To Spend or not to Spend on G8/8.1 Anymore
Sevrin
Posts: 6,313
G9 looks amazing, but she/he isn't here yet. It will be another month or so. There have been some assurances about Autofit/Autofollow, but how things will work in practice for our favourite props is something we don't know. The livestream showed an issue with the Rigid Follow Nodes on a G8 jacket, for instance. That might not be a big thing to fix, but it will be a thing that needs fixing.
There have been some enticing offers recently, albeit not for Gift Cards, but now I'm thinking of holding off on spending on G8 until G9 and more information become available.
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Comments
G9 being there doesn't mean you have to use it exclusively from now on, your G8 and G8.1 will still work.
are lots of nice props etc still
if I actually had money Stonemason would get it
otherwise will grab G3-G8.1 if cheap enough
I am afraid the influx of new G8/G8.1 products is going to tank rapidly with G9's introduction.
I expect both Daz and PAs to jump into the new bandwagon. I have too much money in G8/G8.1 products to go get a whole new library of expensive G9 products.
the value propositions of G9 are going to take a long time to materialise because it all really depends on having a catalog of G9 content, which just isnt there and wont be for months if not years.
It depends on how you use the figures, but for me G8 is only as good as it is because of the additions you can buy on Daz store which enhance the capabilities of the generation. Off the shelf gen 8 characters are not that great, and Gen 9 wont be either
G8/G8.1 is still going to be far more useful than G9 for a while.
If G9 was Ziva Dynamics quality, then we would be having a different discussion, but it's not that advanced.
I still buy v4 occasionally if it's an outfit I like and convert it to whichever figure I'm using. There are some outfits that have not been recreated for later figures.
I honestly don't know why Daz announced G9 / V9 so far in advance! If you're going to hype me up on how awesome your new product is, make sure it's available to buy now. They'v effectively tanked their own market and product pipeline for any releases of G8 / 8.1. Why should I buy this old, not-so-shiny thing when I know there's a newer shinier thing right around the corner?
What's that? You still expect me to pay premium prices on this old stuff when I know the new shiny is a few weeks away? Yeah, but uh, no thanks. Not buying a darned thing til V9 is out. And I'm definitely in a wait and see mode because G8 - especially G8.1 is already amazing!
The realism of the figures themselves have far outpaced the hair and clothing available for them, with some notable exceptions. So it's not the figures that need updating.
Honestly, what am I saying? I should thank Daz for letting me know that Vicky 9 is coming out and I should hold off on purchasing new stuff til she's released, and the G8 stuff goes on discount. I'm not quite sure that's the message they were trying to send, but that's the message I got!
Thanks Daz!
I'm going to start planning out my next NVIATWAS render til Vicky's release date.
Depends. I do not plan to embrace G9 too soon. So I will probably still buy 8/8.1 stuff but probably get a little more picky. Also there might be some PAs who will offer products supporting G8 as well as G9 like it was in the early days of G8 with G3 support.
Except that it will probably take at least a year before there's enough morphpacks for G9 to get anywhere near to what can be done with G8/G8.1 at the moment.
This really depends on what kind of workflow people have and what they're using Daz models for. If someone mostly works with extensively customized characters and they know they want to upgrade them for the G9 functionality, they may have valid reasons to expect that they won't be using 8/8.1 much in the future. I pretty much dropped 8 because trying to maintain visual consistency between figures that use products made by multiple people is challenging enough.
That's true if you plan to upgrade, but I actually think Daz should have communicated their plans for G9 sooner. There are a lot of folks saying they're sticking with 8/8.1, and while some of them may get the figure and realize they can use it just fine, this really does seem like something with a hardware cutoff point. 8.1 may be the main figure for many users for a long time.
Undoubtedly true. But why pay premium pricing for G8 / 8.1 when it's no longer the latest and greatest? I know now Vicky 9 is coming soon!
Shortly after Vicky 9 comes out, G8 prices are going to drop drastically. Why buy G8 stuff now when I can feast on a ton discounted items in a month or so?
