V4 Question
pfunkyfize
Posts: 496
Hi all,
So whenever I see items for V4, they always seem to be in some Poser format like CR2, HR2, PP2 etc...
How come I never see any DUF files for V4? Isn't V4 a DAZ product? V4 isn't dead is she? I still like using her in my renders just for the sheer amount of 'stuff' that she has. Does DAZ feel like legacy characters reach an end-of-life software cycle (Like Windows 7 will in two weeks for those of you stuill using it as your OS) and just refuses to make content for her anymore?
Why does everyone call V4 a 'Poser' character when V4 was made at DAZ?
Thanks, I'm still quasi new to this 3D stuff and it has been a burning set of questions for me for a few years now - that I keep forgetting to ask...
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Daz started out selling content for Poser. Victoria 4, or V4 for short, was made before they created Daz Studio. The early versions of Daz Studio used .cr2 files for characters, .duf files weren't invented until later, I think it was around Daz Studio 4.something and by then Daz weren't making new stuff for Vicky 4 anymore.
I think that Daz and the PAs think that the newer figures are better so it's more worthwhile making new stuff for them but if you like using her she isn't dead. And you can probably still find new stuff for Vicky 4 in other online stores. I'm pretty sure Daz still sell Vicky 4, and if you bought her from Daz you can always redownload her. I've got stuff in my library that is older than Vicky 4 and I can still download it.
.cr2 files are Poser type files, they will also load in the program Poser.
The V4/M4 files are legacy files however a number of people still use them and one can find content, new and old, in the store(s).
Now, if you are using Daz Studio, you could treat yourself to using Genesis and with the purchase of the V4/M4 basic shapes, have a more up-to-date type file with their shapes. There is the added advantage of being able to mingle other morphs made for Genesis, and most of the clothing fits thanks to the autofit features in the program.
She is to me and many others. Thankfully there are plenty of converters and tools in DS to still make use of her products on newer figures so you don't have to lose your investments in her.
The status quo around here is basically once a new figure comes out, support from the PAs for the old figure usually goes away so they can then focus on the new figure
DAZ Studio did not even exist when the first Victorias were released. It all started out with Poser only, and DAZ made and sold Poser content..
At the time Victoria 4 was released, almost everything DAZ sold worked in both Studio and Poser, with both using cr2 and pp2 formats. Studio was at version 2 in those days. The main differences were only in lighting and advanced shaders. At the time V4 was released, the duf format did not yet exist.
The great devide only began with Studio 4 and Genesis, and the introduction of the duf-format, then later with the introduction of iray.
Victoria 4 had a much longer life span in Poser, due to the fact thet the native Poser characters were never very popular, and Genesis never really worked natively in Poser. (Only when jumping through hoops with the DSON exporter, and even then not fuilly) There are even weightmapped versions of V4 for Poser, that I still use. I think, to Poser users, V4 is still the most popular character, and still very much alive. They still make new content for V4 outside of DAZ3D.
Thanks for all the answers everybody! That puts a lot of stuff into perspective. So it's not like V4 items can't be made into a DUF file, it's not so much a technical difference so much as an old vs new character. So basically, if you want to sell new V4 clothes one could do that in a DUF format but CR2 etc. should also be included because it's only Poser people that will use V4... I see!
It's more like V4/M4 figures were made when Poser the the big-kid in town, and since then DAZ Studio has come into its own, but the products have never been converted/updated to the DAZ Studio duf format, because DAZ Studio imports the Poser formats fine (you just need to 'find' them from the Poser-style Runtime folders to load and use them).
Once found and loaded into DAZ Studio, you can re-save any of these items as DAZ duf formatted files using the normal DAZ Studio scene save functions. Then you can have V4/M4 products in your DAZ world in a more 'native' format, in your preferred locations. This is a manual process.
Most of us just mount both the Poser runtime and DAZ libraries for the older products and get a sense of the age and likelyhood of an item being in one library or the other and load things from each, taking the easiest way to 'get things done' from the native libraries.
Others will install and manually convert Poser-style products (to DAZ duf) as they come in, creating a nice consistent library system, at the expense of the installation steps, etc. When you see DAZ CF files in your library download options, that means someone has already created these DAZ duf files, based on the original Poser formatted content. There was a *lot* of it at one point in history, so it made mroe sense back then. DAZ doesn't really do much in the Poser direction these days, since they are doing well enough supporting their own app/world/context. I say this with no malice.
Clear as mud?
:)
--ms
No there's a techincal difference between Gen4 and Genesis characters. Things such as autofit, automorph generation are not available for M4/v4, as well as geoshells. Earlier versions of Poser couldn't scale body parts so until recent versions so that was a big difference as well. V4 doesn't use DSON (not duf) formats except for material settings, so no, you have to save clothes in CR2s.
