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Nice Lee
Happy New Year everyone. Here is some more fooling around, this time with the Chronos character. This is a HUGELY powerful morph and the head is not separated from the body. I used the X-Splitter tool to make an inverse copy of the head so I could try and put some expressions on the faces. These are both G8M, with the cloning on the female character. Otherwise it is 25% Chronos, 40%AME with Flex at 90%, tuned ASE, my own extra enhancements etc. I darkened the skin slightly on the Male character with 15% Chronos head remaining, with the Female at only 10% Chronos head remaining. The materials on these characters took over an hour to render, even at SubD3.
Terry,
You mentioned that the RSSY clothes gender swap utility had a better clone, how do you use it/access it?
BTW thanks for all the input with AME for G8F!
Hi, and thanks for the feedback. You would need the CrossFigure, not the Clothes Gender Swap product. The Cross Figure isn't necessarily better, just slightly different. The major difference is in the breast/nipple area. the G8M has a different map in that area, so forcing the shape causes some sort of distortion. The Transgender forces the nipple to stay close to the original location, and gets a crease on the outside of the breast (really prevalent on smaller breasted figures, but usually hidden by any clothing). The Cross-Figure has no crease, and is very smooth, but the nipple is forced significantly downward and outward. If you want any nipple morphing to show thru clothing it will be in the completly wrong location. What is interesting is that when I split the Transgender head and body morph with the X-Splitter tool, the resulting body morph did not have the crease, and the nipple stayed significantly closer to the baseline location. I have also attached a screen cap of the separated G8F head and body morphs, and the favorite settings of one of my typical setups. There is a ton of info here, and well worth the review! Just a few pages back is my step by step walk thru's (PDF files) of how to get everything working. I still long for a G8F version of this product though. I can't seem to get everything I want on one figure, so end up compromising on something. Soft body dynamics is my current WIP. I may post some updates to my previous post on that subject when I get some consistent results. Hope that helps, TD
Added an actual Render of the Split Head Demo, G8F materials for both, same clothing, just a different morph on the shorts.
Yes, thank you, I've followed your guide on morph transfers and I appreciated the step by step instructions. All of your posts have been helpful and very informative.
What impresses me so much about G8, gender morphs, splitter, and AME is the flexibility! I used to fiddle with bump/normal/displacement maps and AME works so well regardless of the other products involved. I've settled on the need for some kind of direct mesh editing and I may delve into JCM and weight map editing. Thanks for the cross figure tip, I'll go get that right now.
Thank you, Sigurd, GhostofMacBeth, and Terry for the kind words!
Terry, you are a genius. I love your stylized render and the work you're doing with creating gender swapped AME figures is amazing!
This forum thread is always inspiring and educational. I learn new things every time I pop in. :)
Here's a new character I worked on. This time I used RawArt's figures as the base.
I *tried* to limit myself to using the minimum additional musculature/body morphs, but I always gravitate back to adjust some bit here and there. LOL!
These are the products I used: Genesis 8.1 Male base, AME/ASE (of course), the following 4 RawArt figures: Pete, Cromwell, Biggun, and Broken Jester, Genesis 8 Male Body Morphs, Genesis 8 Male Head Morphs, Body Morph Kit for Genesis 8 Male, and Musculature HD Morphs for Genesis 8 Male. Also in play are: Electro Hair (hgihly recommended for it's versatility), Super Natural Brows, and Pablo skin texture.
This was another self-challenge to create a unique, stylized mix of some of RawArt's products (they're on sale right now, you know!) :)
Lee
Your work is terrific, Lee. Truly unique.
Great work leemoon! RawArt has great characters to work with. I added Cromwell at 25 % to my Scott Mainz character to see how it looked. He is a great Meso character but I morphed him a little to fit my Meso-Endo motif I am currently working on. It still needs a little work. I like how you display your figures. I will try to work on my presentation a little when I have some more time.
Love it!, Both of you guys keep pushing the boundaries and forcing the rest of us to keep up!! TD
A big thank you to all! Inquire, Sigurd, and Terry - you all inspire me to keep pushing myself. It's been about 2 years now(?) since I've started using DAZ Studio after 25 years of Poser (still a great program, no shade thrown here.)
I'm still learning lots of new things and feel like I'm finally getting settled in to creating characters that have my own style to them.
