Explaining The Girl

RCDeschene

I'm probably going to sound like a complete idiot for asking this, but can someone explain to me again why the original "The Girl", the Millennium Toon Icon by Kim Goosens, has no conversion/transfer support? I was looking through products like Gen X, TC2, and the Genesis Iconic Shapes and it reminded me of this fact. The only instance of such we have of The Girl is for her Gen 4 version.

I know it was passively explained to me before, but in all honesty I could never quite understand why Girl 3 was so unsupportable in this fashion.

Arien

The original Girl was modelled and rigged quite differently from the other characters. If I remember correctly the original scale for her was a touch different from the rest of the DAZ characters (could be wrong here), but more importantly, her zero pose had her with the arms extended but the legs opened in an inverted V, and at the time there were quite a few very unkind comparisons to blow-up dolls. Anyway, while this meant for a much nicer posing, or so it was touted, this inverted V also meant that anything like skirts would require a vastly different setup, as they would load quite stretched to begin with.

Now imagine having to do these transfers into programming, then creating basic rigging that could work for it all... vastly different, right? I suspect that's why there were hardly any clothing transfer utility. I seem to vaguely remember having used Clothing Converter v.1 to transfer some corset or other to her, but even then a lot of of the refitting I had to correct by hand using the soft selection tools.

As for the textures, most people did use the version with the V3 mapping instead of her own mapping.

I reckon that in the end, while it was much requested, sales for the support items were not that good (I seem to remember Kim complaining about this too) and therefore, without ongoing support, the original ended being a bit of a passing fad. And her incredibly distinctive looks didn't help, because while lovely, it was difficult to get *your* mark on any image done with her, if that makes sense.

With the mix of V4 and all the other characters, the Girl 2 version fared much better: she could be used in small amounts to add oomph to female characters, and mixed with existing morphs to add even more versatility... it turned into a question of adding a morph to clothing as opposed to having to do specific models from scratch with a rigging that we weren't familiar with.

Clear as mud?

RCDeschene

Arien said:

The original Girl was modelled and rigged quite differently from the other characters. If I remember correctly the original scale for her was a touch different from the rest of the DAZ characters (could be wrong here), but more importantly, her zero pose had her with the arms extended but the legs opened in an inverted V, and at the time there were quite a few very unkind comparisons to blow-up dolls. Anyway, while this meant for a much nicer posing, or so it was touted, this inverted V also meant that anything like skirts would require a vastly different setup, as they would load quite stretched to begin with.

Now imagine having to do these transfers into programming, then creating basic rigging that could work for it all... vastly different, right? I suspect that's why there were hardly any clothing transfer utility. I seem to vaguely remember having used Clothing Converter v.1 to transfer some corset or other to her, but even then a lot of of the refitting I had to correct by hand using the soft selection tools.

As for the textures, most people did use the version with the V3 mapping instead of her own mapping.

I reckon that in the end, while it was much requested, sales for the support items were not that good (I seem to remember Kim complaining about this too) and therefore, without ongoing support, the original ended being a bit of a passing fad. And her incredibly distinctive looks didn't help, because while lovely, it was difficult to get *your* mark on any image done with her, if that makes sense.

With the mix of V4 and all the other characters, the Girl 2 version fared much better: she could be used in small amounts to add oomph to female characters, and mixed with existing morphs to add even more versatility... it turned into a question of adding a morph to clothing as opposed to having to do specific models from scratch with a rigging that we weren't familiar with.

Clear as mud?

Okay, first allow me to take a moment to squeal and scream at the top of my lungs like a schoolgirl at a Justin Beiber concert that you, of all people, decided to answer my question... Ahem...

OH MY GOD!!! ARIEN!!! I FREAKING LOVE YOU AND YOUR AWESOME SERIES OF STUFF!!! EVERYTHING YOU MADE IS ALL RENASCENCEY AND DRAPY AND ELAGANT!!! THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!!! :'D

Ahem... Anyway... So basically, what you're saying is, making a Gen 3 Genesis Shape for her is inadvisable simply because her default pose is unconventional to the rest of the Gen 3 Millennium Icons and there for Auto-Fitting her items would look unsightly? Would that not matter anyway as none of the Genesis Icon Shapes retain their original poses? If her toony features lacked distinct versatility, that is what the whole purpose of having a Genesis Shape is suppose to address. So the V3 TC2 plug-in covers her UV map as well? (Yes, before you try to explain the technicality of the Gen 3 textures, I know full well that the entire Gen 3 line share the same UV mapping, but it is also true that not every figure sported certain character textures properly.)