I'm not advocating jumping to G9 immediately - nor for staying with G8. Use what makes the most sense to you! I'm just a classical cheapskate, waiting in the wings to buy stuff cheap. And Daz has helpfully supplied me with a timeline of when I can shop in the bargain bin. ;)
The last G8 purchase was just stuff off my wishlist.
I normally wouldn't care much for a new figure. After all, I was on the Genesis 1 bandwagon for a long time until I tried G8F and she was more impressive than G2F and G3F. But I missed the unified figure, it was more convenient to have as a customer. And now it's back as G9, so I'm excited!
Depending on how well the autofit works, it likely won't affect my purchases of G8 clothing or hair. But it will affect my purchases of characters since these G9 skins seem "heavier." Just depends on how well G9 can run on my laptop after lowering the subdivisions.
Fair point, I suppose. Again, I'm not advocating upgrading or staying behind. Everyone's use case is different. If you are going to stick with 8.1, you now know that a lot of content will be doing on discoutn soon. That'll actually make it easier for you to stick with 8.1 and build up your content library.
I don't know about that.
Anyway, I like G8 a lot and still have a bunch of G8 stuff on my WL, but may hold off on purchases a bit until the smoke clears.
The price tag alone for Victoria 9 makes it a huge pass. Is DAZ serious with their pricings ??
The only thing that G9 does is adding more polys to the model and 8k textures to make the model more realistic. Sorry but your renders won't look more realistic than using G8 models if you know how to post work your renders, anyone with half a brain knows that.
I was just looking in my wish list to see if today's discounts made anything a good buy. I mentally filtered out all the 8 and 8.1 characters. I have so many anyway. Environments and backgrounds yes, Characters only if there is a particularly compelling characteristic - and none has.
Personally I don't think G8.X items are going to bargain bin anytime soon, and I still plan on buying them. Maybe some extra 10% off every now and then compared to G9, because it's still the second newest figure, and Daz really has no reason to lower it's prices yet. Main reason being that until G9 gets more morph packs, clothing etc. G8.X remains far superior to G9. Currently as far as I know, G9 has 1 character, couple of bikinis and an "almost" working pose converter, so there's really not much to play with compared to G8.
That being said, I don't think we'll see much new G8.X only releases after G9 release, but more than likely at least some items will support both G8 and G9. How long that lasts depends on new G9 only sales. If the sales for G9 only items are low, then I assume PAs will keep on supporting G8 figures to make more money, but I'm not sure this works for characters since there's too much differences and might be too much work. Let's wait and see how this plays out. In any case, I still have a quite big wishlist for G8.X, and since I'm not in a hurry to upgrade to G9, I'll probably continue buying items that I can use with my G8.1 figures. I'm not going to pay premium, because it's not the new and shiny stuff anymore, but if the deal is good then why not.
When they release a new generation without anouncing it, people complain. When they announce one in advance, people complain....
No need to be sorry or, you know, condescending. Most of what's produced in any medium, whether it be 3D, television, music or finger painting won't be very good, or even interesting. Having denser mesh will open up new options for character interactions with environments and, ahem, other characters. That's not nothing. What's more, PAs never stop surprising us with new twists on base figures, and G9 will be very twisty.
The pricing with the introductory and Daz+ discounts is pretty standard for a fleshed out "pro" bundle, although what that fleshing-out looks like unfortunately still a mystery. It will eventually be offered at deeper discounts still. And the base G9 will, as usual, be free, and inexpensive and even free morphs will be made for it.
It wasn't a complaint, but a comment on Daz cannibalizing G8 sales.
I won't buy anymore 8/8.1 characters (okay, maybe 1-2 of Moussos) and I'll probably pause 8/8/1 clothing/hair until I can see how well the auto-fit works on 9.