Love the community here, especially with all the help and encouragement coming from all of you. :)
Again, thank you so very much. Also, the vendors who create their wonderful products, such as DMaster, and all who provide the most delightful characters, accessories, and add-ons. I don't think I could sculpt a cube if I tried. LOL! :)
I have noticed more new DAZ users posting on the forums the past few days and thought I'd try to show how easy and effective AME is when added to other characters.
Here's my go at a basic demonstration of what AME/ASE can add to a figure:
BUILDING ADRIANO
We'll start with the base Genesis 8.1 Male.
Now we dial in 4 of RawArt's characters to get this figure shape. He's looking good at this point, but we can give him an even better physique.
With AME applied at 50%, we get some terrific musculature. The figure is looking great and we could stop right here.
I always try to go a bit further, so I've continued refining his shape by using various add-on shaping/muscle morphs. Here's the final result of the dial spinning.
Put some hair, brows, and textures on him and we've got a nicely muscled character.
And finally, here are the renders of Adriano.
I hope this overly simplified demo was useful (or entertaining). :)
For our new DAZ enthusiasts, experimenting with the parameter dials is a great way to customize characters to your likes. And I hope you can see the value of adding Auto Muscle Enhancer into your character customization. It's truly remarkable how well it works at any dial setting (from a little extra musculature/definition to pro bodybuilder physiques.)
Thanks for indulging me with this exercise, everyone!
Lee
Great work Lee and thanks for the peek behind the curtain. I always save my different iterations and I am running out of drive space but if you ever screw up, it is well worth it to be able to go back to the previous save. I may go back and try this approach. It was very informative and enjoyable.
Thank you, Sigurd! :)
I also keep versions of my character builds (they can get into the dozens while I'm trying to get the look right.). I generally save my customized figures as Scene Subsets so I can merge them into any scene I'm working with. I'm also going to need some bigger storage in my next Mac (4 or 8 TB) to make sure I've got some head room to save all my stuff. I've also gotten into some VR stuff and picked up a 360 degree camera this week. The video files are huge when recording/editing/saving a 360 spherical video. But they're so cool, especially when viewed on an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset.
Yes, when I screw something up, I can always go back to my previously saved iteration. That happens a lot. LOL!
There are a few things I didn't mention in the mini-tutorial:
I delete all the bump, displacement, and most normal maps. I rely on setting the SubD level to 3 (rarely 4 for final rendering) and use a lot of HD Details that some characters come with (and all the core figures have as options) to get the surface details that I'm looking for. Why do I do this? The bump, displacement, and normal maps slow down the render speed a fair amount. SInce I don't have an Nvidia GPU, I'm CPU bound for Iray rendering. So any speed up I can get, I'll take. :)
The texture I've been using lately is from Pablo for final rendering. I also use the Lincoln and/or the Emil textures when dialing in the parameters. They work well in my default lighting set up and I can see the mesh details while toggling between texture shaded and smooth shaded preview mode. Gives me a sense of how the different parameters are contributing/detracting from the figure. Also, Emil is a quite fast texture to render (see above about me removing the bump/displacement/normal maps.).
My default set up scene is the one I've been using for a while now. An HDRI texture from Quixotry's Artisitic Lighting Kit (a simple gradiant sky dome) for low intensity global illumination and 2 ghost lights. The ghost lights are flat planes generally in front and behind the origin at about neck height. They are parented to and set to point at a null object (at the origin and neck height). I can select the null object and rotate and/or scale the null object to spin the lights where I want or move them closer or further away from the character. Of course, I can move each plane manually for more precision.
The ground is a simple plane with a mid-gray color and a circular gradiant opacity map. Whatever color or texture I apply to the plane will fade out in a circular manner toward the edges, giving the floor that spotlight feel. It's quite basic but works well when setting up my figures. :)
And finally, I spend (by far) most of the time applying the add-on morphs to fine tune the character's face and body. A lot of trial and error goes in to get just the right look I'm after. This results in many, many versions of saved scene subsets! :)
All said, it really is remarkable how much AME can contribute to a figure's look. I continue to be impressed by DMaster's awesome product - I use it on every G8/8.1M figure that I customize. :). I'm preaching to the choir here. LOL!
Glad you found the mini-tutorial informative. :)
Lee
Lee,
Thanks for all this info into your process. I still pull your provided lightset from waaayyyy back out to use once in awhile. I still feel like I struggle with lighting in general. Never thought of that surface map stuff, have to give that a go. You definitely have an eye for the details. Keep up the great work, you are sure to inspire some more contributors. TD
Hi Terry!
