Character Conversion: M4H4 to G8M/8.1M/9?
ArtsyDragon
Posts: 682
I can't find a converter in the store and I think I may have asked about this before but I cannot recall. I have one character package for M4/H4 that I would love to use as a character and skin for a more recent Genesis character.
If there is no package to do this, does anyone have any suggestions on how to do this manually for someone who is rather not good at 3D mesh stuffs?
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I've done Michael 4 -> Genesis 8.1 transfers.
There's probably several ways to go about it; this is the way I did it:
To transfer the shapes, you need all of these products:
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-generation-x2
https://www.daz3d.com/genx2-addon-for-genesis-2
https://www.daz3d.com/genx2-addon-for-genesis-3
https://www.daz3d.com/xtransfer--genesis-3-to-genesis-8-converter
To transfer the skin:
https://www.daz3d.com/legacy-uvs-for-genesis-8-michael-4
To convert to IRAY:
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-converter-for-generation-4
In my experience, the process is very much hit and miss.
I usually don't even bother transferring the body shapes and stick to the head shapes.
Best case scenario, you get a G8M head shape that looks more or less like the M4 original, but less defined. I use dials to get the shape closer to the original.
Worst case the transfer doesn't work at all. I don't know enough about these processes to be able to tell why some characters transfer and others don't.
That's how much I can tell you. Good luck!
I agree with Hylas' recommendations and his methods sound like what I do. With my experience, I have had no luck transferring Jepe's M4 Characters (LOVED his Mil4 men) and Mortem Vetus M4 characters over to G8, but characters from Mec4D, Phoenix66, and a few others have worked just fine. I've found too, that just transferring the head morphs is preferrable for my needs.
One of my favs was Giacomo. I liked what I could do with it back in the day. :) I ran across it in my library and thought 'Hnmmmmmm....'
We'll see how it goes. LOL
I transfered a bunch of M4 characters onto G8M a while back, and Giacomo was one of them. The morph was transferred as has been outlined above, Gen X2 to get on to G3M and then X-Transfer to get to G8M. The skin was converted using a utility sold at Rendo. Here it is a quick and crude render of him. You can see it is the same character, but it is not identical. No doubt you can get closer by tweaking various head morphs.
Interesting, what is the name of the skin converter at Rendo? Who makes it?
Probably Blacksmith3D
Oh yeah, I had forgotten about this products existence (I don't own it)... looks like it's not sold anymore.
Thank you so much. I'll put some time into this. I appreciate all the comments and helpful hints.
Yes it was Blacksmith. Strange that it is no longer available, not even on their own website, I assume the company behind it has folded.
I prefer to have the skins converted to G3F/G3M UVs as they are easier to use and modify than using the geo graft UV utilities provided here, although I do have some of those, and they work well.
I have transferred characters from various vendors, including Mortem Vertus that ZippyGuitar mentioned was difficult to transfer (I can post examples if any one is interested). The only vendor I struggled with was Eric Farris who uses PMD files for the morphs, although I could probably get round that by using Poser to transfer them to normal morph injections.
As Blacksmith 3D isn't available anymore there is also Texture Transformer (assuming that's still available). It's by the same people (I think) and is basically a cheaper, standalone version of Blacksmith's texture converter. I still use it myself and tha will get you as far as G3, which means G8 too.
No, it´s no longer available either. I'm bummed out.
Oh that sucks for you as it works really well. The only other way I can think of is wrapping. Blender has an add-on called Softwrap, which is fairly cheap and then there's the vastly more expensive Wrap3D if you want a standalone option. Might be worth looking into the Blender one if you're comfortble with that software.
Bah, we need a new replacement for those two products. I have a Genesis 1 character I converted over to Genesis 3, and managed to adapt and kitbash together a G3M skin to approximate the look of his old M4-era skin I have on the Genesis 1 character, but he still doesn't quite look the same as a G3M without the original skin the character started with.