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Back in the day.... before Iray existed.
Shadows where the bane of my existence in 3Delight. (this is before all the advanced shaders started taking ove rthe world) Your shadow choices where either a crappy looking shadow map, or ray traced shadows. Now keep in mind that you had to set manualy with every object weather or not it would cast... and/or capture shadows. Then to add insult to injury, there was a setting called shadow bias... the smaller the number the closer shadows would be calculated to object edges (So, more detailed shadows with a smaller number), that in itself had a big catch, if you set the number small enough to catch details like the shadow inside the nose, or ear... or eyelashes cast on the face, you would get all sorts of strange triangle shadows on your clothing because it was catching all the slight variations in the mesh. (This problem was exagerated when using dynamic cloth)
As a result of that crap-fest I always ended up rendering everything twice, one pass with a low number shadow bias for the details and one with a high number for the large areas. Then I would stack the two renders in an image editor and erase the parts with shadow artifacting.
Because of that experience I have gone to Iray and never looked back. (It helps that in Iray, I can think like a photographer when setting up renders.) Oh, and the ability to adjust "Tone Mapping" settings mid render helps too.
I love G8 for all the above-stated reasons. As for content, with all the tools available I use V4, genesis, G2 G3 poses, skins morphs hair clothes, you name it, the works, all on G8. In fact, there is a sale on Godin's V4 figures at Rendo and I picked up about 10 to use on G8.
I would love to know how you use V4's textures on Gen 8!! That's the one thing I REALLY want. Since some of my favorite textures were made by Surreality for V4.
https://www.daz3d.com/legacy-uvs-for-genesis-8-victoria-4
Cayman Studios has a lot of these UV sets.
Awesome! Thanks again, agent!
Daz had overtaken (overtook?) my life, so I took an 18 month break. Now I'm a full-on addict again. When I returned about six weeks ago, I saw that G8 had come out. So I have dropped about $1,000 bucks on all things G8 (between this and other Daz content sites), assuming I needed the latest and greatest.
But my question is....apart from better poses/expressions, etc., do you all think renders of G8 characters look more realistic than, say, Victoria 7 or Michael 7? Am I wasting money?
Apart from better poses and expressions, they render almost exactly the same, since they can use the same materials and have almost identical geometry. Eyes are slightly better. You would be very hard pressed to tell G3 wearing V7's skin from G8 wearing V7's skin.
I add that most of the G8 characters use the new dual lobe settings while the G7's were before the texture change; fortunately it is easy to change them.
I have so much to learn...
I didn't want to count things that can work with all characters, it's more of a DS improvement than a G8 improvement. For someone who doesn't want to tweak shader settings, though, G8 does generally have better defaults as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, Nemisis.please share...........
Because I wasn't allowed to correct this misconception when Genesis 8 first released, I am going to correct it now:
The A-pose instead of the T-pose wasn't switched to make things easier with game development. It was done to make dynamic cloth (introduced in dForce) work better. If you have a shirt on in real life and position your arms in the T-pose you will probably notice that the cloth around your shoulders tends to bunch up. When people modeled clothes for dynamic cloth they would have had to model in the folds and bunches in T-pose so that in A-pose or with the arms to the side there was enough cloth there to not over extend. Whereas with A-pose you can model it much more neutrally on the shoulders and it will flex very nicely with cloth simulations, while also looking good as a conforming piece of clothing.
Ah, excellent! It's good to have that cleared up and hopefully people can stop spreading rumors about it being for game deveopment. :) Thanks, Rawb!
...so can G8 clothes be retrofit to G3 without going through a lot of difficulty?
Agent Unawares is correct that dual lobe arived with G8 and can be used with any figure but pretty much none of the G7 characters use it and more than half of the G8 characters do. I use the EchVo shaders to convert the surfaces (all of 3 minutes work if i'm slow). The effect is a more realistic skin texture which is less waxy, plastic and shiny with better interaction with glancing light. For example, FW's Quenton has a pale matte texture very different than other characters of his. Here is a wonderful set of renderings by Divamakeup showing some of the skin attributes: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/192341/michael-8/p10
Ahhh... That makes sense!
Thanks for popping in and clearing it up!
I find myself using both g8 and g3 at the same time frequently, and I haven't been able to tell the difference between them by looking at the finished render, which to me is what's important. As far as using the models, I definitely prefer 8, this generation is smoother and easier to pose, and easier to get a realistic expression out of. I was hesitant because I have spent entirely too much money on G3 assets, but I am happy to report that it all works great with g8. So far I've only found one asset that has a major problem with the new generation, and it's a very easy fix. When you autofit https://www.daz3d.com/classic-sci-fi-boots-for-genesis-3-female-s to g8, the fit around the new foot bones is all kinds of wonky (the foot portion of the boot doesn't line up with the actual foot at all). But all you have to do to fix it is pose the feet so the foot of the boot is where you want it and then hide the model's feet. Easy peasy and looks great. I haven't run into any other issues worth mentioning, and use g3 stuff on g8 all the time. So if you find something g3 you really like on one of the good sales, I'd say go ahead and grab it, most likely it'll work fine on g8
Visually, (outside of the improved posing and expressions) I have found they are virtually undetectable. But if you like the assets you are buying, then you are not wasting your money. I still use g3 about as much as I use g8, it's all about what look I'm going for and which character catches my eye when I'm trolling through my library to set up a new scene
LOL, IMHO. Genesis 1 isn't bad, but Genesis 3 or 8 is much betterer.
Ahh, thanks for letting us know! I stand corrected.
...I still use Genesis "Classic" for creature, alien, and toon characters that were made/revised for it. The shapes work OK on the later generations but for workflow and the wider variety of older clothing and shapes I can use (compared to G2 and especially G3) I find the first generation is still useful.
The advantages are subtle this generation, but definitely go for Genesis 8, it`s very backward compatible and the new content will be for it mostly. :)
Honestly, I've bought the majority of the G8 figures (Victoria 8, Michael 8, Teen Josie 8, Stephanie 8, Monique 8, Lucas 8 and Olympia 8), but I also own all of the previous figures as well, and despite having bought so much G8 stuff, I find that I keep using the G3s as my primary figures. Why? Because there's currently a much wider variety of base archtypes to use as starting points with the G3s, and a lot of my favorite add-ons haven't been released and/or updated for the G8s yet. Given that they're nearly impossible to tell apart in most renders, that the G3 stuff is running for much less on average with all the recent sales, and that everything made for the G3s works just fine on the G8s, my personal take is that you're currently getting a lot more value for your buck buying the G3s. That will change somewhat in six to eight months as the G8s get caught up to where the G3s are, but in the meantime, I'd advise going through the store to see which figures/characters/accessories you see that you like and what figure system they're for.
I still use Genesis and the G2s a lot as well, and there are a lot of folks who're still doing fantastic work with V4/M4. They're all perfectly valid tools.