Rejuvenate the V3/M3 line?
Eustace Scrubb
Posts: 2,698
Why not give the Mil3 series the same kind of treatement that the African Elephant got, and publish a weightmapped version? You could even include body shapes and clones for the V4/M4/K4 and Genesis-series figures if you wanted.
Comments
Aren't these sort of already there? Called Michael/Victoria 5-8? Or Genesis-Genesis 8 in general?
Not really: I mean actually bringing the older figures back into circulation/use, with their funky UVs and all. No two versions of "Michael" are the same shape, and while V3 has the same shape as V2/V1, her rig is different. But there's still a lot of content out there-- both "still available" and sitting unused in Poser runtimes-- for the Victoria 3 and Michael 3 figures, and as much or more for Aiko 3. Even a fair amount for the child figures of that series.
Other than the UV issue (Cayman has a geograft solution, but it's not ideal), I can use most 3rd-generation content on Genesis 1.
How about Gen8 content on Mil3?
Well, that wouldn't give you a weight-mapped figure. I don't think autofit will work with a parametrically-rigged figure, but I could be wrong. You might have to autofit to Genesis 1 and then use Crossdresser back to a 3rd-gen figure. I don't recall if GenX can transfer from Genesis 1/2/3 back to V3, but I think it can. For the UVmaps you'd need Cayman's geograft method, I don't know if geografts work on parametrically-rigged figures. So all-in-all it's probably less work to go forward than backward, but it might be possible to go both ways.
No, it works only with weightmapped figures as it projects weights to rig the converted item.
Again, it works only to bring morphs to weightmapped figures. You can go from generation 3 and 4 to Genesis line, but not back to them.
I don't think they do, but even if they did you would have to create your own geografts to add the needed polygons and material zones to V3, and alternate UVs for V3 mesh so it takes G8F textures.
well you can if you can scale and shape them using clone shapes, convert to obj and use figure setup tools or Poser
I have done it but it's tedious
I am trying to do my little bit to keep the line still usable with a bidirectional pose transfer. It's not a lot, I know, but it's better than nothing.
However, there is a huge problem. If DAZ is not selling new copies of V3/M3, the generation cannot do anything other than die out in the long term. The result is inevitable.
What is it about the V3/M3 generation that you really like? Maybe once that is defined, instead of saving the whole, the good bits can be saved.
I don't like V3's hip, knee, elbow and shoulder bends. They are simply awful. On the other hand, I do like one particular character. From my blinkered point of view, I would love to transfer that character shape directly to G8 (without G1, G2, G3 and G8 intermediate steps to introduce errors at each stage). I am sure others have different requirements. If they could be stated, maybe we can see a common thread running through what we all want and address the deeper requirement. I fear V3/M3 is dead in the long term, but there is time to save what we like about the generation.
Regards,
Richard
I've found in my experiments that if I convert either V3 or M3 to WM, they can take all of the other Gen3 figures as FBMs, including most of the retrofit ones like M3-to-M2 and Mil3-to-Mil2 kids, whereas M3 and the Freak were morph-compatible to each other and most of the rest were compatible with morphs from V3. The V3-to-V2 mesh isn't compatible with either, for whatever reason, but the zeroed mesh for V2 and that for V3 have the same shape. The Preschool retrofit meshes load about three feet in the air (head, not feet, as the anchor point) and the original Girl was a seperate mesh entirely, despite having a V3 UV option.
Any such product, though, would have to be weight-mapped, anyway.