robertswww said:

Lolman said:

Does anyone know a good Uma Thurman G8 Model?

 @Lolman For a Uma Thurman look-alike, check out: Celebrity Series 91 for Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 Female

And for an alternate morph check magnus1781

U. Thurman by magnus1781 on DeviantArt 

I thinik G9 is great for what I do.I'm not a clothing maker, morph creator, or anything else. I just grab a figure, slap on some clothes, hair, and light up the scene .. viola.  I cannot justify or afford going all out on this G9 when I have already so much invested in earlier versions. M9 is pretty darn good looking, versatile in the face and body. Some new morphs came out as well today, but my wallet is empty. 

On topology and edge loops. - Reply to Oso3D but really a clarification for people less advanced than Oso3D.

Why do vintage modelers emphasize edge loops?  Recall the picture of the G9 torso mesh does not have any edge loops outlining the oval stomach musculature on the front of the human torso, nor does it have edge loops for the lower border of the rib cage.  Instead it has a flat grid.  As a result, if one were to just shrink wrap the base torso to a slim and healthy adult human, the edges of the grid do not line up with the edges of the rib cage or stomach oval.  It may still look OK depending on how dense the mesh is, which subdivision can aid, but major features would be dependent on internal deformation of squares, not outlines by edge loops.  (See attached pic).  However, that is inefficient if you know ahead of time that the shape you want has an oval stomach and a slope for the lower rib cage.  The same shape could be achieved with fewer polygons, less subdivision, less strain on computer resources.  In practice, people who struggle to have 3 or 4 Daz figures in a scene could have 7 or 8 if the mesh was more efficient. 

Other examples of issues include several joints. There have been complaints about rubbery joints reminiscient of V4 and M4.  Some of that is due to JCMs being occasionally deactivated, a bug which I am sure will be fixed (Thank you, Mada, for monitoring the forums and helping diagnose and solve that problem for users).  But another part of the issue comes from poor edge flow of the mesh in the joints.  If the edge loops better matched human skeletal and musculature structure then the rigging and weightmapping would have better results and there would be less need for morph fixes like JCMs.  

I have used the word 'vintage' in the term vintage modelers to try to signal that I know Daz believes the mesh of G9 is a step forward, not backward.  Daz3D is well aware of the points I have made about edge flow, and consciously chose the G9 mesh as is.  One possible good reason to do so would be a decision to rely more on mesh density and sculpting to define shape than selecting and manipulating individual edge loops.  

Just clarification.  I am on the Genesis 9 train.  I have had occasion to dabble in ZBrush and similar.  Looking forward to the people who open ZBrush for the first time and who can't figure out why they can only replicate a seemingly infinite number of spheres instead of sculpting the starting sphere.  :) 

Stop wasting time and hard drive space converting pose presets, just use them!  Bone Minion will do the hard work for you by acting as a bone “catcher” for a pose and then do a just-in-time conversion of the pose to its parent Genesis 9 Figure*.  You can directly use ANY pose (from Victoria 4 and Michael 4 to Genesis 8) with your Genesis 9 Figures.  Simply load the desired Bone Minion (i.e., Genesis 8 Female Bone Minion for Genesis 8 Female Poses) on your target figure (Genesis 9), select the Bone Minion, and start applying poses!

• On-the-fly conversion of poses to your target figure
• Directly convert from the source generation to the target generation without converting to intermediate generations
• Works with full poses, partial poses*, hierarchical poses**, and even AniBlocks!
• Automatically applies full poses when they are loaded*
• Cross-gender pose conversion
• Supports pose properties, e.g., Right Hand Grasp poses (using the Create Heavyweight Bone Minion script)
• Use pose details on the Bone Minion to apply partial poses

Note that converted poses (and especially props if they are hierarchical poses) may not be perfect and may require tweaking. Facial bones (i.e., expressions) except for the eyes are not transferred.

* Any pose that sets the hip of the Bone Minion will be automatically converted on the fly and applied to the target figure. The Apply Changes script can be used to transfer any pose (including partial poses) on the Bone Minion to its target figure.

