DAZ3D Figures (Pre-Genesis Era)
khalibloo
Posts: 76
Hi, I recently got a request concerning my Blender addon, the Khalibloo Panel about adding support for older DAZ3D figures. For those who aren't familiar with the addon, part of its job is to make it easy to import Genesis figures into Blender and automatically generate rigs for them. I just need some help getting info on certain DAZ3D figures that apparently existed before Genesis. When I started using DAZ3D, the Genesis platform was already released, so I didn't bother about what was. My addon currently supports only Genesis figures (1, 2 and 3) but I'd like to know if some of the older figures are worth the effort.
The first is the V4 figure. Is its topology different from the Genesis topology? How similar is the rigging to Genesis's rigging? Is the figure still widely used? Is it still supported by DAZ3D? Is it worth the effort, adding support for the figure in my addon? Or is it a lost cause/dying breed? And when I search the shop for V4, the V4.2 figure pops up. Is its topology similar to V4? Which of the 2 is more popular?
Are there other pre-genesis era figures I should know about? Are they still popular? Are they worth supporting?
Quite a lot of questions :D Sorry about that. I can't seem to find the answers anywhere else.
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Comments
V4.2 is just the current version of V4. I don't know any of the tech stuff but I know it is very different from the Genesis line. Poser users still use V4 and you might want to ask the question about whether it is worth it to create what you are talking about in the forums at Renderosity and Hivewire because they are more likely to use V4 as their main character because there are more Poser users there. I still like V4 and have tons of content for her but only use her in Poser, I use the Genesis characters in DS. I know nothing about rigging though...
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/24257/daz-3d-human-figures-a-history/p1
Thanks, @Wonderland! I'll ask around renderosity and/or hivewire. I really appreciate the info.
@Chohole, that's quite enlightening. It explains a lot. Thank you very much.
Oh and BTW V4.2 and Mike 4 and all the rest of the 4th generation are still my go to figures as well, as I use Poser as a plug in for Bryce, to prepare stuff to import into Bryce. There are quite a few Brycers and Carrarists who do use poser in preference to DS.
I'm interested to know what your add-on does exactly. Does it import a single figure or a scene? I ask because I wonder whether it might be possible to create a small scene in DAZ Studio with two characters and export to Blender for animation (I think Blender has better animation tools than DS but I'm not very knowledgeable on that score). Perhaps two figures dancing together or fighting or just walking hand-in-hand? I've tried in DAZ Studio and it is very difficult to coordinate the animations of two figures together - at least it is difficult for me.
The addon imports a single figure at a time, but there's no limit to how many characters you choose to import into your blender scene. It automates the weight re-mapping and generates an animator-friendly rig for the character using Blender's rigify rigging system. The addon also assists with importing your character's morphs such as facial expressions into blender.
It also contains lots of other tools I developed to assist me with repetitive tasks in blender. You can find more detailed descriptions and instructions on Bitbucket
The scenario you mentioned above is completely alien to me. I've never attempted exporting animations from blender to DAZ Studio. Also, recent versions of blender's collada importer seem to break the DAZ rig to a point where it's unusable, so I'm not sure how you'll work around that. The addon came about as a result of my workflow a while back. I would build a character in DAZ Studio and send it to blender to be used as reference/concept art. It was one-way traffic, so I never bothered about re-exporting back to DAZ Studio.
Keep in mind, any animations you create in Blender using the generated rig will not directly transfer to DAZ Studio. You would have to retarget them to the DAZ rig and then export the animation in a suitable format. Blender has one or two good retargetting addons out there. I have no experience at all doing this, or even making animations for DAZ Studio.
So would you say it's safe to assume that most 4th Generation users are Poser users and not DAZ Studio users? Is it something about Poser that limits its users from using Genesis or newer figures in Poser? Or is it just personal preference? If so, then would you favor 4th generation figures over Genesis figures even in DAZ Studio?
As the addon only caters to Blender users, I think I can safely disregard the Carrara userbase. Carrara seems to play nice with DAZ figures already.
By no means, A lot of DS people still use the older generations. It's just people will send people over to other sites, when there are still users here that they could ask. I must admit I did miss the fact that it was primarily Blender and not Poser you wer interested in. If you look for it you will find 2 or 3 long running blender threads here, like this one http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/8736/who-said-blender-was-hard/p1
Genesis is very clunky to use in Poser. Genesis 1 & 2 can be used with DSON exporter and someone at Renderosity created a plug-in to use G3 in Poser (but on a Mac which I am, even more complicated.) And, of course you can't use Iray skin in Poser... I think most DS users use the Genesis family although some people on low budgets may use V4 in DS because you can get a lot of her content really cheap or free, but then they usually try to figure out how to use it on Genesis. V4 is much easier to use in Poser and all the materials work. She's a great character for close-ups but some of her bends are not the greatest but there are many fixes for that sold by third parties on Rendo. In general I would say that DS users use Genesis and Poser users use V4 but of course there are many exceptions...
Yes, including some of the PAs.
Thanks guys for all your help. It's a real wealth of valuable information.
One last thing then. I may not be able to provide support for all the 4th generation figures, so I have to spend my development efforts wisely. I understand V4 is the most popular out of the 3 4th gen base figures. I'm guessing M4 is the next most popular. And finally the kids 4. Are the other 2 (M4 and the Kids 4) even half as popular as V4? Do you think lots of DS artists still use them?
Genesis was a game changer. Of course, Smith-Micro changed their game at roughly the same time. Both programs intorduced weight-mapped figures as the default, practically concurrently. (i.e., 2010) And they each adopted a different, incompatible systems of weight-mapping.
Gen4, with its legacy rigging is usable in both programs without issue. Ergo; a lot of people who are using either program (particularly older versions of either program) may still have all kinds of older content which is still in service, and a lot of Poser users *still* prefer DAZ gen4 models to the ones which have shipped with Poser from Smith-Micro. Upon the whole, the DAZ figures are far better supported. And given that Victoria 4 has been around for a decade, there is a *lot* of content for her to choose from.
For me personally, when it comes to 4thgeneration figures it would probably be about 40%V4 30%M4 40%K4 (and that mostly in poser, as for DS I do prefer the genesis figures...
There was also Victoria 4.2 WM as well, basically some enterprising people got together and weightmapped Victoria 4.2.. If you google Victoria 4.2 WM you should get some hits..