Victoria 7

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Comments

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,414
    edited December 1969

    Just tell me that V7 comes with a separate head and body Dial. As for the HD details, it can be incredibly helpful to dial them back when working on a scene, tho I've noticed a lack of separate HD dials with quite a few HD figures of late. Making the lack of "Alt Shader" mats just that much more painful in 3delight.

  • riftwitchriftwitch Posts: 1,439
    edited December 1969

    Just tell me that V7 comes with a separate head and body Dial. As for the HD details, it can be incredibly helpful to dial them back when working on a scene, tho I've noticed a lack of separate HD dials with quite a few HD figures of late. Making the lack of "Alt Shader" mats just that much more painful in 3delight.

    I haven't bought V7 yet, but according to the product page, there are separate head and body shapes. That seems to be standard with the iconic DAZ figures; that's not always the case with other figures in the store.

  • jakkujakku Posts: 91
    edited December 1969

    Yes, body dial, and head dial, and full dial for both, and the head can be dialed out as well

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,414
    edited December 1969

    Jakku said:
    Yes, body dial, and head dial, and full dial for both, and the head can be dialed out as well
    thanks riftwitch.

    F.Y.I. I have many figures that listed Apply/Remove for the head and body on the product page, and many of them do not have dials. Thus the question will always be for any new figure.

    Again, thanks for the info. So it's just a matter of making an AltShader for her for 3delight. :coolsmile:

  • Kevin SandersonKevin Sanderson Posts: 1,643
    edited December 1969

    Vaskania said:

    I've seen written elsewhere that she comes with normal maps you can use in place of the morph.

    thanks, I read that elsewhere and I said we wouldn't have HD morphs if there wasn't a point to them.

    HD morphs have lots of advantages over normals..otherwise why even make HD Morphs? Normal maps aren't a replacement. In the past I would use normals from one set, and HD morphs that were not related all on the same character...

    Maps are more limited and only work when the textures you are using share the same UV set. Where as in the past I could use my Lilith HD morphs with any G2F UV's including V4. Granted, right now there is only basic female and V7 UV's but I expect in time there will be a new UV each month.

    being able to dial in Lilith's HD morphs to any of my shapes with whatever UV I wanted was really neato. So this is currently a disadvantage for V7. Hopefully it is something they are willing to change.

    Does she actually come with full body HD morphs built in?


    A mod said so, not sure if its legit though.

    DAZ_Spooky not legit? He works for and at DAZ.

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604
    edited December 1969

    Vaskania said:

    I've seen written elsewhere that she comes with normal maps you can use in place of the morph.

    thanks, I read that elsewhere and I said we wouldn't have HD morphs if there wasn't a point to them.

    HD morphs have lots of advantages over normals..otherwise why even make HD Morphs? Normal maps aren't a replacement. In the past I would use normals from one set, and HD morphs that were not related all on the same character...

    Maps are more limited and only work when the textures you are using share the same UV set. Where as in the past I could use my Lilith HD morphs with any G2F UV's including V4. Granted, right now there is only basic female and V7 UV's but I expect in time there will be a new UV each month.

    being able to dial in Lilith's HD morphs to any of my shapes with whatever UV I wanted was really neato. So this is currently a disadvantage for V7. Hopefully it is something they are willing to change.

    Does she actually come with full body HD morphs built in?


    A mod said so, not sure if its legit though.

    DAZ_Spooky not legit? He works for and at DAZ.

    Yes indeed DAZ_Spooky isn't truly a mod, he is a DAZ_Person, he knows far more than we mods do about what is what.

  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited June 2015


    DAZ_Spooky not legit? He works for and at DAZ.

    I don't think anyone questioned if he worked for DAZ or not. But the product page does not list specifics to exactly what we get with Victoria regarding the HD elements. (nor does it ever mention HD) We don't have a separate dial for it like we did in the past, but we do see HD morphs for particulars in the face.

    We are wondering about a dial for the body, or body parts. Or do we have to assume if you don't have V7 dialed in all the way, you won't get the HD part of the body morphs.


    DAZ_Person.


    These people are known for lack of documentation :) And miscommunication and stuff. And are people, who can be wrong.

    And still no additional information has been provided. So we are trying to figure this out blind.

    Post edited by larsmidnatt on
  • tsaristtsarist Posts: 1,635
    edited December 1969


    Lots of that will have to do with how fast people gobble up G3 stuff. We kept seeing V4 stuff for a LONG time here because people refused to let go. Eventually it did stop but it was far from over night.

