How do you use your various Genesis generations?
Wonderland
Posts: 7,133
I've noticed that I use each generation differently and wonder if others do too..
G1: Toons, creatures, less realistic characters or fairies and later arty postwork
G2: Same as above with some more slightly realistic characters (only a VERY few G2 characters look real to me.) Thorne-like dolls, stylized characters, and pretty much like G1. I still don't have a real use for G2 but have gathered a lot of G2 content from deep sales. OK if you plan to use with arty postwork.
G3: Beautiful people. When I want drop dead beautiful girls and handsome guys, I think this was the generation of beauty. Of course there are toons, aging, youth morphs, fairies, here too, but I usually use G3 for sexy girls and handsome men.
G8: I use for realism, photorealism, lesser attractive people, older characters, HD, "regular" realistic people and although some are as attractive as G3s, many aren't but are more realistic. And of course, this, like all other generations has its toons and anime characters... But I'm not sure WHY you need realistic toons or anime characters, I always end up postworking these to death. (But for gaming, I guess it's cool, if people are using them in 3D games.)
Do you use your different generations for different types of projects? Just curious.
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I transfer anything I need to G8.
Those cases I need something not transferable, I use it in the generation it is meant for. These are pretty unusual as I don't do monsters and similar as a rule.
... But yes, porojects influence my choices.
G3 is my main generation to work with, I have tons of characters, morphs and accessoired /clothes, they are detailed enough for closeups and I can turn them into jsut anything I need.
G2 was the generation I started with, I have morphs but only few characters, I still like them but converting skins usefully to iray takes time. So they mostly get a role as background characters,
I rarely use G1 and if so in a similar manner as g2, mostly again because of lacking a good adn quick transfer of skin to iray.
g8.. I don't have much, I like the oldies and oddities there but they only rarely get a role
Genesis 1: for basic generic people and sci fi aliens/creatures
and animation Due to 100 Percent compatibility with my external animation tools.
Genesis 2: for the overwhelming majorty of my Characters Due to 100 Percent compatibility with my external animation tools
(Particularly the classic mimic pro 2 for lipsync).
I likely have every morph ever created for G2F as well as many pushed up from G1Mill4 even Mill3 via the GENX 2 Plugin and some custom morphs I created.
My CG self Avatar is G2 male based
and it natively uses All of my Millenium 4 Skin mats by simple UV switching
Genesis 3: Only use it for the Ivan and George HD male
Characters not interested in any of the females, although
I have modeled some clothing for this generation's males and females.
Genesis 8: DEAD ON ARRIVAL, skipping entirely except for creating some complex commercial animated motions for the base figures ... (Eventually)
Genesis 1: I mostly use it for Bot Genesis and occasionally Universe 3d's toonish characters
Genesis 2: I skipped for money reasons. I have a few outfits I couldn't resist which I autofit to G1 or G3.
Genesis 3: My current generation. I do everything with it, except robots.
Genesis 8: Skipping for money reasons. Luckily a lot of the content is also G3 compatible.
Genesis 9: Will be my current generation once G10 debuts.
Sadly, Floyd 8 and Mabel 8 are making me rethink my strategy.
I don't use V4 or M4 any longer (only clothing autofitted to newer generations), Genesis 1 only for a few specific creatures I have for it.
Genesis 2 female I use often because I like the dense mesh, have some custom characters I like, have a decent amount of clothing and accessories and I can use Genesis 8 and Genesis 3 skins on her. Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 female are pretty much interchangable to me, but if I can upgrade an old G3 scene to G8 easily I will.
As for male figures, I just use genesis 8 male.
Luckily I snagged a copy of SingularBlues morph transfer script before it was pulled and have been able to get the essential character morphs I needed tranferred over to G8, so i am good for now.
I really don’t like previous generation male shapes so only use the current generation
G1: Mostly for monsters and creatures.
G2: I don't use Vicky 6 as much as I still use Mike 6 (cause I love his looks). I liked Gia 6 and Olympia 6 better anyway. Giselle 6 is the best Thorne doll of the last three generations and makes a great fairy if I ever feel the need (which is mostly never). She'll also double as a ballerina. (This generation was my first exposure to DS).
G3: A step closer to realisim. I use G3 still if I don't have a G8 character that will suffice or an outfit I must use that doesn't transfer well. I tend to use clothes on the generation they were made for as it's just the path of least resistance. If I need someone pretty, I reach for G3, male or female.
G8: It's the generation I use the most. LOVE the diversity of styles so far this generation (but hate the lack of males - hear that Daz??). Ollie, Edie, Floyd and Mabel (and even Edward and Alexandra) have made it all worthwhile investing in. If I need someone more normal looking, I go for this generation.
I didn't use Vicky 4 and Mike 4 even when they were popular really. Never liked em. Aiko 3 Realistic was probably my absolute favorite. Haven't used anything much before Genesis 1 in years really.
Laurie
I use all the generations in one giant project. It's a story that takes place over a 10 year period. In order to mimic faded memories, the earliest part is the least photoreal. It starts with V4/M4 rendered in 3DL and will wind up with Gen 8 rendered in Iray. I just finished the Gen 3/3DL section, and am about to move onto pure photorealism with Gen 3/Iray. I recently got a 1080ti just for this and am having a blast flexing my Iray muscles!
I had ZERO interest in Gen 8, but with all those "get 3 Pro Bundles free" deals, I wound up with a lot of Gen 8 content and now I really love it!
I showed up a couple of years before Genesis launched. So I have a lot of gen4 content. A fair amount of gen3 as well.
