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There is a bit of a problem here, though. Effectively the third Genesis generation has become a game developer's asset, and that's not what generations 1 and 2 were intended for (I don't believe). So DAZ have moved the goal posts quite a long distance by what they've done. It also raises questions about the time (probably not too far away) when DAZ decree that Genesis 2 has reached End Of Line, because that leaves them as a company that makes assets for game developers and not 3D artists.
Maybe they should have branched their product line into two forks: "Genesis 3 for Artists" and "Genesis 3 for Game Developers". So you could have, say, Karen 7-A (for Artists) and Karen 7-G (for GameDevs) each also with their appropriate useage licenses. That way everybody should be happy ... AND ... best of all ... the multi-billion dollar DAZ corporation makes EVEN MORE money! What's not to like about that scenario?
Important disclaimer here: I am not criticising Game Developers or asserting that they are not as important as straight artists, just that they have different needs. For them, G3F is fantastic. For artists probably not so.
That said, I have come to quite like G3F - I just wish they'd stop releasing all the {NAME}+7 variants every other day and let the base get settled.
There is a bit of a problem here, though. Effectively the third Genesis generation has become a game developer's asset, and that's not what generations 1 and 2 were intended for (I don't believe). So DAZ have moved the goal posts quite a long distance by what they've done. It also raises questions about the time (probably not too far away) when DAZ decree that Genesis 2 has reached End Of Line, because that leaves them as a company that makes assets for game developers and not 3D artists.
Maybe they should have branched their product line into two forks: "Genesis 3 for Artists" and "Genesis 3 for Game Developers". So you could have, say, Karen 7-A (for Artists) and Karen 7-G (for GameDevs) each also with their appropriate useage licenses. That way everybody should be happy ... AND ... best of all ... the multi-billion dollar DAZ corporation makes EVEN MORE money! What's not to like about that scenario?
Important disclaimer here: I am not criticising Game Developers or asserting that they are not as important as straight artists, just that they have different needs. For them, G3F is fantastic. For artists probably not so.
That said, I have come to quite like G3F - I just wish they'd stop releasing all the {NAME}+7 variants every other day and let the base get settled.
Sorry. Don't know where the double post came from. But I am using the Microsoft Windows 10 Edge Browser ;)
Read the rather lengthy post yesterday, when my DIM was struggling with downloading the new stuff I got. Just could not resist Arianna. :)
I have to say that I'm having a subtle bad feeling about G3, which I did not have with G2. To me, G2 was superior to G1 in every aspect - G1 was a good idea, but it needed way more polygons to cater both genders, which it did not have. The promos for G3 focus very much on the improvements on the feet and arms, which immediately raised the first question: what about the rest?
You might think that it only got better, but, as the OP points out, in retroperspective, it didn't. G3 has less polys and I can't fight the feeling that the models release so far all look to much the same, which raises the second question, if there is not that much diversity possible with G3 as it has been with G2. OP points out, that for muscle definition at least, this is definitely the case and he points out why the proposed solutions are suboptimal at least.
So, G3 was created to cater the gaming industry, where some use these models for their games - and so do I, I only render for fun and that fun got much less since the deal with NVidia (I have ATI). Then, where is all the functionality that you actually need to make an export not a major PITA? Why do I have to spend weeks on implementing loading the models and textures and morphs, then? Also, where exactly is it of benefit that the model now has less polygons? You know that it is easier to get rid of polys than to add some. Subdivision can't do much if the base polys are not there in the first place. HD Morphs, all nice and dandy, but they are proprietary and thereby completely useless when you export the models, yet you lack the base polys to add detail on your own.
I have to add, that I'm a one man army, I can spend only so much time on certain aspects of my pipeline and there is only so much that I can and that I'm willing to learn on top of all the stuff I need for creating a game from scratch, including the engine, in the first place. Some might be able to master e.g. Blender to add the missing detail, I just can't and that's where the "less polys" is a real problem. I can always drop polys, I can create low-res LODs, but I can't add detail to the mesh that isn't there. So, raw polycount can't be high enough for me. I don't gain anything from a more detailed face, if details have been taken away somewhere else - you clearly see it in the screenshot provided by the OP, just look at the thighs for example.
As said, from my point of view there's something "just not right" with G3 - I start to think that this is the new G1. It's a step in the right direction, but you would have needed a couple more steps to get there.
Nonetheless I already bought quite some content for G3, but I'm starting to feel uneasy with it, as it's absolutely not backward compatible and if there is something to somewhat migrate content over, it again costs you an arm and a leg on top to get them all and works not as good as you would like it to - it is clear that DAZ does not provide migration tools solely for PAs having something to make money with. See, I expect such tools from DAZ and I expect most of them for free as well, there is still more than enough money to be made for the PAs with new content and improved shaders and stuff. No offense.
