Genesis 9 and Male Chests
MelissaGT
Posts: 2,611
So I've been building some custom characters on G9...specifically males. And while I have the faces down and I love making faces with G9...I'm having the hardest time with chests. I've noticed even with all the G9 core figures I've purchased, all the male chests just look...weird. I have to wonder if this is just me thinking they look weird or if others have noticed the same thing. Even the new one today, Wang 9, has a weird chest. I find myself scouring the marketplace specifically for more chest morph options to make them not look weird. I've also noticed that the back/shoulders is also very hunchy...if that's a word. The entire chest cavity area, from front to back, is just...off. And no matter what I do I can't seem to make the pectorals not look like boobs.
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There's actually a large number of things about Gen 9 that I'm struggling with, all related to your observation. I've purchased a wide number of G9 products, and have really given it a shot, but the brow, the chest, the legs, the feet... things just don't look as defined as G8.1, IMO. I've just come to the honest conclusion that portraits was the aim here, and maybe compatibility to a degree, but as an overall product this feels like a step backwards both in ease of use (for my workflow) and quality. I know there are some proponents here, specifically those who sell content, and I'm happy G9 is easy, but its stuff like this... the weird chest shapes that are hard to specifically quantify... that I keep getting hung up on.
I don't think that helped you, other than to say I've also had the same issue. Even when just trying to integrate G9 into the scenes as cursory characters, things like this still bug me and I can't figure out how to dial it in even with the extensive list of morphs I've already purchased.
I've gotten into the habit of exporting out the final figure in HD, taking into Zbrush, and just putting the detail back in myself.
G9 is like Victoria 4.
It is a Head-Only figure.
For posing G9 charcters the mesh is unusable without HD subdividing.
Because of missing edge loops some overlaping polygon edges are creating artefacts on the surface.
The mesh design still looks better on male characters than on female characters.
I haven't had nearly as much issue with female shapes. I'm actually enjoying working with G9 when it comes to females. But males...only the faces are working well for me. Even converting clothing from G8 to G9 only works well for females (because the base G9 body has boobs). It seems like even though it's a unimesh, G9 was designed with male figures as an afterthought.
Technicalities of geometry aside, I find that female characters are easier to work with for G9 than males. I can get females looking good, but males are just...weird. It's hard to get them to not look doughy and booby.
In Dazland, males have always been an afterthought...
At least with G3 and G8 (and G2, but I've never used G2) there were separate base figures for males. I thought I'd like the unimesh for ease of converting stuff and having all my morphs available for both males and females...but the fact that the base G9 figure has boobs by default makes it very hard to get rid of those boobs entirely. Load up a G9 and then add in the base masculine slider...still has boobs. Load up any of the male core figures...still has boobs. 99.9% of male G9's I see in the store have boobs and not pecs. It seems the base figure should have been made without boobs because they're easier to add than remove.
Yes, I call it pancake pecs.
G9 has shaped breasts by default, which makes sense based on sales figures and customer interest. But instead of (what I assume would be a laborious task of) reshaping the chest to a base undeveloped look before creating a male figure, the breasts are just reduced and flattened. It leaves what I think is am overly defined shape between and under the breasts that is out of keeping with the rest of the definition in other areas of the body.
I have seen only one G9 shape that has been able to eliminate the effect, it was on a tree creature.
As much as I like the G9 face, this issue has made it a no-go for me.
Yeah that's exactly the issue I'm running into now. I've already built this character on G9 and facially he is perfect. And because it's fanart, he has to be perfect. The emoting and everything is perfect. When I initially built him, it was a fully-clothed piece so the body didn't matter so much...couldn't even tell there was boobies. But the piece I'm working on now he is shirtless and the boobies are driving me crazy!
I'm with you on this one. I thought having one base figure would double with textures, clothing, etc. More for your dollar, so to speak. Feminine textures tend to (not always) be flawless and porcelain perfection. While the masculine textures tend to (not always) have warts and all. Also, mens and womens clothing have buttons and zippers on opposite sides. It's small little things that throw off realism one tries to create.
As for the pecs/boobs debate, most of the core DAZ masculine figures, I'd say, have reasonably sized pectoral muscles for the swimmers/athletic build they've been given. Dain does verge into bodybuilder territory, however.
G8M does have a morph called Pectoral Undercurve (or something along those lines) that either enhances or decreases its size to give a flat chested look. That might help with G9 (if it has one). Though, all those faces might cause some distortions.
Are you sure you don't have extra morphs lurking that are retaining soem of the breast shape?
Yes I'm sure. You can even see the boobs in the product promos.
It's not so much the size of the pectoral that is an issue...it's the shape/angle itself. I bought some chest morphs specifically for male figures on the 'other' site and I'm hoping that will help.
Maybe post a picture of the morph so we can see how it looks and/or give feed back on how to correct it for you.
And, if DAZ Moderators delete the picture, you'll know if they look like boobs or pecs. Lol.
Yup. G9 male chest looks like botched plastic surgery. They must keep their shirt on. (Image source)
OMG THEY DO! LOL. *cries*
I will post a picture of the model I'm working on as soon as I finish tweaking the rest of the body.
I don't think the issue is that G9 is a unisex mesh, rather that the unisex mesh they created is not ideal for what they are doing. The lack of geometry in very basic places is a huge problem. Even the belly button needs a HD mesh just to be visible, and it needs to subdivided a couple times at that. HD level 1 is not even enough. What is the point of base mesh resolution if you need to subdivide to see ANY detail, we are not just talking about the fine details here.
