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I invested in Genesis, then G2 and skipped G3 and picked up G8. However, there have been so many sales I went back and now have G3.
I agree with the comments that G8 is really an upgrade to G3 - but I like the compatability between the two generations. However, I have invested so much in G3 and G8 now that I'm not especially interested in G9, unless it is a radical change. That being said, I will be waiting about a year before buying anything. My experience in buying G8 as it came out was an exercise in frustration waiting for the various utilities to come out that support it.
I've gotten really good at converting to Iray and can make all the characters look good, even V4. I've also used V4 textures on G8 (using Legacy UV's). I still pick up cool V4 characters (for their skins) - V4 still has some of the coolest characters for faries, aliens and so forth. I'm waiting for Zev0's morph converter utility to release so I can upgrade some great old characters. As far as the HD characters from G2 and G3 are concerned, I'll just use them rather than convert. Clothing can be an issue.
I'm really happy with the variety of morphs including old and imperfect characters in G8, so I'll be using that for quite some time. It gets too expensive to upgrade every 2 years.
TRUTH!
I think that's where soft body dynamics would kick in for these sorts of deformation issues such a sitting, breast sqwish and stuff like that!
When it comes to technology, its best to allow it to accelerate and evolve as fast as possible. Just because YOU aren't ready for the next thing, doesnt mean everyone else should wait. Imagine how things will look 10, 20, 30 years from now while the rate of improvements and new technology also accelerates.
The thing about soft body dynamics is that it's a huge amount of work to get it to work ok, and then another huge amount of work to get it actually good.
Really, dFormers are the sort of thing you want, being able to get in there and just tweak stuff. The problem is that they are a bit awkward to use.
...if there was still support for the older generation I'd have no issue, but once a new generation comes out, support for the previous one takes a nosedive. Autofitting from old Gen to new Gen generally works fine but going the other way often results is fit/pose issues that are not always simple to fix.
As mentioned elsewhere, compared to G3, G8 is more like V4.2 was to V4.1 rather than an entire new figure as G3 was to G2 (particularly the change in weightmap format) or Genesis to Gen4 Hence for some, having to re-invest in all new base morphs, poses, and resources to make it as useful as the previous version really didn't seem to justify the cost of retooling. Had it been more "groundbreaking" that would have been different. Still a pain in the wallet for those on tight budgets, but at least worth the added expense.
One of the major points that stopped me at G3 was at the time I knew there would be no more updates to Gen-X as the PA passed on (I understand that Zev0 will be releasing something similar, but I believe it will not be compatible with Dimension3D's plugin).
...yes.
Since I discovered a dformer's Influence can be changed to Weight Map from Sphere, I find them much, much easier to use. You can even select something within the object and move it! The Cabin in the Snow product has, convenient in most cases, turned the multiple trees into a single object. Using dForms with Weight Map, I was able to select a single tree with the Geometry Editor Tool, apply 100% weight to the entire tree and easily move it to another place on the terrain. (This image.) It's still not a perfect solution, but significantly easier to use, imo.
My understanding of Daz Studio and how to use assets from one generation to another grew by leaps and bounds when G8 was introduced due to the generously shared information in the Morphs from G3 to G8 thread in the early pages, with PDFs from RedzStudio on creating my own morphs, and with Sickleyield's equally generous tutorial to Convert Clothing G3 to G8, G8 to G3 on DA. Armed with that information, I've had no issues with buying either G3 or G8 content.
When G9 is released, if the base mesh is the same, or similar enough, that I can use G3, G8 and G9 content with any of the three generations of figures, I'll have no problem with investing in G9 assets. However, if the differences prevent using G3/G8 content with G9, and vice-versa, as "easily" as between G3 and G8, I'll be dragging my feet considerably. Even if G9 includes significant improvements.
I wonder how you wanna know if its worth it or not, without knowing anything about g9? If g9 is a huge step forward, you have to move to g9 if you wanna use the new features... you can still use ur g3/8 stuff for older models, you don't lose anything.
It will be like windows... Go right from 8 to 10, skipping 9, because everyone knows that the tween-versions of windows all were horrible, which is why windows never released 9, this time around... (It already went from Gen-3 to Gen-8, so why not! They just skipped Gen-NT, Gen-ME, Gen-XP, Gen-MediaEdition, Gen-Longhorn, Gen-Vista, Gen-7)
I think getting DS 5 updated to the new QT is way more important or you risk losing DS all together !
...
The other thing is that you might have created content yourself that cannot be easily transferred to a new generation, or cannot be transferred at all. For instance if you created strand based hair for this generation I doubt you can transfer it to the next generation. Same for custom morph. Yes, DAZ releases a morph package for every generation that is more or less the same or at least similar. Characters based on these morphs could be re-created given some effort. But the custom morphs you've created using Blender and imported via obj and saved as a morph asset? I don't think you can transfer them without a dedicated tool. Yes one time a character or morph converter will hit the store. But it took RiverSoft Art, one of the most accomplished creators of converters, so long to come up with the characters so I doubt the mechanism is easy. This means that for morph transfer or might take you till the end of the next genesis cycle until you can convert your morph. And still you are not guaranteed a good likeliness.
Yes of course you could entirely start over and render new characters. There are people who don't care about that V7 looks very different to V8. Or for whom it's a good thing that V8 looks different than V8. But some people care about characters especially if they made them themselves for personal use. Of course you could always start from scratch and create a new morph. I know I did but I came from ol' V4 and M4 and I couldn't get GenX to produce a decent copy for G1. So I started all over. Fortunately I came up with a much better morph this time but I prefer not to create new morphs for every generation especially as it's not easy to create an exact likeliness.