    We kept seeing V4 stuff because Genesis was such a radical shift from previous DAZ characters.
    I'm a Carrara user and Genesis doesn't work natively in Carrara 6,7, or 8.
    Genesis also didn't work natively in Poser.

    If Daz had made Genesis work right out of the box for DS 4 & earlier, Carrara 8 & earlier, & Poser, V4 would have dried up as fast as V3 did after V4 was released.

    Genesis 2 still has problems working in Carrara 8.5

    People didn't REFUSE to let V4 go.
    A lot of us COULDN'T let her go.

  • jakkujakku Posts: 91
    edited December 1969

    Not to mention, not a single person has come forward with hard evidence of the presence of actual geometry HD details! :D

    Maybe DAZ_Mischievous logged into DAZ_Spooky's forum account to confuse us! :)

  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    tsarist said:

    A lot of us COULDN'T let her go.

    I am aware of that, and meant no harm.

    Not to mention, not a single person has come forward with hard evidence of the presence of actual geometry HD details! :D

    Maybe DAZ_Mischievous logged into DAZ_Spooky's forum account to confuse us! :)


    *chuckles*

    Yeah, I just think this stuff would help sell the product if it was listed as a feature on the product page. When I purchased the Morph Kits they always list the morphs available on the product page. V7's HD facial morphs were like a pleasant Easter egg, but a bit more clarity would be appreciated.

  • dragorthdragorth Posts: 10
    edited December 1969

    Noobisher said:
    I don't see the great improvement on Victoria 7 to Victoria 6. The figure doesn't look like (much) more realstic than before.

    Also I wish you would add GPU rendering support for AMD cards. I have a Radeon 290 which is pretty fast but I still render with the CPU.
    HD Charakters take forever to render.

    They can't add AMD support, iRay is an nVidia technology they licensed. Its the same renderer included by default in Maya and Max, but it does not support AMD cards thanks to being implemented in CUDA, an nVidia only compute language.

    Now, you could use Cycles, from Blender, which is gaining AMD support. And they could even integrate cycles, as it is open source, and has no commercial restrictions attached.

  • SauronLivezSauronLivez Posts: 153
    edited December 1969

    Not to mention, not a single person has come forward with hard evidence of the presence of actual geometry HD details! :D

    Maybe DAZ_Mischievous logged into DAZ_Spooky’s forum account to confuse us! smile

    I don't want to pull this thread too far off-topic, but.....where are DAZ_Sidious, DAZ_Tyranus and DAZ_Maul, and what do they have to say about it? :-) Maybe they would know....

  • JOdelJOdel Posts: 6,306
    edited December 1969

    dragorth said:
    They can't add AMD support, iRay is an nVidia technology they licensed. Its the same renderer included by default in Maya and Max, but it does not support AMD cards thanks to being implemented in CUDA, an nVidia only compute language.

    Now, you could use Cycles, from Blender, which is gaining AMD support. And they could even integrate cycles, as it is open source, and has no commercial restrictions attached.

    If I'd known that, the rest of the new game-changing tech would have been a lot less of a surprise.

    So. What *else* can we expect the DAZ crew to be adopting from the Autodesk crowd? Things to come, much?

  • dragorthdragorth Posts: 10
    edited December 1969

    JOdel said:
    The main consensus that I’ve seen is that they DAZ is aiming at the Autodesk and Maya crowd. i.e., Professional developers of a class of software that DAZ figures are already used in to some degree.

    DAZ tried this once before, about eight years ago — about the same time as the "clip art" fiasco. It was a fail, simply because of DAZ's and Poser's lousy rep within the larger CG community. I dont know that this will change anything for users of higher end proggies, save that they'll have a more articulated mesh for their off-hours x-rated animations. :-)

    I think you are missing the gaming community. One of the largest growth industries is the Indie developer, whom Autodesk made a highly cheap version of its premeire software, Maya LT, for. By making their figures compatible with Maya, Modo (who did the same thing), and other CG software used by this up and coming crowd, they are hoping to increase the size of their market.

    Indies also have to pay a one time fee to use DAZ products, which is pure profit, and then pay other PAs to use products not made by DAZ, of which DAZ can see a further payout.