As for price, I'm okay paying a bit more for the launch Vicky 9 bundle, but I hope it doesn't mean the Genesis 9 characters re going from $13 to $18, or the next OOT hair is going to be $25. As long as the CAD is dismal, those prices are way out of my league. At that point, I might only be able to afford the Riversoft conversion tools :P
Was interested to see V9. Certainly an interesting idea to go quite so far back to the past. What has changed about the disadvantages of having a single mesh shared between male & female in the G1 period? Surely those disadvantages still exist now? Seems odd to invest in the idea with G1, then ditch it with the next G2 character iteration. Are the same reasons not valid now? It almost looks to me as if the base G1 has more polygons than base G9, which argues against G9 resurrecting the idea as G1 tad too few polygons in many of the right areas. Seems odd to me. It could cause non-DAZ PA's serious problems because the HD technology looks like it's needed to make a male/female character look anywhere near as good as DAZ characters.
However, 8k textures... They are not going to take any prisoners with the oldest of GPU cards. It's making V9 probably too big to work with a 6Gb GTX card at all, especially after all the RTX code is stuffed into VRAM as well as the textures. It's confirming my decision to invest in somewhat better hardware now my Win7 machine is rather antiquated. In theory, the highest standard Win7 compatible driver for my GTX 1060 will only allow me to use DS 4.15, so I can't try V9 on it anyway.
Don't want to stop playing with DS in the way I had to in 2006 due to inadequate hardware.
Regards,
Richard
My worry is that they're trying so hard to make a more realistic model, but the clothing and hair is just not keeping up. There's already a giant disparity with G8/8.1 clothing/hair and realism when compared to the G8/8.1 characters (with some very specific exceptions)...now the gap will be even wider.
So this is basically a more expensive do-over for Genesis, what with the unified mesh?
... Huh. I'm reserving judgement, but if a majority of PAs both within and outside of Daz's storefront had issues adjusting their content to properly work for both feminine and masculine bodies for Genesis, I doubt that will have changed for G9.
Also, what about poses, are we going to need yet more pose converters or will they work 1:2 out of the box whether it be using G9 poses for G8 or vice versa?
Even though she looks amazing and all, I'm holding off on buying anything G9 until I see if there are any updates for animation in Daz 5 before I commit to a new generation of characters.
Free is too expensive? Victoria 9 is not the base, Genesis 9 is and that will still be free.
I thought pose and cloth are backward compatible according to yesterday's conference, the only thing I won't buy is G8/8.1 based figures
That was 10 years ago though. It might be easier to do now, since technology used has changed quite a bit since then.
That's technically a price for a bundle of two characters because I don't think there will be Michael 9 as a separate.
I'll be shocked, I mean truly SHOCKED if there won't be any high heels in the bundle, though.
For me the question is a different one; "To spend or not so spend on Genesis 9 (anytime soon)?"
After all, the figures are just the basis. They are of limited use without a wide collection of clothes, hair-styles and additional morphs/textures.
From what I have seen so far the compability between G9 and G8 items looks very limited. We all know the limitations and downsides of autofit compared to an item that was custom-tailored for a certain Genesis generation.
I will probably stick with G8 for quite a while since I have invested so much in this generation. As others have already mentioned; 8k textures only provide benefits in extreme close-ups and without equally realistic clothes/hair-items the end result will not look any more realistic then a G8 character.
I hope that's the case, but tbh I don't expect PAs who deal primarily with feminine clothing (i.e. Aeon Soul, OOT) to even consider how their G9 clothing will look on a masculine body. That's their prerogative, absolutely, but it will influence my purchasing decisions wrt G9. In the past I would've been really angry and passive-aggressive about it, but these days, I'm just tired and with recent IRL purchases (a new-used car) taking a huge chunk out of my budget, gotta start prioritizing now lmao.
Also, I hope the unified/unisex base mesh means more beastly/non-human-y morph kits. That was one of the things I enjoyed the most about Genesis and that later generations never quite captured fully.
ETA: G9 aside, where the heck is an update on Daz Studio 5, that's what I'm wondering.