Noticed Something Interesting
Ghosty12
Posts: 2,080
When looking here and at other sites about what content is out for the Genesis series I have noticed how much content has been made for each generation..
Looking at what content was created listed below just from this site over approximately a 2 year period does not include content from external sites..
Genesis 1472 items both male/female
Genesis 2 Female 2239 nothing much more coming out for this iteration..
Genesis 2 Male 996 nothing much more coming out for this iteration..
Genesis 3 Female 2731
Genesis 3 Male 957
Also these numbers do not take into account items were created for multiple figures but you can see the trend..
Now I suppose what I am trying to get at is from a creation point why both Genesis and more so Genesis 2, why they did not see the love that Genesis 3 in the same period of time, when you look at figure specific content.. And that does not count from other external sites which have shown a huge surge in content created for G3..
Now I suppose it is all the new bells and whistles that G3 has but the same could be said for both G1 and G2 at the time of their release, just interesting to know what seems to make G3 so special and well I suppose the same will probably happen when G4 is released..
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I think a lot of G3 purchases will be down to iRay. Many users will already have stacked up enough assets during the Genesis period, and so will have felt less need to get on board with G2. Then along came iRay, with everything prior to it having materials for 3DL and needing to be resurfaced to get the best from the new render engine. The G3 stuff is iRay ready, with no faffing about.
Genesis 1 was also sharing the stage with Queen V4 and her siblings. A majority of Poser-centric users and vendors stayed with Generation 4. Genesis 3 and Iray is where you started to see a shift in Poser users and vendors back towards Daz and Studio.
For me, Genesis 2 was really the sweet spot, compatible with both programs. But that's just me.
(Based on my observations and feels. No true data involved.)
As Astricadia and Morana mentioned, I think Iray was the tipping point. Iray seems to have brought in a lot of Poser only users, and others who wanted to try Iray (Nvidia even encourages people who want to try Iray for free to use DS). It may also be a factor that since Genesis 3 doesn't have Poser support, it is easier to create for a single platform making it more attractive to content creators as well (and maybe a bit more time efficient). IMHO Iray is the biggest factor for increased G3 content, but others mentioned certainly have also had influence as well.
Some of the lack of love for Genesis 1 was also because, as a unisex base, modeling sexy necklines and properly allowing for curves was a bit trickier. And having tried to make a dress for Genesis 1, but being disappointed with the neckline once a female morph was applied, I can see how that might discourage people. Especially since female stuff outsells male stuff by a lot.
And I say this as someone who was delighted with the unisex base because of the ease of mixing and matching "male" and "female" elements without worrying about Autofit glitching, and will dive into Genesis 4 in a heartbeat if *somehow* they can bring the unisex base back. I'm not holding my breath for that, mind you, but it could happen. (Otherwise, I'll probably wait until ... I'm actually not sure. Maybe a decent collection of male hair? I still default to Genesis 2, though I've been investing in Genesis 3 stuff.)
For my part, I thought the Genesis 3's looked much more realistic than previous figures. Mike 6 looked okay and I still like him and use him, but he has strange "moobs" ;). Vicky 6 looks, IMVHO, very stylized to look much in the way of realistic.
Laurie
Define content. Do you mean clothing, characters, morph packages, poses, utilities, or everything combined? Or are you talking about ALL products; sets, props, vehicles as well?
As to figures: Genesis 1 was a game-changer. Its weightmapping didn't work in Poser. It was some time before DAZ brought out DSON as a patch for using Genesis figures in Poser.
At that point Poser was still slightly the more widely-used program. The reason that Studio has so many users NOW, is to a large part *because* of the Genesis series of figure bases. By now, it seems evident that it isn't *just* because Studio ships with only Genesis (all versions). Both programs ship with free content. Both programs come bundled with free human figures. Poser has a *lot* of them. But, somehow, acto the voice of the market, the DAZ figures are by a wide margin prefered over nearly all of the native Poser people. The prevalent human figures used in Poser are still probably the DAZ figures from gen4.
However, Genesis was *such* a game changer that a lot of vendors backed off rather quickly. The weightmapping (which wasn't the same as Poser weightmapping), the Triax rigging, the unisex mesh -- *none* of this was what they were acustomed to, and they weren't having any. The different behavior of lights and material systems between the two programs was something that people were used to dealing with, but these new wrinkes were simply too much. We lost some very popular vendors whose work for gen4 had been widely followed. Some of them made 1 product for Genesis and disappeared. Some just disappeared. Many only started coming back towards the very end of G2's term of development. Some not until G3. Some haven't been seen since.