    But indie game devs aren't the only ones using these lower cost versions, indie movie makers are using things like Unreal Engine to make movies, and architects are using it to create photo realistic real time building and landscape demos, all of which could benefit from the ready made store and assets available at DAZ.

    This also means it behooves them to make as much content available for their figures as possible, so I believe they will encourage content that makes older content usable on the new figures.

    So, I do think this makes financial sense,

  • edited December 1969

    what DAZ should do is offer most of the characters they have done in G3 format so that people at least feel less cheated out of their money. It would actually tempt people to move over to G3.

    I don't mind frequent upgrade as long as there is some backwards compatibility in the software and in the assets.

  • The Blurst of TimesThe Blurst of Times Posts: 2,410
    edited December 1969

    Compatibility... I guess I'm glad I have V4 and G2F product. It helped get me ready to work across with G3F. As said in another thread, autofit isn't everything. It's simply a tool, which sits atop the data. The data doesn't care for your generational models. It's just data.

    I've fit V4 on V6, and also on V7. There's no reason why you can't go backwards either. Now, if you need Daz to do it without intervention, then that's probably not logical.

    Autofit is hardly salvation either. If that's what you mean by "compatibility", then it's bound to disappoint.

  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    bernierb said:
    what DAZ should do is offer most of the characters they have done in G3 format so that people at least feel less cheated out of their money. It would actually tempt people to move over to G3.

    I don't mind frequent upgrade as long as there is some backwards compatibility in the software and in the assets.

    Thing is, that sounds nice but once you break it down it doesn't work so well. Having the shape does not mean the old boots, dresses or hair will work as they did in the past due to rigging/transfer differences. Nor will old textures.

    And it does take time for someone to make these transfer shapes and solutions. So they leave that open to PAs most of the time, which has always been Daz's way to keep focused on their core offerings while having partner PA's that have room to find voids to fill.

    People are willing to pay for compatibility products, Legacy shapes and transfer tools. Even when there are free ways to do it(inside of daz studio right now) people will wait for someone else to make it one click for them. And that is where opportunity lies for PAs.

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,414
    edited June 2015

    bernierb said:
    what DAZ should do is offer most of the characters they have done in G3 format so that people at least feel less cheated out of their money. It would actually tempt people to move over to G3.

    I don't mind frequent upgrade as long as there is some backwards compatibility in the software and in the assets.

    Thing is, that sounds nice but once you break it down it doesn't work so well. Having the shape does not mean the old boots, dresses or hair will work as they did in the past due to rigging/transfer differences. Nor will old textures.

    And it does take time for someone to make these transfer shapes and solutions. So they leave that open to PAs most of the time, which has always been Daz's way to keep focused on their core offerings while having partner PA's that have room to find voids to fill.

    People are willing to pay for compatibility products, Legacy shapes and transfer tools. Even when there are free ways to do it(inside of daz studio right now) people will wait for someone else to make it one click for them. And that is where opportunity lies for PAs. Yes, the ease of use is very much appreciated by, many.

    As for stuff not working at all on G3F, I wouldn't have a clue about that. I did have some difficulties, and the ponytail pose bones on one hair style did disappear. Tho I digress.

    FW Ja-Long HD, and the G3F dance crew, Live at the Modular Lounge.
    As You Wish outfit, Time For School outfit (Imagine This Leggings), Ghawazee outfit (Faylinn Leggings). Casual Streetwear sneakers. Sporty Braid hair, NJA Ponytail Hair, and Sora Hair. All G2F stuff Auto-Fitted to G3F.

    20150625_G3FandJaLong_001002_Render_1.jpg
    1920 x 1200 - 1M
    Post edited by ZarconDeeGrissom on
  • dragorthdragorth Posts: 10
    edited December 1969

    Slosh said:
    acanthis said:
    Slosh said:

    As the guy who did all the UV conversions from M4 and K4 and all of the Genesis shapes, I can answer #3 for you...

    The reason the textures from Genesis 2 and earlier won't be convertible to Genesis 3 really boils down to the location of the textures on the uv maps. The new system splits them up differently, so let's say I converted the legs from G3 to fit the uv space on G2 textures... not hard to do at all, but some of the leg zone on G3 gets it's texture from G2 on the Limbs map and some from the Torso map... there isn't currently a way to tell DAZ Studio to get part of the texture from one map and part from another. The same happens in the shoulders. The eyesocket now houses the lacrimals, which is on the head texture for G3, but on the eye texture for G2 and is not even shaped the same. Then, there is no eyesocket on G2, so where would G3 get the color info for that from the G2 textures.... There are more problems, like the naming of the material zones, but what I have listed here, alone, is enough to make it impossible without reconfiguring G3's material zones.