Hopefully DAZ will improve on this, but, looking back, I doubt it. We will have this again and again and again. :|
Well, let's not give up hope...
Holy wowzers, TLDR on that wall of text! I read the first paragraph in hopes for an "executive summary", but got no feel on the OP's direction (is he upset with DAZ? Is he upset with the new Karen 7? IDFK!), so I had to move on. I feel a little bad because I know I tend to type a lot, but I just don't have the time today...
I did get some vague sense that the OP wants to produce a deliverable; maybe tell a story, using 3D graphics.
Do that.
G3F looks alright to me, but I'm not seeing anything that is all that different than what came before. Honestly, I think a case can be made there is less variety in more recent years products.
I'm also a long timer (first order 2003) and I'm letting my PC+ membership expire 8/28. There just isn't the content in the store I want to buy or get excited about. It's not Daz's fault or my fault. You can't please everyone. I've been buying product for almost 13 years and have a lot of stuff in my runtime. DaZ Install manager says 3085 items installed. I still love DazStudio and think it's great they put such a great program with content for free. But when I am struggling to find something I want to use my $6 coupon for, it's time to exit.
I'll still be watching the store for enviroments and props, but unless some good stuff is released for G2M, I'll be skipping the people, clothes and hair.
Hmm, you think that is only with G3F? Ha, I still work with a V4.2 based Figure and M4 because I do not like these new figures at all from Genesis on. I do not like Genesis and also not all the other new Figures like G2F, G2M and G3F. Two of many other reasons are. It is impossible to create a character with them that nearly looks like my V4.2 Dixie character. The same with all my M4 Characters. Converting is also not an option. The Figures allways don`t look like the original. So no option.
Other thing are the clothe-converters, well on the first view they are really good but on the second they are not. Sure that is because the mesh wasn`t desinged for the new figures but I have so many stuff for v4.2 and I do not want to kick it and buying all stuff new is way to expensive even there are not so much products out there for the new figures I really like and because of constantly new figures I am a bit confused and do not know what I should buy anyway. Maybe this is an understanding problem but if you have a look at the products at the market place: This is for this figure or character, that is for that figure or character and this for this and that for that, the same with poses or morphs. I thought all G2F and G2M characters are based on the same mesh so why has every character its own clothes and poses? Or do I misunderstand something?
Then you can buy add on morph packs and I have bought some for G2F and had to recognize that some clothes I have do not follow these morphs or it looks strange or unreal. Maybe one can fix this also. I don`t know, but all that shows me, that all this is far away from easy to use. And that is just about the clothes and poses.
My V4.2 version (The V4.2 based Figure WWG2) has some third party morphs and a shaping d-former tool with magnets and so it is a real good Figure in my view, maybe not like a 100% real human being but who cares. With the smoothing modifier applied and the collision iterations on clothes and probs and hair nearly every pose works fine without any break of the clothes and the the values for smoothing are at standard and the values of the collision iterations are also the standard values or 4, depends on the clothe. Also have V4.2 and M4 converted to SubD but I use just the resolution level at high but the SubD level at zero, the algorythm on catmull-clark and the edge interpolation on soft corners-soft edges and also this makes a difference to the standard v4.2/m4 mesh. Good enough for me :) and because of that I don`t need the new figures. Sure I have some fixings on the figure by hand (just because I have applied the manual tweaking of some third party morphs not the automatic tweaking) but my experience with G2F so far is, that I also have to fix things, so no difference on that issue.
Unfortunatelly nearly every Vendor doesn`t create any more stuff for V4.2 and M4 what is really sad. These two were and still are great Figures.
Just my point of view.
And if you want to have a look at my characters visit my gallery
http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/10548/
Well it's an issue of the location of the geometry. Since we can't make our own HD morphs, we need to use the geometry that exists to shape the figure. Because of how the thighs are set up it would be difficult to sculpt definition in there...so you would have to wait for some HD morph kit...
G2F and G3F work about the same in real-time apps...improvements in that area are overstated.
If you are using the Daz decimation tools, maybe, but that tool doesn't reduce Verts does it? Verts are important. Polys are only one piece of the performance equation.
How can you read anything, at all, about the UV mapping, when the UV maps aren't shown? This is the main mesh we're dealing with.
My big complaint about Gen3f right off is that she only has auto-fit support for Gen2f clothing, etc. whereas Gen2f can autofit V4, Genesis and Gen2m. I would have hoped that Gen3f would support more autofit options, not less. The "unsupported" option didn't work at all well in fitting some Genesis content I had to Gen3f.
This knocks out most of my very expensive content and makes Gen3f useless to me for the time being.
