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SickleYield — [Tutorial] Transferring Character Morphs G1G2G3G8
Published: 2013-10-25 18:44:57 +0000 UTC; Views: 265551; Favourites: 602; Downloads: 0
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The first version of this workflow came from Kattey on the DAZ forum, for which I acknowledge credit.
Here is that (lengthy) thread: www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthrea…
First of all, however: there are two ways to recreate a character. There is the easy way, which is not redistributable, and the hard way, which is. We'll discuss the easy way first. I'm sorry, but I can't do anything for those of you who absolutely can't learn from text. This is what I have time for right now.
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PART 1: CREATE A SINGLE DIAL
Load Genesis 1. Dial in your character morph. There cannot be anything in the scene except the single figure while we do this. No hair, no clothes, no props. Or if they are there, you must hide them by clicking the eye next to them in the Scene tab.
Go to Parameters-General-Mesh Resolution. You should always have a Parameters tab. If you don't, you aren't ready for this tutorial because you are still stuck in the mental mode of only using clicky presets. I still like you, because you're going to be giving me and my fellow PA's a lot of your money at some point, but you sure don't have to. 
Set Mesh Resolution to Base and Subdivision Level to 0.
Set the scale of Genesis to 100% for this first try.
File--export--wavefront obj. Export to a folder you will use for your transferred morphs. Mine is in my Blender files G2 directory and is called Transferred Morphs.
Delete Genesis and reload from the library to get an unmorphed figure.
Now start the Morph Loader Pro. Its icon looks like a flexing arm with a P on it. Click on the button that says "Choose Morph Files." Navigate to your obj and select it. It should appear as NameYouChose.obj with options under it that you can click to expand.
Next, create a NEW property group. You must do this by right-clicking on the words "Morphs/Morph Loader" and choosing "create" AFTER you load the obj file into Morph Loader Pro. I suggest Actor/Female (or Universal or, at a future point, Male)/G1/MyCharacters or the like. This will save you a lot of trouble later.
Click Accept.
Navigate to the property group you put your morph in and dial it to 100% to check that it works. This probably cannot be redistributed because it probably contains other people's commercial morphs incorporated into one, but you can definitely use it as a shortcut for your own rendering.
File--Support Assets--Morph Asset. The Vendor Name and Product Name tell DS where to save the morph under data/DAZ 3D/Genesis/Base/Morphs. For e.g., if the Vendor name is Bob and the Product is BobsMorph, it will be saved to data/DAZ 3D/Genesis/Base/Morphs/Bob/Bobsmorph. Expand the properties under Genesis below that and check just your morph. Having put it in its own properties group makes it much easier to find here.
Now delete Genesis 1 and reload from library.
PART 2: TRANSFER TO G2 AND ADJUST (WITH NOTES FOR G3 and G8)
Now it's time to load Genesis 2 as well.
Go to Genesis 1 and find your new morph, or the morphs you want to transfer, in the Parameters tab. Right-click and choose "Favorites" and "Add Selected Properties to Favorites." This will tell Transfer Utility which morphs to transfer so you don't have to wait while it processes all 500 or whatever of the G1 morphs.
Start Transfer Utility. Use G1 as the SOURCE and G2 as the TARGET.
If converting from Genesis 2 to Genesis 3, under the Target dropdown choose "Clone" and "Genesis 2" either Male or Female depending which you are converting from. Leave the left dropdown blank. If converting from Genesis 3 to Genesis 8, pose Genesis 3's arms at 45 degrees down and legs at 6 degrees out, and use "Current" rather than a clone. This helps prevent wrist distortion.
Now when you start Transfer Utility, uncheck everything but the "Morph Targets" option. You need to have the "Show Options" button checked to expand that part of TU. Make sure you also uncheck "Fit To Source Figure!"
When you click on Morph Targets to highlight it, on the Extended Options panel to the right, you have new options. Uncheck "From Projection Template" and "Override Existing" and then click on the dropdown.
