For some time now I've been documenting my journey while I reinstall my 3D content in Daz Studio over at Hivewire 3D forums and felt that it might be an idea to post over here as this is where my freebies have been released so far. 

Along the way I'll be converting stuff from many different characters to Dawn 2 and possibly Dawn SE as well. I use a variety of figure models some designed specifically for DS and others have been around a long, long time and were designed for Poser but still usable in DS. It's fun to convert them to triax weightmapping and to play with them in DS.

To start the ball rolling, here is Dawn 2 with a morph, hair and horns I created in ZBrush.

I was initially attempting to create strand based hair within DS but I got so frustrated I decided to have a play in Zbrush instead. Horns were created from a cone and I will probably set them up as a prop in DS for release as a freebie.

Hair is very much a work in progress as it's my first real attempt a fibermesh. I used the Strand based Hair shader that comes with DS.

If you're interested in my journey or have questions about what I'm doing feel free to ask.

I do also play with Genesis and I'm looking forward to having a good play with Genesis 9 eventually...

So having completed work on converting the sundress I did for Genesis 8 and Dawn to Dawn 2(I'll pack it and find testers tomorrow) I started back on working on converting hairs to Dawn 2 and at the same time sorting the hair I've converted previously for Dawn and at the same time I'm testing the templates that I'm working on for Hair for Dawn 2.

After looking at Genesis 9 templates I've made meshes for a short hair and a shoulder length hair template.

Chelsea hair was converted from one I had already converted to Dawn SE.This allowed me to use the clone that comes with Dawn 2 for the original Dawn figure.

 The image in the top left corner is the conversion with original textures, top right corner is from the original textures which come in duf format

Bottom left is using some of the morphs, SASE lights and the ties are shaders from Wilbear's iridescent set. Bottom right is the same shader but rendered before I added the lights and morphs.  You can see the difference a good set of lights makes.

Some of the morphs in hairs are located on the neck or the head as this is where they needed to be prior to duf format when everything came in cr2's, to make life easy for myself when using the hair I went thru and altered the morphs located my selecting the figure so they are no longer hidden and I also made sure to alter the limits to on and changed it from the very high number it was set on. This will make it easier when I use the  hair in future. I saved the hair as a figure prop located in Hair under Dawn 2 in the people folder.

I think the shoulder length template did a reasonable job as there is little distortion with this hair but will be checking further in a variety of poses.

Been out today so haven't achieved much. I did with help manage to export my fae face and ears morphs to poser and create an injection so I'll be able to do the morph freebies for both programs.

Not sure that it's okay to post Poser images here so you'll have to check out my thread at Hivewire. Still have to create the rem files and hack the injection ones so they don't have absolute paths.

I've put out a request for testers for the poser version of my fae faces and ears as it's now packaged.

Here is another hair that I've converted to Dawn 2 this time it's Crazy Locks.

Some of the images contain shaders and I've also played with the settings on the original texture.

Overall I'm happy with the fit. I may need to create some jcm's for the template though as I did notice some issues with extreme bends.

Finally discovered Hivewire's expresion pack...not sure how I missed it. I must be going blind. Finally she has a decent smile.

Hair is Biscuits Echo set on Long Curly iirc

Lights are Fabiana's set.

Dress is my dforce one that I've done for Dawn and Genesis 8 now converted to Dawn 2.

I just need to pack it and get it tested before putting it up as a freebie. When I do I will put all three versions up. I'm planning on doing a few more textures to go with it.

Dforce Sundress is now ready for testers. Any Volunteers?

Once I have it tested I will upload all 3 versions Genesis 8, Dawn and Dawn 2.

Still continuing to work on alternate textures. These images are just testing the texture maps. Surfaces still need some adjustments. There are more versions with the ruched ribbon trim also.

Last nights render play Dawn 2 wearing BadKitteh's shimmery dress and shoes.

Lots of work to convert. Needed to create a new surface so I could use dforce.

Poser Fae faces and ears has been uploaded  and is pending approval.

Currently working on converting the headmorphs for Dawn 2 to Poser. Will possibly do some more converting in DS later today.

Still looking for people willing to test the dforce sundress for Dawn 2

Did some work in zbrush, still not completely there yet. Working on replicating a face from real-life. Did a body morph as well. Still need to come up with textures.

Dress is Diamond Dress from Ken1171 with a trans to create a quick mandarin collar and some shaders from Lully. Hair is Charlotte by Swam converted using the Dawn SE clone and the short hair template I'm working on.

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Mainly sorting the runtime today. 

Quick play with Poser figure Amity by Dragonfly in Daz studio. Used the strand based shader then added the trans maps back.

Shader on dress everything else as it unzips.

I'm currently sorting thru my Poser figures in my runtime and while sorting thru Hein's section rediscovered a fiber hair I did for him. I felt he needed some more morphs so after a trip to Zbrush here he is...

