G9 Items on G8
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Is it just me or are G9 items less and less compatible with G8. I bought 4 G9 items: two barely work after jumping through hoops, and the other two don't work at all.
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If you are speaking about autofitting clothes, you'll need an autofit clone. You can either buy the ones created by @Mattymanx (I bought them, they works fine) or you can create clones by yourself, following a tutorial written by @Catherine3678ab
Clones by Mattymanx: https://www.daz3d.com/mmx-genesis-9-clones-for-all
Tutorial by Catherine3678ab:
If you're speaking about converting them, I don't remember reading a tutorial explaining how to do it and I don't have the converter sold here.
Even with clones, they can be problematic, especially dresses. When a conversion with autofit fails I do the following:
Load the figure the clothing originally belongs to and delete all the addons. Dial the G8 clone shape into the original figure and pose as close to G8 as possible. Change clothing to base res and fit to the figure. Hide the figure and export the clothing as an obj.
Load G8 figure, import the obj and fit to G8 using Transfer Utility as normal. Using Transfer Utility again, transfer the morphs from the original item. If the item was dforce, give the G8 one a dforce modifier. Copy the dforce settings from the original to the G8. Convert item to subd and save.
This works for all those figures that you have clones for.
How is it done ?
Go into the surfaces pane of the original garment and copy the settings then paste them into the g8 garment
Or save a Materials preset - in the options dialogue you can choose to include only the dForce settings.
The problem is that you have to jump through hoops to get it to work at all. You can usually get hair to work by adding it and parenting it separately so you don't lose bones or dforce. But the last two I bought wouldn't even allow me to add shaders. Clones strip bones and dforce. I am just way too far down the G8 path to switch over again.
When i use autofit buttons tend to go missing. Any idea what causes that?
Of course you have to jump thru hoops since the goal is to get users to move to the newest figure. Another idea is to use converters to move your fav characters to G9 that way you can use newer G9 items with less issues. Otherwise, you will have to rely on converters, clones and other methods to try and get newer G9 items to work on the older figures
Autofit doesn't support conversion of any followers on the clothing, including rigid follow nodes. You have to use a more robust process to convert these properly.
No, you have to jump through hoops because converting stuff between base figures is fundamentally difficult. A base figure is a foundation, and you can't take one house and easily drop it onto the foundations of a different house.
Daz are fully aware that the intercompatibility of their assets is one of their main selling points; it would be a very good thing for them if all characters, clothing, hair and whatever could be easily and flawlessly transferred between new bases, because then they could sell G3 characters to people who want to use G9, G9 clothes to people who want to use G8, G8 geografts to people who want to use G2... their catalogue, old or new, could be sold to anyone.
Hell, if they could get stuff that seamless, they could be updating their base figures whenever they wanted, rather than having to stick on each figure (and whatever mistakes and limitations it has) for several years at a time.
The reason it's hard to transfer stuff is not greed; it's that it is hard.
Matt, we'll agree to disagree. I fully suspect that if Daz wanted seemless compatibility between all figues, they could make that happen. There is a reason why they don't support or offer older versions of DS or want PAs to create content for older figures. Greed and business are two different things
My experience has been different. I have had good results with the autofit clones for the few G9 items I've tried. I'd go as far as to say that I don't feel the fit is any worse than you get with G8 items on G8. But...
Almost without exception, my wardrobe contains tight clothing, which I would imagine is more likely to work, and I want it to be perfect, so I expect to be correcting it in Blender anyway.
That is inherently not possible - change the figure and conversion becomes a matter of trade-offs, some of which may be automatable but many of which are too situation-dependent for that.
I assure you, it is not currently feasible.
Speaking as someone who's good at converting assets between bases...
I have put jeans on both ends of a centaur:
I have put a dress on a dragon:
I have created tools to automatically unshrinkwrap large breasts:
I have completely remeshed assets when their original geometry wasn't clean enough for what I needed:
I have morphed a figure the entire way between human and centaur:
... I very much understand the processes involved in taking something from one shape and making it fit a different shape.
I have the power to export these assets to other programs and use their suites of tools. I have created several tools to help with these things myself. So when I say I am doing these things the hard way, it is not because I am a masochist, it is because - as of now - no easy method exists.
It's entirely possible we're not all that far from neural networks being able to do this kind of thing, but that still requires a lot of development (particularly to reach high standards across all concievable asset types). And when it becomes possible at all, I would not be at all surprised to see Daz implement it, because intercompatibility is a key selling point of their business.
TL;DR: Trust me when I say that this isn't something Daz is trying to con you over.
I completely see that it's never going to be possble to have complete compatibility. My examples above are the easier cases that are more likely to work. Heels can probably never work automatically. But it is most definitely possble for a human to create content that supports both. On Renderosity, it's the norm, assuming they support G9 at all. In the Daz store, almost everything is G9 only now, including the new vendors, who where perfectly happy to support G8 before. I can't say that pleases me.
What you have achieved there is amazing, I almost always end up correcting the fit of clothes, and I've developed methods to do it, especially for correcting the breast area and on skirts, but not in that league!
Actually, what it means is that I will no longer be purchasing content from the Daz marketplace.
It is possible to create your own autofit clone that is 'adequate' without modelling or spending money (eg G8F autofitting G9 clothes). I couldn't do anything else when I made my TriAx Victoria 3 and wanted G8F clothes on her. I posed V3 as close as I could to G8F's pose, then scaled each bone in X, Y amd Z to make it as close as I could to G8F in the base shape. Then saved the obj & made an autofit clone. There is up to a 0.2cm error in places, so I do need a smoothing modifier, but, the top, jacket & trousers below on a morph of V3 is all from G8F 'Denim Diva' (not the shoes):
It does depend on the level of precision you need, but it's frequently a real surprise how far you can go with the tools built into DS and no need to purchase a thing.
Regards,
Richard