Where is Genesis 8?
Where is the Genesis 8 base figure? I was under the impression that Genesis 8/Victoria 8 was part of the free download package with Daz Studio, but I can't find either. I have Genesis 2 and 3 material, Michael from Poser and the Freak which I guess is based on him, and Victoria 6 and 7 (based on Genesis 2 and 3?) but that's all. I have been through ALL the file systems that can be accessed from the program, and cannot find any 8 figures.
When I google for 'free base figures in Daz Studio' it takes me to the store, where instead of free base figures, I see $44 characters based on G2 and G3. Is G8/V8 actually paid material? If so, where do I find it?
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Did you install the Genesis 8 Starter Essentials package(s)? If so, you should find the Genesis 8 Basic Female in your Content Library under People/Genesis 8 Female.
Victoria 8 is a morph of Genesis 8 Basic Female and she is not generally free. Occasionally she is offered free or highly discounted with some other purchase or sale deal.
Ah, thanks. Yes, I did install G8 Starter Essentials, but no figure- but I just uninstalled it and reinstalled it, and now the base figure appears.
Daz Studio has some great features, but the file system is weird and kind of buggy- and it's very hard for a newcomer to see what works with what, or where to find things, both in the program and in the store.
I still can't launch anything from Daz Central, so I need to launch Daz Studio manually and then hunt up stuff through the libraries. And now I see that there's something in my cart, although I emptied it about ten minutes ago...
Some of the problems I'm running into seem pretty minor, but they add up to confusion and a loss of confidence in the package.
Daz Central was supposedly designed to make things easier for new customers, but lots of people have been having lots of problems with it. I have not installed it. I continue to use the Daz Install Manager, which I find reliable. But, I have been around for a long time, and have had time to learn its ins and outs. You can also install products from within Daz Studio itself on the Install pane or the Smart Content pane. That is called Daz Connect. I found it too problematic and reverted to using Daz Install Manager. The important thing is, don't install the same product in multiple ways. If just wastes disk space and causes lots of confusion.
The Daz Studio Smart Content pane can help you figure out what goes with what. It works well for recent items that have good metadata. The problem is that very old products usually don't have any metadata at all. The other problem is that even new products get released with metadata errors occasionally. There is a Filter by Context checkbox on the Smart Content pane. If you select and item in the Scene pane and check Filter by Context, the Smart Content pane will show you only items that are compatible with the selected item. I love Smart Content.
I think you could benefit from watching some tutorial videos before you get too frustrated. It could make the whole process more fun for you. Daz Central was supposed to have tutorial links, I think. Does it?
Yes, I watched several videos via Daz Central, but they didn't correspond to the reality I was getting so I stopped. For instance, according to the videos, you can launch the program from Daz Central by clicking on the button under an item and it will find the item once DS is open- but DS doesn't open at all that way, and if you open it manually, none of the little hints shown in the video launch. I don't really like having to ask about all these little things in a forum, but the things you mention about file systems and meta data and of course Daz' long history of versions and updates and legacy material makes it hard to find 3rd party tutorials that address Daz as it exists at the moment.
I know it's a big program and an even bigger universe of content, but somebody really should sit down and clean it up and make at least the stuff that the Daz store sells play by a consistent set of rules. Since most of the content is 3rd party, this wouldn't be that much work for the Daz team themselves, and it would make the program MUCH more accessible to new users. I think it would be a good business decision, besides just being good manners toward the customers.
I encourage you to use the forum a lot. The forum search is next to useless. Google search will work better. Add site:www.daz3d.com/forums to your Google search terms. Almost anything you can think to ask has probably been asked already
If you can't find the answer, don't be shy about asking questions in the forum. Just make your question specific and clear in the forum thread title so it catches the eye of the right people who can help. Like this thread, "Where is Genesis 8". That is a good title. I know where Genesis 8 should be, so I took the time to respond. If the title was less specific, I may have just moved on.
Thanks, I appreciate your prompt replies. I have found a few things by searching the forums already (via google...) but often they are six or eight years old, and then I suspect the answers are obsolete.
On the other hand, I did find an apparently official video on converting non-d-force hair to d-force, from January of this year, and if this is how the system works, the correct answer is "make it yourself in Blender," because the results are just awful. It appears the weight-mapping tools are very primitive here... I can see that I need to give major attention to how to export things to Blender and re-import them, with some idea of what will actually move in each direction and what has to be created wherever the figure is going to used. Sigh... another research project...
Postings from 6 or 8 years ago may very well be obsolete, you are right.
Hmmm. I doubt that was a Daz official video. Do you still have the link?
There are two kinds of dForce - cloth based and strand hair based. Only PAs have access to the tools to make strand-based dForce hair. Users like us cannot do that and cannot convert non-dForce hair to real strand-based dForce hair. All we can do is convert non-dForce hair to "cloth based" dForce hair, which doesn't work well, because the hair wasn't designed with that in mind. A couple vendors, like Linday, have had success using cloth based dForce for hair, by creating the hair in a specific way to work with cloth based dForce.
Daz Studio has a built-in Strand Based Hair Editor that works pretty well, once you get the hang of it. It is available to users like us. The output is not dForce hair, though. That strand-based hair cannot be simulated to move with gravity, etc. You can style it for a certain pose in the hair editor, but if you change the character's pose, you may have to restyle it in the editor again.
Ah, thanks for that information. I can't remember the exact search terms I was using, so I can't find the particular video, but here's an even more recent one about doing the same thing. It strikes me that running the simulation takes so long that the author doesn't want to go through it- in Blender this goes in real time. I'll have to figure out if I can do weight painting in Blender, where I can check results, and then move it back to Daz- it seems like that should work okay. Of course, I don't want to render in Daz anyway, but I don't know how difficult it might be to use expressions and poses from Daz in Blender and continue to manipulate them, so ideally everything about a character should move both ways.
Anyway, check the video, it seems like this should work on hair from the Daz strand based hair editor, the trick is going to be getting the weight painting done on it.
Thanks for the link. It does seem a bit suspicious that he doesn't even show the final result after simulation. I've done a similar technique on hair, but it can be pretty tricky to find all the hair root areas to make sure the weightmap is painted out. If you miss some, that part of the hair will fall to the ground. If you clear weightmaps from too much, it will drape strangely. I did Jocelyn hair a few months ago. I made it dynamic only from about halfway down to the tips. It worked pretty well for standing poses.
This technique will not work for Daz Studio strand based hair. Strand based hair is not made of polygons. it is curves that are tessellated at render time. The technique might work for fiber mesh hair generated by other means. I haven't tried it.
I don't think weightmaps are transferrable between Daz Studio and Blender. I don't know whether poses or expressions would work. I don't think the rigging is compatible. I haven't tried, though, so you'll need to do more investigation.
Thanks for the input. It looks more and more like a one-way pipeline from Daz to Blender is what I need. I'm pretty sure this will mean having to rebuild the rigging in Blender, and maybe some other issues, but I'm seeing quite a few bits of funkiness in Daz, and it would be insane to render there, especially NPR stuff, which is what I'm after. It will probably take a while to work out a reasonable workflow, but the upside of a one-way flow is that I can resculpt meshes to my heart's content in Blender and not have to worry about the mysteries of Daz' morph targets- if there even are such things? Are all the characters basically hand sculpted?
There are some threads in the forum about transferring Daz assets to Blender. This is one. I've never done it, so I can't offer advice.
Thanks, I'll check it out.