Migrating V4 Content to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 Female

cafedelic

I've been dabbling in Poser/DAZ for more than a decade and along the way have acquired mountains of V4 content. Having been snowbound for weeks, what better than to try to migrate some of my V4 content so it works with the G1 and GF2 characters in DS4.7?

I settled on three base products (some require add-ons) for this -- Generation X2 for transferring V4 morphs, PoseMaster for transferring V4 poses, and V4 Skins Auto Converter for Genesis 2 for transferring V4 Skin Textures.

With a couple weeks experimentation under my belt, here're some opinions.

It's time consuming because for before transferring each Character morph (and I've been doing the Head and Body morphs separately), you have to load the full V4.2 Morph++ morph set. But for G1, the results are remarkably good. My gold standard are the look-a-like V4 characters such as Scarlett Johansen Kirsten Dunst, Jennifer Lawrence, Helen Bonham Carter, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, Summer Glau, Lena Headly, etc.

Generation X2 did a remarkable job of transferring both head and body morphs to G1 single character sliders that are a breeze to apply -- and as far as I can see, are nearly 100% accurate. I was actually surprised at how well Generation X2 handled the minute nuances of head shape that can make or break a celebrity look-a-like.

My experience with Generation X2 and transferring V4 head morphs for GF2 was not nearly as satisfying. Perhaps its something about the underlying geometry, but I was only able to achieve a slight resemblance between the V4 character and the transferred GF2 head morph. The GF2 versions were attractive, but they weren't really recognizable as the the original Scarlett, Kirsten, Jennifer, Helen, Marilyn, Sophia, Summer, Lena, etc.

So far, I've only used the PoseMaster script to transfer large batches of V4 Poses to work with G1. The results have been very good, with one caveat. The G1 figure has a slightly different bone structure, so the poses simply cannot be a perfect match. This is most noticeable in poses were the hands or feet are near each other, or touching body parts. Poses like these will require additional tweaking, there's no way around it. The conversion process is easy to set up, but does require considerable time to run. Like complicated renders, it's best done while eating a meal or watching TV. Haven't experimented converting any V4 poses to GF2 yet.

The V4 Skin Auto Converter, like the name implies, is fast, simple and almost completely automatic. It also works amazingly well at transferring textures from V4 to GF2. (Remember V4 textures can be applied directly to G1 as long as you change the UV Map setting to V4 in the Surfaces Editor).

What about Subsurface Scattering settings in V4 Texture that have SSS versions? Good question, I assume SSS settings aren't transferred, but I haven't really checked.

What I can say is that V4 Skin Auto Converter works -- and works remarkably well -- at transferring V4 MATs for use with GF2.

Bottom line, all three of these products do their job and do it well -- with the one exception Generation X2 conversion of V4 head morphs to GF2 where the results are not unpleasing, but lack some of the important nuances of the original V4 head morphs.

Hope this is helpful to anyone contemplating migrating a few hundred gigs of V4 content for use with G1 and GF2 in Studio 4.7. It takes time, but yes, it really can be done!

Havos

cafedelic said:

My experience with Generation X2 and transferring V4 head morphs for GF2 was not nearly as satisfying. Perhaps its something about the underlying geometry, but I was only able to achieve a slight resemblance between the V4 character and the transferred GF2 head morph. The GF2 versions were attractive, but they weren't really recognizable as the the original Scarlett, Kirsten, Jennifer, Helen, Marilyn, Sophia, Summer, Lena, etc.

Bottom line, all three of these products do their job and do it well -- with the one exception Generation X2 conversion of V4 head morphs to GF2 where the results are not unpleasing, but lack some of the important nuances of the original V4 head morphs.

Hope this is helpful to anyone contemplating migrating a few hundred gigs of V4 content for use with G1 and GF2 in Studio 4.7. It takes time, but yes, it really can be done!

Hi,

In my experience GenX2 transfers to Genesis 2 every bit aswell as Genesis 1. In theory Genesis 2 is capable of a closer match than Genesis 1, since there are a few more polygons in the head, but in reality both of such close matches I struggle to see a difference. I have attached an example, I used quite a strong and distinctive V4 morph, http://www.daz3d.com/francesca-for-v4 so that any differences would be more likely to show up. The heads show V4, Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, I will let you decide which is which :-)

FSMCDesigns

yep, we are very spoiled to be able to transfer so much and use clothing and other o0ptions from across many generations of figures. Pretty remarkable when you think about how tedious and time consuming it was back when V3 was around.