2019 UPDATE:
You can remove eye and fingertip distortion on most morphs by raising the distance tolerance under Projection Options to 0.06. The bigger the eye of the morph, the bigger the distance tolerance needs to be; if you get a weird wrinkle distortion in the cheek area you have made it too big. It can be a good idea to do a separate pass with the larger head morph to fine-tune the needed tolerance. This is so effective that it basically negates the need for the "transfer eyeballs sideways" fix, so I've deleted that section of the tutorial.
Now you have these options:
None
Favorites
Favorites and Sub-Components
Shaping And Pose
All
If you choose "Favorites," then TU will only transfer those morphs that you marked as Favorites in the previous step. This gives you an easy way to transfer only one or two morphs in a figure with many. No more waiting fifteen minutes for all of Genesis' morphs to go over when you only need a few!
Accept. This will take a moment to run as morphs are transferred. When that is done you can delete G1 from the scene.
Now go to the property group you created on G2F and dial in your morph to 100%. Most morphs work pretty well, but you will have to adjust the bones to fit the morph properly with bigger or more stylized morphs. Here's how.
Start the bone tool. Its icon looks like a bone with a bandaid across it, and it causes all of the figure's bones to appear. Depending on how much your morph changes the figure's shape, the bones may not line up with the mesh, which means they won't be posed properly.
Right-click in the viewport and choose edit--adjust rigging to shape. Check all three boxes including Orientation at the bottom, and click Accept. Now the bones are adjusted to fit the new shape. We need to freeze the ERC so that the adjustment "sticks" to this morph.
Go to the Property Hierarchy. In the new version of DS this is instantaneous. In the top search box, type the name of the new morph to find it easily. Expand the "Parameters" entry to see it. Now you can right-click on just that morph and choose "ERC Freeze." When the box pops up, just click Accept. Again, very fast.
Now go back to the Parameters tab and dial your morph to 0 and back a few times to see the skeleton adjusting with it. Good. Now set it to 0.
Now file--save as--support assets--morph asset again. Check just your new morph and click Accept after you have entered a Vendor name and product name to choose where DS will save the morph under data/daz 3d/genesis 2/female/morphs/base.
Delete G2F and reload from the library. Only the one you saved to library before you deleted her is retained, and you now have a nice neat dial for your character.
You can save several characters by checking multiple morphs while saving, provided you don't mind they all get put in the same Vendor Name/Product Name folder in data/daz 3d/genesis 2/base/morphs. I don't recommend just checking everything because some morphs won't transfer as well (male ones to the female and vice versa, especially).
PART 3: THE HARD WAY (REDISTRIBUTABLE)
In order to do this, you need to:
1. Apply your dialed character to G1. Write down each and every morph you used and its dial value.
2. Delete and reload to get an unmorphed G1.
3. Load the G2 figure.
4. Use Transfer Utility to transfer all morphs again.
5. Delete G1.
6. Adjust the bones and freeze the ERC on each component dial morph separately. This is why you wrote it down.
7. Will all the morph dials zeroed, file--save as--support assets--morph assets. Now check just the component morphs of your full dial after you put in the Vendor Name and Product Name. Click Accept.
8. Delete and reload.
9. Redial your character onto G2F from component morphs.
10. Navigate to the People--Genesis 2 Female--Characters folder in your Content Library. Right-click and choose Create Subfolder. Name it after your character.
11. In this folder, click the little plus sign at the bottom of the Content Library screen. Choose Shaping Preset. Click Accept.
Now you've created a dialed preset from transferred morphs. This can be redistributed, but it will only work for people who have also transferred those same morphs, of course.
Related content
Comments: 385
OK, so I found I could instead make a single dial via ERC freezl with the spawned dform and dials, and will use that for dist/sell/freebie. Thanks for the help!
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Hi! Is it possible to transfer morphs from G2 or G3 back to G1? And is it possible to do it using this tutorial?
Thanks a lot.
p.s.: (the morphs are called XandM Ultimate or something like that)
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Yes, but it's likely going to end up messed up in the eye area, and you need to have Genesis 2/3 clones for Genesis.
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Thanks, Sickleyield!! Worked like a charm, when I didn't miss any steps 
But, is it possible to only transfer one body part (eg the head)?
