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Yeah, I suspected that when seeing the expression packs for Girl 6. So from a comic perspective it's going to be Gen 2.
That little girl is so cute! :)
For female characters I prefer G2F now, for male character I am pretty sure I will prefer G2M (once out). If I need some 'beastie' I am using Genesis 1 at the moment, though this might even change as well partially as soon as GenX gets updated. I simply prefer G2F over Genesis 1 due to better bending and way better expressions. Also the morphs I am seeing for G2F so far are all fine tuned for the female shape, which is really a boon.
Kyoto Kid, nice render. I apologize for my ignorance, as I may be missing something obvious, but why couldn't you do this with the original Genesis?
Very cute, nice work :)
Kyoto Kid, nice render. I apologize for my ignorance, as I may be missing something obvious, but why couldn't you do this with the original Genesis?
...OK Crisis averted, after some poking around on my system,finally found the full backup of the complete post.
Well I could, and did my best but it it always felt like I was falling short of what I intended to achieve.
The Genesis Evolution morphs were primarily adult based. As with Vicky4, breast reduction was difficult past a certain stage on the full female shape as the mesh would distort and collapse (similar to what I experienced years ago with V4) which also affected the look of clothing fits. True, there was the basic child shape but nothing really "in between" that and full adult. To bridge that gap required GenerationX (a fairly expensive plugin as it also required it's own add ons to transfer morphs from different characters) so I could load the gen4 components I had used with V4 (such as Thorne/Sarsa's Tommi, JW's Tindra Thompson, and the Steph4 NPMs) into Genesis. That got the body shape pretty well though it was still difficult to get the narrower hips for a preteen physique without her looking emaciated. I ended up getting Satsuki specifically for the more lithe physique and separate hip morphs that allowed me to dial down the lower portion of the hip bone a bit more (of course not using hte head morphsas the charate was Asian and that didn't fit most of the characters I was working on).
As I do not have the mindset to script my own custom morphs, I have to rely on what is commercially available and try to push the envelope with that.
When Thorne/Sarsa released YT5 in December, Finally, I had the proper basic shape and morphs I needed to get the correct physique. The one thing missing yet, the facial morphs I needed. Even with a lot of painstaking adjustments my characters still ended looking like variations on Julie rather then the characters I envisioned, even with several merchant resource morph kits. As a matter of fact I would joke about how many times my Leela ended up in promos (Julie with Paxton hair red in colour). YT5 was still a much needed product as there have been no teen/preteen shapes since Gen3 (Luke and Laura).
In the end to get close to what I wanted, took a hefty investment in both resources and time as well as a Genesis that took three times as long to load and taxed my system (only had 2GB available in 32 bit) during rendering because of the "weight" all the extra morph channels GenX added.
OK now on to G2F Out of the box by itself doing a preteen character just wasn't a possibility and I was at first rather disappointed as who knew hen a G2F child/teen shape was going to be released (YT5 was released more than a year and a half after Genesis). However along came Zev0's Growing Up morphs and suddenly that all changed. Below is the first pic I did using G2F, Growing Up and the Head Morph Resource Kit 1 for G2F. (I didn't yet have the G2F body/head morphs). Needless to say I was pretty amazed at the results. One of the major drawbacks of Gen4 and even Genesis was the pelvic tilt which led to the "swayback" posture of Daz females, which may be nice for fashion shots and fantasy scenes but not normal in real life. Growing up solved this with a pelvic tilt morph which was linked to the different growth stage shapes and could be manually adjusted as well. Where the real beauty of this comes in in that one can make further adjustments to any of the "age" shapes as was fit for the character being created and didn't have to stick with the default shape.
Afterwards I picked up the G2F Morphs bundle, V4 to G2F Clone (thanks to a sale) and most recently, the Head Morph Resource Kit 2. A much smaller overall investment than I had in Genesis to do the same thing. In a sense, more efficient.
Since GenerationX has not been updated yet (most likely waiting for the release of G2M) no morphs from Gen4/Genesis characters were carried over. I also do not have the Sisters head shapes nor any of the Gen6 female characters so the only shapes/morphs I had available were from the G2F head/body morphs and growth stage shapes from Growing Up.
The best part of this, my characters look much closer, if not spot on, to the way I intended them to, they each have a distinct identity rather than looking like "variations" on another character theme. That is what I was unable to achieve with Genesis and all the plugins/content I purchased to make this work. Also G2F is a lot "leaner" than the Genesis figure I used for my teen/preteen characters which was loaded down with morphs transferred through GenerationX.