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So I watched the first video in Arki's dforce tutorial set. Afterwards I decided to have a play with some of the concepts.

I did adapt her mesh creation method as I was using Zbrush not Hexagon.

Corset has been quickly thrown together for modesty sake and I really need to do a fix morph for the shape I dialled.

Still getting some poke thru on the 3 layers but it does simulate without exploding which is a start.

I'm hoping that the Second video will provide some methods for avoiding collision between the layers.

Character is my Nisha morph with some body shapes dialled in.

After creating a higher density mesh and playing with the layer settings much improved final simulation with less poke thru.

Still need to play with the silkiness settings on the surface adjustment dialogue

When stuff goes  boom and when it sorta  works.

Been working on sorting my runtime out. It's taking some time to go thru V4's clothing as she has so much. Took time to have a quick play at converting some items to Dawn 2.

I strongly recommend not to with Classic Dressy as it is a garment made up of pieces. Don't look too closely at the collar as there is a lot of fudging to get it to work.

Dawn's eyes in the beach renders are using Ghostship's eye textures applied manually thru the surfaces tab.

Busy organising my son's engagement party this weekend. When I get a moment I've been working on a couple of projects but some textures for the dforce Sundress I made for Genesis 8 and converted to Dawn SE and Dawn 2 are the only things really ready to show. I've made 8 additional print textures and I'm still work on additional txtures for the linen version. Hopefully to be released when I get the Dawn 2 version back from testing and upload all 3 versions here at Rendo. I was very obviously in a green mood while doing these textures.

I've not posted much recently as I've been fairly involved with family stuff as I was organising an engagement party for my son. Today I've been continuing to sort thru my runtime and redownload some files from Daz manually. I've noticed a lot of the older stuff seems to be missing folders  and needing reinstalling and I'm seriously considering going back to manual downloads as that way I will have more control over files.

What folders are missing?

Hi Richard,

It's nice to see you are still around.

All I can tell you is there are a lot of orphaned references. When I go into DIM and locate them and then reinstall I get a message when uninstalling that folders are missing. It mainly seems to be the older products. 

I don't know why this is though. Or what has caused it. It may well have been something I did but if that was the case I don't understand why it is mainly older files that have been affected. I could understand if they were missing from the categories but I've found missing files under products when I've been looking to see what is happening also.

My only concern is to fix it so I can use my runtime.  

I've also noticed that a lot of the older products have been renamed which makes them harder to find and product pages don't seem to always have which character/dress is required.

I also made a duplicate of my downloads from Daz which I'm currently sorting through and finding many duplicates in different places within the download folder. 

I've decided to go back to manually downloading and sorting files so I have more control and only myself to blame if anything odd occurs.

If you could post some examples I might be able to see what is happening. One thing that might be catching out is that some sets, mainly +/PC items, were updated to use .duf files instead of .daz sceen files and script-based presets, texture expanion sets might have issues there (but should have been updated themselves).

Thank you for the offer and it could be what you've described or something else.

That said all I care about is fixing it.

When I come across them I'm uninstalling and reinstalling the product which seems to fix it.

There's not really a lot to show just a lot of orphaned references and when I uninstall the product in DIM I get a message saying that one or more of the folders are non-existent. That's it. 

Thanks for offering to try and work it out...

Having recovered after all the work from my son's engagement party and the clean up completed, finally got to work on finishing the textures for the dforce sundress I did for Genesis 8, Dawn and Dawn 2. I'm hoping to get the Dawn 2 mats completed tomorrow and get it packed up and tested so I can release it after I upload all 3 dresses here. Most likely the day after as I can only upload 3 items to Rendo every 24 hours which is fair enough. I'll slowly put up the things that used to be at ShareCG if I think they are likely to still be wanted by anyone.

I had a few tutorials up there as well as clothing and morphs also.

Images are Dawn SE with a mixture of dialled morphs including the nose that came with VW's asian character. Texture was also from that but manually applied after using the SE Iray mats. Hair is Sapphire Fox by Quarker. Still a favourite after many years. It's just a really nice hair.

Here's the linen textures, if anyone knows, is there a way to make the images smaller here?

Today's effort...yes I know I should have finished the mats for Dawn 2 but my muse tugged me to do this instead.

First image was proof of concept. Hood isn't attached to shirt.

Second it's been joined still needs some finessing of the hood to make it pouch out at the sides and back. Still needs tweaking in other areas but it's now one mesh. It would be nice once the hood is where I want it to make a morph that has it hanging down at the back. No real finessing of the dforce yet either only one surface.

Before and after shots of using dforce...still need to refine the mesh more and create lots of adjustment morphs and probably fit morphs also. Not to mention uv'ing.