a universal mesh/pose meant to transfer different shapes between figure generations

AuggieSays

with GenX no longer developed due to the creator's passing people were looking for ways to bring their favorite character shapes between the various generations of DAZ figures, with some PAs selling recreations of older core characters for newer generations.

there are countless tutorials that show how to wrap one generation's topology over another's shape to get that shape transferred but due to the different generations' varying zero poses you get weird baked in poses that make subsequent posing have wonky results.  so maybe instead of directly transferring one shape to another, we could have a sort of transactional middleman mesh that acts as a bridge between generations. 

it will have the same proportions and the same t-pose across all the generations so any new morph applied to on generation will be followed by the other generations or something.

basically, we have one universal mesh that will bridge the generations and maybe act as a merchant resource for "upgrading"  abandoned core figures like Callie 6 or Lillith 7 or port brand new characters to older generations. 

heck with Zwrap for Zbrush being out now I could see the same universal mesh be used for 3d scans and original sculpts making character creation even easier.

IsaacNewton

Nice idea and probably technically possible. However, ask yourself this question; Why would any company make or support such a thing? A shoe company that makes everlasting shoes will eventually go out of business. Sad but true.

AuggieSays

eh was going off how DAZ sold a plugin that basically did the same thing I described with GenX2, make shapes work across different figures.  and i think the analogy of the everlasting show falls flat as  DAZ kinda does that already by giving their app and all basic figures for free, even offer their own figure maker in the form of the Gen8 Developer Kit.  to my understanding, DAZ works off the razor-razor blade model where they make the real money off off add-ons like custom shapes and original assets which is why they can give the app and core figures for free.

DAZ still gets your money from the custom shapes as you already baught the library you wanna transfer and you till have to buy any new figures you wanna transfer to your already free figure bases.

at worst they till get your last payment from the initual universal morph and at best people will buy across all the various generations since they can use everything with everything else rather than be stuck with one generation.  hell might give some spectaular feek as they can see what assets have been baught in conjuction with others so they can supply apparent demand, like upgrade a popular shap or asset from a previous generation if they found it baught with assets for the latest.

might also encourage more people to become Published Artists if they have an easier way to make new shapes ie just wrap a base mesh over a fully custom model instead of javing to sculpt on said basemesh, and in turn grow their product library and their consumer base as DAZ might be the only charatcer crator app that has such a universal mesh.

Male-M3dia

If you look at the forum posts to manually convert figures between generations, they use the autofit clones as a method to do so. What you're asking for is already created; just find the posts in the forum to manually convert.

Also shrinkwrapping figures for things such as clothing is not allowed per EULA, so that can't be an incentive for being a PA. Unless you're creating an utility to automate the steps (and not distribute the result itself since you probably didn't create the original product), PAs should be focusing on NEW content, not converted ones.

nicstt

If you use the correct poses for the particular generation of model, and reverse deformations - selecting the pose - existing features within Studio work well.