    Good explanation. I suppose the only way forward would be something along the lines of a Texture Translator that builds new textures by extracting/merging/extrapolating areas of the original. It probably could be done, but I doubt the results would be good enough to warrant the effort.

    Ah, well. RIP Genesis 2.

    Yes, exactly. Remember the old UTC products (from 3duniverse, I think) that converted Generation 3 textures to Generation 4 and vice versa? It would be nice to have something like that, but I don't possess the skills to write such a thing, lol.

    What about Ptex? If you can convert the textures to Ptex on one model, can you map the polygons from one model to the other? After all, Ptex uses polygons, not UVs.

    If you are worrying about the polygon counts being different, couldn't you subdivide the meshes until they matched? Just a thought. You can currently do the reprojection in Mudbox, and it may be possible in Zbrush, though that could be my bad memory. Mari also allows you to do this, and 3DCoat should as well.

    Blender has a built in tool called bake to selected, but requires the two meshes have the same polycount. You could subdivide both meshes till they were the same poly count, then transfer the UV in order to use the old UVs.

    What I don't understand is why DAZ didn't just use an extra UDIM slot for a backwards compatible texture slot, and use that to transfer textures.

  • ZarconDeeGrissomZarconDeeGrissom Posts: 5,414
    edited June 2015

    dragorth said:
    Slosh said:
    acanthis said:
    Slosh said:

    As the guy who did all the UV conversions from M4 and K4 and all of the Genesis shapes, I can answer #3 for you...

    The reason the textures from Genesis 2 and earlier won't be convertible to Genesis 3 really boils down to the location of the textures on the uv maps. The new system splits them up differently, so let's say I converted the legs from G3 to fit the uv space on G2 textures... not hard to do at all, but some of the leg zone on G3 gets it's texture from G2 on the Limbs map and some from the Torso map... there isn't currently a way to tell DAZ Studio to get part of the texture from one map and part from another. The same happens in the shoulders. The eyesocket now houses the lacrimals, which is on the head texture for G3, but on the eye texture for G2 and is not even shaped the same. Then, there is no eyesocket on G2, so where would G3 get the color info for that from the G2 textures.... There are more problems, like the naming of the material zones, but what I have listed here, alone, is enough to make it impossible without reconfiguring G3's material zones.

    Good explanation. I suppose the only way forward would be something along the lines of a Texture Translator that builds new textures by extracting/merging/extrapolating areas of the original. It probably could be done, but I doubt the results would be good enough to warrant the effort.

    Ah, well. RIP Genesis 2.

    Yes, exactly. Remember the old UTC products (from 3duniverse, I think) that converted Generation 3 textures to Generation 4 and vice versa? It would be nice to have something like that, but I don't possess the skills to write such a thing, lol.

    What about Ptex? If you can convert the textures to Ptex on one model, can you map the polygons from one model to the other? After all, Ptex uses polygons, not UVs.

    If you are worrying about the polygon counts being different, couldn't you subdivide the meshes until they matched? Just a thought. You can currently do the reprojection in Mudbox, and it may be possible in Zbrush, though that could be my bad memory. Mari also allows you to do this, and 3DCoat should as well.

    Blender has a built in tool called bake to selected, but requires the two meshes have the same polycount. You could subdivide both meshes till they were the same poly count, then transfer the UV in order to use the old UVs.

    What I don't understand is why DAZ didn't just use an extra UDIM slot for a backwards compatible texture slot, and use that to transfer textures. I've spent the day making an alt shader for G3F, and I'm not seeing anything other then the usual JPG files. As for the UV mapping, yea, there stretched a bit differently onto the JPG files. I'm just not seeing this UDIM malty-file per map format thing at all.

    UV mapping is still there, and it is still using good old fashioned JPG files. Not some UDIM thing.

    Post edited by ZarconDeeGrissom on
  • KaribouKaribou Posts: 1,325
    edited December 1969

    Victoria 7 is HD. Does that mean DAZ Soon is two days ago?