I have been working at trying to perfect a teen/preteen character ever since I started in this five an a half years ago. My intent was to create illustrations that would help to tell the story of a musically gifted young girl who lost everything, her family, home and even country to war. I no longer an draw or paint because of crippling arthritis, so when I was turned on to Daz Studio by a community member on an RPG forum I found a new way to visualise my ideas and return to visual storytelling.
At first all I had to work with was Vicky4 and Teen Ashley. Immediately I discovered it would be slow going because I needed some way to create a more petite lithe figure out of what was basically a fairly tall buxom fashion model. It took months of trial and error, purchasing character sets (like those by Thorne/Sarsa) with more lithe physiques. I was a major contributor to the Lil' Vicky thread where the challenge was to create a 7 - 8 year old child (K4 was still a couple years away). Again having no skill at creating my own morphs I had to rely on what I could find in the store or freebie sites. After nearly 6 weeks of experimentation I finally came up with the results in the second picture below. This is using just V4 with a special flat chest morph (freebie) and Thorne's Tommi character. A good part of the time was spent scaling each of the individual body zones and limbs separately so she was not just a V4 "Mini Me".
The real bother was getting clothing fits (particularly shirts and blouses which were rigged for Vicky's breasts) as we didn't have Autofit back then and what we did as not supported by any of the conversion utilities available since the shapes did not exist commercially.
Before the release of 4.0 and Genesis, we finally got Steph4 which helped solve several of the issues faced creating a more petite character necessary for a pre/young teen. However again clothing was an issue as a fair amount of what was available for V4 was not appropriate for an 11 - 14 year old. Without a Luke/Laura4, clothing for that age group just didn't exist without again relying on a conversion utility that frequently required a lot of manual adjustment afterwards thus impacting workflow.
Don't get me wrong, Genesis was a definite improvement, but only after GenX came along so I could transfer what worked in Gen4 for me to the new figure. Finally clothing fits were no where near the issue the were with Gen4 (save for long skirts or anything that had a long sash) as I could even use male clothing now without relying on a third party utility.
As I mentioned above this got me closer, but still not quite where I wanted to be (and as with Gen4 still requiring a fairly large outlay for content and utilities to achieve).
In the scene I posted a few responses ago, the girls really look like 11- 12 year-olds, not taller versions of K4 or smaller versions of Vicky. A lot of this has to do with the Growing Up morphs as the base as these also affect default head - body size relationship and head/face shape as well.
Had a more "generic" morph/shape set like this rather than one that was "character themed" (YT5 Julie/Justin) been available for Genesis, I probably would have been been able to achieve what I wanted. It would have also saved me quite a few Zlotys had it been released as early on as Growing Up was with G2F. I understand there is a Gen6 teen character in the wings (Josie - not sure by which vendor), however, I have little interest in adding her to my library as I feel I have the tools I need. Maybe some of the clothing, hair content, and pose sets will interest me, but I can get those on their own.
Kyoto Kid, thank you that was a very detailed reply and actually very illuminating. I went ahead and purchased GenX already and have been using it with fair success so far (it seems to squeeze my Genesis down in the torso too much, more than the original V4 shape I'm trying to emulate) but otherwise is fairly close. Not an exact match, but that makes sense considering it's working off the V4/M4 shapes for Genesis, and those aren't an exact match to the actual V4/M4 shapes.
I don't often (hardly ever) render kids, so I'm of course not running into the same problems you have faced. I just don't care for most of the morph shape sets that have been released for Genesis (well the male ones seem ok, but the female ones don't appeal to me) so it's important to me that I be able to preserve the face shapes of the V4 sets I've acquired from skilled vendors like Freja, Sabby, and Silver (to give some examples).
Since there isn't a GenX for Genesis2 yet, and especially as the way she looks by default and the face shapes I've seen for her so far are... unattractive IMO to a degree that I bet all her girlfriends have to loyally protest 'but she has a great personality!' I know I'm not jumping to Genesis 2 yet, since I know I won't be using her. However once there is a new GenX that allows transfers of shapes to Genesis2, I think it will be a valid consideration and I'll probably move more to Genesis2 at that point, because it does sound like she's got some pluses.
As I understand it though, she can't wear anyone else's shoes but her own?
I'm finding that's true with Genesis too, at least so far. I seem to be able to use all or most of my V4/M4 clothing and hair with nor real problems, but I'm having to buy new footwear for Genesis left and right. I've been picking up a few outfits in the PA sale not so much to get more clothing, but because of the footwear involved :)
I have to congratulate you on your little girl shape you've developed there, Kyoto Kid, it's very realistic. Congrats on achieving a very good look and some very good renders.
