Razor42 posted at 7:18AM Tue, 03 November 2015 - #4236618

While we're OT, just to ask the question, all of these Ports of Genesis (1,2 or 3) figures do feature all of the same functionality as Genesis does in Daz Studio with the same compatibility with all supporting products such as hair poses morphs etc?

Or are they closer to a nerfed/Hacked version using some of the foundations of the Genesis figures like the mesh and textures for example. In a effect a Genestein or Frankenesis figure? Because for example I would say the base Mesh is about 10% of what makes Genesis 3, Genesis 3 in Daz Studio.

I am asking because it may be great to have a figure in an alternate program, but where do all of the resources for it then come from then? It would seem like a full time job if everything for the new figure needs to be also hacked modified to work with the figure. And I do know to some there hobby is more based on this form of art and truly its amazing sometimes what they discover or cobble together to make work where it shouldn't. But for many they will basically just end up with a less functional figure with little supporting content. Making it not truly an alternative option. But more a tinkerers passion project.

So for example If I port Genesis to Poser as a native figure. And I really want to make Genesis into the Troll or Gorilla figure available at Daz3D for Genesis can I just buy this content and use it? Or do I need to use a hack type process and it may or may not work as expected depending on certain factors? Genesis 3 in Lightwave is awesome, what are my options for pants for the figure once there? It may help those considering this as an alternative to know what they're in for if they decide to pursue this option to maintain content viability.

Yep. It isn't a "hack". I can't speak to LPR001's issues with animation, I don't animate - I use Poser for illustrating graphic novels and the genesis 1 & 2 figures work just fine.

When I started my research, my goal was to get Dariofish's Aliens working in Poser for my Star Trek Fan-Fic, along with Luthbel's Cthulhu for my horror-fic. All the morph dials work in Poser. I haven't fooled around with the HD nonsense, but I other folks have - from what I remember, one had to push the subdivision in Poser up to 3 to see the difference. I have a couple of HD characters and they seem to run fine at sub-d 1. (Which is where you will take your genesis figures in Poser.)

Genesis 3 isn't an option at this point (so you won't have access to the fat chick) due to how the face is rigged. (Shrdavid built a G3 Sydney for Poser 8 that used facial rigging, but the Poser team went in another direction - the ability to add support for facial bones is there, but I don't know if a cost-benefit analysis shows it to be worthwhile.)

All genesis brings to the table is animatable joint centers (Which Poser has supported since at least Poser 5 that I am personally aware of - See Apollo Maximus from a decade ago.) and weight mapping along 3 axis, as opposed to Poser, which has weight mapping along 1 axis. That is the only difference.

If one goes this route, most of your time would be spent in restructuring what passes for a runtime in DS (and putting PCFs where they actually belong, as opposed to stuffing every conceivable file type under the Pose subfolder - or better yet, converting them to Poser-native files, to also eliminate the need for DSON - saving it out is a 2 second operation. There is 1 vendor that actually makes native Poser companion files, as opposed to the fake ones most DS vendors make). You have to do some planning ahead of time, due to the way DS generates a figure (example - many female characters come with a base gens - you would need to do some simple file rearranging to keep them from showing up on Skyler, for instance.) Most folks do that since there is no rhyme or reason to subfolder organization in DS anyway.

Whether exporting from DS via File - Export, or using DSON - a figure is built with every single morph the program can "see". This can make a figure quite RAM intensive. Again, planning ahead in runtime structure makes these problems go away.

But we should move back on topic.

One of the issues that hasn't been addressed vis-a-vis staying on DS 4.8 forever is if a future change to the underlying operating system that breaks DS 4.8. This has already happened more than once in the OSX world (10-4 to 10.5) - that's is why Hexagon didn't work under OSX for 4 years. How many of you are willing to chance that? DAZ depreciates earlier versions as each new version is released.