You're quite welcome and thank you for the encouragement! That old light set was never quite the actual one I use (mine has purchased HDRI maps instead of the sun/sky dome) and I'm using better ghost lights now attached to the null object. My current scene is still rudimentary, but serves me well so far. It's a bit broken in the newer DS betas due to changes in Iray, but I'm still rendering on the slightly older DS version.
Tuning/balancing the HDRI lighting in conjunction with the ghost lights can have dramatic effects on render time. I've been sticking with my current set up since it seems to be getting good illumination and fast render times. There was a lot of trial and error setting that up initially. :)
My lighting needs are not too complicated at this point, but I will need to up my game when doing artistic renders. I still enjoy doing head and full body portrait renders and especially love converting a render to monochrome at the end of the process. Big fan of black and white photography here! :)
You might not notice much/any difference in render speed with or without the various surface maps if GPU rendering in Iray. You definitely feel the slow down on CPU with the maps enabled.
My eye for detail will cause me to go on for what feels like forever trying to get something just right. I finally have to call something done and move on even if something's a tiny bit off. LOL
Take care and thank you and Sigurd for taking the time to post the kind feedback on the mini-tutorial!!
Lee
Well here is a peek into my own insanity process. I had an idea about the recent What If Marvel animated series, and thought AME was perfect for the Agent Carter transformation! So I went on the hunt for any Haley Atwell morphs that might be out there. I found one, but did not think it was very accurate, so I decided to try my own (It's not very good either, but it's mine). First, go on the hunt and find suitable pictures to use in the software. Spend around 2-3 hours tweaking the generated morph, find a texture with suitable eyebrows, etc. (You finally have to say...good enough for my purposes (pic 1). So I then saved out the tweaked face as a morph. I then loaded that morph back onto the G8F platform and proceeded to look up measurements and statistics on the actress. Hourglass figure, Measure Metrics, lots of G8F body morphs and.....voila a completed figure that I exported and saved as a single complete morph already to scale! Transfer that over to the G8M platform and duplicate the settings and costume, hair, jewelry etc. (pic 2, which one is G8M?). On the G8M I allready preset 30% AME and tweaked all my other usual add ons and presets for the future.... Load a before and after shot of the Super Soldier serum effects (pic 3). Finally a little demo of Captain Carter in a work out outfit in all her AME glory (pic 4). Yes, I might be insane, but it keeps me occupied and I learn things every time. After Lee's last comments, I dropped some vellus hair that wasn't required at these portrait distances, and render times dropped significantly. TD
Forgot to add: Get a British flag image, and modify the texture on the uniform!
I would like to learn more about something Lee wrote above: "I've also gotten into some VR stuff and picked up a 360 degree camera this week. The video files are huge when recording/editing/saving a 360 spherical video. But they're so cool, especially when viewed on an Oculus Quest 2 VR headset."
What is this 360 degree camera? Does it work within DAZ Studio?
I don't know which specific camera Lee got, but look at the Insta360 One X2 as an example. It takes spherical pictures and videos, which can be used to create HDRIs for DS. The resolution on consumer 360 cameras probably isn't high enough to make an HDRI that looks great as a background, but you could at least create your own lighting.
I picked up an Oculus Quest 2 headset a couple of weeks or so ago, after my brother showed me his. :)
And Gordig is correct, the 360 camera I got is the Insta360 One X2.
I don't know that the VR headset works with DAZ Studio, but I understand you can connect the headset to Windows PCs and use it as a monitor. So DAZ Studio will be flat, not 3D looking (presumably.). Not sure if it can mirror the Mac display or not.
It is nice to play some games on the headset, watch videos -- especially 360 VR videos (those are AMAZING). I have plopped a 360 VR video on my youtube channel just to work out the process. It's in a private playlist, and is not worth making public. It's just me walking down the driveway and back.
