Since transferring Ariadne, I have also transferred Daphne (compare with original) and Yanmei (compare with original). I opted to do Felicity (compare with original) next, since she is the first Raiya G2F figure that is HD. My workflow has improved a bit, so I wanted to document that here.

The Textures

The workflow is still largely the same for the base set of textures. (I forgot to mention last time that if you save the Map Transfer presets, your future self will thank you, since you can just load those settings.) 

However, after discussing this with MimicMolly on the DAZ forums, I now forego the part where I swap out the makeup and eye maps on V6 to the G2F base and save them as separate material presets for Texture Transformer. Instead, since I also own V6 UVs on G8F, I load a G8F and apply the Victoria 6 UVs. I then load the V6 makeup and eye maps on G8F's Face and Lips surfaces and use Map Transfer to transfer just Face/Lips and Iris/Pupils/Sclera to G8F UV maps. I then use Photoshop to blend those into the base maps made with Texture Transformer. This is a time saver!

I have to confess, though, that as of Felicity, I'm so done with dealing with the eye maps. I'm just using EmmaandJordi G8F eye materials from here on out.

The HD Morphs

All experienced DAZ users know that HD morphs are not made available to everyone, only Published Artists. So, there is no transferring those morphs. What you can do, however, is bake the HD into normal maps. I used Substance Painter to do so.

Substance Painter will bake maps based on the different surface names, so with G2F, even though Ears/Head/Hips/Neck/Nipples/Torso uses the same map, Substance Painter will save out six different maps. You could then use Photoshop to patch it all together, but that could result in annoying seams. I think there is a Substance Add-on that will bake up to six surfaces together, but I'm so much better with Daz Studio, I just stuck with what I know. 

So in preparing the G2F figure, what I did was combine each of the following surface groups into one surface:

• Ears, Head, Hips, Neck, Nipples, Torso → Torso
• Face, Lips, Nostrils → Face
• Feet, Fingernails, Forearms, Hands, Legs, Shoulders, Toenails → Legs (then renamed to Limbs, but that's not really necessary)
• Irises, Lacrimals, Pupils, Sclera → Irises (then renamed to Eyes)
• (I ignored the lashes and mouth groups because I'm not baking HD into these maps)

To do this, I used the Geometry Editor in Daz Studio. Select G2F in the Scene. Right click, Geometry Selection > Select by > Surfaces, and then choose all the surfaces that go together (but you have to do this one by one). Then right click, Geometry Assignment > Assign to Surface > (one of the surfaces, e.g., for group 1, all to Torso). Right click, Geometry Selection > Clear Selection. Then in the Tool Settings tab, expand the Surfaces, and delete the surfaces that no longer have geometry assigned to them. You can also rename any surfaces here. Rinse and repeat for every surface group. Then hide the Eyelashes, Gums, Inner Mouth, Teeth, Tongue surface groups. They will mess with the HD baking.

Then save the scene so you can just open this scene whenever you need to bake a G2F normal map from HD.

At this point, make sure G2F is on base resolution. Dial in the morphs you want. Then export to OBJ using the following settings:

Then change the resolution to high resolution and increase the subD levels to max. Export to OBJ again, using the same settings above (but obviously export to a different name).

Open Substance Painter. File > New, and in the dialogue box, click on File and select the Base Resolution OBJ file. Click OK. In the Texture Set Settings tab on the right, click on "Bake Mesh Maps." Uncheck everything except for Normal on the left pane. On the right pane, click on the document symbol by High Definition Meshes and choose the HD OBJ file. Then click "Bake all texture sets." Once that's done, File > Export Textures and collect the Normal Open GL maps.

This is not quite perfect, however, and I had to adjust the results in Photoshop a bit. I have to hit the tutorial videos again to see how I can prevent the inner mouth to deform the lip surface. There are also some seam issues that I need to resolve, but the edges can be softened in Photoshop. I'm sure there are much more experienced Substance Painter/DAZ users who can advise, so I'll look into that and update this when I have resolved the issues.