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Not that I've ever found, not if the morph is a full body morph and not a head morph.
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hi SickleYield, I don't know if it's because of my english understanding (french)0 or maybe not enough used/familiar with 3d concepts and softs like daz but...still remaining some confusions or unclear things. So thanks for this procedure but the fact is
I have characters morphs that are based/fit on/for Michael 4 (or V4).
And sometime..for some reasons I have some characters based on Genesis or Genesis 2 Male that I would be happy if the newmorph chars for M4/V4 would be ....transfered to Gen or Gen2M/F.
I know there is Michael4 for Genesis2M. But it only allow to pass gen2M morph to M4 morph (particulary the head/face in fact), not the additional morphs made for M4. You see ?
So...don't know. Maybe export the M4+morph char as obj and try kind of process to my G2M char ?
As I faile till now to do so...depending I am trying to find solution to keep my M4/morph char with some tricks to get Gen/G2M clothes/hairs/Armor.
Well...so f ar so good ...swithch from char/morph to another not easy. I could understand why but...wow...time consuming
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The reason the tutorial is for G1G2G3 is that M4 and V4 are a different rigging setup and do not transfer well. Using obj will not work because the vertex order is not the same. I was able to get some kind of result by first changing M4 to General Weight Mapping (TriAx if using G2 as the target) and using the Michael 4 clone in the Target dropdown in Transfer Utility following this tutorial (I buy all the clones I can get), but it still didn't look right.
It didn't transfer either scaling morphs or head morphs at all that I could find, and the ones it did transfer it split up into all their components, so to get an FBM you have to select all the morphs in the list for hip, thigh, calf, arm, hand,etc., and set them all to the same value. I think if I were going to do this for long-term I would dial a given morph to 1 on G2/g3 and export it to obj to reload as a single morph to save all this hassle.
Freak 4 is a complete wash. The Morphs++ body morphs work okay because they don't affect the head. Nothing I've tried gets the head to transfer, for some reason it transfers the eye-eyebrow-neck-chest of a head morph but not the head area of the morph.
So as far as I know the only way to get head morphs is this: www.daz3d.com/genesis-generati…
(Notice it has a LOT Of add-ons.)
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Thanks so much for this tutorial! It's something I've been wanting!
I am having a bit of difficulty though.. The morph works great on the G1 character and when I transfer it to G2 - the fingers twist up like they've suddenly got the worst case of arthritis imaginable. Also, I couldn't find the morph on the G2 character anywhere. I did a little fiddling (undid the G1 delete, actually) and discovered that any changes that I made to the G1 character were reflected in the G2 character *including* morphs that had not been transferred. Huh? I redid the whole thing and was *extremely* careful to only import the one morph - setting it as a favorite and importing only the favorites. It seems I managed to link the two characters in a one-way relationship somehow. Very strange! Any ideas what I've missed?
Thanks so much!
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That's a new one on me! The fingers thing is probably clone-related, are you making sure to select the clone before transfer?
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I'm using the base Genesis and the Base Genesis 2 characters, so in the clone choices, I chose "Michael 4" for the genesis side - and there were only two choices on the Genesis 2 side, "Genesis 2 Female" and "Genesis". Both choices gave the strange arthritic result and linked the two characters together. I tried it on a Genesis 3 base also, interestingly the two clone choices I got there were "Genesis 3 Female" and "Genesis 2 Male".
My suspicion is that this is not working for me because I only have the base character models, so there are no choices for the clone model. I'm very new to Daz, but I've been doing 3D animation for a long time. I understand that their are more bones in the later models for increased articulation, but I should think the transfer utility should account for that to some degree - and in any case, I didn't think that applied to the fingers!
Thanks for your response!
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Okay, item one: if you're going to use a clone, it should only be on the right side, the Genesis clone for G2F. Leave the left one blank. This alone could be causing your issue.
And item two: Make sure you uncheck Fit To Source Figure on the bottom left of the dialog.
If you want to convert things to G3 you have to have the relevant clones, and it only comes with the ones for G2.
