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With Substance Painter I've managed to turn HD stuff into normal maps pretty easily.
When you say you purchased G8, what was it you bought since G8 is free? Did you need any products other than the free G8F to get Ms Hedgehog to work?
To the original question - Is there any reason to upgrade? It depends. I started picking up some of the G8 stuff to try them out, including the V8 Pro Bundle, but, to be honest, none of it really blew my socks off. In fact, even though the PAs are shoving updated products out at a crazy pace, it will still be months... if not over a year... before I'll be able to do all the things with G8 that I can do right now with the first three generations of Genesis. And, even most importantly, it's very likely that some of the products that I use constantly as part of my workflow will never be upgraded to G8. To be fair, I should note that I had a similar reaction with the G3s, which had a much better set of selling points with all the new native iray skins versus the incremental changes to G8. So, this time around I'm opting to buy in very, very slowly until someone releases a G8-only product that I just can't live without. In the meantime, the G1s-G3's are still doing a great job for me, and that's all that really matters in the end.
To me, G8 should really have been named Genesis 3.2, as there are lots of small improvements, but no major changes. At least not like the improvements we saw between generation 1/2 and the generation 3 characters, or the huge increase in add on products for Vicki 4 (actually V4.2). Then came Genesis which combined male and female AND spawned a lot of wonderfully diverse creatures.
I found Genesis 2 to be a let down from Genesis, character wise, but with lots of nice clothes, etc. G3 was a slight improvement on G2, but showed promise.
And then came Genesis 8! Huh? Sure, there are some things improved, but, overall, nothing to make me rush out and buy anything. In fact, apart from the Starter bits for G8F and G8M, all I bought was Olympia 8, and that was a huge let down, compared to Olympia 7 or even Olympia 6.
So, I'll just keep an eye on the generation 8 products, but I expect I'll buy little of it. And hope that the next version is a proper upgrade, not a bunch of fixes and hype.
Sorry about this rant, and I'll probably regret posting it later, but opinions were asked for, and this is my opinion. Frank (AKA: dragonfly2004)
As the figures have gotten closer and closer to reality, then it is inevitable that each improvement will be a smaller increment than previous ones.
My feeling is that the expressions on G8 are definitely better, and this is probably the most important thing to making the faces look more believable. I have seen a lot of renders that look almost photo quality, but generally the face is the biggest give away that it is CG. Partially this is down to the hair, which has been mentioned in many threads as being still largely based on very old tech, but a natural expression is also of critical importance, especially in a portrait render.
Of course dynamic hair and clothing helps the realism a lot, but that is a different argument to the merits of the various base figures, which is what we are discussing in this thread.
I said nearly this very thing in another thread earlier and I agree completely. It's going to come to a point - well, I think we may be starting already - that the differences between the generations will be smaller simply because there isn't as much asthetically to improve upon. It might be time as Havos said to look at other things that make 3D renders look more believeable like cloth and hair.
Which hopefully means dynamic cloth and hair is coming soon as Daz Steve did say some big announcements were yet to come at the end of this year
Maybe it's because I've been an artist most of my life and have been studying the appearance of people basically all of my life, but to me, we still have quite a ways to go before we hit genuine photo realism without post work. There are very very few images of Daz characters I've seen that would come even close to "fooling the eye" when it comes to "is it real" or not. So we still have a ways to go, for sure. I'm definitely looking forward to those improvements! :) But yes, G8 was a nice step forward. Not a big step, but still an improvement.
Sorry about that! G8 *is free but I was thinking of V8 when I said that because the Hedgehog is what started my whole V8 spending spree afterward. But no, I didn't need to purchase anything else to get the Hedgehog to work. It works with G8 alone. Sorry for the confusion!
Yeeeah, the 'we're getting close to reality' sounds... very excusey. ;)
I think it's more that we're reaching the limits of what you can do without SERIOUS work, like more dynamic stuff, definition of muscles, procedural freckles (or other details), and other stuff that's really a leap.
Better, more posable models can only go so far.
''To me, G8 should really have been named Genesis 3.2, as there are lots of small improvements, but no major changes.''
If there was major changes you then get users complaining old content no longer works. Unfortunately there is always that decision to make. Go all out and break users investments, or improve a figure in a way where some of the old content is still usable. I for one fought for the fact that Daz loses the multiple UV sets per character for Genesis 8 and that it becomes standardized and is compatible with G3 skins by default. (Thank God that actually happened lol) Daz could have easily created a figure where all that wasn't possible. So yes, sometimes, keeping some things the same is beneficial, and minor improvements is better than changing everything completely:) Also the change in naming convention was to allign the figures with the base model. Calling Victoria 8 for Genesis 3.2 is a marketing nightmare and would just confuse new users.
I know ;). I have everything crossed too (which looks very silly and makes me walk funny...lol).
Laurie
I have seen undoctored and unpostworked FHD & UHD video cam recordings of people that some of the best and newest DAZ characters in iRay renders come close too under 'casual inspection' if you exclude the hair, the eyes, and the clothing. A couple of those video recordings give you the feeling, 'have the people in them been 'compositited' in?'
