Tutorial request

Connatic

A comprehensive tutorial covering the proper installation of Genesis content for use in Carrara would be a big help. I have installed Poser content for over 10 years and never had any problems getting things working in Poser and Carrara. I find the DAZ systems Download Manager and CMS to be confusing. They are supposed to be automatic and simple, yet the components are installed in the wrong destinations, as they do not work properly for me. I tried to uninstall and reinstall everything and it still does not work. Hopefully this tutorial would start out by describing the correct way to uninstall, or if possible move the currently installed content to the correct places. I am not sure what is going wrong, but I believe maybe some files are going to "Documents..." and some are going to 'Users/My Documents..."

Can Genesis work in Carrara WITHOUT using these DAZ systems to install? I thank Dartanbeck for previously trying to help me, but I still have not gotten this issue solved. I know I am missing something or making a big error somewhere in this process, and hopefully someone can help me get this stuff all working correctly. G1 worked BEFORE I reinstalled, but now does not load at all. G2 loads and seems to mostly work, yet some morphs and clothing and other files do not show up in Carrara. There are folders for them, but nothing is within. I bought a bunch of Genesis content, but have gotten no use from it so far. I have spent many hours failing to get this all working and eventually I get frustrated and set it aside.

frank0314

Can you post a screen shot of your applications tab and downloads tab

Stezza

I'll put together what my setup is..

which works flawlessly for me..

Just getting it all together to post up ;-)

Stezza

First off all my programs and content are installed onto different drives to my OS drive

My OS drive is C:

Content drive is D:

3D Program install drive including DIM is E:

This setup works for me flawlessly ( touch wood ) other users may have a different setup which is just as good or better.

Do what works for you.

Hard drive setup pics:

Stezza

Setup the DIM to point at the drives for content and installs

Stezza

Next is to install DS and setup the parameters

I don't use DS but I find it important for the install of Genesis ect for Carrara 8.5 pro

Stezza

Then the final steps after Carrara 8.5 is installed is to setup the content for it..

That's how I do it and I don't have any problems..

I can reinstall my OS at any time and get my 3D APPS up to speed in no time..

Hope this helps in giving you some ideas :-)

Connatic

I totally forgot to thank Stezza for this amazing tutorial!  Between this and some help from DAZ Helpdesk I learned to set up Studio and Carrara in a way that works for me.

Thank you!!!!

Mistara

my rig is offline
like to d/l from ProductLib.  right-click, save as,  backup the .zip to external hdd 
unzip,
rename just about everything lol

prefixprefixprefix_boot.duf
rename boot.duf

content, subfolder,subfolder,subfolder,vendornamefolder,subfolder, ... , material, subfolder/sufolder

move to 

content, 01 Fashion,
rename outfitname (concatenate) gn1 , 

Material, iray/3delight
move the subfolders to directly under the outfit folder, deleter 'material'

content, subfolder,subfolder,subfolder,vendornamefolder,subfolder, genesis creature
move to Content, 04 Fantastx

and if there's no .duf files (the old Genesis days), create a preset with duf extension
materials are prolly in .dsa, will all need to be .duf for Carrara
convert geografts to conforming

and if i save a character's shader preset in carrara, i like to copy the texture files to the carrara .cbr folder, an external carrara presets folder, like to keep it separate from the native content.
e:,CA85XLib,presets, ShadersX, character name (concat) uvsTemplateName

separate libs for RPG and SFF

 

Dartanbeck

Hi Connatic!

Stezza's got you covered, I see. Sweet! Just in case you'r looking for more information on the subject, here are some of my notes on the subject. I wrote them while Carrara 8.5 Pro was still Beta, but I feel that this stuff is still good:

► Carrara 8.5 and Genesis

This list below hasn't been updated in a long time. It basically links to some threads regarding troubleshooting Genesis and DIM type stuff

► Genesis - Carrara 8.5 - DIM Support Thread Links
Got questions about Genesis use in Carrara, DIM use for installing?
This page lists links to threads that have answered many questions to common problems

This list is for anything Carrara

► Forum Help Links

...and this is just a fun perusal of Carrara-related stuff

► Learning CARRARA and need some help?