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For some reason if I choose clone it only has G2M and not G2F which is what I want to transfer. (it has other options like G3F, Genesis or V4 but not G2F) Should I try it with G2M or a different setting? (and do I need clone if I'm only trying to convert a face?)
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What are you attempting to convert to and from?
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You do still need a clone because of the different shapes. If you're transferring TO G3F from G2F you would use the G3F clone, not the G2F one. G2F doesn't carry a clone of itself.
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ahhhh that makes sense (I've never tried anything like this before, can you tell 
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Haha! Success!
The "Fit To Source Figure" turned out to be the source of the arthritis and the mysterious link to the original figure.
I still couldn't get it to work and I was getting seriously annoyed - when I realized that the new dial was simply -hidden- on the G2 figure.
So, now everything's working *perfectly*! Thank you SO MUCH for your patience and help! My Daz horizons have just been *hugely* expanded!
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I am having a weird issue, When I take the morph from Gen 1 and transfer to gen 2(The Base was a V4 character) It just scratches out the character to all hell. The V4 Char works for gen 1, But I can't seem to get it to work for gen 2
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Like the entire character, or mainly the eye area?
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The whole character, but I figured it out.
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Thanks for the tutorial! For some reason the transfer I wanted to do worked perfectly, or at least as perfectly as it can. I think there's some subtle shape differences between G1 and G2 bodies that can't be overcome without manual adjustment, but all I really needed was the face to be exact. You have made my use of Daz Studio so much easier and more enjoyable!
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Thanks heaps for all your brilliant tutorials.
Has anyone got this to work on G2 to G3 transition of morphs.
Thanks
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Many thank for tutorial!
Please, could you help me with a question?
How do I save my thumbs in morphs dials created in DAZ Studio 4.8? Every time I close the application they disappear.
The thumbs are saved correctly in the My Library \ data \ DAZ 3D \ Genesis \ Base \ Morphs \ My_Nyckname with folder. Image in PNG.
I would greatly appreciate it if you hover anyone also who can help!
It is very important for me, thanks!
Anderson Soares
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Hi! To get them to stay you have to save the morph itself in DS again after you have applied the icons in the Parameters tab. That's been my experience, anyway.
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Awesome, just what I needed. Will give this a try very soon. Thankyou Sickle
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Thank you; yes!
Clear and concise, and the blessed thing works.
From G1 to G2.
But how do I transfer a morph from V4 to G2??
I’ve tried many combinations, and in most cases
the Transfer Utility starts working, working, until it stops,
and then--? Nothing. There is no morph on the Genesis side, or the G2F side.
One thing I’ve noticed is that Genesis comes with a clone for V4 et al.,
and G2F comes with a clone for Genesis.
Thus it should be possible to transfer morphs from V4 to Genesis, and from there to G2F.
If there is no low-labor way to do that in DAZ Studio,
I’ll try it in Blender, via Shrinkwrap and shapekeys and stuff,
but that’s gonna be labor-intensive!
Edit: see below !
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The short answer is "you can't with V4, you'd have to buy Gen X and use that."
...Okay, apparently you can? Huh. I wouldn't have expected that to work.
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Hallelujah!
I got a V4.2BaseKerata1d(.daz, .duf) with a full-body morph called Kerata1d and little else.
I DO get the blessed morph transferred over to Genesis!
If I choose just Favorites, no new morph shows up. But!
Having chosen Favorites and Sub-Components, I get, not one morph called Kerata1d:
(that one is nowhere to be found); what I get is Kerata1d_hip … Kerata1d_rPinky3 … and on and on.
They DO work!
so that a single slider will rule them all !?
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Dial all the sliders to 100% or the value that looks the best.
Go to the Property Hierarchy tab. Create one if you don't have one. Right-click anywhere in that space and choose ERC Freeze.
In the dialog, choose your figure from the dropdown and then choose "Create" below that.
Another dialog pops up. Give your control dial a name different from the sub dials (usually CTRLCharacterName for the true name and Character space Name for the label below that), set the limits if you wish, give it a correct path (Actor/People/Real World or /Fantasy SciFi is where control dials belong, and click Accept. Then click Accept again. Now DS creates the control dial for you and you can save it to library.
