Genesis products
barrieM
Posts: 292
I am currently working with V5 and Bree skin from the Genesis starter kit. Daz products appear to be for specific characters or specific versions of Genesis which is quite confusing to someone who recently graduated from Victoria 4.
• What are the differences between Genesis, Genesis 2 and Genesis 3?
• Will hair products for Genesis 3 characters be OK for Previous Genesis characters?
• If I buy Morphs for Genesis 3 will they work on Genesis 2
• Some products are for Genesis 8. Is there also Genesis 4,5,6 and 7?
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Genesis 8 was a jump from Gensis 3 to make it match Genesis 8/Victoria 8, there are no Genesis 4/5/6 or 7, people got confused with G3/V7 relationship.
Short answer, no you cannot mix G1/G2/G3/G8 things, longer answer, sometimes you can and there are tools to allow you to use things between generations also, older->newer is easier compared to newer->older, I am not sure about G3->G8 because I don't use G8 but it's possible that many things work flawless between G3<->G8 because G8 is a small upgrade of G3.
Difference, have a peek here: https://www.daz3d.com/technology/
later version offer "better" character, lower base resolution, facial rigs, better joint bending and so on.
Morphs do not work between generations, hair can often/sometimes be used between generations, poses can be converted with scripts.
Timeline: M4/V4 -> G1 -> G2 -> G3 ->G8
G1 share the same base for female/male character, G2 went back to separate male/female and lower resoution, G3 got even lower resolution and facial rig so you can make changes without needing a morph and a morph just move the bones, G8 is tweaked G3 no big revolution there.
If you want to reuse something between generation it may or may not work or it may require additional tools or scripts, but you can always try, older generations cloth often works fine on later generations.
To use some of the tools you also have to use DAZ3D as a "plugin" for Carrara.
A useful tool for transferring morphs (but operates in DAZ3D) is https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-generation-x2
Many thanks Mikael for taking time to answer my questions. Greatly appreciated.
Another FYI you might be interested in.
For using Texture maps:
V4 maps work on Genesis 1 Basic Female preset (bring Base Female into Carrara and use V4 maps in the shaders)
M4 maps work on Genesis 1 Basic Male preset (bring Base Male into Carrara and use M4 maps in the shaders)
K4 maps work on Genesis 1 Basic Child preset (bring Base Child into Carrara and use K4 maps in the shaders)
Once the appropriate preset Genesis 1 is loaded, we can make the shape anything we want and the textures will still work, although extreme changes will cause at least some degree of stretching or constricting. But since so many Generation 4 maps were made by so many people for so many things (like creatures by RawArt, for example) it can be a handy way to make custom characters and creatures.
Knowing that, you should also know that:
Stephanie Petite 4, The Girl 4, and Aiko 4 maps fit V4, so use Basic Female (Genesis 1) to use those maps
Freak 4, Hiro 4 and David 4 maps fit M4
The main Generation 4 shapes were based off of the Michael and Victoria base shapes using the same UV Mapping. So if it's an adult male generation 4 character, use the Genesis 1 Basic Male preset and the texture maps will fit the UVs. If it's an adult female generation 4 character, use the Basic Female.
Example:
For a new monster, we can load in Basic Male Genesis 1 preset, Edit > Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders, and then switch out the texture maps for one of our M4 maps - perhaps RawArt's M4 Tin Man?
Then dial off the Basic Male shape and dial up the Gorilla morph, or the Troll... perhaps Undead Fiend. I like to mix and match shapes, so I've collected almost all of the various monster shapes for Genesis 1. The cool part about that (aside from the main content of this post!) is that, with Genesis, we can very easily individualize all of the various monsters in a scene. Grenol can be an entirely different looking Zonkrog than Bonmur, his shorter, uglier (looks more human) brother.