I feel like the chest is really oddly made, no matter which perspective you look at, male or female. It goes beyond that, there are other aspects of G9 that simply look weird. It is hard to define what exactly it is, but I see it in almost every G9 male and female, there is something not quite right.
Easier doesn't automatically mean easy.
Sure, adding boobs is fairly trivial if the figure is nude, but when you consider clothes, I had to take many hours and create new tools to make projection morphs to stop one of my bustier (G8F) characters loading shirts like this:
... and instead load them like this:
And I've had to make different versions of this projection morph to address clothing of different tightnesses. (Fortunately I've now got my process fairly refined so I can adapt it to new character shapes reasonably quickly, but alas I don't have the scripting skills to automate it entirely).
Sure, dForce can somewhat handle this problem if you do a timeline simulation to bring the shape in, but that's tedious and requires dForce compatible shirts (which are comparatively uncommon). Fit Control is a port in a storm, but it's also imperfect, trying to work out what combination of shapes can best cancel out the deformation.
Getting a good fit on clothes the further you move away from the base shape is a challenge - and I say that as someone who is really good at making clothes fit things far from their original base shape:
So making G9's base shape completely flat chested definitely does not magically make all the challenges go away.
We can argue then that perhaps there is a need for separate base figures... but the concept of a unisex base is meritorous. The number of times I've needed matching outfits for men and women, or needed to share morphs to make characters look like brother and sister, or turned down buying a monster because the PA only made it available on one of the bases... it's not a small number. And while sorting those kinds of things is within my skill set, I know my skill set is uncommon.
Actually, if we've brought up G2 - the G2 figures share exactly the same topology, as do (I believe) all the Victoria era figures. You can export Girl 6 to a mesh file and then reimport that shape on G2M just fine. (There's minor differences in the actual rigging, but ultimately G2 is a unimesh base, and splitting it into two mostly has the advantage of needing less clothing morphing).
Entirely separate geometries for the male and female bases is actually an exception rather than the rule amongst Daz figures.
We're perhaps in a position where the vendors haven't needed to work with the constraints of a unimesh base in a while, particularly with the changes to how rigging and correctives are done since those eras, but nothing fundamentally means that the same geometry for the male and female base is a problem. If anything, the way it was done with G3 and G8 could be seen as a bodge that replaced one set of problems with another.
After doing life drawing for a few years I came to the conclusion dude's chests are weird and what I think looks right is a tiny slice of what exists out in the wild.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=slim+shirtless+man+one+arm+up&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
The placement of the nipple sometimes seems to move a lot with shoulder movement, and sometimes barely all, and I'm not enough of an anatomy student to explain the inter-person variation! So I've tried to be forgiving of the Gen 9 figures and correct as much as I can to my personal taste and reference material.
(If anyone has a good suggestion for a more dramatic nipple movement product please suggest here, as mine are limited!)
Oh... might have answered my own question - Pectorals Sag from https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-9-body-shapes moves the nipples and then I can correct with outher dials
Vinme Morphs do a decent job of reshaping the masculine chest -- although they do call those specific morphs "breasts masculine". Mind, that's a hefty price to pay for the six morphs that affect the male chest, so you would want to get the whole package to use for other things. (And they've finally corrected how it crashed into Shape Shift and caused duplicate formulas.)
Genesis 9 has morphs called "Chest Volume Fix" for both left and right pecs. It reduces the outer curve and maybe a bit on the undercurve. Not sure if that's in the Starter Essentials or the Essentials Expansion add-on.
It's possible that Soto's Breast Utilities might help with this, but the promo images for the male are ... discouraging on that front, let's say. However, I don't have that set so I can't say for sure. And again, not cheap.
Sickleyield's free morphs package also has one morph (SY Free Pecs Shape 02) that squares off the bottom of the pec a bit to attenuate the moobtacular shape. That combined with the Chest Volume Fix might get you where you want to go.
@MelissaGT - was that the package by SF-Design? Did it do what you wanted?
G9 is a non-human figure. This was heralded as a boon for creature creators. I consider a non-human humanoid figure anti-human, but I'm fond of people. Perhaps the artist that created V9 will make one more masterpiece for us.
The need for HD morphs on G9, and the absence of a texture creator seems to be hampering the PA's at third party sites making good G9 content.
And just like Victoria 4, it seems to take quite some time before we get figures that don't look like Victoria 9 or her brothers and sisters.
I can see Vicky 9 even in Wang 9
Yeah, it's the SF-Design and so far it hasn't really helped. But that chest volume fix is promising! WHY IS THAT HIDDEN UNDER TOOLS??? Vinme morphs has been help. I'm definitely going to give the SY free morphs a shot.
Basically what I've been trying to achieve is a moderately thin yet toned body with defined chest/pecs...which is what has been difficult. Because you either end up with defined everything else and moobs...or a flat bird chest. I'm going to keep playing with it...I'm focusing on the rest of the body right now. It's for fanart of a game character so I've been using screenshots from the game as reference so it's a distinct look I'm going for. I'm not against personalizing it to my tastes and to help give the game character more realism, which is what I did with the face (which came out awesome if I do say so myself), but I still need it to be recognizable.
Closing this as the main points have been amde and discussed, it is now turning into a repeat of the launch threads.