Hi to all,

I have a V3 character that I am fond of. I have modeled her face with many hours of playing with her head morphs dials, and I have used her in many images. Now I would like to "convert" her to my new purchased V4, but the V4 morphs are obviously quite different than those of V3: names and functionalities do not match.
Is there a simple solution for this problem or must I spend a lot of time trying every dial to achieve the old look? I do not expect a perfect 1 to 1 morph match, I just would like to shape her face in a recognizable way. The morph dials involved were not too many, just a dozen or so, but there were many "ethnic" morphs (like hdAsian, hdFilipino and so on) and I have no idea of how to reproduce their effect with the new set.

Body morphs are not a problem (they were not much different from the standard).

Thanks in advance,

Giorgio

The two figures have completely different geometry, so the simple answer is no.

Too bad... I was afraid of this answer.

How hard would be this kind of manual work? Is something worthing try or there is no hope of achieving a satisfactory result in a reasonable time?

Giorgio

Hi, I would like the same thing. The problem is there are not nearly as many morphs in v4 for her face and mouth as there were for V3. You could try the morping brush. That is probably your only hope.] Let me guess, you've got a character for a story or something, but you would love to use V4 as she poses much better. You would also love to be able to use your old V3 and poses too. Maybe the solution would be to fiddle with V4 until you get a character you really like that's similar to your last one, then somehow transplant her head onto your morphing V3. (the daz supplied V4 head on V3 body doesn't have body morphs or any way of putting them into her) Love esther

It depends on how strong your vision is of the character you want, and how comfortable you are moving the dials around.  I had worked up four major characters of my own that were original face morphs with V3; when I changed my efforts over to V4, it took me maybe a week to ten days for each of them to convert to something pretty close, although a couple of the characters evolved into something rather different because my own vision of those characters changed, not so much because I couldn't reproduce them exactly.  All of my characters also became a bit more evolved and stylized to my own internal vision.

If you have a good reason to convert to V4 (I did, superior bending, plus I really liked the materials settings for the high rez material set) then I would suggest you just go ahead and buy the figure + morphs, and be prepared to take advantage of the 100% money-back guarantee if you are not satisfied.

Good advantages that V4 has over V3:
Morphforms really are a nice workflow improvement if you don't use canned poses and do all your poses yourself (and I do).
Better bending at the shoulders, back, hips and buttocks, although there are some new bending problems that were not serious issues with V3
Closer to a natural starting point, although V4 is still quite a bit taller than average
Lower poly count by about 10k

I think us mortals would have a hard time converting our V4 face to look like V3 because of the lack of morphs for the face. You can't spin dials that just aren't there. There are much less face morphs for V4 than there were for V3. (hehe you might be able to help us though as the mouth is the main problem). I agree about the advantages of V4 but her face generally isn't as pretty as V3 can be. I mean, not saying some V4 charcters aren't beautiful, but the beautiful ones all have a sort of sameness about them too. I would like a V4 head on V3 morphing body as well so I can use all my old clothes and poses much more easilly. Then my V4 hapiness would be complete. I bet giorgio_2004 has the same dilema that I do. Love esther

I already have purchased V4 for other works, but actually estherau is right: I have a character well established (Keilani, the main character of my novels, you can see her in my gallery). I would like to switch her to V4 because she poses better and also because she has some interesting clothes (the V4 catsuit is amazing). Keilani is half-Hawaiian so I had create her recipe playing with the ethnic dials (a bit of Asian, an handful of Polynesian, and so on...), and I loved the result. I am surprised that this new model does not have (yet?) the same possibilities of the old one.

Giorgio

Have you played with the morphing brush in poser yet? Lvoe esther

Quote - Have you played with the morphing brush in poser yet?

No, and I am not sure to be skilled enough to use it. Anyway, I will try it if there is no other solution....

Giorgio

Giorgio - I just looked at your gallery. Is your "shy model" your Keilani? If so I think you might be able to get this from V4 if pjz99 can do the lip morphs that he is going to try and make for us. There are probably some dials to slope the eyes in V4 I seem to remember, and the chin can be made more prominant fairly easilly with the morphing brush and so could the cheeks if you can work out the symmetry thingy. Definitely try playing with the morph brush in poser - just so you can see what it can do. Love esther PS i seem to recall that daz did promise some kind of ethnic pack for V4 or morphs so also if you can wait awhile things might get better.

Quote - Giorgio - I just looked at your gallery. Is your "shy model" your Keilani?

Yes, Esther, she is. (The same character also appears without her mask in other pictures, check "Lost in her thoughts" for a face close-up). I'll start to work on her with dials and morphing brush: we'll see what I will able to do.

(BTW, if someone more skilled than me wants to help... not for free of course... I'll be glad to provide the original V3 settings).

