Unofficial Daz Support & Manual Part 1 : Correctly rigging Genesis 2 Male or Female
First:
Genesis 2 Base Male = Standardized version of Michael 5 (Genesis 1)
Genesis 2 Base Female = Standardized version of Victoria 5 (Genesis 1)
There are small but real difference between loading M5 or V5 or a Genesis 1. Their UV's and materials will work but you'll notice small differences. There are many benefits and improvements to staying with Genesis 2 especially with cross-compatibility. However, you can load your Genesis 1 textures and materials on to Genesis 2 base and expect results loyal to the apperance of how they look on Genesis/V5/M5.
First:
Genesis 2 Base Male = Standardized version of Michael 5 (Genesis 1)
Genesis 2 Base Female = Standardized version of Victoria 5 (Genesis 1)
There are small but real difference between loading M5 or V5 or a Genesis 1. Their UV's and materials will work but you'll notice small differences. There are many benefits and improvements to staying with Genesis 2 especially with cross-compatibility. However, you can load your Genesis 1 textures and materials on to Genesis 2 base and expect results loyal to the apperance of how they look on Genesis/V5/M5.
1) Do not alter the rigging of Genesis 2 Female, Male, Victoria, Michael, etc, they are already rigged and VAM expects their rigging to essentially not change or it will break. Altering the rig in ways not intended essentially is making new unsupported models.
At worst like a new version of Base Male (Michael 5) or Base Female (Victoria 5).
So how do you adjust the rig to your character? Posing. What? OK, let's clear a couple things up... Poses don't just included joint angles. They also include transforms. That means scale. This means you first "pose" a second figure or donor into the correct proportions (lengths of bones). This is called normalizing. It mainly refers to first scaling up the height of your character to the same height of the base Genesis 2 Male or Female. Then, working outwards until there's a reasonable match.
Would this take a long time? Yes, if you did all of it by hand and didn't have a few tricks on hand.
Code:
In the next stages of the tutorial I will do two kinds of demonstrations:
1st, a genesis 2 shape that's already in a dramatic pose but has no rigging. If you autofit the rig to this and freeze, when you dial out, you'll lose everything: shape and pose. So to rig this, posing to rig to get or save the pose is required.
2nd, a very oddly shaped but official DAZ character: one of the Goblins for genesis 2. I will remove the default rig and rig it from scratch.```
But first, let's go over what normalized scale metrics are. When the figure is in "default", "unposed", or "starting" position (often the same as "zeroe'd but not always) you can measure like such to get a normalized height and width:
This assumes there is no pose present when measuring your variation of base.
Note the thick yellow lines. This is a are exact measurements for getting a normalized scale.
However, our base G2 figure is meant to be somewhat human, and even though it is considered unposed, you may also want to know the maximum potential normalized scale. This means the absolute widest and tallest the figure could possibly be with an extremely straight pose. This is very useful for measuring limbs, or working on the geometry as it is now as close as can be in line with all 3 axis.
For now, I will keep parts of this guide short and come back to prepare a fuller instruction set.
Also, if you are working from just a mesh and do not know if your figure was potentially reposed, straightening out the geometry this way first, and reloading as a morph will allow you to then "pose back to zero/restore (the default) and corrects any future problems and your mesh will be be ready for rig-adapting for G2.