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ERC Freeze! 
Ok: in an outdated DAZ document on joint controlled morphs,
there is this image that says drag to here, with an arrow.
Bingo. Skip the ERC. Here’s my cheat sheet:
Result: a list of dozens of fragments (Kerata_abdomen to …upperJaw).
Right-click again, and a new option has appeared: Create New Property…
Right: that will be the ring to rule them all!
I call it Kerata without more qualifiers.
Follow the options that open before you, and follow your instincts.
look now at the very top of your window, where it says DAZStudio,
click on Window and find, under Panes (Tabs), Property Hierarchy.
Once you’ve found that, you might as well dock that pane as a sibling to your Parameters tab.
named Node/Property and Node
You can ignore the second column.
Concentrate on the first: it contains a single item called Genesis,
but if you open that (by clicking the little triangle),
it expands into Bones and Parameters,
each of which expands into more lines that you can fathom, so, in the search field over all that,
enter your buzzword, and now open just Parameters under Genesis. Much better.
You will see, in alphabetical order, your buzzword, followed by buzzword_abdomen, etc.
Link
Aliases
Sub-Components
Controllers
Make a mental note of Sub-Components.
By clicking and shift-clicking, you can select all of your piecemeal morphs
without selecting the ring to rule them all.
Do that, and now drag those dozens of pieces onto the Sub-Components
of your very first buzzword morph: THAT’S IT!
you will see that, by dragging your ad-hoc buzzword slider, all the other buzzword_… sliders follow suit.
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That takes twice as long as just doing an ERC freeze from the Property Hierarchy, because you're doing exactly the same thing by a different method, but it certainly works if you prefer that.
👍: 0 ⏩: 2
When you ERC freeze, you first dial up your individual morphs to something like 100%, yes?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
The united dial that you're creating by initiating an ERC freeze with those morphs on will have their current value as its max. So if they're all at 100%, it will max at 100%. When you dial the master dial, the child morphs will dial up and down with it.
DAZ's morph dials in Actor/People/Real World are ERC freezes compounded of usually two morphs, a body and a head - they dialed in the body, then dialed in the head, then froze the ERC to create the dial that's labeled CTRLFigureName in the data files. When you dial Victoria 7 from Actor/People, it dials both FBMVictoria7 and FHMVictoria7 together at the same value (the body and the head, respectively).
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Twice as long in execution, or in mousing around?
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Either. The ERC Freeze dialog has a lot of functions in one place that otherwise require a lot of multi-selecting in Parameters.
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The name Freeze was putting me off.
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Sometimes terms can be awkward. A lot of people still think rigidity mapping still has anything to do with rigging, for instance, because of the name (it only affects morphs).
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Am I right in hearing that between what Sickleyield put here, and your mad genius, you've figured out a way to transfer morphs from V4, to Genesis without the aid of GenX?
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Without the aid of GenX: correct. The saga continues ...
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is there a way to use this on genesis 2 to genesis 3? I've done all up to TU but I don't get the morph dial for gen3.
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I haven't tried it yet. Someone on the forum has been claiming they succeeded in achieving a TU morph transfer.
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Thank you for the reply. I did find that and it works except the mouth and eyes get badly distorted. The morph is a full body (including the head) that I want to transfer. not sure what to do at this point. Daz Is SO screwed up to release a new figure with out giving you some way to use all the stuff you paid so much money for.
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I was looking at the forum link you credited, but then found this as well...so your Part 1, is that only if I want a Single Morph? What if I want a few of the existing G1 morphs I have like Toon Amy and Hitomi? Do I just start at Part 2 above?
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Yep. Make sure you favorite all the morphs you want to copy, and make sure you choose "Favorites and Sub-Components" under the Morph Target heading.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
OK thanks! I tried it with Hitomi and Toon Amy, but I got the squished eyes thing the other person got below. The body came out alright, but maybe for face morphs...not so good. Thanks for the tut!
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