Well, it sounded good at the time ;)
Laurie
lol Yeah, I totally agree. Dynamic clothing and hair available for purchase would be awesome - but a disaster for my wallet. I'd fork over money faster then when I saw Star come to Genesis 3 Female (and THAT was the fastest I've ever bought anything from the Daz store). lol
Gen 8 bodies for men are an improvement over the the previous male bodies. I don't like the heads... the mouth is weird and the head odd and thin. Expressions are better for the ladies but the male 'Nice' expressions like smile look weird and constipated. Not sure why. I can most definitely see improvement in some regions.
I find that the compatibility promise seems to break down when it comes to shoes. At least I can't figure out a good working way to adapt shoes from a previous generation to the next - I could never make it work with G2->G3 or with G3->G8. Is there a viable solution? I found some instructions on a forum, but they never actually worked for me.
SY provides some instructions that seem to work: https://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Convert-Clothing-G3-to-G8-G8-to-G3-686682065
At first I was quite annoyed that the new figure line didn't offer anything new from customer perspective, and I was even little angry that I would have to buy all the toys again for such a little gains. I was hoping soft body physics and all the cool stuff, but what I got was new A pose, which means absolutely nothing for hobbiest user. That got me thinking that do I really have to upgrade? What would this new figure really brings in the table that the old one can't do, and only thing that I could think of was HD expressions ( which could have been done to G3 ). Since I really didn't like the looks of new V8, decision was finally quite easy, and I decided not to upgrade. Also I realized that release of G8 was actually a good thing; Now "old" G3 products get really nice discounts, and I'm still not out of the technology train, since new model is pretty much the same as the old one. If I need some new skimpwear, there's always that other marketplace, and I still continue to support DS development by buying new environments etc., where my old G3 figures work just fine. If Daz Steve brings something spectacular for G8 later this year, I can always reconsider, so currently I see no reason to upgrade.
Michael 8 has this "Jagger pursing" thing with his lips that I hope to avoid completely, and that, I think, is the same weird/constipated look you're talking about. But I have found that, with a lot of care (and test rendering) I can get fairly convincing expressions onthe G8 Male, whereas my G3M's were constrained to the facial emotional range of Bruce Lee, Clint Eastwood, and Jason Statham, or else they turned back into cartoons. Admittedly, cartoonish expressions are just as easy to dial on the new generation as the previous.
Lol soft body physics yea when pigs fly lmao, hopefully we get dynamic hair and cloth later this year as Daz Steve said some big things were coming later this year
Lips and mouth also are a bit low on the face which ads to cognitive dissonance for ne. It is like the mouth is not part of the head. Yes the pose expressions can easily go the way of the sims game but do agree that expressions can be better and more natural
Soft body physics, dynamic hair and clothing was never going to be part of Genesis 8, because those technologies have nothing to do with the figure. They are enhancements needed to Daz Studio, and when or if, we ever get these new tools, they should work with all figures.
Pretty much exactly how I feel. So far the G8s have been a disapointment and while I have bought a few of the G8F items, it's been as much to key other sale discounts as for the figures themselves. Beyond that, I'm just not seeing enough benefit to rush to replace everything with G8 equivalents.
Well Genesis 8 has me wanting to try making more realistic expressions & poses and save them as presets since that tiny subset of believable expressions from prior generations has been lifted.
I can't really say I'll buy fewer G8 compared to G3 or prior generations characters as I never comprehensively collected anything near all of them to begin with.
Meh, I can do dynamic hair / cloth with VWD already. Unless it works better / easier... Which is possible if it's integrated with products, I suppose.
Well, what would be nice is some more intelligent musculature/bone system that can deal with things like compression of skin, variable SSS by underlying tissue (particularly bones), etc.
I didn't jump on G3 because I didn't have the cash flow to pick up all the morph sets and such to make characters and individualize them. Then they started releasing the G8 characters where if you bought the character, you got all the old bundles for that character free. So, since I had all these G8 characters (just so I could get the G2 bundles free) I've almost updated the G8 characters. I've got both head and body morph sets for both M and F, Everything for GenX to get my old characters to G3 and there's a nice script on these forums to go from G3 to G8.
So I can get all my old characters into G8 and create some new ones. My only problem that has kept me from fully updating is I haven't been able to get my old clothes to fit G8 yet. They get all the way to G3, then the A pose of G8 somehow messes up the arms and legs.
I jumped temporarily into using G3M but because of various monetary issues I had to pull back to G2M. Actually I was using Genesis until about a month ago and the only reason I switched to G2M and G2F was because I was getting slightly more detailed faces and expressions with them - or at least I imagined so. Actually I'm not so sure anymore. I browsed the threads and the argument between GM and G2X was "better expressions, better bends". I think I've seen the same argument with all new releases and personally I haven't noticed much difference. Especially since there are so many products to fix the slight issues. I wonder if it's the exactly same with G8M.
Actually I'm sort of contemplating about going back to regular Genesis since I find I tend to use a lot female stuff on my genesis males and it's pretty darn hard to use G2F stuff with G2M. Autofit just botches loose clothes like capes (i.e. the mad nurse cape) which are specifically the items I want to use. I don't even use the iray mats prefering to use my old M4 and V4 skins. Maybe because I'm not aiming for realism. My goals is more painted "realism" and fantasy art.
Sadly the issue is that new content is pretty much always provided for the newest generation but I'm sure I'll make do. If I switch back to regular Genesis I'll loose Mec4Ds awesome outfits... I've so much stuff I'd rather not have duplicates around. Running out of HDD space.