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...just not sure my system can handle working up a character with Genesis from the ground up in 4.5. Again, I am at the low end of the the app's OpenGL requirement which could be part of the reason I am getting UV mapping errors with the Tindra Thompson MAT.
I have V5 (basic) and already tried to create Leela with her but, as with V4, the breast mesh deforms horribly when dialed down to Leela's petite physique.
..and loading V5 causes Norton to issue a "High CPU Useage" warning.
(throws oatmeal creme pie at RKane)
KK, I'm still rooting for your beast PC, which would solve some things. Wish I could offer you a fair price for the guts, so you could get something else.
I suppose they're still playing vault the darling with the S4 shape (she didn't come with the other S4 character shapes, included though). Still, it wouldn't take to much to bring them in from the source, with GenX, maybe some manual scaling.
If you should get GenX on sale, it shouldn't take long to pull all of Leela's morphs and shapes. And if you've used the scaling tricks that Jamminwolf does, then you could manually copy the part scalings. I think you'd only need the V4 shape, to get the Steph morphs in, but don't quote me on that... sigh... never enough time to get very far in any direction with any software...
With the GenX Gen 3 addon, and the required shapes, a person can mix Gen3 and Gen4 custom morphs, morph dials... it's wild frontier wherever you look. Hope you get to play someday.
To better times...
Still running on sleepnessness fumes... I'll probably cringe if I read some of the stuff I've written... apologies in advance, heh.
Hehheheh, yeah, good luck with that. There's enough good new stuff going on in there, that we ain't likely to reach a consensus on anything.
(A belated and well-deserved hats-off to the devs).
When reading endless tech talk gets too out-there in the ether, I just shrug and go play with it..
...thank you. Unfortunately I am convinced that prebilds are not the way to go if you want to get something useful so there really isn't 'something else" I can get later.
For one they usually scrimp on whatever they can like the PSU and case. Often the PSU is just barely adequate to handle the components installed meaning that it will be forced to operate at high output levels for much of the time. This means a shorter service lifetime. When A PSU finally goes, it often can take the rest of the system with it.
The case is also far more important than it looks. All too often the manufacturer uses the smallest and simplest one they can get away with which only one or two small fans. That is nowhere near adequate for dissipating the heat generated by the latest multi core CPUs and the system's GPU. particularly when rendering. When I was looking at prebuilds I would have them open the case and usually was appalled by how tightly crammed together everything was. Another thing with "off the shelf" systems is they usually come with a lot of useless bloatware that only sucks needed CPU and memory resources away from the primary task of rendering.
This is why I settled on doing a custom build and decided just to tough it out. Yeah some of the components have now achieved 'legacy" status but they still are far ahead of what I have been using all these years. Needless to say I have finally dealt with the last couple roadblocks and am ready to start setting things up. Still going to take some time since I am ]going to perform celan installs of all my applications as well as manually building my runtime form the ground up for I am through with how the Daz installers just throw stuff anywhere and everywhere. Fortunately a lot of the older content has been converted to .zip files so that will make the process a bit easier. Basically it is going to take at least another month before I am ready to start creating and rendering scenes on the new system so I will have to make due with the notebook in the meantime.
Here's the basic specs of the new system:
MB: ASUS P6T
CPU: Intel i7 920 at 2.66gHz with an 8MB cache. with CoolerMaster CPU cooler.
Memory: 12GB DDR3 1333mHz
GPU: nVidia GTX460, 1GB GDDR5
HDD: 1 250GB 7,200 RPM + 1 TB 720RPM
Optical Drive: x24 DVD RW
PSU: Corsair 750W
Case, Antec P193 with 5 fans: 2 - 120mm top, 1 - 120mm front, 1 - 120 mm back 1 200mm side.
OS: Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit.
Firewall: Norton IS 2012/13. (love it or hate it, it's kept my notebook totally clean for the last couple years)
WOW, KK!! That's better than mine! I can hardly believe DS4 won't run on that! Well, I hope something works out for you! :) *Big Hugs*
...as I mentioned above, it isn't quite set up yet so I am still on the 32 bit notebook for a while.
Even so, still not into dumping a whole lot into Genesis to get it where I already have Vicky, Michael, and Steph. What good is creating Leela with it if I don''t have hair that works, shoes that fit, or am unable to use the texture Maps I need?