About the above post by myself:
I mention Remove Unused Masters > Consolidate Duplicate Shaders, and I mention that often. Here's why:
Generation 4 maps work well on the above mentioned Genesis 1 character presets, but the material pose files that apply them do not. But it's still very simple to use the texture sets. That's where Consolidate Duplicate Shaders comes in. (We can even have shaders consolidate upon loading in Carrara preferences)
After consolidating, we only have to change three or four shaders to alter the skin. Then we can decide for ourselve if we also want to changes the eyes, teeth, etc.,
One shader will be used for the Torso, head (top and back of the head), hip,
One for all of the limbs, which will also work for the nails unless we want to make those their own
One shader for the finger and toe nails if not using the Limbs shader
One shader for the face, lips, nostrils,
We can alter any of these shaders for their appropiately matching domains (like giving the lips a different color and glossiness, for example) but that comes later. It's so much faster to go ahead and change the few shader we now have after consolidating that to have to chage every shader for every part (domain) of the figure. So here we go:
After consolidating, look at the Shader tab on the bottom right of the interface. Not a whole lot of shaders left to edit, in most cases of Character figures. Double click the first one in the list to edit it.
At this point, I look at the Color map to see what main part it belongs to and rename it. So let's say the map is the Torso map, I'd rename it to the first initials of my character, then _Torso, for example.
Another thing I do at this point is to change the following shader channels to "Texture Map":
and then set Shininess to somewhere around 3 or 4 and everything else to None.
For each Texture Map, I navigate to the folder than contains the Texture set I wish to use. If I don't know where the folder is, I use DIM - find the instaled product, right-click, show installed files. If I didn't use DIM (came from somewhere else) I'll check the downloaded zip if I still have it or download it again and look at the name of the folder that resides in Runtime > Textures
Color gets the main colored texture map for that body part.
Highlight gets the Spec map
Bump, bump. If there's a Normal Map available, we can make the Bump channel Normal Map instead of texture map.
Just doing those quick changes make for a great start that is a lot more optimized for Carrara than any DS or Poser solution via clicking from the library.
Thanks Dartanbeck for the mine of information posted above. I always have significant problems with downloads from Daz. I have had Carrara and Poser since versions Zero but never mastered any of them because I only used them on odd occasions. Due to my negligence and many auto updates, content files and folders are like a gigantic chaotic haystack. I never know if a download file is lost in the haystack or lost in cyberspace. I recently downloaded a Carrara product but can't find it. The product sheet says it is a .car file but doesn't state the file name which makes it difficult to find on the computer. In the old days, we got a list of file names on the product page.
How do you use DIM to find lost files?
In DIM,. you can go to installed files,. then select any product,. then right click,. and choose "Show installed files"
this will show you a list of the folders and files for that product.
that should make finding them through the browser , a little bit easier.
Any products made for Carrara,. should be installed into the main carrara program folder structure,
You may need to add the Folder for the carrara product manually to the carrara browser,. since carrara doesn't auto-search for new content in the same way as Poser or DS do.
If you are using DIM, open DIM
Then click on the installed tab to see if you have installed it okay with DIM
Then click on the Settings icon located top right (shown as 1 with the arrow in the screendump), click on the Downloads tab - this will show you the path that the downloads have been done.
Next click on the Show Log button in the Settings Window bottom left corner (shown as 2 with the arrow)
In the log.text browse through and check your Current Content Install Path (shown as 3 with the arrow) and also check which products have been installed.
Using the right-click method gives you the installed content path at the top and the list of files.
Many thanks 3DAGE and Bunyip02 for explaining the DIM search utility. This will be a huge time saver.
Has anyone used "Macro Skin for Genesis and Genesis 2 Female". The eye balls are just painted black and the skin isn't ultra realistic when rendered. Also the lip and eye color doesn't change when applying different lip and eye materials. I must be doing something wrong. Any ideas?
I'm really not conviced, but they want to force us to use that to control everything.
In Carrara,. the shaders for the eyes will need to be adjusted to work better.
In carrara you can set the shader to use real transparency and reflections from the scene,. that'll work better for the eyes
set the index of refraction to Water.
Also,. in the render settings , you'll need to enable (Light through transparency) in the global illumination section
Generally,. when you load a skin or a material which is made for DS or Poser,. Carrara will translate that into a carrara shader,. and that will work, to a certain extent,. but in all translations there are errors or emmissions, some channels in the shader, such as Bump, Highlight or Shininess, may not have the image map loaded, or need to have values adjusted slightly to work better in carrara's render engine.
setting up (adjusting) the shaders in carrara to work better, will make your render look better
There are some skin shaders (products) for carrara, but its pretty easy to adjust or create your own,.
