..as many know I was very skeptical about Studio4.x and Genesis. For one I work on an older system which barely meets the the minimal requirements for 4.x. This is the first time I have experienced crashes of the app when I wasn’t rendering (due to OpenGL issues).
I ended up getting PP2010 as it seemed to be a bit “gentler” on my old system. It also allowed me to render in background (using the queue manager) which saved precious memory and processor resources.
However didn’t have weight mapping and was still dealing with the joint issues.
Then I decided to give 4.5 pro a try. Seems a few of the OpenGL issues were taken care of as it wasn’t as sluggish as 4.0. Also the new version of 3Delight is really fast (as long as one doesn’t use IBL with a lot of raytracing). Renders using the standard Daz lights and mapped shadows often completed within a minute thirty or less (which in 3Advanced took anywhere from fifteen to twenty). I’ve also had fewer render crashes even when using IBL and raytracing (just that it is slow as molasses in a Siberian winter).
It also appears that the memory management issues that plagued 3Advanced and the early releases of 4.x have been dealt with.
What sold me on Genesis is the GenerationX plugin and the ability to mix various body shapes including toon characters. With the Gen4 and Gen3 body shapes I could use all the morph sets and characters already in my runtime with the benefit of improved joint bending offered by weight mapping. I even successfully created a weight mapped version of Steph4 (though not sure what to do with her as she apparently doesn’t like most texture maps other than the basic V4/S4 ones, or character morph sets due to the geometry change).
The Transfer Utility is a marked improvement over the original Autofit. Along with Collision Detection and Smoothing, it makes clothing fits so much easier to deal with.
While I still need to be careful to not make large adjustments in the morph sliders or quick changes in camera position (which usually results in the viewport blanking out due to the OpenGL support issue) and am not able to do a really “loaded” scene, I am still admittedly impressed with 4.5.
It would be nice if there was a Queue Manager/Render in Background option like Poser Pro has, as well as a the ability to pause/resume rendering (like Reality/Lux has). As long as Daz Studio does not have these additional render choices and user defined dynamics, Poser/PoserPro will still have an important place in the toolbox.
It still is more of a case that both have their advantages and disadvantages and in a sense, still complement each other.