As far as PAs and new vs old... as soon as the new version releases actually customer go to the new versions, making it less profitable to release items for older versions. So if a new version of a figure releases, we generally shelve the older projects because they won't make the money we need to live off of. So no V4 characters won't make near as much money as genesis.. even at other stores (if you look at their what's hot list)
One big difference between V4 and Genesis figures is the type of rigging used: V4 uses parametric rigging, not weight mapping. That means you can't rig V4 clothes with the transfer utility, for example, you need to use the figure setup tools.
Actually auto morph generation does exist for V4 in DS, with the "transfer active morphs" command.
I still use her, but that is only because I have a legacy project that I created back in the A3/V4 era. Really, there isn't much in the way of good material for her. It is all so old and crude, and mostly impractical clothing. It was in an era where most vendors had enough skill to release bikinis but not much else.
Mostly, stuff from pre-genesis is dead.
But you have to select it from a menu, which doesn't make it "auto" ;)
i dont see why they cant release her as a duf file, they did it for milcat
rdna had a weight mapped version of her
If they went full blown DSON with her then very little of your existing content would work properly with her, every conformer would trigger autofit, none of your morphs/characters would work as DSON formats don't have morph channels to INJect into, every single one of them would have to be rebuilt, basically it's one huge nightmare of a job. I learned that the hard way back when I converted Aiko3 to TriAx (not with "convert to WM" as what you get from that is only fit for the trashcan", creating a skeleton, painting new WM, rebuild her JCMs and rebuilding all her morphs was "easy" compared to the huge mountain of content I have for her that also needed converted, so she got mothballed several years ago.
woulda thought aiko3 be easier, no deformers
i deleted all of v4'd deformers before importing her.
the dformers are a pita when using her in carrara.
https://www.daz3d.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/small_image/350x455/17f82f742ffe127f42dca9de82fb58b1/a/l/allegrathumb.jpg
This is Allegra for V4; I actually bought the character October, 2018, but only just got around to converting her to G8. (I don't think available anymore, but she is the last character I converted so was first V4 I came to.)
I don't tend to convert shapes, but the textures are generally worth spending some time on; there are a lot of good ones out there. It is possible to convert shapes, but I generally am content with a facial approximation.
So does that mean that the new characters for Poser like Dawn and La Femme are all just an extension of V4? parametric rigging, CR2 format and fundamentally different than the Genesis characters? Can DAZ Studio handle those newer chars?
I bought Allegra on sale a few months back, she's a good looking V4, I have yet to finish moving all my V4s to Genesis figures... Transferring my V4s to Genesis is purely for the accessories and clothes so I am wondering what is involved with clothing V4 in DUF formats and splashing Iray all over her with dForced items. Weightmapping was just mentioned here too....
Dawn and La Femme are completely new characters and have no V4 or Genesis connecttion. I think there is a Daz Studio friendly version of Dawn but La femme is Poser only.
Dawn is somewhat unusal in that, as nemesis10 pointed out, there is a DAZ Studio version and a Poser version. When DAZ Studio and Poser introduced weight-mapping they each used their own implementations which were incompatible. Dawn is a weight-mapped figure, but the DAZ Studio version uses DAZ Studio weight-mapping, while the Poser version naturally uses Poser weight-mapping. La Femme, as well as any other Poser generation 2 and later figures (Alyson 2, Sydney 2, Pauline, etc.) use Poser weight-mapping only, which is why they won't work in DAZ Studio except as static props.
Thanks for adding that; I reme,bered that there was something peculiar...
Ah! Ok!
Thanks for those reponses, I got into the 3d game when G2F and G2M were in the middle of their popularity. I am still trying to put V4 in the DAZ scheme of things since she was originally a DAZ creation...
Dawn was released roughly contemporary with G2, and all the Hivewire human figures use Triax rigging in their Studio versions. And, yes, all of the Hivewire base figures so far do have Studio versions. Some of their add-on characters don't, so you need to be aware of that.
The Studio version of the Hivewire human figures also have autofit clones, although those only work among themselves.
V4 has some beautiful face morphs, great expressions and textures from PAs but the body is not that morphable so it's still very viable for portrait renders but not so much for full body renders.
There are actually a few V4 characters that come with Iray MATs. Anjel over at Rendo is one. SV7 provided every manner of MAT settings for DS and Poser for her. You still have to load V4 from the CR2 files, apply the morph with a PP2 file, etc. The Iray presets are DUF. You can also convert skin settings to Iray using a converter and save them as DUF.