20 - Preliminary Thoughts for Adapting Genesis 1 Workflow to Genesis 9

General There is good reason to believe that the same basic steps will work for genesis 9.  I intend to create three Avatars for my version of MD.  The Base G9, the G9F, and the G9M.  For gendered clothing I will model the garment using MD or a more general modeling program to G9F or G9M as appropriate.  I will then use reverse deformation in the rigging stage of Daz Studio transfer utility.  For items that are unigender, I can create morphs for the clothing item that fit each avatar and then import those as substitutions for the default morph created by the transfer utility.

UVMapping - I have not discussed that above.  MD can have decent UVMaps derived from the 2D panels, but that may depend on whether the mesh needs to have retopology.

Retopology - the default of my old version of MD uses triangles.  It can change to quads but the results around edges and seams are not good.  May be better off brushing up on retopology in other programs - and if so, then also brushing up on UVMapping in other programs.

18 - Basic Test for Conforming and Morphing

Can test to see if the transfer utility worked. 

Does the skirt morph if the Basic Female is dialed to 0?  Yes.

Does the skirt morph if an unrelated morph is used like Victoria 5?  Yes.

Does the skirt conform if the legs are posed?  Yes.

17 - Edit Skirt Object Using Transfer Utility

Select the skirt

Use edit object to bring up the transfer utility.

NOTE - cannot use defaults because have fitted the skirt to the Basic Female morph.  So see settings in screengrab.  

16 - Start a new Daz Studio Scene with Genesis 1 in Basic Female morph set to 1.  Import the Skirt OBJ

Will be using the transfer utility.

In the import options, make sure to use Daz Studio scale to match the MD export setting.

The skirt should load fitting the Basic Female shape of Genesis 1.

Hi, Uthgard.  I'm sorry, but it isn't obvious to me.  Can you explain what you mean by splitting morphs that are loaded into a figure, and how I would transfer the Dweller to G8F?  I'm not understanding what you said.  Can you give a bit more detail?  Thanks for your time and help!

Practice Workflow for Upcoming Genesis 9

Return to Genesis 1

Genesis 9 and Genesis 1 each uses the same base for both the female and the male figures.  This is different from Gensis 2-8 which had separate figures for male and female.  In anticipation of release of Genesis 9, I am revisiting the original unimesh genesis 1.  I have an old copy of Marveous Designer before they went subscription so I don't have all the tools, but I can use it to make a quick loose skirt for the Genesis 1 Basic Female shape morph.  Will then use reverse deformation in the transfer utility when rigging the for Daz.

I am loosely following the very generous Jay Versluis and John Holden (Fugazzi) who held a webinar shortly after the announcement of G9 release.  I will provide a link to their video with an edit.  But for my own memory aid, I will be posting a series of screenshots on a Marvelous Designer to Daz Studio unimesh workflow.  So here we go.

"HD" is just a label. Sure it defines the morphs above base resolution, but I don't see other software calling it that. It is just a subdivided mesh. It is nothing special in other software because those software tend to allow everyone to be able to sculpt at high subdivision.

Here are some numbers for poly counts. I removed all the eye and mouth geometries and imported this back into Daz.

That left the skin mesh with 13,510 polygons.

If you subdivide this you get to 54,125 polygons. This would be a HD level 1 morph. Jumping to subD 2 takes it to 216,331. And at subD 3 it jumps to 864,640. SubD 4 jumps to 3,459,247. Again these numbers are with the eyes and mouth removed. You can see the trend, since most of the mesh is made of quads, subdividing basically quadruples the numbers.

So Genesis 9 is roughly doubling the base mesh of G8. If they are exactly doubling the skin poly count, that only gets you to 27,010 polygons on the skin. That is still far fewer than what HD offers on Genesis 8. Most PAs are designing their HD meshes far beyond HD1. Many are doing this at level 3 or 4. So while the base mesh may double polygons, I don't see how regular users are going to be able to really get much more detail than they did before. Daz might be throwing non PA creators a bone, but it is a small chicken wing, and a baby one at that, nothing meaty. Daz Studio just doesn't get it.

Here are the numbers on a full Genesis 8.

Base 18,176

SubD1     67,426

SubD2    264,134

SubD3    1,050,382

SubD4   4,194,616

Thus if we assume Genesis 9 has 27,010 polygons, jumping to SubD 1 is going to push it past 100,000 polygons. At SubD 2 it will be hitting 400,000-500,000+. At SubD3 it should be well above 1,200,000+.

These are pure guesses, and they are going off Jay's words that the base has about twice the number of polygons. We know the eyes and mouth are now separated, so we they do not get subdivided with the rest. That is a cool idea. But the numbers still add up fast. It will be interesting to see if people use lower subdivision levels on G9 versus what they did on G8. Since each subdivision in G9 appears to fall halfway between each G8 SubD.