Genesis 1 was very slow in gaining traction. Even here in the DAZ marketplace. Although at that point, most DAZ users were more interested in being able to adapt their existing libraries to the new Genesis platform. Over the course of the 2 years that Genesis 1 was the only game in town, a large portion of the products produced were things like the legacy shapes from gen4 and even gen3, and clones for autofitting. And a *lot* of new characters, monsters and 'Toons.
In fact, the traction was so slow to form that DAZ made the decision to go back to a mesh that was optimized for both sexes. There was a lot of outcry here in this forum. But once G2 was on the ground, and clearly the current version we did start to see noticably more Genesis content in places other than DAZ, and a number of the vendors who had bailed started coming back.
With Genesis 3 DAZ abandoned the Triax rigging. This was another major game changer. They also redid the texture layout which has been a major pain. And, here in this marketplace, the fact that they had burnt a couple of bridges seems to have translated into a determination to get people to replace their legacy content rather than to, yet again convert and reuse it. Virtually all of the converters, clones, and UV patches to have come out in the past year and a half have been PA products.
Once Genesis had been the standard for something like 2-4 years, people who got into 3D since the "great schism" started developing for it. And with the imroved posing of the new rigging, some of the vendors who had abandoned ship started trickling back. Iray only showed up about midway through G3's development cycle, but there were already at least as many G3 products in other markets as there had been for G2 over it's whole 2 years.
Iray probably has goosed the development of scenery and prop production. Something like a whole new light and materials paradigm rather creates a vacuum which needs filling.
...as well as with Carrara.
Yes I agree genesis 2 was sweet I wish they didn't abandoned it the way it has been & I really wish it was still supported with new content., it was a great versatile figure that worked great in many software & pipeline work flows. Genesis 3 does not play well with any other 3d software other than daz studio, no matter how much Bull feed they try to shove down your throat. . I know from experience that if you have tried working with g3 in poser and found it impossible to work with .. wait until you try using it in Iclone or a game engine like cryengine. it almost impossible to tranfer the rigging over through fxb to 3ds or maya , I can't say if it works in bender or not I never tried it. Bu I won't even bother going into all the problems genesis3 has working with it in animation pipeline. and trying to pare it with older generation content has proven also to be very difficult at best .. Yea genesis and genesis2 are awesome g3 not so much if you have plans using in software other than in daz studio. thats why after working with it for a while I didn;t bother to invest in it. though i jump on anything genesis2 that comes out.. I just got a great new cop outfit for g2 .. so I stay hopeful. :)
...@ JOdel...I saw G3 in some ways as a game breaker because of the change in mapping structure. Suddenly if you wanted more skins you either had to purchase a bunch of different characters or figure out how to create them on your own, as the older generation ones no longer were compatible without a lot of manual fussing or needing third party conversion tools. I only have one G3F character, Josie. who surprisingly was one of the first new figures released (usually teen figures don't show up until later, sometimes much later as in the case of Julie/Justin5) along with the latest Growing Up Morphs. I will admit posing has been improved with the change in weight mapping, but I find the lack of compatibility with older textures/figures a serious drawback if you are on a limited budget (thankfully Zev0 will be releasing Skin Builder Pro3 in a few weeks).
One of the other game breakers is Iray due to the fact a good amount of new content is being released only with Iray shaders. For those who do not have nor can afford a beefy Nvida GPU, it is either render on the CPU and wait......, or stay with 3DL. Sadly unlike converting 3DL => Iray, the reverse process is much trickier as for several 3DL channels there are no Iray equivalents.
@JOdel I am talking about figure specific content, such as clothing, hair, poses and so on..
@kyoto kid Yeah I am in the same boat I have only bought one G3 figure that being V7 and mostly clothing that I can port back to G2 using the Autofit clone product.. The main reason for not going full tilt into G3 is as you said converting older content is no walk in the park.. And well I have so much stuff for V4, Genesis and Genesis 2 that I have purchased over the years well don't want to waste it, there are a lot more reasons but this will do..