Giorgio

You could always make a hybrid figure with V4's body and V3's head, that would be the easiest and fastest way to get the best of both worlds.

bB

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2677445

Spanki and I have been working on a Python script for this purpose.  It does successfully transfer morphs between actors with different geometries.  The process may be slow, depending on the resolution of the meshes involved, and the quality of the resulting morph will depend on the quality of the source morph.

The script is still in development, but these basic features are verified.  See one of the later pages of the thread for a recent post of the script.

What BastBlack and Cage said.

Attached pic shows a "V3 to V4" hybrid.
The advantage is that all V3 headmorphs work 100% right out of the box. Just inject your V3 character and that's it.
The disadvantage is that you need V4 textures for the body and V3 textures for the head, so you have to find two textures of matching color. (Or match the textures yourself in Photoshop before you apply them.)

I successfully used Cage and Spanki's Phyton script both to create my reduced resolution  MIKI and Sydney meshes, as well as to transfer V4's expression morphs over to V3RR.
:thumbupboth:
Worked like a charme, but as the process is still a WIP, be prepared to do some manual cleaning up of the morphs.
Especially V4's causes a lot of problems because all those gimmickry DAZ put into her cr2..

The advantage is of course that only the shape is transferred, not the actual mesh, so if you use that script all original head morphs will still work and of course the mapping stays the same, too.
(So no need for "patchwork" mapping.)

Cage and Spanki Phyton.....  oO

It really works?  oO  oO  oO  oO  oO

faints

bB

That sounds great!! Love esther

I don't want to hijack the thread, but I should point out that it's more "Spanki and Cage" with the Python.  :)  He did the brainy stuff. 

Recovers from fainting spell.... Okay, Spanki and Cage python. So.... What does a Spanki-n-Cage python newbie need to do to get started with Spanki-n-Cage morph transfer madness? 8)~~~ ...and does it work on a Mac? oO bB

*"So.... What does a Spanki-n-Cage python newbie need to do to get started with Spanki-n-Cage morph transfer madness? 8)~~~ ...and does it work on a Mac? oO"

*It uses Tkinter, so whether it's Mac compatible or not really depends on whether Tkinter is working with the Mac now.  I seem to recall that there have been problems with that.  Perhaps that's been solved with Poser 7 and a new PoserPython version?  I really don't know.  It needs to be tested, I suppose, but I don't have a Mac handy....

Getting started.  You need the script, of course.  It might help to read some of the thread about the script.  The idea is to line up the source and target actors in the 3D view, select them in the appropriate listboxes, run the script, and go get coffee or something while it runs.  It creates a mesh correlation datafile, so the slow part, the mesh comparisons, only needs to be run once.

The problem is that most meshes don't line up very well without some work.  Some actors may require rotation, translation, morphing, or magnets or other deformation in order to get a decent correlation run out of the script.

I'll try to answer any questions, but I'd rather not hijack someone else's thread to do it.  :)  Anyone should feel free to IM me or post to the script thread with questions or comments.

I hav'nt read this whole thread, but aside from what cage is working on, new Daz figures come with a old/new.CR2.  This is something like a V3 head on a V3 body.  So, you can use V3 and V4 stuff at the same time.

um no, not unless you just want your V4 head to be on an unmorphed V3 body. YOu can't have any morphs in the V3 with the daz option. I don't know anybody who would use a V3 like that, unelss the clothes are really loose and longsleeved. Love esther

Giorgio

giorgi - Did yu use the same textures/lighting for each figure.  I'm trying to see why the goemetry has anything to do with the V4 character being fairer skinned?

"Still many things to improve, but now they seem, if not twins, at least sisters... "

Any luck with ears, eyelashes, or teeth?  I've been struggling with those areas myself when I compare geometries.  

Your characters are looking good!  :)

(And, ah... Spanki needs credit.  Cage would never have made it work without Spanki's remarkable contributions to the script.)

Oh wow, giorgio. That is truly impressive! Kudos to Spanki and Cage! =D Hey, has anyone tried a V3 character face to Miki? bB

Angelouscuitry: the texture is different. For the V3 is the "standard" hi-res texture by Daz, while for the V4 is the Ethnic Beauty Lelani V4 by Syltermermaid. The eyes too are different. At the present I am interested particularly in the face geometry. Matching the exact texture color is not a priority, because   a) is much simpler and  b) I was never fully satisfied of the V3 color and this V4 texture is actually much better  (my character is half-Hawaiian).

Cage: no, I have tried nothing with ears or teeth, because fortunately I do not need them for my renders (mouths are similar and ears are always covered with hair). And yes, I have forgotten Spanki! Please forgive me, Spanki! ^_^

BastBlack: thanks for the compliments! I am uncertain if trying to improve her look further, or if declaring myself satisfied and calling the conversion complete. As pjz99 said, it depends on how strong the vision of my character is, and actually I have not decide yet. But I think I'll make some minor adjustments, then I'll stop to spin dials and I'll start to make renders! (I still need to convert her suit!)

Giorgio
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