Hi Casual

Great to hear from you, Sorry about the PC that's no fun at all.  I've been using your last posted script from your old site, I can sent you that if it will help

MIDIhelper I've made using Excel and VB seems to be working OK

I've made a few help Videos for MIDI helper, MIDIload and Animating a drum kit

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/67013/animating-a-drum-with-midi#latest

I've finished animating the Drums and Drumsticks movements using MIDIhelper and MIDIload and some timeline fixes

I'm now animating Victoria Generation 3  Work in progress LOL

I've got the Shoulders,Arms, Hands and Fingers Thighs, Shins and Feet working OK it's just a lot to Animate everything

I'm not using MIDIload for this bit as there are a lot of bits to move

Hope to catch up with you soon, if not have a great Christmas

Greetings,

I'm not doing G3 yet, but this is inspiring me to contemplate older Raiya stuff. ;)

Don't know what generation you're stuck on, but Leon for M5 was one of my fave male characters for that generation, and Felicity was a really good V6 character.

I have a bunch of others, but I sadly didn't use them as much.  Just not enough time to render... :(

--  Morgan

My first test render of Victoria 7:

I am returning to Daz after a looong hiatus. When I did renders before V4 was the top dog in models. Everything was simple enough. You had V3, you bought V3 clothes and items. V4, V4 clothes and items. Etc etc. Very simple and the content library was fairly simple to deal with once you got the hang of things. I dont think there was the smart content stuff back then. I think that is all new and I havent tried creating a scene yet (as I just got the program working properly today) so IDK how that works or if I will have Qs on that later on. But for now Im confused about general figures and content.

I am afraid that despite trying to research the heck out of it and viewing MANY items in the store I am not 100% clear about Genesis vs. regular models. I dont know if Genesis replaces the old models or if you need both Genesis bases/morphs AND the other models (Victoria, Michael, Freak, Stephanie, Aiko, etc etc) to make content work or what. Some items I view in the store seem basic and I think I understand them and what I require. Others are more complex and thus confusing so Im a little unclear what exactly I need to make them work. I have over 620+ items in my wishlist and I def dont want to waste money on items I dont necessarily need, you know? I have a family of 5 to feed. :P

Some examples of what I mean and what is causing my confusion:

http://www.daz3d.com/natasha-for-genesis-2-female

This model. It looks pretty straightforward. It appears all I need to make this content work is Genesis 2. It doesnt mention morphs though so IDK if I should assume I'd need full body morphs as well to make this work?

Then we get something like this: http://www.daz3d.com/valerie

Am I to assume I need BOTH of the "required" products? V6 AND Genesis 2 morphs bundle? Or do I need either/or? Either V6 base/morphs OR Gensis 2 base/morphs (again morphs are mentioned with V6 and base isnt mentioned with Genesis 2 part so a bit confusing there. Im making assumptions you need both to make a custom char like this work).

To go even more complex: http://www.daz3d.com/jepe-s-orso

This guy is showing a crapton of required products. Do I need ALL of those products to make this character work or do I need either M4/morphs OR Genesis (with M4 morphs) OR Genesis 2 with M4 Morphs? Once you get past all that should I assume that to even use M4 to genesis morphs properly I'd need the M4 base regardless?

It is a bit confusing and overwhelming for a noob and again, I dont want to waste money if I dont have to but I also want to make sure I have everything I could possibly want or need to make any and all content I fancy (custom chars, hair, clothes, etc) work. If that means I need EVERY single level of Genesis/2/3 base+full morphs AND each and every regular model base/morphs as well then I will eventually buy all. I want a well rounded library that will let me make a variety of characters that dont all look exactly the same and Im rusty. VERY rusty. And I dont know how to make my own original content/textures/whatever. I cant even pretend atm. :P

Thank you for reading (its long sorry) and for any help or advice/tips you can provide. Im very excited about getting back into Daz and want to update my content library very soon as well as get to creating some new renders. :)

I didn't check but this is from from the PoserContent description and says there are partial poses (including curtsey) for V4:

"There are even custom dynamic morphs included in the skirt and matching partial poses for Victoria 4 so your lady can sit serenely upon the included stool, or make a lovely curtsy to royalty as she begins to dance the night away."

I can animate it in another program. What I'm saying is, there was a convenient way to animate a figure in DAZ. With Victoria 7 export issue this DAZ functionality becomes useless for me. I would be happy If this issue would be fixed. 

G3/Victoria 7 is an amazing figure and the fact that we can't export it properly is a shame. I hope there will be no such problems with the future figures. 

I think congratulations have to go to Raiya for producing what I consider to be the first "real-looking" G3F character to hit the store in Cailin (http://www.daz3d.com/cailin-for-victoria-7). Now thats what I call a tempting character model.

Victoria 4 uses magnets (DForms) to help with posing, you don't want to delete those or the figure will not work correctly. I thought the spawn would ignore hidden nodes, which the posing DForms should be.

Oh good to know. I didn't delete them, I clicked 'No' when it asked me if I wanted to delete them, and it Spawned a Morph. It seems like it works fine.I just wanted to make sure I didn't do something wrong, since they didn't state in either tut I saw that a dialog box would come up about the d-forms.

 Nice render.

I'm also using myself as my main reference, Its rather fun. For instance, while my hand has much deeper microdetails than my shoulder , my shoulder has much smaller details, thus while my hand has much deeper "bump" my shoulder has a higher "roughness".

But you can only do such thing if you're single, your girlfriend/wife is out for "Ladies Night" or herself a DAZaddict.