So on one hand it is great that the base mesh is getting a boost, but denying users access to create their own mesh in "HD" is still very much a problem. Doubling the base mesh does not solve that in the least, and it might actually backfire.

Maybe all the geometry that got removed from breasts went to face, LOL. I suppose that is a possibility, as it does look like the chest has far fewer polygons. That had to somewhere.

We also have no info on gen props. Neither preorder mentions it, not even the bundle. What is the deal? Is Daz really prepared for this? Why is there so much secrecy? Why are PAs still finalizing products just a couple weeks before launch??? What if one of them falls ill and is unable to provide their product? This just seems weird.

It is fine that Daz announced G9 ahead of time. It lets people plan for it. That is quite a novel approach for Daz. But what good does the announcement do when nothing else gets revealed? There s not a single product aside from the bonus items mentioned. Video games might do preorders all the time, but they reveal what those preorders contain months in advance. How can you ask customers to preorder a bundle without any idea of what that bundle contains?

Pendraia said:

I think they're worried that the base level on Genesis 9 will be hd in which case it might not be possible to do your own morphs. I think this might be a bit of a leap and very much depends on whether the lowest level of the slider will allow you to create standard morphs that aren't hd. 

Another option they're missing is it could mean that when the slider goes up on your own morph the hd gets applied. Until Genesis 9 is released this is all just speculation unless someone who already has the figure posts.

Seems to me like there's a problem of definitions. Only PAs can create HD morphs, but in that context "HD" just means at a higher level of subdivision than the base mesh. For G9, the base mesh has higher resolution than G8, which means that base resolution for G9 is equivalent to a subdivided G8, not that G9 "is" HD in Daz terms.

Professor Santiago said:

Hi Windamyre,

First of all, thank you so much for getting something like this up and running, it has been a real help to getting things working for me. However, I've run into a crash recently and am wondering if you can help at all deciphering what the cause might be, or point me in the right direction.
When I try to load a G8.1 Female model it just crashes after what appears to be it trying to load. A G8.1 Male has no issues, same thing with G8 as well.

I have removed and re-added the Custom Actions in case something had broken there.

Other actions that I have setup work, Emissive Shaders, Iray Uber Base, Mirror Posing, Riversoft's Look At Camera II all work, its just the G8/8.1 F which does make me think its just the amount of morphs installed.

The only other thing I can consider, is its my network and the fact my data folder is on a NAS, but given other actions work, I am leaning towards just the amount of morphs I have for the females.
Any chance you could take a look and see if a) my thought process is correct, and if so is there a fix for it somehow?

TL;DR: Because I ramble.  Yes.  It seems like anything that takes more than about 1.5 minutes crashes Daz Studio.  I'll work on a possible fix, but part of the issue is with the Daz Studio plug-in which I didn't write.  Details (and rambling) are below.

Hey there!  First off, I'm glad it's (mostly) working for you and thanks for using it.  I've always wondered if anyone else found it useful.  As for the error, I've been looking through the log to try and backtrack what it dumps out.  I've got a couple of questions, just to make sure I know what's going on, but you might be barking up the right tree.  I'll explain in a second.

1. What's crashing?  Daz Studio or the Plug-in/Elgato driver?  I'm guessing Studio
2. Did you set it up by right-clicking on Genesis 8.1 Female and using Create Custom Action... and then assigning that as a Custom action?  I'm guessing Yes.

I was distracted at first by a couple of really log error messages, one starting on line 16.  The word "Fatal" is what caught my eye, but I think that was a red herring because it kept running.  Still it means I should probably dust off the code and get back to work on it.

What I think is the problem is on the last two lines of the log you sent:

2022-09-28 16:54:20.2500|INFO|CustomShortcut|156|Cannot communicate with Daz Studio or plug-in
2022-09-28 16:54:20.2505|DEBUG|CustomShortcut|156|The request was aborted: The operation has timed out.

I found that I had a similar problem when I tried to use a Render shortcut (I'm too lazy to use Ctrl-R or just click the Render button).  It would render fine, but as soon as it was done, Daz Studio crashed.  When it does this, I get the same lines at the end.  I knew about this, but work had just picked up and I adapted, and to be honest: forgot.  I'm sorry about that.  I should have at least posted some feedback on the GitHub site.

Here's what I think is happening, and you were on the right track:  When you press the button, the StreamDeck is sending a message to Daz Studio, or actually the totally awesome plugin that Stephen wrote telling it what Action to perform.  That plugin takes the Action and executes it inside Daz Studio.  When that Action is done it sends back a reply to the plug-in.