** Hierarchical poses require the props loaded on both the Bone Minion and the target figure. For Genesis 9, the bone names ARE VERY DIFFERENT and you will need to move the props to the correct bones manually. The prop will be properly rotated for the pose but may need to be manually translated to the correct location.

Tutorial

What's Included and Features

• Bone Minion for Generation 4 Poses for Genesis 9
• Bone Minion for Genesis Poses for Genesis 9
• Bone Minion for Genesis 2 Poses for Genesis 9
• Bone Minion for Genesis 3 Poses for Genesis 9
• Bone Minion for Genesis 8 and 8.1 Poses for Genesis 9

The scene file or preset contains a reference to those morphs (if only to say their value is 0), so it's normal you get an error when loading them when the morph doesn't exist anymore.

If the morph was not actually used, you can always ignore the message and resave the scene.

Looks very good, and the items released with him all look pretty good of their types too. I'm more tempted than I was by Victoria. But I'm more tempted by the new Toons than either.

Still, I do definitely like the morph. And the promos do a decent job of showing variety.

I have a gajillion morphs installed that I want to clean-up and get rid of, however when I delete the data Daz3d always gives me a message with old scenes and figures that said data is missing.

Can I make it not do that? Thanks.

Okay, now that I have watched the video you linked I have a better understanding of how you are working.

Not a great teacher  --  and he was only teaching from his perspective of how he likes to work in the simplest way more geared to animating shape keys.  Not a bad thing, but I thought you were on my page of content creation for Daz Studio/Poser adding morph targets for end users to have choices while using your model.

So, I see he taught the weight paint method, but did not teach the vertex selection method (what I mainly use).  Nor did he teach about the Edit Mode view pairing, or what any of the advanced options that are available in the drop-down triangle on the far right side.

I am glad you were able to glean what I was trying to tell you about the Edit Mode view toggle, and that it can help you with your MT's.

Looks like you are on your way now to accomplish your goals with your dragon, and I hope you post some images of your future progress and your finals.

I'll raise a shot to you tonight with my whiskey of choice, Fireball...

This is the news.

First, about compression. In Genesis2 folders there is a file with the same name PHMFlirtingMasculineL.dsf And I was very curious to see if it has the tag "formulas".
As soon as I found out that this file was only pretending to be encrypted, I immediately unpacked it and looked inside.
Of course, this file turned out to be very similar to the old Genesis PHMFlirtingMasculineL.dsf file. But it doesn't have a "formulas" tag. It is not in the new Genesis PHMFlirtingMasculineL.dsf file either. In the old file, the "formulas" tag is between the "group" and "morph" tags. This is redundant because the same "formulas" is contained in the CTRLFlirtingMasculineL.dsf file in the same folder. Now it does not matter. The old files have been replaced by DAZ with new packed files, but I want to show what kind of error can cause the warning "Duplicate formulas found..." Two completely identical tags located in different files duplicate each other.
But there is at least one other error that results in a warning "Duplicate IDs were found while reading the file. See the log file for more details."
I was reminded of this when Richard mentioned "id". I searched and found a file that actually had two identical 'id's. Both of them were in the same file, but neither of them was redundant this time. In fact, they were mistakenly given the same name. This is where Richard's advice came in handy. One "id" belonged to a node and could not be renamed because the node name was referenced by many child elements in the file. I didn't even try to rename it. But the second "id" belonged to the figure mesh and nothing referred to it. Its name change was successful. The warning "Duplicate IDs were found..." no longer appeared. This applies to old files. They have long since been corrected by DAZ. But I'm surprised that the forum posts from time to time about such errors with new figures. Perhaps those errors have a different meaning.

xyer0 said:

Daywalker Designs said:

Padone said:

benniewoodell said:

I'm going to have to pick them up and see how well they transfer into Blender through Diffeo and wait to see how they are in Maya after the Maya Bridge is updated for G9.

Again, since G9 is HD based it is harder both to import and use in blender or any other platform. May be the toon figures don't use HD but it would be an exception. Actually G9 imports fine with diffeo for the base jcms and the HD shape via multires, while HD morphs require baking to displacement maps and a whole lot of manual work to make them functional, and displacement doesn't work in eevee.

