Renderotica

I've already received several PM's and emails and thought it would be best to address this here.

The Genesis 8.1 Expression problem

As many of you have already discovered, the majority of expressions in pose packs designed for G8 do not work with the new 8.1.

The reasons for this are pretty simple, expression designers (this goes for almost all expressions bought here or at DAZ) usually build expressions on the base figure dials. Even single dial expressions mostly just combine a set of base DAZ dials into one dial. Very few content creators do morphed expressions, and even fewer do "boned" expressions.

Some single dial "morphed" expression sets work, if the dial was truly built on a custom morph, not a combination of base DAZ dials. Even these are quite limited on 8.1 since several major bone changes can make them not open mouths or eyelids correctly.

The only expressions I've encountered so far that appear to work well are expressions previously built on the bones, with no dials used. These are very rare as they are time consuming to create, and again, 8.1 changed some facial bones so these bone based expressions don't translate perfectly.

That said, at Thunder-3D we're actually quite excited about the new facial architecture of 8.1, in testing it does indeed allow for MUCH more realistic results with extreme expressions, and we're looking forward to working with it in the future.

What this means for you.

All Thunder-3D expressions work perfectly well on G8, no changes were made to the G8 figure that would cause anything that worked before to stop working.

G8.1 based figures will require new expressions to be built from scratch. At this time there's no way around that. Little birdies have told me one or more vendors "may" be working on (one possibly submitted already) products to convert 8.0 expressions to 8.1. While I'm hopeful, I'm not counting on this to happen soon. Release of a good working product like this will also be a big factor in whether we do future pose packs with dual 8/8.1 expression compatibility.

I already have several projects in my pipeline, but am looking to work in time to do a special G8.1 expression pack built from scratch that will encompass the most popular and several of my personal favorite expressions from previous packs, but again, this is going to take time as there does not appear to be any way to easily convert expressions to the new G8.1. Additionally I need to take a little time and decide if it's worth doing 8.1 expressions as dials or just start making bone based expressions, I'm still getting a feel for what the community wants in that respect.

All BODY poses appear to work exactly the same on G8.1 as they did on G8, at least boned poses. This is the weird thing about the pose building community, we all typically use the bones on the body, but the dials on expressions were just way easier to use than the facial bones. :)

Ultimate Skin Updates

As for the Ultimate Skin Moisture products, we had already been working on a massive update over the holidays that includes a quantum leap forward in the quality of the water and sweat shaders, they will look WAY more realistic and eliminate shadowing issues as well as offer a crisper reflection on droplets. this was literally a week or so away from being submitted, but we're going to hold it back to address compatibility with 8.1. It's not a tremendous amount of work, so the delay should mean a late February release instead of late January. This update also addresses new grafts from Meipe that did not exist at the time of the USM original release.

The Future of Ultimate Skin

In the process of updating USM we experimented with some really insane new things that make water effects even better and more versatile, so keep any eye out for future info on Ultimate Skin Moisture 2 planned for late spring :D.

Lastly, in the coming weeks we'll finally be releasing a few new pose sets that were finished back in 2020 but just never finalized for submission for various reasons. At this time all our pose sets will be made for G8, and those body poses are 100% compatible with G8.1, however expressions will only work on 8.0. Again, we're looking for a way to squeeze in a special expression set ASAP for those who have decided to move on to 8.1, please understand though this will be a time consuming project and expression support for 8.1 will be limited for the near future.

I hope this addresses all your questions! Please feel free to discuss (politely) here :)

Edited by user Sunday, January 24, 2021 12:11:25 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Will the updates for supported grafts include Futalicious?

I don't know how relevant this will be for the foreseeable future but I'v kept my ear to the rail in the D*Z forums and here's what I found. I'll quote:

“Because, if correctly installed, G8.1F has two folders (installed by the new Starter Essentials and the updated standard G8F expression pack) at...

data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Female 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Base Pose Head\ 
data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Female 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Expressions\

... that are full of dummy placeholder morphs that G8.1F is seemingly supposed to pick up in lieu of the standard G8F expression controls, hiding those controls on G8.1F.
Note that I'm not recommending removing these folders, as I'm not certain why this choice was made* - it could well be for valid technical reasons that they break something 
in someway, or it may simply be to avoid the confusion of two very similar sets of controls on the figure's face. (I'm personally currently using my G8.1F as a guinea pig to see 
what - if anything - breaks if the old controls are accessible, but as I'm not official Daz staff, this is not a suggestion to screw with your library installs)

However, this is the "why" of why most people cannot access the G8.0F controls on G8.1F - they are seemingly deliberately blocked, assuming your DS and library packages 
are all up-to-date and working correctly."

I have moved away the folders in question for both genders of G8.1 and then, I've started to experiment with my "normal" G8 expressions, including yours, Thunder. They indeed work. I also have tried to use the face controls from the dev kit folder, which still works fine and last, the New faces expressions set from Daz meant for G8.1F. That works too. 

I can't guarantee that this won't break anything, or that it'll work every single time but for now, it works. Kudos to Wonderland who figured it out at D*Z forums.

A CAVEAT:

It turns out that the Mega Zero resetter won't work. I'm still looking for other misbihaving expressions and wioll add them if I find any.

Edited by user Friday, January 29, 2021 12:19:38 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Originally Posted by: raven449

Great, and I just bought the Gen 8 Moisture packs last month. Will version 2 have an upgrade price, or even free?

But besides that I noticed that on very large scenes if you move your figure too far from the load in point, the moisture skins fail and half the figure turns a chrome color.
I Is there a way around this beside draging the entire scene to my figures location?

Thanks, and I love all your work.

Very sorry, just noticed this post.

No, the upgrade to USM v1.2 will be free. It involved work I had to do anyways for USM 2, so I figured USM 1 should benefit from the improvements rather than be left behind in a state I wasn't completely happy with. :)

Not sure what's going on with the chrome coloring, but it could be something with the old shader I used, I haven't seen this happen on the new shader settings.

More details here ( Ultimate Skin Moisture Discussion - Page 7 - Thunder-3D - Renderotica - Renderotica - Renderotica.com the online community for 3d erotica. )