Digital Art Zone

Hi

I’m new here, so apologies for the dumb questions…

Just went to the DAZ website to find the latest Victoria (I have Victoria 4.2) and it says that Victoria 5 is a Genesis figure?

http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-5

I thought that Victoria and Genesis were toally separate and incompatible (they used to be). Or has DAZ just made everything Genesis now and abolished the old Michael, Victoria etc?

Thanks

Genesis is effectively the new Gen5. The problem with the old Victoria series is you needed outfits specifically designed for them, so whenever a new Victoria arrived on the scene, most of your older items would no longer fit correctly or indeed fit at all. Genesis eliminates all that by using a single mesh across the board for both Michael and Victoria, allowing either one to wear the other’s clothing and accessories, as well as giving the ability to blend in morphs from otherwise unique characters (Aiko + Victoria, for example).

I expect this will be the trend for future releases, since it means that content for one is effectively content for all. This gives us a lot of flexibility in choosing our purchases, and also a lot of freedom in how we portray our characters.

V4 etc are still available, still going strong, and there is still products being released for the Gen 4 figures. They are far from dead as only people who use DS 4 and above or Poser 9 plus can use Genesis.

How ever yes, the 5th generation of figures will be only for Genesis.

I see. Thanks

Any idea if any of the old V4 poses, content etc will work with V5?

Remember all that talk about unimeshes way back when? Welcome to Genesis.

The concept is quite brilliant in its simplicity. All humanoid characters look pretty much the same when viewing the mesh as a wireframe because they all have a body, arms, legs, hands, feet, neck and head. And probably some other bits I didn’t mention (I’m not human so I tend to forget what you creatures are made of). Anyway, the point is Genesis was born because DAZ realised that underneath all the textures and shapes was a mesh that looked the same when you took the bells and whistles away. So they sat down and created a base which could be turned into any character you want. Male, Female, Child, Gorilla, it’s all the same really. Move a few vertices this way and you get muscles. Move a few vertices that way and you get breasts. And thus the Powerpuff Girls…erm I mean Genesis was born.

Genesis is not a figure. It’s the clay from which all future figures will be made. So V5 for example is just Genesis with its vertices moved around a bit.

This approach works great because as HOF above me said, clothing made for one character will work with any other character build from Genesis. Even UV maps can be swapped out to use a V4 texture on M5. And because it’s one solid mesh creating morphs are also just so much easier. Well to me anyway.

Harry Dresden - 27 January 2013 04:21 AM

Remember all that talk about unimeshes way back when? Welcome to Genesis.

The concept is quite brilliant in its simplicity. All humanoid characters look pretty much the same when viewing the mesh as a wireframe because they all have a body, arms, legs, hands, feet, neck and head. And probably some other bits I didn’t mention (I’m not human so I tend to forget what you creatures are made of). Anyway, the point is Genesis was born because DAZ realised that underneath all the textures and shapes was a mesh that looked the same when you took the bells and whistles away. So they sat down and created a base which could be turned into any character you want. Male, Female, Child, Gorilla, it’s all the same really. Move a few vertices this way and you get muscles. Move a few vertices that way and you get breasts. And thus the Powerpuff Girls…erm I mean Genesis was born.

Genesis is not a figure. It’s the clay from which all future figures will be made. So V5 for example is just Genesis with its vertices moved around a bit.

This approach works great because as HOF above me said, clothing made for one character will work with any other character build from Genesis. Even UV maps can be swapped out to use a V4 texture on M5. And because it’s one solid mesh creating morphs are also just so much easier. Well to me anyway.

Right, so if I start with a genesis figure and apply a V5 morph to it, then any V4 content (MATs etc) should work with it (i.e. without all those nasty seam gaps in the skin)?

sc_taylor - 27 January 2013 04:15 AM

I see. Thanks

Any idea if any of the old V4 poses, content etc will work with V5?

Genesis is a completely different mesh to V4, and has different bones and now uses triax weight mapping.  The V4 General Poses will work airly well on Genesis, but the feet usually need to be corrected.  If you mean character poses, where you have a V4 character, and you want to transfer it to Genesis, then you would need the GenX plugin for DS, and the iconic shape for V4 as well.

Clothing for V4 can be made to fit Genesis by using the Autofit plugin which comes as part of DS 4 and DS 4.5.  It works fairly well for most things, but shoes and boots can be a problem at times.  I believe that Gen3 boots and shoes often work better, but you would need to buy the Gen3 Iconic Shapes for Genesis so that Autofit can work with them.

There are lots of free items for V4 on ShareCG, and Genesis comes free with DS4/4.5, so you could try some of them to see how well Autofit does.

sc_taylor - 27 January 2013 04:32 AM

Right, so if I start with a genesis figure and apply a V5 morph to it, then any V4 content (MATs etc) should work with it (i.e. without all those nasty seam gaps in the skin)?

Exactly although some work may still be needed with older poses and clothing. Autofit does a good job with clothing for the most part but is sadly lacking support for anything that is not skintight so results may very. Poses works too but has a tendency to mess up hands and feet but a simple reset item pose fixes that.

Between one Genesis character and the next however you wont have any problems because it’s the same mesh.

ok, thanks guys. I can’t pretend to understand what you’re saying (meshes and all that), but I think if I buy V5 and apply it to the genesis figure I got free with DS4 then everything should be ok, right?

sc_taylor - 27 January 2013 04:43 AM

ok, thanks guys. I can’t pretend to understand what you’re saying (meshes and all that), but I think if I buy V5 and apply it to the genesis figure I got free with DS4 then everything should be ok, right?

Yup.

What I’m hoping for is someone that makes skin textures for V5/M5 and show how they do it

Everyone I ask have been giving me the same answer “I use a per-made texture set and make it my own” Ok, that’s fine and good, but someone along those lines have learned to apply a seamless texture to the UV map

Some are artfully hand drawn by mindblowingly amazing artists. Others are actually photos taken from real human skin which are then mapped onto the UV’s of the mesh. The latter, of course, tend to be incredibly realistic though they do require a person willing to model in the nude for you. Then there are procedurally generated ones. These can also be very lifelike.

I think creating a unique skin texture from scratch might conceivably be one of the most difficult texturing tasks there are.