More specific towards content, I've also written these which are techniques and tips that have helped me immensely over the years. I know... I'm throowing a lot out here... but Carrara is a vast place. You'll see that it's nice to have a handful of too much info that we can go back to a check from time to time so we can take things one step at a time at our own pace ;)

Your Carrara Browser
Making great stuff isn't as cool if you can't remember where you put it. Let's get some good habits going right from the start

Daz Install Manager - Installing Custom Poser Runtimes
Basic walkthrough of designing your own custom runtime structure

Navigating in Carrara
some good tips on how to get around the work space, go to where you want to be at specific times, and how to send stuff to specific locations within your scene

Kinda funny/boring/whatever... this is a babble-session when I first decided to switch from installing manually to strictly using DIM. I was recording on the fly and didn't do a lot of editing, so it is like an hour long. But I'm still doing it this way. I use the above article for installing my Poser content to my specific Poser Runtime Structures using DIM, and I keep ALL Genesis and other DUF-Only installs in the default DIM location, and it works great. 

Another set of babble sessions immediately following the release of Carrara 8.5 Pro

I hope that between all of these comments you can find your way to some wonderful Genesis fun! 

Connatic

@Dartanbeck - You have been a tremendous help to me also.  I am always on-again-off-again with Carrara.  I need to get back into it.  I have migrated from Poser to Studio over the past couple of years.  I might use Poser 10% of the time, totally prefer Studio, especially because of Iray.

If anyone has or knows of a thorough tutorial for exporting an object or figure from Studio to Carrara, making a morph, and re-importing to Studio, I would love to read it.  I have had success doing this, but help would be good.  Like to know what settings to use at the various steps, and why.

Dartanbeck

Connatic said:

@Dartanbeck - You have been a tremendous help to me also.

Thanks! I appreciate your kind words, my friend! Always glad to help!

 

Connatic said:

If anyone has or knows of a thorough tutorial for exporting an object or figure from Studio to Carrara, making a morph, and re-importing to Studio, I would love to read it.  I have had success doing this, but help would be good.  Like to know what settings to use at the various steps, and why.

Absolutely!

The beautiful thing about Carrara is that we don't need that extra step of exporting from Daz Studio into Carrara, unless we're working on a figure that Carrara doesn't support, like Genesis 3. More on Genesis 3 morphs below. But for Genesis 1 and 2 and earlier figures, like V4, M4, etc., we can open them directly into Carrara, model the new morph upon the base figure (or upon a morphed figure, which requires a subtractive step in DS later in the process) in its default pose, and export from Carrara using the Daz Studio OBJ preset.

Then import the new OBJ we've just exported as a Morph onto the Base figure in Daz Studio using Morph Loader Pro, which also contains the abilities to subtract the morphs that may have been applied in order to create the morph. For example, if we wanted to make a specific morph for the Genesis 1 Gorilla, we'd need to dial up the Gorilla morph so we can make our morph. Well, if we don't subtract the Gorilla morph's data from the new morph obj, we'll be multiplying the Gorilla morph onto Genesis. So Morph Loader Pro allows us to remove the Gorilla morph during the morph creation process from the OBJ we've exported. Cool, huh!

For Genesis 3, it's just as easy to use Carrara as the morph modeler, except that we do need to export the figure from Daz Studio just like we'd need to do with any figure for any other modeler.

For all of these things, there are many questions and techniques that pop up along the way. To get started into doing this stuff, it's really Really easy. Just follow these simple instructions and delve into more lessons as needed. Don't forget to check out how to hook up JCMs as well... it can help make things work automatically behind the scenes! ;)

Here is where to begin - DAZ Studio 4 3D Content Creation Tools - by Daz3d

These tutorials are for an earlier version of Daz Studio and for Genesis 1, but the same tools apply now, and have even gotten better along the way.

One of Daz3d's incredible employees, whom is an amazing guru on all of this, has also started his own channel on his own time to help us even further - and helps to show us how endless our Carrara <> Daz Studio relationship can become, even though he doesn't mention Carrara at all - he's a Modo user. But I feel that Carrara is perfect for all of this work. It's easy to keep topology intact, we don't need to do nearly as much tinkering with export/import since the figures (except for Genesis 3) open directly within Carrara

I give you, Mr. Josh Darling!

 

Bunyip02

Dartanbeck said:

Connatic said:

@Dartanbeck - You have been a tremendous help to me also.

Thanks! I appreciate your kind words, my friend! Always glad to help!