I also used Materialize to generate height maps for displacement but again, the seams need work. 

The Morphs

I batched out the Raiya women from before so I have those morphs all ready to go. 

I decided, though, to prep the Raiya men in advance, this time using Riversoft Art's Character Converter. I did first export the G2M morphs first and reimport them so they were not dependent on all the Michael 6 morphs. As clarification, the export settings I used here are different than the ones above; they are:

I then load the morphs using Morph Loader Pro, save the morphs, and save as a character preset for Character Converter to recognize it. And you will have to put it in a folder named "Characters" or else the script will fail. I just use [Custom Daz Content Folder]\People\Genesis 2 Male\Characters\[Character Preset.duf] for the sake of continuity. I opted out of transferring joint-controlled morphs ("JCMs"); for simple shapes I don't find them very necessary, and it's just going to increase the transfer time and bloat the resulting figure for no good reason.

The Character Converter does not create morphs for G8 but rather creates a scene that you can open in Daz Studio. There is a dialed-in G2M morph for the resulting G8M, so again, I just export OBJ of the entire body at base resolution, and use this method to create a separate head and body morph. 

At this point I think I'm saving/keeping track of G8 morph OBJs to import as morphs through Morph Loader Pro as needed, rather than saving all morphs. The more morphs you have for a figure, the longer it takes to load, so this is one way to save figure loading time. G8 figures are getting a nice, long life, but that also means increased loading times if you are a character addict like I am.

As for the men...I can't wait to work on them, but I'm debating whether to transfer the genital mats, since I don't do nudes. I might transfer them just for the sake of learning how.

If you have any tips that can help streamline this workflow, please comment! Thanks very much.

Note: I have published some updates to this.

Raiya is one of my favorite Published Artists at Daz3d; her characters are just lovely, and I'm a character addict. During a recent Genesis 2 blowout sale, I picked up her remaining Genesis 2 figures so I have them all now! I had previously been hesitant to pick them up because at this point, I exclusively use Genesis 8 figures. I did buy a lot of conversion tools, so that's usually not a problem, but...Raiya's Genesis 2 characters tend not to use the base UV's, so that's an added step of conversion tedium that I did not previously want to deal with.

But minds are made for changing, and I decided to convert (at least some of) the characters to Genesis 8. Ariadne is Raiya's first Genesis 2 character, and I'm starting there. This is a documentation of my efforts; not quite as detailed as a tutorial, though I will link to various tutorials that have helped me over the years.

The Textures

Since Ariadne uses the Victoria 6 ("V6") UV's, the first step was to bake the textures onto the Genesis 2 Female ("G2F") base UV's. I did that with the Map Transfer utility inside Daz Studio. 

For my own future reference and for anyone else who needs a handy list, here are the surface groups for Genesis 2 figures:

• Group 1: Ears, Head, Hips, Neck, Nipples, Torso
• Group 2: Face, Lips, Nostrils
• Group 3: Feet, Fingernails, Forearms, Hands, Legs, Shoulders, Toenails
• Group 4: Gums, Inner Mouth, Teeth, Tongue
• Group 5: Irises, Lacrimals, Pupils, Sclera
• Other: Eyelashes (I don't bother with the rest, like Eye Reflection, etc., but if you do, they should be done separately)

Side note: Using the V6 textures on base UVs will not result in any seams, but not everything will align correctly.

I had to load all the new converted maps onto G2F (with G2F UV's) and save them as material presets, including all the makeup and eye options. This is because Texture Transformer (with the Female Add-on) ("TT") processes presets rather than simply asking for file locations. Would really love it if TT could convert using simple file locations, but alas, we have to go through this extra step. So, I used TT to convert the Base UV textures to Genesis 3 textures, since Genesis 3 Female ("G3F") and Genesis 8 Female ("G8F") share the same UV's, excepting the eyes, which are just a teensy bit off in a way that is noticeable in portrait shots. TT did not convert the makeup masks, so I had to save separate presets with those mask maps as the diffuse layer to get that texture converted.

