all advances with Genesis 8 figures, there is no way, I go back to Victoria 4 renders.

So in short - I am very happy with the converter and I will continue to use it.