However, I found DS3 to be an endless hassle to work with, so once DS4 and Genesis made their appearance I invested heavily in them. The fact that gen4 skins worked seamlessly with Genesis 1 meant that I continued to buy gen4 characters to use the skins, and GenX ported a lot of the morphs.
I ended up with a character library of about 100 continuing characters, or thereabouts, and wasn't about to go through all that hassle again in a hurry. Ergo; while I've stockpiled a lot of G2 and G3 content as it was released, it wasn't until Ollie came out that I've made any attempt to start porting my library to later figures. Ollie was *exactly* what I wanted for one of my major characters.
So now I'm playing catchup. At some point I'm probably going to try to port my G1 characters to G3, and see if I can get the skins to transfer, using Cayman's work-arounds. So far I had poor results the one time I tried that, but I know that it does work, so eventually I'll get it.
I'd move things to G8 if there was something like GenX available to do it. But I can at least hypothetically get things past the watershed of G3's release where everything changed.
Genesis 1: I mostly auto-fit their clothing, but do use them as background or generic characters (this also applies to M4/V4 characters and clothing)
Genesis 2: My most used generation. Despite starting at M4/V4 era, I had the most access, time, and money around the arrival of Genesis 2. I still think this is one of the better generations, with amazing adaptability, add-ons, and unique clothing. Some great monster morphs for his generation too.
Genesis 3: Rarely used, but I do like it. I have some select characters that use this generation, some nice outfits and skins too. Felt this generation was rushed over and Genesis 8 took over not too long afterwards. However, REALLY happy that Genesis 8 responds well to items from Genesis 3, it makes my library of usable stuff, poses, and items so much more useful.
Genesis 8: Got most of the pro packs from this era. Will likely continue to support it until Gen 9, but hoping like Gen 3, Gen 8 items are usable on Gen 9. I would rather a larger library of usable items, poses, and figures, than a hard drive full of now useless for current-gen stuff. Really liking the older figures, and mixing them into the younger generation has enhanced the realism 100 fold. In earlier generations, aside from the odd ancient mage or hag, there were so few elderly people. So having them in this generation is great, really adds to character scenes in stories. Thank you DAZ for adding more age diversity. One thing missing from this generation that really needs to come by, is Lee 8. Korean version of an Asian character, with the Korean style would be cool. Some dance outfits etc.
Genesis 9: Will be my current generation once G10 debuts. Out of the box posing as standard would be nice. 10000 built in poses at launch, hell yeah! By this generation, stances, hand poses, and the like should be standard, not required additional purchases.
Gen X?? EH, too far away to worry about now.
Genesis 1 - At this point, mostly creatures, or Were-Critters that I need to show in mid transformation.
Genesis 2 - Continuing projects I started with Genesis 2, Pirates and Swashbucklers. (Seriously, I've been generally dissatisfied with the piratical/faux 17th century offerings for G3 and G8 - especially female, and I can't rely on Autofit to handle the coats correctly) Also my prefered figure when using 3DL special effects, since there's less chance of stumbling accross a character or clothing that's Iray Only.
Genesis 3 - Currently my dominant figure, though more for Urban Fantasy than high fantasy. Or anything I want to do in Iray, since it's easier to find a suitable G3 skin texture and Iray materials for G3 clothes than convert G2.
Genesis 8 - I actually intended to use G8 more, but I keep running into money flow issues when the characters drop, and times when it's just better to continue my investment in G3 rather than go with G8. There's a lot of G8 stuff on my wishlist, though. And I do have the base morphs.
Generation4 V4/M4 ~ use for animation background characters. tranfer cycles, and to use with poser.
genesis1 Animation character and to use with poser.
genesis2 Animation character and to use with poser.
genesis3 Animation character in Daz only
genesis 8 .(not invested much in it at this time unlessed I'm commsioned to use it )
Genesis - Pretty Girls
Genesis 2 - Pretty Girls
Genesis 3 - Pretty Girls
Genesis 8 - Pretty Girls
The last 3 art images that I purposely rendered a male were Oct 2014, Jan 2014 and March 2013. I just render the Ladies! I dont count my promos since I render what is needed for those and not what I prefer.
Pretty much only use G8 these days except for some specific creatures / monsters that I have based on the older generation. My huge V4 library of content sits in a corner gathering dust. Without the ability to retrofit Gensis 1, 2, and 3 things onto G8, I might not have gotten back into the hobby at all.
I make Candy out of them. :D
And a silly little comic-adventure (NSFW) https://www.deviantart.com/psychonauty/gallery/64509890/Clueless-Drew-comic
So mostly pretty girls, some pretty guys, and eventually I will have monsters eat them all.
I started with G1, so G1 and G2 make up most of the main characters in my webcomic. So I'll keep using them, and Melody 2.0.
As far as introducing new characters, I generally look through my catalogs of clothing and hair and use the generation that the clothing and hair I want fits.
For military people, I'm usually stuck with G1 because my military is human male/female Melody 2.0 male/female, and I need uniforms that will fit all of them.
In short, I use G1-G3 depending on the scene and purpose. Don't use G8 at all, because my workflow is slow enough as it is.
...pretty much what DaWaterRat said.
Genesis 1 - mostly redundant for me now, good for character morphs e.g. Anubis/Cat People
Genesis 2 - Occasional use for background characters, legacy scenes or where I want to use specific outfits that are a pain to convert to G3
Genesis 3 - Main usage
Genesis 8 - Skipped mostly. I have bought products when I think they are cool enough or dForce but they are all converted to Genesis 3 (I too was lucky enough to get SingularBlues script to transfer morphs)