Here's the problem: if the Action takes too long to complete (like a render or the torturously long morph loading process) the communication line between the StreamDeck and Daz closes out. On my set-up this happens after about 100 seconds.  When the Daz Studio plug-in tries to reply, it runs into a bunch of errors and crashes out.  Here's the last few lines of each of my logs:

----Streamdeck----

2022-09-28 19:11:53.8383|INFO|CustomShortcut|57|Key Pressed
2022-09-28 19:13:33.8556|INFO|CustomShortcut|57|Cannot communicate with Daz Studio or plug-in
2022-09-28 19:13:33.8556|DEBUG|CustomShortcut|57|The operation has timed out

----Daz Studio----
2022-09-28 19:14:32.754 [WARNING] :: QHttpResponse::setHeader() Cannot set headers after response has finished. 
2022-09-28 19:14:32.755 [WARNING] :: QHttpResponse::setHeader() Cannot set headers after response has finished. 
2022-09-28 19:14:32.755 [WARNING] :: QHttpResponse::writeHead() Cannot write headers after response has finished. 
2022-09-28 19:14:32.755 [WARNING] :: QHttpResponse::end() Cannot write end after response has finished. 

So at 13:33 the StreamDeck stops listening.  At 14:32 Daz tries to reply and can't.  The plug-in crashes and takes Daz Studio with it.

So, Solutions:

1. Don't use the StreamDeck plugin for anything that takes longer than about 1.5 minutes.
2. That's about it.

Stephen did the Daz side, in no small part because I suck at C++ and couldn't code my way out of a wet paper Hello World! application.  I don't know if there's anything I can do on his side.  I'm going to try and see if I can tighten up some of the code on my end.  Maybe I can extended the disconnect timer if I can find where that's hidden away.  That way even if it takes 2 or 3 minutes, the StreamDeck would still be on the line for the reply.

Besides, I need to clean up some things and work out a better organization system.  Just a heads up:  If I do get a fix worked out, you'll probably have to reset the keys.  I don't know if I can work out an 'upgrade' from one version to the next.

Please let me know if any of that made sense or was helpful.

Thanks again for using it!

The "Issue" is that (it appears) the base mesh does not have the geometry to create nipples or a navel, this will necessitate either HD morphs (which would make creating or modifying these elements impossible unless you are a PA) or geographs (which would be bad for various technical reasons).

3rd party sources can make the geograph elements if Daz make it HD morph only, but this is not a good option.

HD Morphs should not be needed if the underlying geometry is set up correctly, HD Morphs also add unnecessary bloat to computation and increase render times.

It is a better option just to have the right geometry in the base mesh.

I ticked the "Show Hidden Properties" option in the Active Pane Options menu while being in the shaping pane but still couldn't find the morphs. Am I looking in the right place? Not sure what HBM stands for, FBM is Full Head Morph right?

I installed the character through the DIM and did try to find the morph while having a base G 8.1 selected in the scene, so I'm not sure what went wrong.

3D Art Freebie Challenge September 2022 "Cars, Cars and more Cars!"

"Go man, go! Ride!"

[Best watched at full size for details.]

Starring: Claire, Barack and Walther

The tale: (Entirely fictional)

The fast and the curious... It's the end of summer, Walther and his best 2 friends (fast and expensive cars are their passion and life) have been racing their Muscle Car all summer long on this little-visited country road in the countryside. But now the fun seemed over...

Non-Motion Picture Soundtrack:

Pat Travers - Hot Rod Lincoln (© 1976)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM0weRWS6EA

COUNTABLE FREEBIES: (Alphabetic order)

#01! 33 Eyes Materials for the Genesis 8 + 8.1 people by LevKornowska
https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/88372/33-eyes-materials-for-the-genesis-8-81-people  **

#02! Barack for G3M by dumbuser
https://www.sharecg.com/v/88699/gallery/21/DAZ-Studio/Barack-for-G3M  **

#03! Benzo Convertible by elele
https://www.renderosity.com/freestuff/items/66656/benzo-convertible  **

#04! Cao Ren for G8M and G8.1M by Shinteo
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cao-ren-for-g8m-60640842
[Beard used]

#05! Claire for G8F and G8.1F by Shinteo
https://www.patreon.com/posts/claire-for-g8f-67510833

#06! Claire Bad Cop outfit for Daz by Shinteo
https://www.patreon.com/posts/claire-bad-cop-67765735

#07! Claire Classic for G8F and G8.1F by Shinteo
https://www.patreon.com/posts/claire-classic-67544693
[Needed for Bad Cop outfit]

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[Face morph used]

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[It's in the Muscle Car]

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#13! Ford Mustang Police USA (.obj) by DMI
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#16! Kratos for G8M and G8.1M by Shinteo
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[Eyebrows used]