Well, you should use what will work best for you, but just so you know... Hair (and much Gen 4 clothing) can be easily fit to through autofit (which now keeps the morphs) or can always be parented like prop hair... transferred shoes are still a bit troublesome sometimes (I have better luck calling them pants in autofit sometimes), but all Gen 4 textures work just wonderfully! :)
...thank you. Unfortunately I am convinced that prebilds are not the way to go if you want to get something useful so there really isn't 'something else" I can get later.
Yeah, I know all too well. But bad eyesight is a surprisingly effective obstacle to system building... trying to get the magnifying glass the right distance, while moving my head around to align the shadows cast from the headband-flashlight. Getting the jumper go on straight... Takes 40 minutes to plug in those many jumpers from the case, and even sata connectors (eventually) go in by feel. (Is it upside down, or do I keep playing?) Wouldn't trade it for arthritis (I might get it anyway, Mom had it when she was younger than I am).
My 6-year-old XP is crapping out. I don't think it'd be worth replacing the mobo. But I might have to.
Sooo... when I used to have some semi-decent spending money (for a few years)... siiigh...
Whelp, I got shamefully lazy, last time, and got a high-end HP floor model at Sam's.
Made their restore CD's, took the side off (permenantly), replaced the PSU, uninstalled the bloatware, Acronis'd the boot drive, cloned it to a better one, and put in a secondary. (But no Dells for me. Can't put in a standard PSU, can't swap to a standard case. Friends have sloughed off their oldies on me, and the two best-spec have to be Dell... sigh).
I got a hell of a sweet monitor in the deal, it still goes for more than half what I paid for the system.
But a couple of months after I brought her up to 4 Gigs ram (the max), the motherboard decided I needed to shut it off at the PSU for a moment, before it'd let me power up by the soft switch. I've run enough systems into motherboard death to know what that means...
A barely-an-upgrade path:
A couple of years ago, an Auto Dealership, that's been here for decades, bellied up. I picked up a server for $150. But relatives had decided to visit, and when I finally ducked out, they were getting ready to close the doors. Therefore, a couple of kids had pulled out a drive tray, put it back in, pulled out another... sigh... That's a really bad idea with raid 5.1 (it tried to rebuild each time), and the Win3K OS (and everything else of course) are irretrievable - but probably not much will run on that anyway.
But it's a little old... rather old... pretty old. At the head of a long list of why it's not very practical to upgrade, is that it needs a Pro XP to handle two physical CPUs (Vista is possible, I expect that'd have to be pro, too). (Linux is iffy, there's driver support for SUSE pro and Redhat Pro).
Still, it's 4 cores total, which is 2 more than I have. Same 4 gigs (server ram is insanely $, I probably won't go down that road).
I could keep going for a while...
But depending on how I weather this latest round of inflation, and expenses, I might end up stuffing something newer (not server-class) into the awesome server case. (But it'd be kinda nice to have its 4 cores thown into a Reality CPU-stew).
I've also got a gigantic older case, with IDE removable caddies, but it's tall, not wide (Ya need tall to stack caddy sockets).
SATA would be way better for airflow, and IDE is an afterthought on modern boards. But I'm not handy enough to graft SATA trays into it, and external assemblies tend to be high-ticket for RAID. At least there's plenty of internal fan mounts.
Closing summary: There's a couple of dozen half-assed ways to replace/upgrade, but no matter how low-budget, it'll still cost a stack.
I wish someone wouldcome up with a definitive answer about weightmapping and Genesis.
I found a definition of weightmapping, but it was so complicated I couldn't understand it.
Here in the forums, one person would explain weightmapping and I would think "oh okay, I understand."
Before 5 minutes was up, someone else would say "that's not weightmapping, THIS is weightmapping" and I would be confused all over again.
The same with Genesis.
One says Genesis is this, the other says no.
I guess until we can get agreed upon definitions, we will have confusion.
I'll try to answer that-- but I don't guarantee that my answer will be "the" complete or definitive one.
Genesis
Genesis itself is just a fairly low-resolution base figure that is neither male nor female. It is, in effect, the "ultimate unimesh." All of the DAZ figures from Generation 3 onward were created from a "unimesh"-- that is, the same basic mesh was used to create V3, M3, and all the other "Gen 3" figures; and another basic mesh was used to create M4, V4, K4, and the other "Gen 4" figures.
