Wow! Just... WOW!!!
Adding to my notes below, this is Rosie 9 using the Young Anime Hero dial, but then backing off the head shaping for it entirely. I like it with the Anime Hero head and without - it just changed the style of her without actually changing her - much. Facial muscle in each version need to be treated completely differently. I'll get myself some rigs going to differentiate how I emote each individually.
Challenge Accepted!!! :)
I explain better below... Rosie 9 is still a l o n g way from being able to stand up to the likings of the Truly Incredible Rosie 8.24!
Development of Rosie 9, of course, impedes on Rosie 8's progress - it simply has to. But Rosie 8.24 is still busy acting her little tail off! She has a LOT of Advancements that I simply don't have available to me yet for Genesis 9 - not to mention all of the custom internal work I've been designing for her - which also hasn't stopped.
I'll even go as far as to say that, at least right now, I enjoy working with Rosie 8 over Rosie 9 by a fairly large margin. But I'm also incredibly pleased with how quickly this latest attempt at making the beginnings of a Rosie 9 has come together!
Further, working with Rosie 9 and getting her all put together is a wonderful learning experience that I truly must undergo with the new Genesis 9 figure - which is out-of-this-world Incredible!!!
But for all of you fans of Rosie 8, don't worry! There's still a Lot more of her to come!!! And Soon!!! :)
The Elusive Rosie 9
I was Overjoyed when I saw the release of Genesis 9 - what a Marvelous Unimesh Figure!
Unimesh being that it can be Male, Female, and even something in between - all using the same base figure, meaning that all products for any of them will work in some way, shape or form no matter what character we're working on.
Genesis 1 blew me away with this aspect.
Now, I've heard folks mention (gripe, even) that Genesis 9 base shape has rather oddly large pectorals.
All I ask is that we think about it for a minute. There are presets and dials to add "Masculinity" and others for "Femininity". It only makes sense that the Base Shape is something that can produce male and female shapes with as little distortion as possible. I saw that Immediately the first time I was able to see Genesis 9. Stretching and constricting mesh from its base shape is what causes problems - or at least it can.
Anyways... enough about that!
I've been holding off building Rosie 9 for a number of reasons. The biggest one is that I'm really waiting for that Special Character Preset product that will make for the perfect Rosie 9 base to start from. From there I have to put in all kinds of magic, imagination, thought, and preparation to end up with a final result.
The other big reason is that Rosie 8 is absolutely adorable and a lot of fun to work with.
Strange things happen. It was a time ( a few days ago ) when I was browsing the Daz 3D store day dreaming and looking at all of the Genesis 9 products. Like... All of them.
I've been collecting Genesis 9 products all along. I always collect for the latest Daz 3D figure whether or not I'm actually using it yet - because when I do decide to take the plunge, like everything else: I like to have a good library of goodies to work with.
During my browsing I found a few assets that might make for a great combination towards building a Rosie 9 base - and then there are tools and clothes that would help everything along as well.
It was literally just then when two of my good friends: Tugpsx and Therrix from the Daz 3D forums decided (separately, but at the same time!) to support my endeavors with a nice Gift Card for Daz 3D!
It's really crazy how the timing of all of that went down - it really is. It just blows my mind! Because it also happened when the things I was Wish Listing also went on sale, just after I submitted my Gift Card codes! Jaw... Dropped. Don't worry - I'll find it later!
What about converting Genesis 3 and/or 8 Figures?
Well, that's one of the things I really wanted to try. The biggest issue with doing that is that, unless you have advanced skills and a whole lot of patience, Characters converted to Genesis 9 pose problems.
I thought that I had all of the issues sorted out with my conversions, but like all of my character builds, I start animating them to see if any issues crop up.
Oh yeah... issues. Not that I'm giving up on the idea, but I'm far too busy to be able to devote that kind of energy right now - and in the foreseeable future.
For stills it would be great. But I need my Rosie character to go far beyond that. She needs to perform on the spot, all day, every day.
She looks cool though!!!
Conversions of both Sol and Ensley, combined with other shapes that I've collected. I like this one so much that I'm going to revisit the MF Figure Convertor for Genesis 9 as soon as I can. This time I'll read the manual, ask Jay Versluis for help, and endeavor to do a better job so that the final result can withstand the rigors of daily animation.