#17! Mealie Road HDRI by Greg Zaal
https://polyhaven.com/a/mealie_road

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#19! Muscle Car by Anders Lejczak
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$x.     Purchased/Paid For Item

Rendered with DAZ Studio 4.10.0.123 (nVidia Iray)

Other free software used: GIMP v2.10.32 and Irfanview 4.60

Postwork: used the AltaLux Image Enhancement Filter (Effect) by Stefano Tommesani that comes with Irfanview and some filters (oa) that come with GIMP. Also used mcjDenoise (https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts9/mcjdenoise) and mcjLut by mcasual (https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts9/mcjlut) with the free FilterGrade Cinematic LUTs Pack (https://filtergrade.com/free-cinematic-luts-video-editing/).

"Go man, go! Ride!"

Sorry if this is obvious, but this script only splits morphs that are loaded in the figure, so you'll need some way to transfer The Dweller to G8F before doing anything with it. Still, if the only thing you want is long fingers, you can select the bones of the fingers in the scene tab, go to the parameters tab, and play around with the scale parameters to see if you can manage something to your liking.

Leana said:

Masterstroke said:

Leana said:

Cybersox said:

Here's the thing... if the capability to produce the HD morphs continues to be restricted just to DAZ PAs as it has in the past, won't that make it hard or impossible for any non-DAZ PA to produce characters for G9, making them a product that can only be sold by and through DAZ?   If that's true, and I emphasize that I'm just guessing though it seems like a pretty logical extrapolation, then I suspect that this probably going to go about as well as the dumpsterfire that occured when DAZ essentially kicked V4 to the corner and went full bore on the first Genesis, ie: with a huge portion of current DAZ's buyers moving to the other stores that will continue to support the G8s since that's all they'll be able to do... assuming that they don't just switch to Metahuman or some other new base.    ;/

I don't see any reason non-PAs coudn't create non-HD characters for G9, just like they do for G8.

Non PAs don't have the tools to make subdivided HD morphs for figures.  

And they already didn't have them for earlier figures. I don't see what in G9 prevents them from creating characters the way they did it before.

I think they're worried that the base level on Genesis 9 will be hd in which case it might not be possible to do your own morphs. I think this might be a bit of a leap and very much depends on whether the lowest level of the slider will allow you to create standard morphs that aren't hd. 

Another option they're missing is it could mean that when the slider goes up on your own morph the hd gets applied. Until Genesis 9 is released this is all just speculation unless someone who already has the figure posts.

As a user I would be really disappointed if you can't create morphs as it's a huge part of my process and would mean that even though it's the unisex figure which I've wanted it would be a no go for me. 

That said I'm happy to wait and play with the figure in a few weeks and leave any buying until that has happened.

I had to look up a picture of his coat, as I was looking for something more along the lines of something Spike would wear. I did find this: https://www.daz3d.com/hc-trench-coat-outfit-for-genesis-8-males which you would need to use leather shaders on, but it has a length morph and is not dForce, but it is not exact as to the pockets. It also comes with some pants that look like the ones Angel wears also. 

Sevrin said:

Well yeah.  Regular security updates for Windows 7 ended over a year and a half ago.  There's no reason to support insecure operating systems.  OTOH, it does support Android 6!

I've made my Win7 machine totally secure - or at least as secure as is reasonably possible. It's slightly irritating not having an internet connection on the machine, but it pays back handsomely by not having the distraction of said internet connection... And I've not seen much evidence of viruses that can infect Android and then be transferred to Windows when doing file transfer from safe sources, and operate in Windows too.

..was making no comparison as that was the way I saw it as well with each "named" figure jsut a shape/morph set for the base Genesis X.

I simply was making a general observation about V4.

As I see it, there has to be a slider, because it is a morph.

I don't have her, but have you tried to search for it, and if still no luck, it might be hidden although that doesn't make sense.

Mr Bowen said:

Yeah...and I have yet to find those textures. I do see them in the installed folder. Just not in Daz.

About the anatomical elements materials/textures:

-Norbert character comes with 2 material options, selectable in your library

-Gladys comes with 1 material option INCLUDED in the "Gladys All Maps" material option in your library, plus a special morph (you need to select the anatomical element)

In both cases you need to own the anatomical element models for Genesis 8 first.

jxwone said:

I'm considering creating a virtual influencer using daz3d. So basically; purchase a character morph from the store > make some minor facial edits > custom clothes > final virtual avatar.
I'm concerned about the fees/licenses I need to pay for or if it's okay/legal to do it this way. Is the interactive license enough? Will I need to pay any other additional fees?
I would really like to hear from the community regarding this!

Interactive licence is needed when one makes a 3D game and uses the DAZ store bought 3D models in that game - That is the only purpose and use of Interactive Licence.