All your shaders can be saved to the carrara browser,. so it's a bit of work adjusting the shaders for a figure the first time , but once you're done you can save the "Global shader" to your browser, then drag and drop onto a character in a scene.
Because each 3D program uses different lighting , camera's , shader engines, and render engines, it's good practice and interesting to figure out what the different shader channels do, and how they work together to create the final image.
Hope that makes sense
Right. It might seem inconvenient at first, that we need to edit shaders in Carrara, but it really becomes entirely worth it, and it can get easier as we go, or we can also constantly try to achieve that perfect look... so we all have our own methods of optimization.
I've written a fairly new tutorial on the subject of Genesis shaders, but it's not on the web yet. Here's one that I wrote for Carrara Cafe:
► Optimizing Your Content – Shader Basics
by Dartanbeck | Mar 6, 2014 |
3DAGE and Dartanbeck, thank you both for your very generous help. I now understand exactly what challenges are ahead if I want to use Genesis characters. Dartenbeck's tutorial on Genesis shaders is very interesting and helpful. However, I think I will focus on V4 which is far inside my comfort zone.
I understand how this can seem like a step too far to some, ..I just want to load and click go etc,..
but no matter what generation of figure you work with,. or what outfit they're wearing,. or what hair etc,. you'll need to adjust some values in the shaders to make them look their best.
things like metalic surfaces will often use a "reflection map" (rather than use real reflections from the scene),. some items will use "alpha maps" instead of real transparency.
You should have some "Carrara ready shaders" bundled with carrara,. which provide you with a great example of the type of settings you'll need in your own figure shaders
the default V4 loaded into carrara and rendered,.. looks greenish,...
This is because the shaders are made for Poser,. and the main "Diffuse" channel is set to have the texture map, Multiplied with a colour (green) ,. this is because of the way that the Poser / DS render engines work,. (DS was made to work like Poser and support all poser content)
In Carrara,. and most other 3D programs,. The texture map (photo of skin) is what you need,. not mixed with a colour to correct it for the render engine.
You can just simply load a figure and click render and all should work reasonably well,. but,. adjusting things to work better than they do in the programs they were made for is both educational and rewarding.
It's easy to fall into "click and render" when all you're doing is clicking and applying prebuilt things,. but what are you learning about How or why ?
the DS/poser shaders (Surfaces) are created by the artist to show their product at it's best in DS or Poser ,. but few developers make carrara adjusted versions.
so we need to make your own adjustments,. but you're also learning something new,. and since most 3D programs don't work like DS and Poser (click and go) , and do work like Carrara, where some minor adjustments of imported content is required,.. or even completely rebuilding shaders,. it's something worth learning,.
even if it's only to help you create your own shaders for you're own models someday.
3DAGE, Thank you. You have given me much food for thought and I do appreciate and agree with your comments about learning. A long time ago I made some very nice morphing props in Carrara. I found I couldn't get them to work in Poser so I spent a few months learning Blender for the sole purpose of re-making my morphs for Poser. I then used the morph in Poser and spent about 3 months trying to get to grips with all the new Poser features. In the end I gave up, mainly because I didn't like the new render engine superfly. In the end I decided Carrara was really my best option. My objective is to create photorealistic scenes and portraits with dramatic lighting that will serve as references for my oil paintings. I made a painting machine, wrote the software and make special oil paint for the machine. I now want to make the digital pictures that feed my machine. I've been retired for a long time but still learning new tricks. What you said makes a lot of sense and I will think about it. In the meantime I will play with V4 and if it is within the forum rules, I will post it here for constructive criticism.
Here's my walkthrough for Victoria 4. The actual shader techniques work for anything though.
Fun exercise with lighting, global illumination and shadows
If you've watched any of my tutorial videos, you'll have noticed that I was an absolute newbie at it. My voice recording has a horrible hum to it and I often tried to mitigate that using effects and music. Yikes. Maybe one day I can find time to fix all of that and upload new version of them, or just plain re-record the info and start from scratch.
Anyway, this funky 'First Look at Carrara 8.5" video has some helpful tips within it - including working with Genesis shaders. You might find it useful if you can cope with the music and voice reverb! LOL
I think that Genesis 1 works great in Carrara. Auto-fit from previous generations works pretty darned good if we have the extra Genesis support files for that generation - I have all of them: Generation 3 and 4
I really like Genesis 2. Since auto-fit, at least in Carrara, doesn't work nearly as well for it compared to Genesis 1, and I don't have a huge collection of clothing and hair for Genesis 2, I end up not using it as much, but it is a better formed figure, I think.
