G9 Woes
bdpease9014823
Posts: 35
in The Commons
I recently decided to give G9 a try and spent around $400 on content, including a character converter. I have to say I am quite underwhelmed, and my conversion success is at best 1-in-4. I've found it clunky to use and the materials to be rather bland. Does anyone out there have any insight or opinions they'd care to share?
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Comments
Any time you convert from one thing to another there are almost always some sort of issues. If you can't use G9 as G9 you may be setting yourself up for disappointment. If the materials seem bland, it may be your lighting, if it is not the lighting, there are many, many thread comments where people are adjusting aspects of skin and have been happy with their results.
I hope you can find your joy with G9 - I enjoy using it, but can empathize with being disappointed with somehow just not being able to find the secret sauce for success with a particular model or shader. Hopefully someone else can link you directly to resources to help you out, but providing more information on specifically what you are struggling with, i.e. skin shaders, etc. can help people provide solutions.
I use almost exclusively G9. I have no widespread issues at all with the models or products. Problems can occur because of what the PA produces, but that isn't related to the model(s).
What are some specific examples of a problem, or problems that you're running into? I use G9 in various outside-the-box ways, including, in the early days, conversions.
I never used G9 until I purchased Damira (https://www.daz3d.com/naturally-bending-damira-hd-for-genesis-9-feminine) last month. My big objection to G9 was the bending in some of the joints (knees, thighs, elbows, etc). The bending was worse than the original Genesis. A lot of those problems have been solved by Damira. So far, I have been very pleased with the results.
Using G9 as G9 is fine (if not a bit underwhelming), it's converting the thousands of dollars of g8 content that isn't working -- eyes disappear, characters are not even close. Just can't justify throwing all that away.
Which version of Daz Studio are you using? Which render engine, Iray, 3Delight, or the Viewport drawstytle?
Firstly, theres nothing to stop you carrying on using G8/G8.1 alongside G9, especially if you have heavily morphed G8 characters. As for "kit and aceesories" - I saw on here, the other day, that G9 clothing now autofits onto G8... Maybe someone else has more details about that?
As for G8 --> G9 converters... There are quite a few. I have a couple and have had most success with https://www.daz3d.com/rssy-character-and-material-conversion-genesis-8-to-genesis-9-bundle - However, the number/types/severity of morphs on your G8 is supposed to have an effect... And, stood side by side, you will see some (small) differences. To some extent I agree with Gogger (^), the tools are very useful but - without the native 8k texture sets of g9 - you're likely to be underwhelmed if convert is all you do.
My experience of using G9 models has been enjoyable and successful - though, as with G8, that does depend on the model(s) you get. The top-quality skins produce some fantastic renders, especially close-up, and I find I get better results with less lighting-work and post-work - I've also found posing easier too.
I still use my G8 library (which has easily 20x as many items) - and now rarely convert G8 to G9; instead I use G8 alongside G9 in renders.
Yeah, I honestly cannot tell too much of a difference. There are subtle hints between the two figure types when used in the same scenes, but if it were me, I'd ditch the converting and just use G8 on G8 and G9 on G9.
Iray on founders 4090 -- issue is not with the renders. I guess my point is if I am going to stick with G8 to begin with, there isn't any point going to G9.
Well, you can mix characters in a scene, as was mentioned before. But if something comes out and you want it for G9 then you might buy it. Because most new content will be for G9 just because there isn't a return on investment for people to create for both generations.
Yep, I'm using G3 & G8 mostly, but still use G1 and G2 for some characters, especially those using geografts that only work on those generations. My main issue is on me, not DAZ or the content; I really need a new computer. Mine struggles with iRay, so I mainly do 3dl renders. The RSSY iRay to 3dl converter works great, but it doesn't have a shader for the G9 skins, so converting to 3dl has been an issue. And my computer simply wont do Dforce, so some newer outfits aren't really useable for me at the moment.
The release of a new generation doen't make the older generations obselete. Use them all, if you need to.
...this is why I stuck to only getting characters like creatures and monsters for G9. I'm content with G8 for everything else.
Same here as to hardware. My system is 13+ years old and "upgraded" as much as it can be for what the motherboard supports. 4K textures are enough of a handful to render.
I prefer the PBR on G9. When light shines through the hands on some G8 skin textures they have that translucent wax look. G9 for portraits too. G8.1 and G9 for expressions over G8. G8 has quicker loading & rendering times on my machine. G9 wins for the universiality. No seperate Male/Female clothes or poses. G8/G8.1 wins the treasure chest topology prize minus the treasure, just the chest. Hoping G10 will have base level navel & nipple topology.