    LOL!! Now THERE'S something I've never heard before!

    dragorth said:
    I don't see the great improvement on Victoria 7 to Victoria 6. The figure doesn't look like (much) more realstic than before. Also I wish you would add GPU rendering support for AMD cards. I have a Radeon 290 which is pretty fast but I still render with the CPU.
    HD Charakters take forever to render.

    They can't add AMD support, iRay is an nVidia technology they licensed. Its the same renderer included by default in Maya and Max, but it does not support AMD cards thanks to being implemented in CUDA, an nVidia only compute language.

    Now, you could use Cycles, from Blender, which is gaining AMD support. And they could even integrate cycles, as it is open source, and has no commercial restrictions attached.
    LuxRender via Reality will have GPU acceleration that AMD cards can use. Lux 1.4 already has it, but Paolo described 1.4 as a transitional version. 1.5 is where it will be fully integrated and Reality will support it. It won't be an integrated part of DS, but it is an exceptionally reasonable pricetag for a very good product.

  • dragorthdragorth Posts: 10
    edited December 1969

    JOdel said:
    dragorth said:
    They can't add AMD support, iRay is an nVidia technology they licensed. Its the same renderer included by default in Maya and Max, but it does not support AMD cards thanks to being implemented in CUDA, an nVidia only compute language.

    Now, you could use Cycles, from Blender, which is gaining AMD support. And they could even integrate cycles, as it is open source, and has no commercial restrictions attached.

    If I'd known that, the rest of the new game-changing tech would have been a lot less of a surprise.

    So. What *else* can we expect the DAZ crew to be adopting from the Autodesk crowd? Things to come, much?

    Technically, OpenSubDiz and Ptex support have been in DAZ Studio since at least 4.6, both of those are big in the Autodesk world. I am actually suprised we haven't seen Ptex content, as it supports dynamic resolution of individual polygons, so you could have extremely high resolution on the face and the eyes, and tone it down on the bottom of the feet, or wherever it makes sense.

    With their Nvidia partnership, we could possibly see some PhysX support, or they could choose to support bullet physics. Or not, this is just a guess. But Gen3 does seem to be in this direction. The nice thing is, all of this stuff is also supported, or about to be in the case of Ptex and OpenSubDiv, in Blender, so you don't have to spend thousands every year to benefit from such a program.

  • dragorthdragorth Posts: 10
    edited December 1969

    Karibou said:

    Victoria 7 is HD. Does that mean DAZ Soon is two days ago?


    LOL!! Now THERE'S something I've never heard before!

    dragorth said:
    I don't see the great improvement on Victoria 7 to Victoria 6. The figure doesn't look like (much) more realstic than before. Also I wish you would add GPU rendering support for AMD cards. I have a Radeon 290 which is pretty fast but I still render with the CPU.
    HD Charakters take forever to render.

    They can't add AMD support, iRay is an nVidia technology they licensed. Its the same renderer included by default in Maya and Max, but it does not support AMD cards thanks to being implemented in CUDA, an nVidia only compute language.

    Now, you could use Cycles, from Blender, which is gaining AMD support. And they could even integrate cycles, as it is open source, and has no commercial restrictions attached.


    LuxRender via Reality will have GPU acceleration that AMD cards can use. Lux 1.4 already has it, but Paolo described 1.4 as a transitional version. 1.5 is where it will be fully integrated and Reality will support it. It won't be an integrated part of DS, but it is an exceptionally reasonable pricetag for a very good product.

    Yeah, I know about LuxRender, but 1.5 is also a transition, they are working toward a 2.0 release, and their underlying core is still in flux. You need the Reality blugin mainly thanks to the massive changes in each versions file format. This is a bit dangerous for my tastes, though props to Paolo for his much harder than it had to be work.

    BTW, the 1.5 verion includes Intel's Embree library, and can render much faster on the CPU. I wonder if iray could use that, or if it does already. And, how does Genesis 3/Vicky7 render speed compare to Genesis 2/Vicky6?

  • dragorthdragorth Posts: 10
    edited December 1969

    dragorth said:
    Slosh said:
    acanthis said:
    Slosh said:

    As the guy who did all the UV conversions from M4 and K4 and all of the Genesis shapes, I can answer #3 for you...

