Reinstalling DS, converting things to Dawn and Diva and my experiments along the way

[Pendraia]

A few years back I had a hard drive failure and in the process lost many of my conversions for Dawn. I've been procrastinating for the last few years at the thought of reinstalling, reconverting everything was overwhelming. Thanks to a friend on facebook I was reinspired to play with morphs again and created Rosie as a morph dial. She's not quite where I want her to be and eventually as my skills return I will take Diva into Zbrush and use her as a starting point to recreate the morph as a custom morph. Here's the initial image of Rosie plus a few other where I've been converting Satira's Diva Play to DS dynamic. Eventually I'll post the process I used so others can do similar.

 

[Pendraia]

My friend on facebook's name is Rose which is why the character is named Rosie. If you look closely you'll see the chin, jaw and eyes aren't quite what I want so that's why I want to do a custom morph. Rose is using the dynamic long curly hair. The original images were created using ai. She's been playing with a few different ones but iirc it was Midnight Journey that she used for these.

 

[Pendraia]

So now I'm up to date with the last few days, what have I been doing today?

I've been reinstalling Hivewire Dawn Characters and also testing some of my hair conversions for Dawn to see which work and which don't. As I like to have figures rather than props so that they will follow the figure in ds I started to work on some of Biscuits and convert them to figures.

So far I've converted Bibi.
I found that if I just used the tranfer utility that it would change the scale of the hair when I did it. So I followed the process below. Using the fit to option.

1. Scale hair to fit
2. Load hair on figure
3. Select hair, right click on scene/edit/geometry/rigging and convert to a figure from prop/
4. Fit to Dawn in the parameters tab
5. When option for clone comes up leave clone as none.
6. Note: some hairs will need specific morphs creating to ensure no mesh problems. e.g. diva

Rosie wearing Bibi hair as a figure. Hair has a custom fit for Diva but not Rosie

 

[Miss B]

My friend on facebook's name is Rose which is why the character is named Rosie. If you look closely you'll see the chin, jaw and eyes aren't quite what I want so that's why I want to do a custom morph. Rose is using the dynamic long curly hair. The original images were created using ai. She's been playing with a few different ones but iirc it was Midnight Journey that she used for these.

Rose does some beautiful work. I love all three of those renders she created.

 

[Pendraia]

She does...and this particular image was the one that inspired me to get back to work which I'm glad about. I've found the last few years very unmotivating with all the bad stuff that has been happening.

 

[Miss B]

So now I'm up to date with the last few days, what have I been doing today?

I've been reinstalling Hivewire Dawn Characters and also testing some of my hair conversions for Dawn to see which work and which don't. As I like to have figures rather than props so that they will follow the figure in ds I started to work on some of Biscuits and convert them to figures.

So far I've converted Bibi.
I found that if I just used the tranfer utility that it would change the scale of the hair when I did it. So I followed the process below. Using the fit to option.

1. Scale hair to fit
2. Load hair on figure
3. Select hair, right click on scene/edit/geometry/rigging and convert to a figure from prop/
4. Fit to Dawn in the parameters tab
5. When option for clone comes up leave clone as none.
6. Note: some hairs will need specific morphs creating to ensure no mesh problems. e.g. diva

Ohhhh, I have a lot of Biscuits hair products, as she always includes about 25-30 morphs, and that makes it easy to create many different styles from the one hair product. I don't think I have Bibi, but I'll have to check that.

OK, I just checked, and I do have Bibi, but haven't played with it in quite a while. The 2 of her hair products I use the most are Echo and Aloe. Needless to say, I use them in Poser, so it's going to be interesting to see you convert them for Diva in DS.

 

[Pendraia]

I have a number of Biscuits Hairs for that very reason. Lots and lots of morphs. Working on Echo at the moment. Just rendering with Diva. Had to use a slightly different method as using the convert from prop didn't follow the morphs. So instead I updated the base mesh after using the transfer utility. Not sure if I have Aloe...if it's recent I definitely won't. I haven't bought any 3d in the last few years. I did grab some freebies at daz yesterday though.
Note: previous method didn't work as it lost the morphs. So back to the drawing board.

 

[Miss B]

No, Aloe's not new, as I've had it for quite a while. OK, I just checked, and I bought Echo in August 2017, and Aloe in November 2017, so definitely not new.

The only thing I'm not totally crazy about is Biscuits hair materials/textures. I find they render rather dull, so I've gotten material sets for each of them from a few vendors over the years. The gal who did the ones I have for Echo, Aloe, and a few others, has gone through 2 or 3 vendor name changes, so wouldn't know where to find them, but ~Wolfie~ has nice hair materials, and she has those 2 for sure. I just checked her store to be sure.

 

[Pendraia]

Okay so I figured it out. I had a plDiva morph there prior to converting it to a figure, so I deleted the morph and then converted to prop and fitted it to the figure and it's now working. Just need to decide if I need to add a custom morph for Diva.

Hmmm, I'll have to have a look for it. Might be in my wishlist still. I know what you mean about materials as Biscuits hairs are normally set up for Poser. I have a few hair shaders for Iray that I will need to play with I think.

 

[Pendraia]

On Rosie...still rendering Diva but I'm thinking it might need a custom morph.

 

[Pendraia]

Custom morph done. Just need to save it and Echo is done.

 

[Pendraia]

Comparison from Dawn to Diva. The dress wasn't meant to go on dawn and I've never updated the mesh for her so please ignore stretching.

 

[Miss B]

The dress is looking good, and the Echo Hair is looking very nice.

 

[Miss B]

Custom morph done. Just need to save it and Echo is done.

I've never thought to do morphs for Biscuits hairs. I just write down all of her morphs I used for a certain look, and then I can just recreate them whenever. I know, clicking on a morph would be easier, but sometimes I'll set one up, and then change it slightly for just that one time, so that wouldn't help the morph I had already created.

I haven't used any of her hairs lately, so I may have to get back to using them.

 

[Pendraia]

Only custom morph I do is a fit for Diva if it's necessary otherwise Biscuits hairs tend to have lots of morphs already. The newer hairs I'm buying tend to be dynamic. At least the last 5-6 hairs that I bought. Here's Dawn wearing the Mckinley hair iirc from Daz

 

[Miss B]

It doesn't look familiar, but then I bought most of my products from DAZ many years ago.

 

[Pendraia]

It's one of the newer dynamic hairs for G8female

 

[Miss B]

Ahhh, OK. I've never played in Poser's Hair Room, but lately have been trying to create hair in Blender using it's Particles System. I'm taking my time, as a newer Blender version is supposed to be coming out soon that will have a brand new way to create hair, and I'm still getting used to a newer version of Blender than I've been using for a while now. Blender came out with a brand new UI, which is totally different than the one I've been used to, so I've spent the past couple of months getting used to the new look, and where everything is now located.

 

[Pendraia]

Daz has an interesting hair tutorial that refers to this video on sectioning which I find interesting...

 

[Miss B]

Yes, that is interesting. I had tried making a "cap", as Biscuits does with her hair products, because Blender's Particle System needs a "base" to create the hair. The tutorial I was going by uses a sphere, but what do you do with hair that's all over all sides? So I thought Biscuits use of a cap would work well instead of a full sphere.

Then I figured I would probably do better if I sectioned it off, as the tutorial you posted talks about, and even only use half of it, and then when all the hair has been produced, mirror it for the other half. That I haven't finished playing with, but I have 5 or 6 sections starting at the Nape, and then running up and over to the front of the forehead. I just haven't worked on it much lately because I'm waiting for the Blender version update to see what they've come up with.