I can't get abything done with PBR skins. they only seems to work for a very dark skin tone. For lighter skins it makes the skin look dry and flat, like it is loosing its texture and remains only color information.
Almost all vendors set skins to dark (Irayuber and PBR), no matter the figure. You can easily see it with HDRI environment, featuring real life people's skins.
In comparison to those real skin tones, DAZ skins are too dark.
G9 joints are horrible. I purchased extra joint correction packages, that don't help a single thing.
Again the unisex aproach is a mistake.
it requires one layer of joint corrections for the base figure,
one layer of joint corrections for either the male or the femine version
and one layer on top for custom characters.
so that makes three layers of joint corrections instead of two for e.g. G8
There is a flaw in the G9 femine shape about the arms, shoulders and lower spine, that is for some reasons difficult to fix by custom shaping.
and if you look a full frontal or side views, it seems. that no vendor has either been able or willing or anyhow adressed that flaw.
These shapes are not unrealistic or faulty in any way, but they are outside an average statistice phenotype normal, which is not expected from a default female shape.
I don't see any of those flaws in the G9 male shape.
I do think, that G9 works exellent as a male base figure.
I'd like to see a base G9 female figure, for the current G9 is all male to me.
I promise to start using G9 stuff as soon there is a way to convert G9 to G8 figures and G9 only clothes don't cause problems when used on G8 figures (yes, many work, but I encountered problems with some longer than knee-length pieces ofclothing).
And a way to convert G9 characters to G8.
For me, G9 has been the best. But ONLY because the separate mouth anatomy allows characters to REALLY have proper predator teeth. Plus 5 maps are easier to keep track of.
Plus having only one model is nice.
Speaking for me, I started with converting G8 to G9 but I've largely dropped G8 entirely because I like my characters in G9 better. Mine was a process in evolution anyway, so there was no great loss in walking away from G8.
I can understand that if someone is faced with converting a bunch of established, working characters from an earlier version to G9, there would have to be a lot of 'wow' factor that just may not be there.
Are you using Autofit on the clothes? It will copy the figure's rigging to the clothing, which is fine for things like shirts and pants, but will mess up anything with different rigging, like loincloths. I've been manually converting clothing items if Autofit is an issue.
Here ya go: https://youtu.be/kXssz90XFEA?si=w41glSuHto6kEfII
Jay's tutorials have been very helpful to me.
...as to dealing with skin tone for all Daz characters, there is a tool that works on every Genesis generation from G1 - G9 (and even Gen4).
https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-iray-skin-manager.
I use it to make fine adjustments to textures for my characters, even those I create with Zev0's Skin Builder plugins
Tried that, but wasn't able to achieve a success, probably due to me being just unable to follow a spoken "How to" compared to a written one. Will try again, if it gives me some easy way to change HD figures from G9 to G8 without too much clicking, saving and reloading
I was also very pleased with Damira. I'm sad to see that the Nerdworks hasn't posted any products since he posted her.
I've been trying to convert my oc into G9, and I've hated all of the results. So I'm sticking with G8F, and using MMX G9 Clones for All to get some use out of the G9 clothing that I've purchased.
May I humbly suggest using Genesis 9 UVs for Genesis 8 and 8.1 Female so you can get the superior G9 skin along with the relatively superior G8 bends?
I just tried that tutorial and now I've screwed up all my base G9 figures, they all load with the eyes and teeth out of place, not sure what happened. Can't figure out how to get my base g9 shape back to normal now. I think I'm just gonna uninstall all G9 content and forget that it exists. Was hoping to transfer a couple shapes to G8 but i think its not mean to be. Its a cursed generation.
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I'd like to see a proper UV mapped product for both directions in the G8-G9 relationship. The geograft products don't do anything useful to me as in closer renders I want to make use of HD morphs that aren't followed by geographs, and in wider renders I just don't see the benefit as Daz/Iray has significant texture detail drop-off in wider renders, even at stupidly high resolutions. That's could even be where a lot of the G9 is no better than G8 feeling comes from. Honestly, no one generation is significantly better in a wide shot than other generations.
My gut says it should be technically possible to create new UVs for a base figure, but I've not looked deeply into it.
Because of the way G9 is UVmapped compared to G8, and the differences in the location of UV seams between the two, it's not possible to change a single G8 tiled UV so that it fits the G9 UV seams without overlap.
What is superior on G9 skin?