So basically, when you go to rig something for Genesis that started out as a Gen 4 product, plan that you will have do a fair amount of work to get it converted. Granted, you already have the mesh built (which then needs to be fit to Genesis) its already mapped, already textured, and possibly even already has DS MATS (if you do them for your Gen 4 packs) You even have some of your thumbs already done (at least, ones that will feasibly not need changed) So that all does save time (but really, only coz you already did that stuff anyway for Gen 4 or whatever) But speaking in terms of only what DS will generate for you, there’s still a good amount of work involved.

Also keep in mind… it goes easier if you have experience with traditional rigging to boot, and adjusting jp’s, falloffs and such. Because its similar (not exact, but there are similarities there for sure) If you haven’t, the learning curve may be harder for you – or it may be easier, as some people do take to things rather naturally and maybe this will click with you better. But as DS4 uses traditional rigging as well as weight maps, you will kind of have to learn it all (unless you have no intention on using the traditional rigging stuff)

Projection Templates: Can be really handy, but be careful –
Its a cool way to get a basic weight map rig for something. So, if you have a dress, use the dress option. If you have gloves, use the gloves option. But if you use the WRONG something, your rig will be fubared LOL Case in point: I used the bodysuit on a pair of sandals, instead of the boots (which weren’t working right for me) not fully thinking it thru (that doh! a bodysuit would have no feet) I noticed later, the feet wouldn’t fit right and had to re-run it thru using no template, then fix the weight map joints manually. Just make sure that the projection makes sense for what you are doing – and if there doesn’t seem to be anything that matches correctly by item (or as in my “sandals rigged as boots” case, is not exactly right) then use nothing at all when you set it up (this will pull the rig from Genesis entirely, and take nothing into account on how a certain something would be rigged)

The Weight Map Brush: HATE IT –
Ok, this isn’t a bad thing for DAZ or DAZ Studio… just a personal dislike, really. I wouldn’t use it in C4D, either… coz I don’t like it at all. In fact, I find better results just selecting stuff in DS and filling in the weight at 0 or 100, or smoothing by that selection. The weight map brush makes me mental… it’s a slow and laborious pain in the ass. Seriously. It’d be okay for little or minor things and I use it for that stuff, but… ugh… Ill be avoiding it for the most part.

What really IS EASIER: MORPHING! –
What I will say that I like… and I mean REALLY like – you don’t have to have a grouped mesh to use for morphing. It can be grouped however you want, whether by certain pieces in a grouping, or one single group, even (it only needs to be the same exact mesh) Which is actually REALLY helpful. So you can export your mesh from DS with groups and materials attached. Take it into UVMapper, and group it to how you want (either by using the existing groups, or by material) and save them as new groups (whatever you want them to be)

With traditional rigging, you always had to follow your grouping being in tact to how it was in Poser or DS, and you couldn’t change any of the grouping, for the full body morph to work properly (coz you’d get the incorrect number of facets error) When you are trying to get at certain pieces that are made up of several pieces (but you want to grab them collectively – like wings, for example, that would be a collective made up of several feathers) its really hard. Fortunately, in Z you can mask stuff using the scale tool and a couple buttons, to account for it… But you have to do it topologically for every single piece of that something thats going to be in the mask (and if you have 50 pieces in that masking, you can imagine the pain) But its EASIER and TIME SAVING not to have to mask at all – to already have the mesh grouped the way you need it to be, so you can flip the “mask by grouping” switch in Z and grab entire pieces.

The Grouping Tool: Brilliant and Not so Brilliant –
Well, its not a deal breaker or anything – just has pros and cons to it like anything. I will say it is eons better than the Poser grouping tool, however. You can use lasso selection, select individually by poly, or rectangular selection. You can grow and shrink the selection you make. And it works really good. But…. it also selects THRU the mesh. So while you may be thinking “Oh, Im only editing this one little piece” you may actually be editing a selection that went thru that piece, and is including other parts of what you are rigging. So you have to be careful with the selecting, and make sure its on an angle, or otherwise, can’t select thru onto other parts of what you’re selecting. It would also be really cool if you could add to or remove from from a selection you already made, by holding shift or something and selecting again (although, maybe you can some other way, and I just don’t know how)

A common Misconception: Everyone can do it, with Auto Fit! –
Well, even I am guilty of this one. When the tech first released, I thot the fact it was sposed to be sooooo easy and had Auto Fit to boot, would completely kill any need to even bother with Genesis clothing. The end user could just veritably convert whatever they want. Why bother doing an addon they won’t pay for. But I soon discovered… that was a gravely wrong assumption.

Auto Fit isn’t perfect. Because its essentially trying to fit an outfit thats modelled to Gen 4 content, to a completely different shape. And then the morphs further complicate that, by deforming it further from its base shape. The result? Crunching, crinkling, distortion and general yucki-ness. Sure, you can get by with AF – but its never going to be perfect (though it could get better as DAZ improves it) You also lose any adjustment/movement morphs the original outfit might have had (though, there is a way around this using the transfer tool)

That, coupled with the fact there is some work involved even in modelling it to Genesis, and time it will take to learn the new tech, and you have very good reasons why its not as simple as just that.

Poses: the Bane of my Existence –
But after posing in DS, they’ve become more of a bane of my existence. You see, in Poser, when you make poses intended for a prop, it will actually save the prop inside the pose file. So you can move the prop around however you want with a pose, and save that pose. The prop will automatically place as you moved it. This is helpful for tricky poses, where the prop may otherwise intersect with the figure (esp if you want both hands on the prop) Its also handy if you want the prop to face a certain direction (you can just spin it to face the camera, always, so the features stand out) So, in poser, you can just move it about for that pose, save it, and it will work perfectly as you intend it to.

Unfortunately, DS4 doesn’t save the pose with the prop rotation/translation settings. So, basically, your parents must work for ALL the poses. You can’t move them, or twist them to face the camera. This makes me mental…. and makes doing poses harder. In fact, I may even submit it as a suggestion to DAZ for future feature inclusions.