To export to blender or other apps G3-G8 is much better than G9.

It's not HD based; it has a higher base mesh density than G8 and older did. The only things that have HD morphs that load by default are the Navel and the Mouth.

Padone's definition of "HD based," if I've been paying attention, is something like: "Cannot be used as a convincing naked human without HD." So, yeah, HD based.

Keiku said:

I've purposely held off on buying much beyond the initial morph pack and the Victoria bundle. But I wonder if I should have bothered to buy anything G9 related at all.

Maybe return the bundle and just keep the morph packs?.. won't be that long until Vicky is 50,60,70% off.

Keiku said:

I keep playing around with G9 and V9, and I just can't get on board.
V9 in particular is great for face renders... But that's it.
There is no advantages over G8 in my testing. If anything it's much worse: bends are just yuck, fewer surfaces to customise, not much more detail, slower load times (even with out any extra morphs etc compared to a fully weighed down G8 model). Really, they could have just released the V9 morph on G8 with an 8K normal and that would have been better. (again just with my tests so far)
What am I missing? How can I get more out of G9? Or should I just bag it and stick with G8? I mean there must be a good reason why they made G9, right?

i feel exactly the same at this point.

So in the store i'd like to see cool stuff that plays to it's strengths like jewelry, makeup, freckles, face hair, vellus hair, chokers, ruffs, collars, eye patches, food items, food debris, gloves, hats, wrinkles, scars, dirt and dare i say it... blood, sweat and tears! (literally and figuratively) basically anything you can come up with that will look great in a close up portrait of a face.

Looks kinda like this one with the Length morph applied? Maybe?https://www.daz3d.com/blair-hair-for-genesis-8-males-and-females.

I keep playing around with G9 and V9, and I just can't get on board.
V9 in particular is great for face renders... But that's it.
There is no advantages over G8 in my testing. If anything it's much worse: bends are just yuck, fewer surfaces to customise, not much more detail, slower load times (even with out any extra morphs etc compared to a fully weighed down G8 model). Really, they could have just released the V9 morph on G8 with an 8K normal and that would have been better. (again just with my tests so far)
What am I missing? How can I get more out of G9? Or should I just bag it and stick with G8? I mean there must be a good reason why they made G9, right?

Daywalker Designs said:

Padone said:

benniewoodell said:

I'm going to have to pick them up and see how well they transfer into Blender through Diffeo and wait to see how they are in Maya after the Maya Bridge is updated for G9.

Again, since G9 is HD based it is harder both to import and use in blender or any other platform. May be the toon figures don't use HD but it would be an exception. Actually G9 imports fine with diffeo for the base jcms and the HD shape via multires, while HD morphs require baking to displacement maps and a whole lot of manual work to make them functional, and displacement doesn't work in eevee.

To export to blender or other apps G3-G8 is much better than G9.

It's not HD based; it has a higher base mesh density than G8 and older did. The only things that have HD morphs that load by default are the Navel and the Mouth.

Padone's definition of "HD based," if I've been paying attention, is something like: "Cannot be used as a convincing naked human without HD." So, yeah, HD based.

Padone said:

benniewoodell said:

I'm going to have to pick them up and see how well they transfer into Blender through Diffeo and wait to see how they are in Maya after the Maya Bridge is updated for G9.

Again, since G9 is HD based it is harder both to import and use in blender or any other platform. May be the toon figures don't use HD but it would be an exception. Actually G9 imports fine with diffeo for the base jcms and the HD shape via multires, while HD morphs require baking to displacement maps and a whole lot of manual work to make them functional, and displacement doesn't work in eevee.

To export to blender or other apps G3-G8 is much better than G9.

It's not HD based; it has a higher base mesh density than G8 and older did. The only things that have HD morphs that load by default are the Navel and the Mouth.

Padone said:

Ryuu@AMcCF said:

However, when I went to test it in Object mode @ 1.0 value, the morphs were all well short of their target values. Furthermore, just simply increasing the value of the morphs aren't achieving the desireed result as the target zones are severely distorted when going >1.0.