 

Connatic said:

If anyone has or knows of a thorough tutorial for exporting an object or figure from Studio to Carrara, making a morph, and re-importing to Studio, I would love to read it.  I have had success doing this, but help would be good.  Like to know what settings to use at the various steps, and why.

Absolutely!

The beautiful thing about Carrara is that we don't need that extra step of exporting from Daz Studio into Carrara, unless we're working on a figure that Carrara doesn't support, like Genesis 3. More on Genesis 3 morphs below. But for Genesis 1 and 2 and earlier figures, like V4, M4, etc., we can open them directly into Carrara, model the new morph upon the base figure (or upon a morphed figure, which requires a subtractive step in DS later in the process) in its default pose, and export from Carrara using the Daz Studio OBJ preset.

Then import the new OBJ we've just exported as a Morph onto the Base figure in Daz Studio using Morph Loader Pro, which also contains the abilities to subtract the morphs that may have been applied in order to create the morph. For example, if we wanted to make a specific morph for the Genesis 1 Gorilla, we'd need to dial up the Gorilla morph so we can make our morph. Well, if we don't subtract the Gorilla morph's data from the new morph obj, we'll be multiplying the Gorilla morph onto Genesis. So Morph Loader Pro allows us to remove the Gorilla morph during the morph creation process from the OBJ we've exported. Cool, huh!

For Genesis 3, it's just as easy to use Carrara as the morph modeler, except that we do need to export the figure from Daz Studio just like we'd need to do with any figure for any other modeler.

For all of these things, there are many questions and techniques that pop up along the way. To get started into doing this stuff, it's really Really easy. Just follow these simple instructions and delve into more lessons as needed. Don't forget to check out how to hook up JCMs as well... it can help make things work automatically behind the scenes! ;)

Here is where to begin - DAZ Studio 4 3D Content Creation Tools - by Daz3d

These tutorials are for an earlier version of Daz Studio and for Genesis 1, but the same tools apply now, and have even gotten better along the way.

One of Daz3d's incredible employees, whom is an amazing guru on all of this, has also started his own channel on his own time to help us even further - and helps to show us how endless our Carrara <> Daz Studio relationship can become, even though he doesn't mention Carrara at all - he's a Modo user. But I feel that Carrara is perfect for all of this work. It's easy to keep topology intact, we don't need to do nearly as much tinkering with export/import since the figures (except for Genesis 3) open directly within Carrara

I give you, Mr. Josh Darling!

 

There is now an off-site solution for Genesis 3. The following render is Gigalien for G3M by RawArt with The Exile Alien by Josh Crockett morph added, carrara NPR render.

Dartanbeck

Awesome! So I take it all of our purchased shapes for Genesis 3 will work with those Carrara preset characters? 

Connatic

Thanks, that is great help!

Bunyip02

Dartanbeck said:

Awesome! So I take it all of our purchased shapes for Genesis 3 will work with those Carrara preset characters? 

Hello Dart, I have had no problems with any of the figure morphs, which includes GenX2 converted morphs so far.

Some of the clothing does not convert well and will crash Carrara when loaded.

Dartanbeck

Bunyip02 said:

Dartanbeck said:

Awesome! So I take it all of our purchased shapes for Genesis 3 will work with those Carrara preset characters? 

Hello Dart, I have had no problems with any of the figure morphs, which includes GenX2 converted morphs so far.

Some of the clothing does not convert well and will crash Carrara when loaded.

So then you just load those clothes into DS and convert to Blended Weights? Is that right?

I've never used GenX, so have no clue what any of that means.

Bunyip02

Dartanbeck said:

Bunyip02 said:

Dartanbeck said:

Awesome! So I take it all of our purchased shapes for Genesis 3 will work with those Carrara preset characters? 

Hello Dart, I have had no problems with any of the figure morphs, which includes GenX2 converted morphs so far.

Some of the clothing does not convert well and will crash Carrara when loaded.

So then you just load those clothes into DS and convert to Blended Weights? Is that right?

I've never used GenX, so have no clue what any of that means.

Both Wendy & Misty have done a video tutorial at the Carrara forum at the other site, both well worth watching.

GenX2 is DAZ3D specific for converting morphs between figures. I use it a lot especially for my critter morph renders. https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-generation-x2