Except for this, I'd happily start with Gen9. Improved skin shaders and hair shaders are likely to convince me anyway. G8 is quite good here, but of course there's always room for improvement.
As an aside, strand hair using a hair cap can be reasonably transferred to any other figure; you just need to autofit the cap and the hair follows.
In my opinion there is no such thing as Genesis 9 .
It's the Genesis X .
It is the latest Genesis series and will be developed over the years . Like windows 10 .
The best solution to your problems .
I read in one of the dforce hair threads that the first dforce hair Linday released didn't feature a skullcap but they explained a method how the dforce hair for G8F could be fitted to G8M. I've tried this for strand-based-hair and it doesn't work.
I guess I can try taking geometry directly from the base G8 figure and try to convert it into a wearable preset. Then make the G8 geometry invisible. This way I can't distribute the hair due to the fact I used direct G8 geometry but as long as I only use this stuff for myself and never share it I guess it should be ok.
I've been debating a lot with full body stuff. With fur... there's a certain benefit to having a mesh between underlying figure and the fur.
But for head or other stuff... better to use a cap. And yeah, I think a bunch of us have gone '... dang it' with that.
I hardly ever try fit a hair to a character of a different generation than it was built for. I parent it, and then turn off the hair and scale and adjust the cap until it is as close to fitting as I can get it. Then turn the hair layers back on. Caps are useful. Even if you turn them off before rendering.
JOdel: We're talking strand hair, which is somewhat of a different animal.
I believe (though I haven't checked) that if you have morphs on dForce Hair that's fitted to a cap and move the cap to another figure, the morphs are preserved. But ... I should check that.
+1
The Change Log has multiple entries for "Removed Qt3 dependencies from…" one feature or another. I suspect the next 4.12 release, or perhaps 4.13, will "be the new black," (which is to say, the new DS 5.)
There was the potential for a lot of confusion using Genesis 4, what with the earlier models being referred to by generation. The whole V4/M4/S4/et al were often referred to as Gen4, at the same time the Genesis models were often referred to as Gen1, Gen2 and Gen3. Generations 1, 2, and 3 were so old, no one was confused by that, but Generation 4 is still used, even today. Vicky and Mike had been consistent with their numbers, so Genesis 3 had named figures of 7, Genesis 4 would have named figures of 8.
It took a little bit to get used to, but I think Daz marketing got this one right. Going forward, the named figures number will coincide with the name of the Genesis generation it belongs to.
@Asari, maybe the information here will help. The third post from missuskisses and the fourth post from jepegraphics should give you the information you need to use that hair on any G8 of the same gender. Not sure about cross-gender. But I've tried what was posted and it allowed me to use Roderick's hair on a different figure.
I am looking foreward to seeing what the new Gen 9 characters will look like. I will assume that they will offer more than the current Gen 8 figures.... People keep say "next year but next year is only 58 days away so it could come soon after Christmas.
As ever, perspective matters. I didn't like its bending; G2 was where I really started using Studio, even though I still wasn't thrilled with the bends.
My feelings exactly.
Tall, large-busted and mosly naked. :)
I’m glad I didn’t vaguely avoid G8 out of some worry about future upgrades. Have you all seen the amount of G8 items at bargain basement prices over the past two months? Waiting and missing them was a mistake for those who did. One should at least give serious debate to the 1.99 items. There have even been a few G8 items in the 8 for 2.99 bundle.
If if I took this viewpoint, I could still be on G2. G8 has a lot of great nuances for both figures. I’ve been slower on G8M but have still picked up a bunch of great stuff for it. Most G3 clothing and hair items work. (I know people will copy the last sentence and ignore everything else) Poses are poses and always need conversion or simply new packs. But again, the new packs have been at basement busting prices.
It will be annoying to wait a few months and then try to start without the sale. G9 isn’t coming anytime soon. Avoiding 8 will eventually become painful, as so many cool items release for it. I only picked up a few items in the prior (2018) holiday sale run. After these last two months, my G8 collection is solid.
So I can understand keeping it slow. But don’t completely miss out on amazing G8 sales just because of a generic decision. Feel free to avoid G8 after these sales. I’ve still been buying tons of G3 and even G2 stuff because they’re backwards compatible.
Unless it's a stand-alone (aliens/monsters) I do not ever buy G8. I cannot use their hairs, clothes, or skins. I primarily use G1, and G3/2 backfit pretty well for clothes and hairs, but I do not use G3/2 figures (I do have a single G2 character, I confess). This sale has been amazingly fun, because lots of things I can use have been on sale. However, nothing can really incentivize me to spend money (not even $1.99USD/$2.53 CDN) on the G8 stuff, so I suspect the next generation - whatever it is - is unlikely to accomplish this, either. It comes down to what you are trying to do, and what tools exist to get you there, and how much you are willing/able to spend. G8 can't do what I need, and I believe future generations won't, either. That isn't to say I don't believe that Daz won't manage to make some impressive improvements - I have every confidence they will continue to upgrade. :-)
I personally hope we won't see G9 for at least another two years, unless it comes with some radical improvement, like micropressure on skins or additional rigging features. Though I think they could technically implement such into G8 as well.
And why? Well, comparing all the assets available for V4 and G3/8, I think there are still a lot of V4 assets that don't have any equivalents in G3/8 yet. And even V4, G2, G3 and G8 combined far from cover all the combinations of designs and styles possible. So, I simply don't see the need for G9 yet, and think all the designers and developers still have plenty options to make things for the current generation. And I rather see them make new things for the current generation, where I can easily combine them with the stuff that's already available, than segregate it into yet a new generation, where I can't let my creativity go wild combining it with older assets..