The difference between Genesis and the previous "generations" is that in the previous generations, the figures were set up as separate, stand-alone figures, each with its own rigging, morphs, etc.-- and in some cases, with its own grouping and UV mapping. For instance, V3 has the same basic mesh as M3-- but the rigging, UV mapping, morphing, and grouping of the figure into "body parts" are all different. That's why clothing for V3 will not work on M3, and vice-versa. David 3 and Stephanie Petite are also made from that same "Generation 3" unimesh, but their grouping is different from both M3 and V3-- which is why clothing for David will not work on M3, and vice-versa. Aiko 3, Hiro 3, Girl 3, Matt and Maddie, Luke and Laura, the Mil Baby, etc., . were also made from that same unimesh-- but each is a stand-alone figure with its own rigging (.cr2), morphs, and so on.
With the "Generation 4" figures, there were fewer "stand-alone" figures. Figures that had previously been stand-alone figures were set up as full-body morphs of either M4 or V4. Thus, the Freak, Hiro 4, etc., were set up as full-body morphs of M4, and Aiko 4, Girl 4, etc., were set up as morphs of V4. So, instead of having a dozen stand-alone figures as with Gen 3, Gen 4 had only three-- M4, V4, and K4.
With Genesis, that trend of reducing the number of stand-alone figures has taken to the ultimate-- that is, all of the "Generation 5" figures-- M5, V5, Kid 5, etc.-- are morphs of Genesis, as are the Genesis versions of previous figures such as M4, V4, Freak 4, and so on.
The real power of Genesis lies not in the figure itself, but in the functions and features of DS 4-- particularly subdivision, weight-mapping, scaling, and UV swapping.
Subdivision
Poser could not subdivide a mesh within the program, so a fairly high-resolution mesh was needed to obtain proper detailing and morphing. The Generation 3 figures (M3, V3, Aiko 3, etc.) had 74,510 polygons. The face and teeth were rather "overmodeled," in that they had more polygons than they really needed, and other parts, especially the thighs, were rather "undermodeled."
The Generation 4 figures had fewer polygons-- 66,830-- but they were better distributed and arranged, with fewer polygons in the face and more in the body.
DS 4, however, can subdivide a mesh within the program, so that a hgh-resolution base mesh is not needed. Thus, the "base" Genesis mesh has only 18,872 polygons-- slightly more than one-quarter as many as the Gen 3 figures, and somewhat fewer than one-third as many as the Gen 4 figures.
When Genesis is loaded into DS 4, it is by default given one level of subdivision-- so that it has 75,488 polygons-- which is more than the Gen 3 figures had. At two levels of subdivision, Genesis has a whopping 301,952 polygons, which is really "overkill." (Note: each subdivision level quadruples the number of polygons, since each polygon is divided into four.)
So, in short, the subdivision feature of DS 4 makes it possible to get high-resolution results with a low-resolution figure.
Weight Mapping
Weight mapping is simply a method of controlling which portions of a mesh are affected by a joint bend and how much they are affected-- 100%, 0%, or something in between.
In Poser's "parametric" rigging, this was controlled by "spherical fall-off zones." For each rotation of each joint, there were two spheres that controlled the effect on the mesh, and for some reason, these were called the "InnerMatSphere" and the "OuterMatSphere." The InnerMatSphere determined which polygons would be 100% affected by the joint bend-- i.e., all polygons encompassed by it would be 100% affected. The OuterMatSphere controlled which polygons would not affected-- i.e., all polygons lying outside it would not be affected by the joint bend. The polygons in between-- the ones that were enclosed by the OuterMatSphere, but not enclosed by the InnerMatSphere-- would be affected more than 0% but less than 100%, depending on where they were in the "bend zone." Polygons farthest from the InnerMatSphere would be affected the least, while those lying closest to it would be affected the most.
To envision this, consider your elbow joint. If you were bending your elbow, you would want everything just below the joint to be affected by the bend, so that your hand and forearm moved when your elbow was bent. So, imagine everything from just below the joint being enclosed by an imaginary beachball. In Poser, that would be the InnerMatSphere. At the same time, you would want everything just above the joint NOT to move-- so imagine everything from there downward being enclosed by another, larger beachball-- in Poser, that would be the OuterMatSphere. The area between the "skin" of the big beachball that encloses everything from just above your elbow on down, and the "skin" of the smaller beachball that encloses everything from just below your elbow on downward, is the "fall-off zone."