But I still love using good ol' M4, V4 and they work very, very well in Carrara. So, for me, it's a win Win! ;)
Painting machine? I am truly intrigued. Can you share more about it? Sounds amazing!
Silene
Never gone public before, only because I was always afraid of being called a cheat. I'm past that now and enjoy chatting to people who are interested. If interested in art as well as the machine I can show examples. I'm not sure this is a suitable thread so I'll give you a brief intro then you can decide if you want more info and where it can be discussed.
I had the idea about 40 years ago when a computer was the size of a big bathroom. I called it my dream machine because technology was not available. My dream was to create a machine that would paint pictures that looked as if they were painted by a human. After about 3 decades, when affordable technology had caught up with my idea, I built it. Prior to that I had a very enjoyable time in the electronics industry, got a few patents and various achievements. However my proudest achievement is my paint machine.
That's the intro. Let me have your questions and I'll see if I can give you interesting answers.
Wow... If you have any YouTube vids of it in action, I would like to see it. My late dad would have loved something like that. His vision was going at the end when he was 91, but he took up using a home computer at 88 and his 5 year younger cousin was doing digital art with Corel when her vision was also low. Both had AMD, but dad's was worse and it was a bit late for him.
I guess the first question is, is this a mechanical machine that actually puts paint onto canvas, or is it software?
Sorry, never did youTube. It's a shame more old folk don't use a computer in their twilight years. I bet your Dad had a fun time on his computer. It is mechanical in terms of paint application. it is basically a CNC machine where x and y moves a syringe to a pixel and compressed air pushes a thick blob of paint out of a nozzle. The nozzle moves down and up the z axis to transfer paint to canvas then moves to the next pixel . If you are into art, the first stage of the painting is similar to pointilism. The rheology of the paint is very important, its more like putty than paint. I finish off manually with a very small pallete knife sometimes I apply glazes. The blobs are thick and the finished paintings are highly textured. When the paint has dried out the painting sparkles in dim light.
Dartenbeck. I really enjoyed your Tutorials above, Tha animation was awesome very atmospheric especially the opening landscape. The shadow tutorial was also very interesting as I will be using lots of shadow in my portraits.
Here is my first attempt with V4. Amazingly, render time was 21 seconds. If it doesn't display full size it won't be very impressive.
Great job! So did you have fun building the shaders? Did you kind of follow the tutorial - adding the Spec maps to the Highlight channel, bump to bump, etc., or use some other method? Looks Great!
Wow!!! That is SO cool!
A friend back in high school did some amazing pointilism. Very cool how you can go back afterwards with a pallete knife!!! Is it like oils, where the paint is still pliable after the machine is done, or does the glaze soften it?
So very cool!
On my biggest paintings (20x18 inches) it takes 6 or 7 days to complete the blobs. Regular oil paint didn't work because it dried too quickly and it was too thin. I make the paints with safflower oil which is slower drying than traditional linseed oil and Canada Balsam which is a heavy body resin. I then adjust the rheology with fumed silica. The result is a putty like paint that flows through the syringe but doesn't spread on the canvas. The resulting blobs remain soft for one to two weeks giving me time to do the pallete knife work. Glazing is done with the same medium as the paint after the blobs are touch dry. You can see the textures in the attached 7" X 9" practice pieces.
Dartenbeck, regarding my V4 pic, I made it very quickly after after reading 3DAGE's interesting comment and before I saw your shadow tutorial. It was done with off the shelf items except the glasses. The skin texture is Lana Elite. I got it from the DAZ store many years ago. The face morphs are Morphs++ and the glasses are a Morph that I made in Carrara 6 about 10 years ago. The reflections came out fairly realistic without too much effort. I tried to get a similar effect in poser but failed. I will be working on shadows with V4 so your shadow Tutorial will be very useful. The attachments show why I need shadows in my paintings and illustrates why Carrara can be a fantastic reference tool for artists. The two pics were composed in photoshop and painted on canvas by my machine and me and my trusty pallete knife (20" X 18" and 20" x 10").