The Initial Kit Bash
Jay Versluis advised me to start my Genesis 9 adventures from actual Genesis 9 products instead of diving deep into the advanced methods of working conversions into real Genesis 9 compatible characters.
The very next day I got two nice Gift Cards!!!
June HD is made by bluejaunte, who also made the incredible Ensley for Genesis 8. June isn't quite the same, but she has that bluejaunte character look and appeal. There are others I may collect and blend in as well. Neither of the artists who contributed to making Sol for Genesis 3 and 8 have any Genesis 9 characters in the store yet.
TMA Olivia - Like most of my 'Character Shopping' experiences, Olivia just caught my eye. I like the shapes and I like the skin. In the cart - done.
Tuesday HD looked like she might make the perfect bridge to bring these other two lovely females together to create a cool Rosie figure - and she did, but not in the way I was expecting!
The current version of Rosie 9 (Take 3 - at this stage, they're not even code named. That happens after I'm happy with a final result, for the most part) consists of the following:
June HD and TMA Olivia Head shapes are blended, along with additional shaping from the Daz 3D Genesis 9 Essential Shapes morphs. TMA Olivia's body is cranked to 100%.
Tuesday HD won first place among All of my Genesis 9 characters for skin shaders.
Her eye materials are from the base Genesis 9 shaders that come with Daz Studio, and the mouth is using June HD's incredible mouth shaders.
Rosie's eyebrows are almost invisible, very thin, and have a nice arch. So I used the fiber mesh brows from the base Genesis 9 and edited them to work - and I really like the result.
I have Young Animation Heroes installed and I keep going back and fourth deciding how stylized - if at all - I want Rosie 9 to be.
Something that I love about this amazing JoeQuick product - beyond the incredible shapes - is that dialing this thing up also creates a built-in Heroic posture - so applying animations and poses always turn out a lot more heroic right out of the box! Really Cool!!!
I have exported Genesis 9 for use in Cascadeur for making my own animations from scratch, and I also got Bone Minion - Genesis 8/8.1 poses for Genesis 9.
I already have the one for Genesis 3 poses as well - so all of the animations I've made for Rosie 7 and 8 are at my disposal for Rosie 9, along with the rest of the awesome G3 and G8/8.1 animations I have.
I'm a Huge fan of Bone Minion!!! :)
So Here's My Start
You know, you have to start somewhere, right? Developing Rosie 7 took actual years. Years. I lost her in my massive data crash of 2023 and got Rosie 8 up and running within a week - but she's still in development to this day.
Someone as special as Rosie takes time to create. Especially when I look back in time at some of the disasters I've work with over the years.
Rosie 4 (V4 based) was Awesome for a Lot of Years! Then somewhere along the way, I changed and (in my opinion) wrecked her. Rosie 5? There were many Rosie 5s and None of them were very good - except that I learned a Lot about Daz Studio as I experimented - likely the reason I didn't look too closely at how awful she looked! LOL
The Original Rosie 4 and Dartanbeck 4 from my experimental movie - Just a Bit of Fun - below
Highly Stylized
This is a highly stylized version of the combinations I mentioned above.
She's also using a new ponytail rig that I developed for Rosie 8, which pulls a bunch of the hair from her right side up into a tail that's so thick you can't see where it's tied.
Still in experimentation stage, it's survived more animation tests that what the hair can perform without the rig - so for the stability factor it gets an A!
From most angles I also think it really looks cool too. Those image shows it at nearly the worst angle to view it from - and I still like it.
It also puts more of those luscious Linday curls on the top of her head and the dynamics when she's in action is Fantastic!!!
Below, the much less stylized version of basically the same character, shows just a few frame of a rather cool sword animation I created as a test for the hair, and found that I really like the animation, so I'm going to do more with it.
I always use the 'Bare" face version of a character set for Rosie's face, and then I paint the eyeliner on in PD Howler - my favorite tool for this sort of thing.
Getting There!
She's still not quite right. It's going to take a lot of effort to give her a reason to take Rosie 8's place. Rosie 8 is fantastic to work with and I really love how she looks - even though I never felt that she was quite finished as far as how she looks either.
But that's not going to stop me from animating her. I have to in order to do proper development. It's amazing how easy it is to get a really nice looking character, but when emoting during animations, it turns out looking like the wrong person!
I'm facing that conundrum with Dartanbeck 8. Those Gift Cards got me some goodies for him as well - see if I can get him working properly!
That's all for now, but I'll be back shortly! :)