Also, my 87 year old mother has had a blast trying the VR headset. She's spent a few hours with it on. I guided her along by using an iPad to see what she was seeing. I held the hand controllers to make selections and movements for her. We've had a blast with it. :)
The Insta360 One X2 has a max resolution of 5.7K for the entire sphere. I don't know how well that would translate into a decent quality HDRI. At this point, making HDRIs isn't on my to do list, but may be one day. :)
Lee
Terry, your agent Carter/Captain Carter transformation looks great! It appears we have similar workflows when building up our characters. Keep up the amazing work. It's always a joy to see what you come up with! :)
Lee
Here's a series of renders I made to demonstrate the importance of HDRI resolution, using the same HDRI from PolyHaven at different resolutions:
1K:
2K:
4K:
and 8K:
The 5.7K of the Insta360 One X2 would be better than the 4K version, but not up to the level of the 8K version. These are also very low-resolution renders, so at higher resolutions, even the 8K HDRI might start to fall apart.
Thanks for the info.
Gordig, Thanks for that posting. I still use DOF even with HDRI, so the higher resolution backgrounds aren't really a requirement for me most of the time.
Now I kept running into references about these "Hidden" Transfer properties already included inside DAZ. So I finally went looking. For those that didn't want to download from DA, or were reluctant to spend money on the Cross-Gender product this will allow you to do a Female version using AME that myself and others have demonstrated. Very simple to get to it actually. This does however have the nipple placement significanly down and outward, but otherwise no other distortions. You could also export a copy, or just create a new property and ERC link it to the Hidden Property. Several ways, depending on your own workflow arrangements.
Enjoy! TD
TD, here's a stumper for you. I have a Krashwerks character (Cheyenne) that I've converted to G8M (by your process on pg 28. She exceeds my expectations, except that when I apply her body morph (the head morph is fine, oddly) to G8M in step 5 of the process, her back teeth and tongue deform. I only noticed it later on when I was using her in a scene, so I went back to re-create her hoping to eliminate the bug, but it seems to have something to do with the actual character morph when applied to G8M; the G8F version is unaffected. Do you know of a way to, after the fact, zero or restore the teeth and tongue of the my G8M version of Cheyenne to correct the issue? Otherwise, I may just be stuck with it. I'm pretty sure the body morph is the culprit, but the only thing adversely affected are the teeth and tongue! This has not happened with any other character conversions, by the way.
Thanks.
RenderPretender, indeed an interesting challenge. I have Cheyenne in my inventory, so did a transfer to G8M and saw the distortions you described. I went back to look on the G8F, and the mouth distortion is there also. Looked at several fixes, but this one ended up being the quickest and easiest fix using the Shape Splitter tool to build a Cheyenne Mouth only Morph, and then invert it. Once it is made, you could favorite it and move it over to G8M with the Cheyenne morph. Another way would be to add the negative morph, and then Export out the "repaired" morph and save it as a separate alternate Cheyenne body morph. This seemed the simplest and easiest though. Hope that helps. TD
TD, thanks for your reply and the trouble you took to investigate. Sadly, I don't have Shape Splitter, and at some point it really becomes an issue of weighing the practicality of all these workarounds. I had tried to isolate the teeth and tongue with the Geometry Editor, but that failed. I'm not sure I follow you on the negative morph suggestion, though I do recall making one per your earlier instructions,
RenderPretender, I also tried manipulating the tongue and teeth, the results were less than desirable (there really is something going on with that body morph), so I understand your dilemma. The Shape Splitter tool really is a game changer though, allowing you to build morphs and mix and match Physiques, body parts, heads, and isolate high definition textures etc. I also tried building the Cheyenne body morph, isolating the mouth out of the morph, this was ultimately more work than what I presented, really good results though! TD
Yup, there's definitely an issue with that body morph. I can't imagine what's going on there. I'm still weighing the expense and practicality of getting Shape Splitter to try it on this problem. There just has to be a limit at some point.
On the G8F, I only noticed the problem with the tongue, not the teeth. But there must be something about that body morph that causes the issue with both the teeth and the tongue when transferred to G8M. I wrote the vendor to see if they can correct it and push out a new file.
Update: The vendor pushed a corrected file and the tongue/teeth issue has been resolved.
Thanks!! TD
TD -
I have created custom bicep morphs for a base G8F using one deformer per arm. Is there a way to spawn them separately as left and right instead of as one morph for both arms? The tutorials I've seen don't address that, I don't believe.
Thanks.
Edit: I sorted it, and wound up with a pretty decent contraction of the short bicep head that shows some nice separation between it and the inside of the tricep. But there's still no distinct separation (split) between the short and long heads of the bicep, and that's the real issue with G8F/M and ALL of the muscle products that I have seen. The only PA to solve that issue successfully is D.Master (with G8M).