How to use Genx2 to bring V4/M4 and others to Genesis1 in Carrara (mini-tut?)

Jonstark

I'm writing this to myself, because - seriously - every single time I try to use Genx2 after any kind of pause from using it constantly, I find I've completely forgotten how to use it.  That leads me to search for the pdf guide, read it, find it doesn't help me at all.  Because it all boils down to one button that ought to be set to a default but that is blank.  Then after an hour or so of frustration trying out different buttons I finally figure it out again.

So I'm just writing this as a time-saver to myself, but it could also be useful for others (though I'm sure there are many other forum threads that address this too).

1.  Load up Studio.  You don't need to load anything actually into the scene to use Genx2

2  Menu option Window, dropdown to select 'GenX'   The popup window for the plugin is a little small and cramped, but can be expanded by grabbing/dragging the bottom right corner.

3  Click on 'Source'.  Select the M4/V4/G2M/G2F/G3M/G3F character that you are going to be pulling the shape from.  It'll take a sec to load up. 

4  Now you have a barebones figure as your source which has no morphs.  We need to add morphs to the figure.  So on the Studio Content pane navigate to the Poser formats folder and down to wherever you've got your V4 or M4 morphs. 

5  Drag and drop the Injbase morphs onto the GenX2 window.  Next drag and drop the injMorphs+ morphs onto it.  If you're going to transfer an Aiko4 character, or a Steph4 character, then you'll also need to drag and drop the injection morphs for Aiko4 or Steph4 respectively.  Whatever morphs are required for the original character you want to transfer will need to be dragged and dropped on the Genx2 window.  This loads the base source figure with all the potential morphs needed, though you aren't actually changing the base shape (just giving it the potential to change the base shape).

6 After dragging and dropping all the required morphs, now navigate to the Pose folder to find the actual character folder with the shaping morph.  Now drag and drop the head shape of that character onto the GenX2 window pane.  DON'T drag any other shaping morphs onto GenX2 at this point, like the body shape, unless you want to make a morph that has both body and head shape together in one.  I like my head shapes and body shapes separate, so that I can apply them independently to my Genesis1.

7  In the center of the GenX2 window, 'Mode' should be set to 'Create single morph' by default.  To the right of that is the button that's given me so much trouble.  It just says 'Select', so it looks innocuous.  But it's not set to anything by default, so unless you click 'Select' to actually select something, GenX2 won't work.  So click 'Select' and then select the drop down 'Transfer: On for all Non Zero Values'. 

8  Click the 'Transfer' button.  Name your new Genesis1 morph something you will recognize.   Save and you've got your new morph.

9   Before trying to save any other shapes, you'll need to click the 'Reset' button and start all over again, loading the base figure, the needed injection morphs, then finally the shaping morph for the specific body part we want to save out.  

 

Ok, sorry to bother everyone with this, I'm sure it's been covered a million times before, but it will be a great time-saver for my future (alzheimer's-ridden) self.  :)

 

While I'm on the subject of remembering things, it's been a while since I used VWD in Carrara.  I'm sure there's a walkthrough that one of the forum stars here has done that I saw (maybe Diomede or Dart?), anyone got a link?

Dartanbeck

Curious. I've never done it quite that way.

• First, I've never combined morphs to generate a single morph dial for Genesis. 
• Second, I always just browse (you'll see why in a bit) for the INJ folders by address directly within GenX2, I have never drag/dropped them in from the library. Hmmm  Try something new!
• Third, since I'm just adding the morphs I want directly to Genesis, I never had that mysterious button issue.

When I open GenX2, as you did, I simply drag it to dock to the bottom plane along with my timeline and aniMate 2, then just drag the whole thing up to mostly fill the screen. Nice!

Then I select my Source figure and browse-to-folder to load up all of the morphs I want, but instead of one-by-one, I use the "Load All" files - and I'm just selecting the actual files from the file load dialog. Example being I'll browse to Load All Morphs ++ and apply that, then Load All Aiko, then The Girl, then.... until I have all of the morphs that I want to transfer from Generation 4 to Genesis.

Now I have a full hierarchy of morphs to look through and select each one I want to add. 

Then I move on to the next Source figure.

 

When I'm done, I have all of these morphs available on Genesis.

 

What's really cool is that M4's Morphs ++ has things that V4's doesn't and vice versa. Expressions from one almost always work well across genders and many of the actual shaping morphs can also assist in character shaping.

 

Also, whenever Rosie (the real Rosie - My Rosie) opens her mouth, I can almost always see her bottom teeth by the corners of her mouth. Getting this to happen for any of Daz 3d's figures has not been very easy for me - ever. No matter what I try. Almost!

I noticed that when I transfer facial morph poses from GenX2, they end up under "Actor" instead of "Poses" (Poses in Daz Studio is the equivalent to selectingthe main figure name instead of Actor in Carrara in the parameters tab), so I transferred V4's MouthCornersDown morph, even though Genesis already has such a thing. But when I use that morph on Genesis using V4's in the Actor field, it doesn't reset when I zero the figure pose! 

After discovering that, I ended up transferring a whole lot of different facial shapes to create Rosie's face. 

 

I have some of Thorne's face morph kits for Genesis 2 Female, so I loaded up Genesis 2 Female and looked through them and transferred some that I thought might be helpful.

 

The big thing with me is that I'm animating. I might show a horrible still from time-to-time, but the main reason I do any of this stuff is to animate. In my mind, adding a whole pile of facial morphs will make it much more flexible when it comes to animating micro-expressions. Again, I was inspired by Alita Battle Angle when I started this new path into Genesis, which is what led me to (Thanks again, Wendy!!! I love you, girl!!!) GenX2. 

Dartanbeck

Oh, and I forgot to mention that, while deciding upon which morphs to transfer, I'd sometimes load up the figure used as the source along with all of the morphs injected, and try various morphs to see if I want them. 

I have all of the Add-ons for GenX2 except for Generation 3, since I don't really have a lot of morphs for them. 

 

GenX2 recognizes if a morph includes special other morph controllers under the hood, so we don't have to. Just select the morphs you want and transfer them.

 

As jonstark mentions, it's also nice that we can transfer entire character shapes, like Ysabeau 6, Aiko 6, Gia 6 and Kieko 6 that make up the basic main shape of Rosie 5, then with a plethora of other facial and body enhancements from there.

 

One thing that I've discovered, at least in my brief tests on it, is that sometimes blending pre-Genesis 3 shaping morphs with Genesis 3 character shapes can be problematic - but only some - like trying to blend a Genesis 2 Female character shape with a Genesis 3 Female character shape.

 

When we use a Genesis 3 character shape, we need to dial up the Genesis 3 Female shape, which is a dial that GenX2 will automatically add for us - it has its own built-i clone for this purpose. The same applies with Genesis 2 Female - likely the male counterparts too. I mean, the shapes will still work, but they only look like that character in mind if we use these together, which might require that we dial down stuff like "Basic Female" Genesis shapes, etc.,

 

I used RiversoftArt's Character Transfer from Genesis 8 Female to Genesis 3 Female to make a G3F version of Sol, and then used GenX2 to bring her into Genesis 1. It works really well, but she looks more like she's in her late thirties on Genesis, whereas she's pretty yound as a Genesis 8 Female.