I also was happy to pick up a lot of Zevo's stuff, although I didn't get 'growing up' as it's for Genesis 2, but there was some other great morphs I wanted to add to my Genesis.
I also have loaded my Genesis up with tons of morphs I don't really need (I was just going through my V4/M4 library and adding each shape as a separate morph for head, body, and sometimes a body with no nipples) because I didn't realize it would slow the load time of my Genesis :) Means I'm going to have to remove quite a few of the morphs I just added. I assume that's as simple as going to the data folder and just deleting them though (someone please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, here's a method of using the transfer utility to get your morphs to Gen 2, and it works really well, in my experience.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/24093/P30/#356991
As far as characters for Gen 2 I found that using that method I was able to reproduce most of my normal female characters with amazing accuracy, possibly even more like the V4 versions, which IMO are slightly better than the Gen 1 versions. I think V4 and Gen 2 might have a slightly better mesh than Gen 1, so morphing custom characters just seems to work better. I don't know how to describe it other than Gen 2 just moves in a better way for the female face than Gen 1. I've always thought V4 had subtle differences that were better than Gen 1, but I didn't want to give up the usability that Gen 1 brought. Now I have the best of both with Gen 2. Oh, and to use V4 textures just get Mallenlane's great V4 clone for Gen 2, and V4 clothes actually autofit better than on Gen 1.
It's true that Gen 2 doesn't have as many characters as Gen 1 has yet, but transferring morphs helps a lot, and there are already a wide variety of morph's from Thorne and Zev. Gen 2 DOESN'T replace Gen 1 in your runtime, it works side by side with it. It's another tool in your arsenal, and well worth the investment, IMO, especially since it's the future.
..as to shoes I've had little if any trouble with Genesis footwear fitting G2F.
Since I have the G2F V4 Clone, I have been able to successfully fit V4 shoes to G2F as well.
Here's one of Leela's daughter Annika wearing the Teen Ashley sneakers and socks (V4) and Sadie Summer Dress (Genesis).
...the two things that stopped me trying this was:
1. the statement about deformations when posing.
2. having to manually amend the database (not really all that good at messing around with things like that).
Also a while back somehow when I saved a single asset my default Genesis always loaded in as Teen Julie, even though it was only one morph asset I saved. Took me quite a while (and a lot of hair pulling) to track down which one it as and delete it to restore the base figure. Don't care to go through that again.
Just not good at the "nuts & bolts" of this stuff.
Cool render. I love the Tardis in the background!
..thanks, for a while it was showing up everywhere on me.
Title of that pic is "Momma, Is that one of Grandmama's toys?"
I haven't experienced those problems, so I guess I never noticed. I never had to adjust any database. I don't expect a rigged solution to work perfectly. Heck half the time, solutions you buy don't even work correctly, but I guess I take things for what they are worth. If something doesn't work, I'll find a different way to get it done, or change the direction I'm going.
I know people complain about autofit a lot, and it definitely has weak points, But to me it's better to have it than not. That's the way I look at morphs and characters. If I have to make adjustments, I'll do that. That also goes for using Poser content in Daz. Sometime the materials get wacky, and you have to adjust them.
Also: Great title. It's all coming together now!
...yeah I think the better way to go is more "generic" morph sets and shapes rather than "stylised" characters. The Morph Reosurce Development Kits and Shape Kits (Like Zev0's Shape Shift) and Growing Up are extremely helpful for developing unique characters.
I currently have Zev0's Skin Overlay Bundle on my wishlist hoping I can scrape up the funds for the Ketchup sale to get it.
Seems as of late, this type of content is more important to me over new characters as technically I am a developer, just not one who is a content creator.
I was actually thinking something similiar today, although I much PREFER stylized morphs. With Genesis' ability to merge all of the shapes an more generic Lycanthrope/Antromorph would be useful as the ones made are incredible but there is so much detail that it's hard to mix them together to get a more fine tuned look. SO SAY, a "blah" antromorph and a "blah" skullcrusher ogre would get the basic shape and then create your character with head shapes etc.
I've been that way for the last 6 months or so.
I always go look at any new characters that come out but the first thing I look at is the skin mats. If that is something that it looks like I'll use then I'll definitely flag the character.
Then I look at the actual character morphs. If it looks like there's a wide variety that will add something to the ones I have then maybe I'll bite. Most of the time I end up passing on new characters.