Speaking about "roughness"... in contrary to someone's suggestion I still did some research on how to convert a PBR M/R "Glossy Roughness" parameter value over to PBR S/G "Glossiness". (You'll all hate me, again, 'cause it will include some math... again. ).

On PBR M/R, the "Glossy Roughness" value is "secretly" squared (behind our backs. The "Roughness Squared" brick at the Shader Mixer does that). That means, that a value of 0.50 for Glossy Roughness is actually only a 0.25. Not that rough. But if you like how it looks, and want to use the Specular/Glossiness Mix instead of the Metallicity/Roughness, you just have to subtract the squared value from 1, and you'll get the apropriate value for "Glossiness". [1 - 0.25 = 0.75] As a formula:

Glossiness = 1 - square(Glossy Roughness).

Now, if you have found a real-world measured value for roughness (some BRDF measurements include one, mostly named "m"), which you want to use for your PBR M/R "Glossy Roughness", you can't simply type it in. ' Cause it will be squared, remember? You have to calculate it's square root first, and then type that value in. The "Roughness Squared" brick of the Metallicity/Roughness Mix will then convert it back to the correct value.

F.e.: you want to use a Glossy Roughness of 0.30. The square root for that is 0.5477225575051661. Type that into the Glossy Roughness parameter, and it will be converted back to 0.30 by the shader.

Glossy Roughness = square root(m)

If you want to use it on your Specular/Glossiness Mix, you simply subtract the value for "m" you got from 1. [Glossiness = 1 - m]

I Did some test renders (using the DS 4.9 RC) to prove my theory; the Victoria 6 on the left is at PBR M/R, the one at the right at PBR S/G. On the first a value of 0.5477225575051661 (square root of 0.30) is used for Glossy Roughness, and a plain 0.70 for Glossiness. On the second render, Glossy Roughness is at 0.7071067811865475 (square root of 0.50), and Glossiness is set at 0.50. Just the material surface of the face (Template 1).

Slight differences rely on the fact that both mixes use a different method to determine specular reflection.

The thing about good shaders is the ability to really breath life into old stuff.

I was impressed by what I was able to do with V4.2 with good shaders in Iray.

This, for example, didn't even take a huge amount of time to do: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Victoria-4-Iray-555463203

again i am surprised how much more character this V4 models have

ok she was my first love, so....

Credits should be on the page for products listed at Daz will email about that to get it updated.

The outfit & textures are:

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/hot-schoolgirl-for-genesis-3-female-s-/111727/

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/detention-for-hot-schoolgirl/111747/

and the hair is

http://www.daz3d.com/sunny-s-tails-for-genesis-3-female-s-genesis-2-female-s-and-victoria-4

I'm interested in buying the set made for Victoria 6, but am looking for shine/gloss adjustments. Does the iRay Essentials for V6/G2 have any gloss adjustments and are there any samples that of them that I can look at? I am also wondering if the G3 Version could be used on G2 if I control-right click?

Sorry, I didn't include presets to adjust the glossiness of the skin but it is something that can be very easily adjusted for.

I'm interested in buying the set made for Victoria 6, but am looking for shine/gloss adjustments. Does the iRay Essentials for V6/G2 have any gloss adjustments and are there any samples that of them that I can look at? I am also wondering if the G3 Version could be used on G2 if I control-right click?

I tried putting it there and I still have the same issue. Doesnt make sense. The Victoria 4 version has no issues. And it's in the same directory (Users\dthoward64) as the M4 version. Why should one work and the other doesnt?

One problem comes in when there are bright highlights from the lighting, or shadows that are way to strong.  Ideally, the diffuse map should have very little lighting information baked in to it since we want the effects of lighting to come from our scene and not the texture. 

That's very unfortunal true. I remember throwing a darker and darker getting grey on the roughness map I made for the Victoria 6 "Belle" face texture for the eyelid and gap between upper lip and nose areas to tune down the highlights there. The texture itself comes with a very bright highlight already baked in. Now I know how computer keyboards taste...

Ideally, an Albedo Texture shall not include any baked-in lighting and ambient occlusion information. If you take a closer look on the diffuse maps for the new iconic figures of DAZ''s 7th Generation, most of their maps did at first include baked in lighting, too, which then has been supressed by the artist who set them up.

For Photoshop, there's a recommended Color Setting for creating/working on Texture Maps for a PBR environment.

Interesting... so should one save using that color profile?

One problem comes in when there are bright highlights from the lighting, or shadows that are way to strong.  Ideally, the diffuse map should have very little lighting information baked in to it since we want the effects of lighting to come from our scene and not the texture. 

That's very unfortunal true. I remember throwing a darker and darker getting grey on the roughness map I made for the Victoria 6 "Belle" face texture for the eyelid and gap between upper lip and nose areas to tune down the highlights there. The texture itself comes with a very bright highlight already baked in. Now I know how computer keyboards taste...

Ideally, an Albedo Texture shall not include any baked-in lighting and ambient occlusion information. If you take a closer look on the diffuse maps for the new iconic figures of DAZ''s 7th Generation, most of their maps did at first include baked in lighting, too, which then has been supressed by the artist who set them up.

For Photoshop, there's a recommended Color Setting for creating/working on Texture Maps for a PBR environment.

The thing about good shaders is the ability to really breath life into old stuff.

I was impressed by what I was able to do with V4.2 with good shaders in Iray.

This, for example, didn't even take a huge amount of time to do: http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Victoria-4-Iray-555463203

Trying the togruta morph. I don't like using Victoria 4, too much work converting to Iray. It's a pity most of the cool mods are made for her.

Is there an ugly sweater for Victoria?