Now, the "spheres" didn't have to be spherical-- they could be scaled along any axis, so that an "InnerMatSphere" might actually be a long, flat ovoid-- but even so, control of the mesh movement was limited by the fact that the "spheres" had to be some variety of sphere or ovoid. Polygons that fell inside the OuterMatSphere would be affected to some degree, even if that wasn't appropriate for that particular joint. Polygons that fell within the InnerMatSphere would be 100% affected, even if some of them shouldn't be. In short, it was a limited method for controlling mesh movement.
With weight mapping, on the other hand, mesh movement is controlled by a two-tone map, similar to a texture map, which enables the person setting up the rigging to "paint" polygons according to how much they should be affected by the joint movement. This is far more versatile than the "parametric" rigging.
Also, DS 4 has "bulge" maps. For instance, in the elbow-bend example, it's possible to use a bulge map to make the biceps bulge when the elbow is bent. In the traditional Poser rigging, that would have required a joint-controlled morph (JCM)-- and in turn, that morph would have had to be manually included in any clothing for the figure. And that brings us to another function of DS 4:
The Transfer Utility
In Poser's traditional rigging, a clothing item intended to fit a specific figure-- such as M4-- had to include the same full-body morphs (FBMs), partial-body morphs (PBMs), and joint-controlled morphs (JCMs) as the M4 figure-- and these all had to be created by the person making the clothing, which required a great deal of time and effort. Indeed, a very large part of the time and work involved in creating a clothing item consisted of creating, refining, and setting up such morphs. And then, of course, the clothing had to be tested and tweaked to ensure that any morphs used did not adversely affect the rigging or conflict with the above-mentioned fall-off zones. This could be a very time-consuming and nightmarish project all by itself.
In DS 4, however, much of that is eliminated by the transfer utility. The transfer utility simply copies the weight-mapping for Genesis-- including the bulge maps, JCMs, morphs, etc.-- to the clothing item. Thus, any clothing item that fits the base Genesis will fit and work on any morph of Genesis-- M3, V3, M4, V4, M5, V5, Aiko, Hiro, the Freak, or whatever.
UV Swapping
Another very powerful feature of DS4 is the ability to swap the UV maps for a particular object. This enables a particular object to use several different UV maps, which in turn enables it to use textures created from different UV maps. Thus, Genesis can use textures created for other figures-- M4, V4, Kids 4, M5, V5, etc.
Summary
So-- Genesis, by itself, is just another figure. However, thanks to the features and functions of DS 4, Genesis is far more versatile than the previous Poser-based figures ever were.
I hope this answers your question.
Nice one, blondie9999. Thanks for laying that out so well. Now, instead of random factoids, and little hasty fragments of explanations, all floating around my head, I've got a coherent sense of it. (Saved for reference, because my memory stinks, heh).
blondie9999, thanks for putting all that together. It was a really good write up without the sales pitch.
All genesis is is the mill 4 unimesh figure weight mapped. Yes it has a few more bones but the mill 4 figures could have easily been made the same way. We could have had genesis with the mil 3 figures in carrara; If any one at DAZ had taken the time to do the weight mapping.
So what makes genesis unique is the weight mapping. The multimorph unimesh figure is nothing new. Take out the weight mapping and you just have the mil 4 figure with some extra rigging.
I could have made a unimesh multimorph WM gen2 figure in daz beta .8. But I didn't so it's really pointless to harp about.
(of course I couldn't have, but you KNOW Daz could have!*)
What did happen was Genesis and since that other stuff never happened I don't see the point in continuing with the fantasy.
*If a single person had taken the time of course
No.
It is not that and Gen4 really couldn't and to think this is really a lack of understanding what the Genesis system is.
Genesis is a SYSTEM... NOT a figure.
Not true either. At the time the Gen 4 figures came out, neither Poser NOR DAZ Studio had the functionality that enables Genesis to do what it does.
Also, older weight-mapping that was available in Carrara, wasn't as advanced as TriAx, and the latest Poser.
How compatible is this Poser's weightmapping, by the way? How does Triax compare to the older versions of Carrara (before 8.5 beta)?
Studio and SM are late to the weightmapping game, of course.
Edit: removed a bit of misinformation, quoted in replies below. Edit: a couple of nitpicks.
Earlier versions of Poser didn't have weight-mapping.
Thanks for the (unquoted) answers, ssgbryan.