I have mixed feelings about most of these issues.
On one hand, the split to gendered models has dealt a blow to the already meager male market. Many clothing, uniforms, suits and outfits don't come with male fits at all. Not a problem if you only render ladies, but if you want to render both, the gender split clothing-wise has been less than kind. (yeah I know it is easier to model for a single gender, to make a better fit, but the problem is male fits are just not getting made that often).
As far as generations go, I think genesis 3 male is the best of the lot. Whereas there is a fair amount of similarity in the females of geneis, the guys have become better over time. Mostly I think because they are less obviously female as each generation is released.
I would like to see more focus on making an actual male base though. even with genesis 3 male, there are still problem areas, like expression, shoulders, and the collars of clothing and waists and pecs. Male bases are more likely to have flaws like Darius's permanent facial hair. Leo 7's single color eyes, and Lucian's toes and eyebrows. Those kinds of mistakes are less common on female figures because there is more focus and attention on female products in DAZ's store.
I get a strong impression that a lot of the reason for such a flood of G3 content might be because there is a whole new crop of vendors (and users) who aren't particularly invested in anything much before G2. For the user, without a library of legcy content, moving onto the new version as soon as it shows up is a bit easier to do. The only reason not to is economic. For the artist; if an artist is comparitively new to the field they won't have a lot of legacy paradigms to juggle either, and will start working with whatever is current at their point of entry.
And the tech is changing pretty quickly. Sometimes the new developments come lumbered with an unacceptable degree of overhead in order to make use of them. But you flatly could not *do* in Studio or Poser what you can do now, even as recently as a 2-3 years ago.
But I suspect the *main* thing is that, thanks to DAZ's "loss leader" model of making the program and the unenhanced base models free, (which has been the case ever since DS4.0 shipped -- with Genesis, but *wasn't* the case for the whole period of DS3) Studio now has a larger percentage of the market than it did when Genesis launched. So more people are using it, and using Genesis, and prospective vendors *know this*. And G3 *is* what is current, and will therefore be a new artist's likely base to be working from.
Everyone will tell you that the hobbyist 3D market is tiny. But I seriously doubt that it is as tiny as it was a decade ago. Or even 5 years ago, a bit after DS4 shipped. A rising tide probably won't necessarily raise *all* boats. But it will certainly raise the *current* ones.
You hit the nail on the head with that, Genesis and Genesis 2 both had to contend with V4 and her court. It wasn't unti Genesis 3 came out with her new rigging making her unusable in Poser that broke V4's hold on the marketplace. There are still holdouts and even those are starting to fade away.
I've been wondering about the opposite scenario. The market for desktop computers has slumped and the opportunities to capture the arty / doll-playing segment of mainstream users has reduced. Could this actually be a shrinking market? Things like "encrypted DAZ connect" would fit that.
No, I just think the market is middle-aged due to the fact that older people have the income to buy products and that it takes time to use the products and younger people just get frustrated at the time involved. My daughter said since I have sorted my clothing and hair files based on the character it works with, it has made it quicker for her and more pleasant. My daughter wants simply to do anime art for other emo kids. She is into opensouce programs that let her draw her toons more efficently. But I think we are the type of users who won't toss our desktops and facebook on our cellphones at the moment. I think Iray will show that we, like computer gamers, will upgrade our desktops and care about what cards our new desktops are sporting. I haven't tossed out my V4 stuff due to Iray. I have bought those PA products that let me use it and Iray shader packs and textures to make shaders with. If I like something, I buy it whether it was for V4, Genesis on G2F or G3F. I really don't feel trapped into new content. But I still spend tons.
Is there? Personally, I think PAs or whomever is making the Iconic characters is attempting to give them some character to offset the "generic" ladies.
More like the market has reached saturation and most computers are now bought as replacement items rather than by new users. That means that there are as many computers out there in use as the market can concievably sustain.
While I can see that the *new shiney* factor is currently aimed at handhold devices, and I can see people using those instead of computers for things like email and text wrangling -- especially while traveling -- I don't think anyone who actually creates something on a computer is likely to replace an actual *computer* with a handhold. They'll add one, but not dump the PC. Although they may move from a desktop to a laptop.
But I think we're probably drifting off topic.
