Unexpected benefits of Genesis and Genesis 2 having slight problems in Carrara...
... seriously, have you seen how much the V4/M4 stuff is going for these days? High quality texture sets, poses, expressions and most of all clothing clothing clothing, for very little cost.
Just had the big V4/M4 sale in the Daz store, and Rendo had a sale for V4/M4 stuff the last couple of months, and it looks like runtimedna has one going now; I'm sure these sales will keep coming around too. I can't remember the last time I spent more than 3 dollars on a full multi-set clothing set, and usually a lot less than that. It's nice to pick these things up for a song as I can have an outfit for any occasion.
Also in the nebulous future when Carrara 9 comes out and Genesis 2 is fully supported and I finally decide to make the switch (which I probably never will if I'm honest with myself since I like the V4 characters better...) I can use all this clothing on the new figures too, with autofit.
I look at the new clothing items coming out daily in the PA sales for like 20 dollars a set and I can't help thinking 'Madness! I just bought 10 different outfits for V4/M4 for less than I would spend on just one of those newfangled not-as-good-anyway Genesis 2 sets'
A very tangible silver lining :)
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I agree, Jon and Tim. I picked up some cheap stuff for the Gen 4 figures. There was also a sale on Dani/Marformo items so I got something compatible with the "Vicky in a temple with a sword" challenge. I decided to go a completely different direction for the challenge, but at least everything was cheap.
Plus, more things are compatible with Genesis and Genesis 2 than I was led to believe. In the attached pic, the Genesis 2 female has the V4 morph applied, and is dressed entirely in pieces drawn from various V4 clothing bundles. The hair is a pretty3d hair made for v4. Jewelry comes from the Helen outfit for V4, the Tanya outfit for V4, an elf warrior outfit for V4 and elsewhere.
I opened Daz Studio and loaded a G2F default figure. Individually, I loaded each item that I wanted to use and applied fit-to. I then saved the clothing item as a wearable preset. In Carrara, I can then load any or all of the items I saved as wearable presets on a G2F figure and Carrara does a nice job of fitting the clothing item to any G2F shape that I want. In this case, I applied it to the V4 shape, in a DMR throne set. Full disclosure, there have been a couple of exceptions for other items.
Just threw this together in a few minutes, but it could have been the start of an entry in this month's challenge - G2F pretending to be V4 in a throne room with a dagger. :)
Edit: The set is from DM's Mixed Fantasy.
Nice work diomede. I've been following your usage of the genesis figures. It's good to see that it isn't completely borked, as some of the haters on another forum claim. ;-)
I've actually ben putting my old V4/M4 stuff back into places in my runtime I could find after realizing how well most of it auto-fits G2F/G2M - and picked up a few things during last month's sale specifically for use not with Gen-4 but with Genesis 2.
I just put it all together in Daz, and then bring it into Carrara - I like importing as OBJ's so I don't have to worry about the buggy cross-over between those two applications - save for with shaders, which I'd have to deal with anyway because Daz's figures are sold with shaders set up for Daz Studio...
- And after PhilW's videos, it seems wise to redo shaders even for things made for Carrara unless they're made by somebody who's got his level of knowledge of things (which some of you have, but I surely don't :P ).
If I was making 'adult animations with Carrara I guess I'd be... screwed-in-a-manner-other-than-intended... thanks to geografting. And after the Succubus came out with a snake tail recently I realized the same issue would occur if I wanted to do animated fantasy with a Naga creature. But for still art work its fine.
And a lot of V4/M4 stuff is cheaper or on frequent discount. At least from here. Over on other sites people are still putting it out thanks to Poser. I keep wondering why the Poser merchants don't abandon it for the new Poser figures... but then I realize that, if they make for V4/M4... they can at least get some Daz Studio sales...
In the next couple days I'm going to make available a procedural skin shader that could be adapted I think for use with geografted genitals. The base skin is uses no maps at all. To blend in lips, nipples, etc. I used Carrara's 3D paint tool to create a feather edged mask to blend.
It really is the only drawback Carrara has currently is the geografting being borked up. And while it sucks that it doesn't handle geografting right, even after Daz sold it under the premise that Genesis was fully supported and even gave away the M5 and V5 pro bundles with it so we could see for ourselves that the genitals didn't work lol... the truth is I don't have a need to do hardcore sex scene closeups so that issue really doesn't affect me much. Doesn't stop me from bitching about it though...
Other than that, I sometimes find myself wondering why there aren't tons and tons of people flooding to use Carrara and abandon Poser and Studio. Carrara is stable as heck (at least on the windows version, and I have heard waay less complaints from mac users about stability), renders great, has more features (and workable ones, not buggy unusable features in name only) than any program out there period, including the extremely expensive pro stuff like 3ds Maya etc, does this all at a pricetag that is so low it seems too good to be true...
I don't think V4/M4 is going away any time soon. In fact I've noticed in most places (even here on DAZ though less so here) you can't buy just Genesis 2 stuff, most content creators sell it as a combo of Genesis 2 and also V4/M4 in the same package. It's not a situation like when V4 came out and V3 was nearly immediately obsolete, the V4/M4 stuff is still selling well I think, judging from the fact this type of content is still the mainstay of other content sites.
I agree completely. Despite my recent flurry of posts regarding usage of Genesis and Genesis 2 in Carrara, I still use figures that have the traditional rigging (not just V4 and M4, but the earlier figures as well). I really like Carrara's ability to vertex model posed meshes in the animation mode. All of which reinforces your original post in this thread. I am very happy to have been able to pick up a bunch of cheap V4 and M4 compatible content in recent sales. Plus, it turns out much of it can be used with Genesis and Genesis 2 figures. :cheese:
In addition, because I recently had to transfer my stuff to a new computer (ugh), I am still in the process of reinstalling plugins, Poser, and utilities. I haven't tested it yet, but I am curious if Poser's wardrobe wizard can be used to transfer other content for even more figures to a form that can be auto-fitted to Genesis 2 figures. Believe it or not, I actually have a lot of content for the Poser 7 "G2", such as Erik the Red, Caesar, 20s gangster, and more. It would be nice to transfer them to the G2M. Also, I am sure that Poser's cloth room could still be used as a plugin for Genesis and Genesis 2 figures (assuming I get the DSON utility working).
Yes thread liked
I've been following your progress on this in the contest thread, it's been very impressive to see a truly procedural skin take shape. I never in a million years would have thought about the fact that a procedural skin shader would solve the geografting problem, but I can't think of any reason that wouldn't work, kind of brilliant approach actually, makes me excited for possibilities. Good work Evil!
I unexpectedly had some free time when I unexpectedly decided to hell with mowing my lawn! ;-)
So, here's a link to the thread I started about the shader freebie.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/46128/