    The reason the textures from Genesis 2 and earlier won't be convertible to Genesis 3 really boils down to the location of the textures on the uv maps. The new system splits them up differently, so let's say I converted the legs from G3 to fit the uv space on G2 textures... not hard to do at all, but some of the leg zone on G3 gets it's texture from G2 on the Limbs map and some from the Torso map... there isn't currently a way to tell DAZ Studio to get part of the texture from one map and part from another. The same happens in the shoulders. The eyesocket now houses the lacrimals, which is on the head texture for G3, but on the eye texture for G2 and is not even shaped the same. Then, there is no eyesocket on G2, so where would G3 get the color info for that from the G2 textures.... There are more problems, like the naming of the material zones, but what I have listed here, alone, is enough to make it impossible without reconfiguring G3's material zones.

    Good explanation. I suppose the only way forward would be something along the lines of a Texture Translator that builds new textures by extracting/merging/extrapolating areas of the original. It probably could be done, but I doubt the results would be good enough to warrant the effort.

    Ah, well. RIP Genesis 2.

    Yes, exactly. Remember the old UTC products (from 3duniverse, I think) that converted Generation 3 textures to Generation 4 and vice versa? It would be nice to have something like that, but I don't possess the skills to write such a thing, lol.

    What about Ptex? If you can convert the textures to Ptex on one model, can you map the polygons from one model to the other? After all, Ptex uses polygons, not UVs.

    If you are worrying about the polygon counts being different, couldn't you subdivide the meshes until they matched? Just a thought. You can currently do the reprojection in Mudbox, and it may be possible in Zbrush, though that could be my bad memory. Mari also allows you to do this, and 3DCoat should as well.

    Blender has a built in tool called bake to selected, but requires the two meshes have the same polycount. You could subdivide both meshes till they were the same poly count, then transfer the UV in order to use the old UVs.

    What I don't understand is why DAZ didn't just use an extra UDIM slot for a backwards compatible texture slot, and use that to transfer textures. I've spent the day making an alt shader for G3F, and I'm not seeing anything other then the usual JPG files. As for the UV mapping, yea, there stretched a bit differently onto the JPG files. I'm just not seeing this UDIM malty-file per map format thing at all.

    UV mapping is still there, and it is still using good old fashioned JPG files. Not some UDIM thing.

    Ok, UDIMs aren't something that precludes JPGs, it is a mapping of the UV space. UDIM is a MARI mapping, that basically allows you to break up your large mesh into smaller pieces, and give that piece a full texture map of its own. It does this by putting different UV sets in different squares, each of which gets its own textures. Then it is put in a specific naming format that is compatible with MARI.

    They have changed the grouping of the UVs, which is the main hurdle that needs to be surpased.

    You can use it to also have multiple UVs for an object, which is what I suggested.

    Ptex would change the output to a Ptex file.

  • KaribouKaribou Posts: 1,325
    edited June 2015

    dragorth said:
    And, how does Genesis 3/Vicky7 render speed compare to Genesis 2/Vicky6?

    On my machine, very comparable render times. I have a rather new i7 but a middle-of-the-line NVIDIA GPU. Both G2F and G3F slow rendering down with HD details. V7's default texture renders in Iray at about the same speed as G2F with the uber shader preset. Haven't tried 3Delight yet.
    Post edited by Karibou on
  • pearbearpearbear Posts: 227
    edited December 1969

    I'm super happy with this new generation. A lot of things that were less than perfect in G2F are addressed here. Getting closer to a real human model all the time.

    For me, the best improvement is the bends, particularly in the shoulders when raised up. The stock V7 Iray skin mats are pretty excellent (the only thing I touched on the shader in this render was lowering roughness to give the skin more shine, and adding a displacement map for my custom morph).

    And the Iray shaders for the new Leyton hair are great, the way rim light plays through. (It's probably the best looking hair in my collection now)

    This is my first finished V7 render, although it isn't the stock V7 shape - I made a z-brush morph and did some post-work in Photoshop.

    v7_001.jpg
    821 x 1200 - 684K
  • MasterstrokeMasterstroke Posts: 2,300
    edited December 1969

    Excellent picture, pearbear. Love it. Like to see more of this custom shape.

  • edited December 1969

    Anyway, so that I don’t just complain, my suggestion (wish) is that more content be created for existing figures, rather than coming out with more and more figures all lacking anything except the most basic clothing etc.


    The point here is that Genesis 3 Female is free, and it comes with some free Hair, Clothing and Poses, so there is nothing lost in trying it.