I loaded the materials for RY Alison on Genesis 8 Female ("G8F"), just to have a base to work off of, and Alison is another Raiya character who has roughly the same complexion as Ariadne. I updated the maps to link to Ariadne's converted textures, and then I applied the mapless Victoria 8 settings from Altern8 and continued to tweak the material settings, especially for the makeup settings that have masks/shine options. I even ended up making a lip mask for gloss options, since the "Lip" surface area is greater than the textured lips.

For the eyes, I used the settings for EJ Wild's eyes (really, any EmmaandJordi eyes will look great) and the textures as a base for me to blend in Ariadne's eye textures in Photoshop. 

The Morphs

Raiya's G2F characters are based off of Daz core figures, and Ariadne is based off Victoria 6, the character involves more than one set of morphs, i.e., Ariadne's and Victoria 6's. I don't want to deal with multiple morphs in conversion, so I'd rather put the G2F in base resolution and export the morphs out and import them back in via Daz Studio's Morph Loader Pro and save the morph. While usually I'd export head and body morphs separately, since I want to use Gen X (this, this, and this) and GenX requires the dialing in of the G2F whole body shape on G3F, I just exported one Ariadne morph, since I would otherwise have to split it later anyway. 

After using GenX to transfer my Ariadne morph from G2F to G3F, I loaded up G3F and dialed in the Ariadne morph as well as the GenX G2F morph. Base resolution, export, import via Morph Loader Pro. Then I used the Sickleyield method to convert the G3F morph to G8F. 

There are other ways to do this of course (such as this or this or this and this). 

I then exported the G8F shape from base resolution, and this time, used this method to create a separate head and body morph. I like separate morphs because I like as much control as I can get.

The Toppings

My go-to fibermesh eyebrows for characters that already have painted-on brows is Real Eyebrows. It's a great product because it covers a lot of eyebrow ground, offers a fair amount of morphs (such as thicken, curl, etc.) and you can pluck as you see fit.  Note, though, that the script does not work at all. So, a long time ago, I went through this process to prepare this product for G8F: 

1. Load both G3F and G8F.
2. Load any Real Eyebrow eyebrow preset on G3F.
3. Save the scene. I do this because using Geometry Editor will sometimes crash Daz Studio.
4. Switch to Geometry Editor tool and make sure the eyebrow is selected.
5. Right click and select all hidden, add to default group to unhide everything.
6. Unparent from G3F and "fit to" G8F.
7. If you use Iray, select the eyebrows, and in the Surfaces tab, choose both the "Default" and "Hiding" surfaces. Convert to Iray (usually saved to Shader Presets > Iray > DAZ Uber > !Iray Uber Base.duf).
8. Select the eyebrows and save as Support Asset > Figure/Prop Assets, choosing compatibility base and compatible with G8F. 

I then use this method:

1. Load the saved G8F Real Eyebrow onto G8F.
2. Save the scene!
3. Switch to Geometry Editor tool, right click, and select Selection Mode > Lasso Selection. 
4. Use the mouse to draw an outline around a portion of the eyebrow you want to hide (anything that's not the painted brow in this case).
5. Right click, select Geometry Selection > Select Connected. This way, the entire brow hair of each hair selected will be included so you won't have awkwardly cut brow hair or a brow hair that does not have a root. 
6. Right click again, select Geometry Assignment > Create Surface from Selected and name a new surface area, "Hidden." For some reason, the existing "Hiding" surface area just does not work for me.
7. Set opacity for "Hidden" to 0.
8. Repeat steps 4 and 5 for other areas to hide, but instead of step 6: Right click, select Geometry Assignment > Assign to Surface > "Hidden."
9. Rinse and repeat as necessary.
10. Apply appropriate hair shader to the eyebrows.

For Ariadne specifically, I also used the vellus hair that comes with Liliana, and the Victoria 8 HD add-on.

The Results

I've posted the results here. Feel free to compare with the original, which was rendered before the Iray engine was integrated into Daz Studio. Comments welcome!