Arien

No, what I mean is that back then there was little support because of this. Girl 2 is supposed to be her shape translated into V4's mesh anyway, so *in theory*, if you did manage to make a Girl 1 for Genesis, it would look like the Girl 2 shape. And that one is already covered.

What would be difficult would be to create a conversion routine that refits her clothing into Genesis. You mention that all figures are slightly different in their starting pose, yes, but all zero poses for them is relatively similar, except maybe on the feet angling. And you know what sort of havoc that has played with Auto-fit and shoes. Now imagine that compounded by the inverted V legs, which also happen to be slightly bent to the front, around 30º or so (I've just loaded the original Girl and zeroed her to check). She really didn't have THAT much support clothing wise, so you are not loosing THAT much in terms of clothing items to use, and tbh, I can't think of anything made specifically for The Girl that doesn't already have an equivalent for V4.

But as I said, I'm sure that a lot of the "shapes" depend on the actual support and original sales numbers for the figure itself, and DAZ does have those numbers, enough to decide whether it's worth pursuing or not.

As for the textures, not strictly true. There were 2 sets, one for the girls and one for the boys :) But yes, for what I can remember, the Girl-only textures were toony and few and far between, so it's possible that, again, people simply didn't feel there was a need for any converter, when you could have easily used one of the toony textures for Aiko instead.

As for the caps section, thank you :) I'm glad you enjoy my work, it always makes me a bit gushy inside when I hear people say it :)

RCDeschene

Arien said:

No, what I mean is that back then there was little support because of this. Girl 2 is supposed to be her shape translated into V4's mesh anyway, so *in theory*, if you did manage to make a Girl 1 for Genesis, it would look like the Girl 2 shape. And that one is already covered.

What would be difficult would be to create a conversion routine that refits her clothing into Genesis. You mention that all figures are slightly different in their starting pose, yes, but all zero poses for them is relatively similar, except maybe on the feet angling. And you know what sort of havoc that has played with Auto-fit and shoes. Now imagine that compounded by the inverted V legs, which also happen to be slightly bent to the front, around 30º or so (I've just loaded the original Girl and zeroed her to check). She really didn't have THAT much support clothing wise, so you are not loosing THAT much in terms of clothing items to use, and tbh, I can't think of anything made specifically for The Girl that doesn't already have an equivalent for V4.

But as I said, I'm sure that a lot of the "shapes" depend on the actual support and original sales numbers for the figure itself, and DAZ does have those numbers, enough to decide whether it's worth pursuing or not.

As for the textures, not strictly true. There were 2 sets, one for the girls and one for the boys :) But yes, for what I can remember, the Girl-only textures were toony and few and far between, so it's possible that, again, people simply didn't feel there was a need for any converter, when you could have easily used one of the toony textures for Aiko instead.

As for the caps section, thank you :) I'm glad you enjoy my work, it always makes me a bit gushy inside when I hear people say it :)

So pretty much, case in point, the G4 Shape IS G3 and all that applies to her except her impossible UV map and anything else regarding G3 specifically just went the way of the Millennium Kids. I get it now.

But yes, I have always suspected as such with the whole "Omni Gen 3 UV Map" claim. I conducted a little experiment where I loaded every Gen 3 Figure I have (Victoria, Michael, Stephanie, David, Aiko, Hiro, Laura & Luke, and Maddie & Matt; I don't have Freak or Girl). I applied the default textures of each character on all of them to test UV compatibility. I did this because I'm finally agreeing to invest in 3D Universes' Texture Convertour 2 and I want to purchase as few character plug-in as necessary. From what I gathered, the "Real World" Adults (V3, M3, S3, D3) all have 100% UV compatibility with each other. The Millennium Kids (Kt, Kp), work flawless with the Real World Adults as well, however not so much in reciprocal respect. Aiko & Hiro, the "Stylized" Anime duo only shared textures properly among each other. Then there was F3 who wasn't flawlessly compatible with any of the other's textures. However, his texture were very much errorless on all the male figures.

So it seems like with DAZ, Realistic Adults, Sci-fi/Toons, and Children are each their own sub-realms when it comes to Gen 3 UV's.