    It also come with a clone for the AutoFit tool, and you can transfer G2F clothing to G3F out of the box, nothing to buy. You can still, of course, continue to use G2F, or even Genesis and V4, they haven't gone away either. I am sure that there will be extra clones for sale in the store soon, to transfer Genesis (original) clothing etc. to G3F, but you can also make your own.

    Nothing has been taken away, only added, and you can use the new figure with your already purchased G2F clothing if necessary.

    Actually the point was that with generation 4 you could get tons of content making it very versatile. Then came genesis, and G2 and now G3. I was working on a cover for a novel the other day. And yes the M5 character looks more realistic, until I try to dress him... I have nothing even remotely like what I would need. Not a problem, just go to the shop and buy it... except while I now find V7 I also can't buy anything remotely like what I would need, because G1 and G2 are sorely lacking the support (in terms of clothing and accessories) that M4/V4 enjoyed. So back to M4 it was for this cover... and I also just re-installed DAZ Studio3 for it.
    I still caved in and when V7 pro was 51% off I still bought it. Yes the figure looks more realistic. Yes they finally "condescended" to providing relistic looking ginitals so you no longer need to find these someplace else (except there doesn't seem to be a MAT file that works with the basic V7 skin?). Yes I now have a thousand dials to morph and pose the figure. The question is: Do I need all this?
    And the other question is: Do I want to keep buying the same stuff over and over (head morphs for elven ears etc.; Body morphs so the characters don't all look the same, some basic poses so I don't need to do everything from scratch...) or would I rather buy more "support content" for figures I already have?
    With PC games over the last decade there was the unfortunate tendency that realism replaced playing enjoyment. Games became heavier and heavier, more "realistic" but shorter and shorter. And I fear that DAZ3D is headed the same way. For the average user M4/V4 had reached quite a perfect ratio between realism : user friendlyness and as stated before, these characters were well supported with accessories and props.
    Now G1, 2 and 3 came in rapid succession. To use them you need a new version of DAZ every time (yes after having bought the pro suite for DAZ 3 I seem to be getting the upgrades for free and yes I do appreciate this gesture. Thank you! With every new version the old computer proves more inadequate (so on top of buying the "same" bodies and morphs" over and over I would really also need a new computer now for DAZ 4.8). But there is very limited content for the new figures. You can try and use magnets and conversion programs to use the content from generation 4 on the new figures, so working on a scene you now spend hours and hours just fitting old content to new figures... and God forbid you need to re-pose the figure after or want to use it in an other scene. The figures are more realistic... but to get this realism translated to a scene you now spend hours trying to fine tune the thousand different dials.
    So like with games realism is slowly but surely replacing "playability" and versatility of the product. In the end only "specialists" will be able to use DAZ Studio while the general audience will just be scared off by the complexity of the program. And we will all lose when that happens.
    Well as I said I still got V7, I will still give her a chance, both to see if I can learn to properly use her and to see if she gets the versatility of accessories that I would wish for. But I have gotten to the point where I really start wondering "is it worth it" every time I decide to buy more content and it happens more and more often that the items end up in my wishlist instead of the shopping cart. And that even though I am completely addicted to DAZ Studio...

  • MasterstrokeMasterstroke Posts: 2,300
    edited December 1969

    That discussion is the same with every figure release. I renember, people starting that kind of discussion with V4 release. Why can't people just be happy about that? "Wohooooo !!!! New kid on the blog!!!"

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,598
    edited December 1969

    Got home from work early today as I start a 2 week holiday only to find that we have a new generation of genesis. Just finished reading this 46 page thread shaking my head in bemusement as I read it. Sounds very like how I felt when Genesis was replaced by gen2...funny though for the first time in a long time I am actually excited about a new Daz figure. I really like the look of V7 and the new Gen3 female.

    I'm really glad that I didn't pick up the Gen2 bundles that were on sale recently...thought about it. Put them in my trolley and then put them back. For some reason Gen2 never really appealed to me...

    However that said I'm buying V7 and austrani outfit rather than the whole pro bundle. I tend to find that the majority of stuff in the bundles I never use so no point to buying them. I'll be picking up the morphs for Gen 3 pity there's no bundle for them though.

    The lack of content at the moment isn't really a concern as I will kitbash and make my own I actually enjoy doing that. One of the things I discovered playing with Dawn and other Hivewire characters.

    It will be interesting to see how the new uv's work in Zbrush. Off to play as I've just got gen3 downloaded.

    One last comment though...what happened to an official thread?

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