I am not sure. I don't really consider the issues cited to be usability enhancements though. Having one eye color or permanent facial hair or green eyebrows and toenails like Lucian limits useability and makes the character less versatile. Female characters don't have most of these issues.
Those are very interesting numbers and it's interesting to see that the ratio of female content to male content has actually increased with Genesis 3 although in absolute numbers the amount of G3 male content has decreased by less than 2 dozen items while female items look to have increased by 30% to 40%.
With those numbers you can be pretty sure the DAZ Store's sales have improved substantially which you could guess is almost entirely due to the game making hobbiest market and much less so, sites like that DeviantArt site. I can remember when I 1st started dorking with Unity in 2009 with the goal of using DAZ and Poser content transparently in Unity there was literaly no one else online in any forum or blog that even talked of such a desire. Now 8 years later, DAZ & Poser still have a long way to go to build a easy bug-less pipeline but it is still not doable with bit of bespoke effort. To be fair, the needed CPU and GPU power to do dynamic style cloth, hair, muscle, and fat animation are still needed but for traditional game style 3D animation these products are mostly there already.
As for the Genesis 4 I think the facial expressions lack the plasticity of a real human face and need much improvement however that would need addiction of 'muscles' with a dropoff gradient on the surface of the muscles flexing and some logical linkage to all the other muscles in the body so as one muscle moves the others move as appropriate in unison contracting or relaxing as needed. Also the bones and rest of the body need such improved anatomical behavior modeled into the models. Almost like exhaustively taking the V4/M4 muscle models and actually modeling the muscles and the physical ranges of limits for those muscles with morphs or this new bones model of morphing and adding in dynamics to model movement in a relaxed set of muscles while walking...eg the slight waggle of triceps/biceps as one walks.
...but then that is the type of thing that comes out of university research labs I think and then businesses try to take advantage of it if they think it will be profitable by implementing it in their business.
Oh well, Genesis 3 is definately the best set of models but for a more comprehensive set of practical actual modern and actual historical clothing V4/M4 wins.
I had a lot of g2 content and some genesis content when G3 appeared; I'd tried Daz on and off, but even with G2 wasn't that keen; Blender filled most of my requirements.
G3 however, was a vast improvement from my perspective; the texture maps were consistently better and less likely to show seems.
So whilst I was disappointed that G2 stuff wasn't compatible, I was happy that what was new was better. The trouble is, that better actually served to highlight how poor clothes and hair are; this isn't a criticism of the PAs, as what they achieve with such a poor system is usually amazing.
I suspect, that the improvements in G3 brought in new folks, and IRAY's arrival still more.
It was Genesis 3 that pulled me in. I started using DS with version 4.7...just before Iray came out. Before that, Poser user for nearly 20 years. Funny how things work out.
Laurie
What I find disconcerting about these figures is, percentage-wise, the decrease in items available for G3M. G2M was at 45%, whilst G3M is sitting even lower on 33%.
And people wonder why we bitch and moan about a lack of G3M items.
Perhaps slightly off topic, but it still has a relevance. This same thought process came up in other threads and I like you could not imagine why anyone would want to try to make an application like DS or Carrara to run on a handheld device. But some users actually see this move as inevitable, as processing power increases in these little doobies. Some people also expressed that they'd get more accomlshed if they didn't have to sit at a desktop to create. Seems odd to me, but everyone thinks and operates differently. I for example cannot do my homework when the radio is on, nor do I tend to sleep well when the television is on. But some people cannot study without some sort of noise in the room nor can they sleep. Big, giant, fan spinning / liquid cooling desktops might be the way of the past. If more people don't buy new computers then the price will go up and the innovations in that area will slow until they stop altogether.
Honestly, I think it is the extreme gaming market that is keeping the desktop innovation alive, and the fact that most businesses still use them. But even companies are moving toward mobile devices lately.
The desktop was nice while it lasted.
While the small handheld devices get more power, unfortunately my eyeballs have less power due to the general aging and wearing out process ;). Hopefully large laptops and desktops with big monitors will be around at least as long as I am. After that - the world can do whatever it wants. LOL.
Laurie
Ditto!!
Agreed. The G3M clothing content is lower, more costly, and less varied, often wtih design element issues. Sometimes it feels that we are being charged more for genesis 3 male content to make up for lower expected sales. There is also a fair amount of reuse of skins by certain pa's. This makes the new stuff percentage even smaller.