Can't get Fantasy Deer Fawn Kit to work [SOLVED - with lovely detailed instructions]

SilverGirl

Having started with G9, I'm only now starting to dip my toes into the waters of previous generations, mostly when there's a gap I can't just fill otherwise. So there might be an obvious answer to this that I'm just a n00b about.

I'm trying to use https://www.daz3d.com/fantasy-deer-fawn-kit-with-dforce-for-genesis-81-females on https://www.daz3d.com/amira-hd--expressions-hd-for-genesis-8-female.

The Fawn kit says "The deer leg shape is achieved by a partial body morph with conforming leggings on top that provide a smooth texture transition to any Genesis 8 Female texture set." In the Content tree it's under G8F/Characters/Fawn. There's an option for the legs under "Morph presets", but highlighting my character and clicking it doesn't do anything. Clicking the legs & leggings under "Wearable Preset" pops up an autofit dialogue box, and of course G8F isn't an option. The result is it (badly) autofits the leggings, but still doesn't apply the legs morph. I can't find the legs morph under the parameters tab, so there's no hope of dialing it in that way.

What am I missing?

Elor

I don't own any of these products, but here what I would try:

1. Load Genesis 8.1 Female (the base version)

2. Apply the various shapes preset to get Genesis 8.1 to 'shape' like Amira, which can be done either by dialing the morphs or by using the presets in '/People/Genesis 8 Female/Characters/BJ Amira/'

• Amira 01 Head Apply
• Amira 01 Body Apply
• Amira 02 HD Details Apply (if you want the HD details of course)

3. Apply Amira's mat presets, 'Amira MAT' should be enough.

Bonus step. If you're planning to use Amira another time, you should save a Character Preset of the current result. As Amira's brows seems to be baked into her textures, it should be straighforward, but as a precaution, also save your current scene a Scene Subset (with only the character as part of the subset saved): Character preset's main advantage is that you can load them with another G8.1F selected and Daz will ask if you want to replace the current figure with the Character Preset, a Scene subset will load the character where it was when you saved the subset.

Note: Saving a Character Preset can be perplexing to say the least and having a backup scene subset to not lose the work already done is a great idea (some elements will also not be saved as part of a character preset). If you need more help on the subject, just ask.

I'm saving Character Presets in 'My Library' but I don't remember if I had to create the directory I'm using ('Presets/Characters') or not.

4. Try using the fantasy deer fawn kit, it should now work.

What you are possibly missing: Genesis 8.1 is backward compatible with Genesis 8 (except for the Expressions but it can be fixed by removing some files and maybe some products) but the reverse is not true and the Fawn kit is labeled as Genesis 8.1.

In particular:

1. The surfaces of Genesis 8.1 is sligthly different. So while you can apply any Genesis 8 skin to Genesis 8.1, the reverse is not true. There is one exception: a Genesis 8 Geoshell settings won't work without some work on Genesis 8.1.

2. For a reason I don't understand, while Genesis 8.1 can, AFAIK, use any morph from Genesis 8, the reverse is not true.

3. Genesis 8.1 can use any clothes made for Genesis 8, but if a clothing item was set to have 'Genesis 8.1/Female' as a Prefered Base and not Genesis 8/Female, that clothes will show an autofit dialogue box if you're trying to fit it on Genesis 8.

To reduce the amount of headache, I'm only using Genesis 8.1 and the first thing I do when I'm using a Genesis 8 character is the first three steps and the bonus step.

SilverGirl

Oh awesome, that fixed the issue entirely! Thank you so much! I knew it had to be user error somewhere.

And thanks for the info on saving character presets. I save all my recurring folx as scene subsets, that way they load with their favorite outfit (or two) and relevant accessories and such. Saves me time having to start from the ground up for every scene.

I'm still not sure how much I'm going to wind up using G8's overall, but it defintely helps to have a better understanding of the quirks and what to do about them, so thanks for that explanation, too. I knew there were some versioning issues, but since they hadn't applied to me yet I admit I hadn't paid much attention to what they were. Hopefully this will save my desk from further impacts with my head, which I believe is probably the harder of the two. =P