The only reason I can think of for this kind of behavior is if you have concurrent morphs, but it means you're using multiple morphs together. If you dial-in a single morph there's no way that it can be different from what you edited, apart scaling the object that will maintain the proportions. If you dial-in multiple morphs then it will be the sum of them for the vertices they have in common. Unless you defined vertex groups with different weights.

Anyway it is really hard in my opinion to catch the issue if you can't provide a test scene.

Big whoops! 

I was about to post this morning:

I did discover that turning off all those little check marks beside all the listed shape keys muted any other morphs, and so I switched off all of them except for "Basis" and the "Neck8 Left Spinal Ridge". So there should not be any other factors other than coming from Blender, itself. After that, I started playing with that "Shape Key Edit Mode" icon and looking at the verticies' coordinates. I found that everything matched up with what I recorded in Excel, but since the morphs were created with the icon off, then Blender must have been giving me a false image the whole time I was moving the verticies arround. 

Funny thing is, when I had started writing that this morning, it really looked like the answer was just that "Shape Key Edit Mode" setting that DaremoK3 pointed out.

However, as it turns out there WAS another influence causing the problems--those "Vertex Group" fields that I had filled in were causing the weight maps for those body segments to interfere.

Before responding to you, I had made some tests, took several screen shots, and had written up a report on what my results were--but before pressing the Post Comment button, I decided to work a little more to finish making the modifications to that left spinal ridge morph to compensate for the problem and to confirm my conclusions. However, when I started working on the belly scales on his throat, the values I needed to compensate weren't making any sense at all. While T/S that one, I accidently erased the "Vertex Group" field for that morph, and magically, it fixed the bloody thing!!

Fortunately, I DO believe in making frequent backups, so my efforts weren't entirely wasted, but this discovery was both frustrating and amusing, so I'm taking a break 'til tomorrow (maybe have some "stress relief" with a little Jack Daniels tonight--so, *cheers!* ). Although, I definitely think I'm finally on the right track, for once.

¡Muchos gracias!

PS: Trippy thing I discovered about that "Shape Key Edit" icon--it somehow seems to allow multiple morphs to be engaged at once while in both Edit, and Object, modes when it's lit up. But it does seem helpful while creating my morphs, so that's a big plus!

benniewoodell said:

I'm going to have to pick them up and see how well they transfer into Blender through Diffeo and wait to see how they are in Maya after the Maya Bridge is updated for G9.

Again, since G9 is HD based it is harder both to import and use in blender or any other platform. May be the toon figures don't use HD but it would be an exception. Actually G9 imports fine with diffeo for the base jcms and the HD shape via multires, while HD morphs require baking to displacement maps and a whole lot of manual work to make them functional, and displacement doesn't work in eevee.

To export to blender or other apps G3-G8 is much better than G9.

Continued

I started making my own tools within Studio onto my figures to help me solve some of the problems I have with animating in the app. 

Suddenly, to my surprise, I'm actually getting quite proficient with my character animations. 

That's the real magic of Studio - it has tools for making tools - and there are so many of them and they're all, each so good at doing what they do, that we can pretty much make tools using imagination while the development engineers at Daz 3d magically perform the tough parts under the hood using tested and true algorithms or whatever... just awesome. Good job folks!

Many of my tools get built right into the figure, and I control them with parameter dials - like a morph. Others might load onto the character using the wonderful "Wearables" system. Sometimes it might be saving the parts of a shader that I want to be able to add to another existing shader with a click, rather that making all of those adjustments each time... but this is only scratching the surface. I'm still a total noob at Studio.

Still, for making my digital movies Carrara is So Much more flexible. In order to animate textures in Studio, I had to buy a plugin - and I see that there are more such products out there. Even with these add-ons, we're not even close to competing with how we can simple animate any aspect of textures in Carrara - even loading avi or image sequences as texture maps.

Nearly everything in Carrara has user-facing controls meant to make animation needs as simple as changing a value. 

Damn that Hair!!! ;)