I was thinking about weightmapping that some (person or people) had once said to be available via scripting. IIRC, there was talk about users who did, or hypothetically could have used it. I figured someone might bring it up, so I was trying to cover the bases. Didn't occur to me how it would probably be read, heh.
Edit: Oh crap! I forgot. I didn't miss the intro sale of Miki4. But the Tyler info link now goes to featured content.
Thanks for the (unquoted) answers, ssgbryan.
I was thinking about weightmapping that some (person or people) had once said to be available via scripting. IIRC, there was talk about users who did, or hypothetically could have used it. I figured someone might bring it up, so I was trying to cover the bases. Didn't occur to me how it would probably be read, heh.
Edit: Oh crap! I forgot. I didn't miss the intro sale of Miki4. But the Tyler info link now goes to featured content.
Both Poser and DAZ Studio had script functions to return a list of weights for a bone,and that was (wrongly) interpreted as meaning they used weight mapping. Joint bending requires a set of weights to be generated, controlling how each point is affected by the bend, but in older versions of Poser and DS this was done from the position of the falloff angles and otpional spheres/capsules(P8). With weight mapping a vertex can have any weight, regardless of where it is on the mesh and without having to enclose it in pre-defined shapes.
Both Poser and DAZ Studio had script functions to return a list of weights for a bone,and that was (wrongly) interpreted as meaning they used weight mapping. Joint bending requires a set of weights to be generated, controlling how each point is affected by the bend, but in older versions of Poser and DS this was done from the position of the falloff angles and otpional spheres/capsules(P8). With weight mapping a vertex can have any weight, regardless of where it is on the mesh and without having to enclose it in pre-defined shapes.
I stand corrected, and enlightened. Thanks Richard.
Corrected my 1st post about it, to clean up the question. (It's quoted, so there's no problem of the dialog getting fractured).
i guess your problem is norton or some other software that's running in the backdoor, or a virus on it?
norton don't find most of the time the real viruses. I used it years ago untill i found out, that it just doesn't stop harder viruses.
go for avast (not the free version), it scans your pc before windows runs.
use the norton removal tool, else you never get norton crap from your system.
your system is fast enough to run Ds4 and do some basic things.
Ds4.5 runs fine even on a dualcore pc.
haha@ sales pitch! I know it must sound that way when I'm talking about all this stuff...lol :) Just so everyone knows, I don't get a commission or anything... I'm just an enthusiastic fan...haha :)
But, serisously...
Thanks, blondie9999!!! I learned a lot about what it is that makes me love Genesis so much! :)
i guess your problem is norton or some other software that's running in the backdoor, or a virus on it?
[snip]
Yeah, Norton could get in the way of something. A malware should affect other apps, as a rule (but it's possible).
I don't know the specs of his old notebook, but he suspects the graphics chip's ye-olde driver, that they haven't updated in forever.
Offhand, I think I might've read, somewhere, that he's run it on his new system, but don't take my word for it. He's still setting up.the new one.
i guess your problem is norton or some other software that's running in the backdoor, or a virus on it?
norton don't find most of the time the real viruses. I used it years ago untill i found out, that it just doesn't stop harder viruses.
go for avast (not the free version), it scans your pc before windows runs.
use the norton removal tool, else you never get norton crap from your system.
your system is fast enough to run Ds4 and do some basic things.
Ds4.5 runs fine even on a dualcore pc.
...again the workstation is not totally up and running yet as I am about to start building the runtimes (which wlll take about a month) . Until then, I am still working on the 32 bit notebook. Norton works for me, my notebook is totally clean. I don't have an IT staff at home to deal with continually manually updating freeware AV utilities.
Years ago, Norton AV and IS had issues, They no longer do. I had more infection issues with MacAfee which I dumped when I installed the new HDD.
Genesis is a figure, DS4 is a system. The reason genesis doesn't work in poser is because poser doesn't have the system for handling the genesis figure. Genesis in and of it's self is simply a weight mapped figure. Nothing more.
Deleted.. I'm not going to anger myself with these ignorant posts...
Wrong again. Genesis is a system for creating characters.
You probably need to do more research into this so people don't keep putting "incorrect", "not true" in response to your posts ;).
Earlier versions of Poser didn't have weight-mapping.
I shouldn't have doubted, heh.
Getting a freebie at CP probably gets you the emails, but in case anyone, here, hasn't seen it....