However, things like Growing Up or the new Skin Overlay bundle are pretty much instant buys since I can use bits and pieces of them across just about any character.
I actually use both to make my characters. I'll start with a 'base' character dialed down, and add in other face or body shapes. Then when I have something close to what I want, I further morph it with Zev and Thorne's awesome morph kits. My current trend is to start with FWart's Naida character. I can't wait for Gypsyangel's new stuff to come out, too.
I don't try to use stuff beyond what it was intended, though, because it's probably asking for trouble. That's why I'm happy to use Gen 1 for my creatures and males. Heck, I didn't even own M4 until the bonus freebie bundles with these sales.
....this kind of stuff confuses the daylights out of me, but sounds like it's necessary if you want things to work right.
I actually use both to make my characters. I'll start with a 'base' character dialed down, and add in other face or body shapes. Then when I have something close to what I want, I further morph it with Zev and Thorne's awesome morph kits. My current trend is to start with FWart's Naida character. I can't wait for Gypsyangel's new stuff to come out, too.
I don't try to use stuff beyond what it was intended, though, because it's probably asking for trouble. That's why I'm happy to use Gen 1 for my creatures and males. Heck, I didn't even own M4 until the bonus freebie bundles with these sales.
...yeah, admittedly I tend to push things a bit. Back in the Gen4 days I had to in order to create that child character.
I do agree, for myself, G2F won't become anything more than maybe an elf (the head morphs include elf ears) or other "classic" fantasy races (there is a set of head morphs out for G2F for making orcs, fey and such which caught my eye). For male characters, creatures and aliens, Genesis works just fine.
....this kind of stuff confuses the daylights out of me, but sounds like it's necessary if you want things to work right.
I can see where it would be confusing just reading it but if you're following along (or if there are screenshots) what you're basically doing is filling out the fields on a form that pops up. It's actually much more straightforward than it reads.
Ok, I didn't do anything except what was in Ben's tutorial that I linked, and it came out fine, with the Gen1 morphs in the 'Parameters' tab and Gen2 in the 'Shaping' tab. Which was good, since that way I could separate the morphs between Gen 1 and 2. If I wanted to go with all Gen 2 native I could just use the 'shaping' tab. If I needed a little extra kick, or a particular character, I had access to it in 'Parameters'.
Is there something I'm missing? What advantage is there to tweaking the database? Or was that in the tutorial, and I did it without noticing?
AFAIK, the morphs only factor in if you actually dial them (even by a small percentage). I have a ton of morphs in my Genesis 1 from basic to the Generation 4 and Generation 5 and the Evolution to the freebies, etc. Loading up my Genesis didn't slow down, but the characters I load up do tend to take longer the more morphs are active. I could be wrong and it might just be my imagination, however :p
Well, for those of you who like to bend a break the rules like I do, if you know how to Transfer Morphs From G1 To G2F, it really shouldn't matter what versatility G2F is natively lacking. With that, you can combine your G1 characters with G2F's updated geometry for even better use of your content.
This is a completely self-customized hypothetical Aiko 6 that I made using Zev0's Shape Shift, some G2F Morph Bundle dials, and a 25% blend of each transferred Aiko head (A3, A4, A5):
Ok, I didn't do anything except what was in Ben's tutorial that I linked, and it came out fine, with the Gen1 morphs in the 'Parameters' tab and Gen2 in the 'Shaping' tab. Which was good, since that way I could separate the morphs between Gen 1 and 2. If I wanted to go with all Gen 2 native I could just use the 'shaping' tab. If I needed a little extra kick, or a particular character, I had access to it in 'Parameters'.
Is there something I'm missing? What advantage is there to tweaking the database? Or was that in the tutorial, and I did it without noticing?
I haven't actually transferred any of the morphs from Genesis to G2F as I haven't really needed any yet.
Based on the part that KK linked the "tweaking" of the database is actually changing the fields on the Save As form that pops up. If you don't change the Product, creator and other fields at the top then you end up saving over the base G2F with the new version, probably not what you want to do but he seems to explain that pretty well. Then you need to add/adjust the metadata so that it shows up in the place where you go looking for it. Again simple enough when you're looking at the screen but just reading it might be a bit intimidating.
You're not actually opening up the database and "tweaking" it, you're just using the built in tools to set the fields. So, yeah, you did it without noticing :)
So what shapes did you use to get that anthro rat?
A lot - there is a lot of dial twiddling, I've brought over a lot of morphs via GenX but the base was one of Raw's werewolfs.
good luck