"How can you read anything, at all, about the UV mapping, when the UV maps aren't shown?"
The wireframe is shown, and the thighs appear to have better wrapping and less 'crunching' of polygons.
I'm not going to argue whether the figure is an improvement or not because everyone has different needs. I'm still using Genesis 2 and I also don't see Genesis 3 as any huge leap forward. However, what might appear as a step backwards for us could be a step forwards for professionals wanting to use G3 in games or more powerful 3D suites. I think it's too early to know for sure.
G2F could only autofit Genesis clothing out of the gate. You had to buy one package for V4, another for M4, and, I'm pretty sure, anothe for G2M. (Of course, at this point in G2F's life, there was no G2M).
"Where Them All" for G3F gets you Genesis, G2M, V4, and M4 compatability, in one handy package.
http://www.daz3d.com/wear-them-all-autofitting-clones-and-clothing-smoothers-for-genesis-3-female-s
Thing is, as far as I understood it, you can, but you have to buy the shapes on top.
Don't like that either. I think it's just not nice to break content all the time, this time for real, and make you spend on top to get things working again (and you still have to manually adjust things, which costs time and, you know, time is money - so you need to spend much more than just the price for the migration tools, constantly).
I'd like to hear a solution for migrating all the animations that I have created for G2, so it actually makes sense to switch to G3 - G3 is useless for non-DAZ usage for me, when the animations are all broken. I spent some serious time on those! Sorry, I don't have a team of animators who can re-create all that, so, besides textures, it's a major problem for me and hinders the usage of G3.
I know, I'm a special case and not the real target audience, but nonetheless... ;-p
Well as Gilda Radner used to say: Never mind.
I'm wondering, though, if the fact that there never was an 'official' / DAZ original package says something about DAZ' commitment to the cause :D
Well that may also be because as far as the promos tell me, all Genesis 3 Base Characters use the exact same skin texture. Or at least have the same skin tone. It is quite amazing that they manage to have somehow even less variety in skin tone than Genesis 2 after only 4 figures. Maybe they just have one base photo set...
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http://www.daz3d.com/animation-conversion-genesis-2-to-genesis-3
I know about this, but thank you. :) Thing is, if it works as good as the pose conversion tool, which would make sense, it cannot migrate the animations without manual fixing. This is annoying on poses already, now think about doing that on animations. :( Not blaming the PA who made it, really, since there were movements possible with G2, which are not possible anymore. As for the new bones, one can probably throw math at it and create the missing bones by interpolation (which is probably done already). Still, there are movements which probably are not possible anymore and I'm not sure if even serious IK math can solve that problem.
It's just that, if anyone is able to get the best migration done, it should be DAZ, no? But they don't offer such tools at all, afaik they never did. As said, there is still enough money to be made in my opinion, without disappointing your customers (and I already know that this is going to happen over and over again, which does not make it better). Let me use my "old" stuff and make it easy for me - so I'm feeling easy with throwing more money at you, please. Thank you. :)
the general idea is daz leaves gaps for PAs to fill in. This is a common practice for everything in studio.
I'm not sure you understand how UV mapping works. The quality of a UV map has absolutely nothing to do with any "crunching" of the polygons. As long as they have approximately the same aspect ratio and proportionate size in the UV map as they have on the figure, it's a good map. Have you ever done any 3D painting?
I wasn't asking you to. You made a statement concerning the quality of the UV mapping. That statement flies in the light o all my experience, so I am asking you to justify it (or retract it). Instead, you seem to be drifting even farther afield.
Her movements are radically better. Any post that requires her to look balanced or stretched is more realistic. And if the pose involves the arms reaching up more than 45 degrees above horizontal, it's like night and day. Her spine curces better.
If she had more than three basic characters (Skyler, Evavictoriakaren, and Bethany) she'd be spectacular.
"Us" being? For me, the improved rigging and weight mapping is reason enough. Granted, I'm having more luck with Gen 2 conversions than with limited Gen 3 character family, but the posing is a radical improvement.
People are making too much of a thing about gaming. That's one added trick. They didn't take anythihg else away to get greater gaming capability.
I believe for the vast majority of users who are not professionals, that many of the new gadgets, gizmos, bells and whistles are just fluff and are totally unnecessary for amateur playtime. M4 and G1 and G1M are still my favorite stable. I don't use fancy lightsets, I have no interest in Iray or whatever the new render technology is. I get totally satasfactory images with my 10 year old environments, my gen4 and G1 characters and the stock DAZ Studio3 and more recently Studio4.
Of course DAZ has upped its game and provided newer technologies trying to attract those who want it. And of course DAZ marketing is bound and determined to try to convice all the rest of us that we have to have it too. And of course the PAs rush to produce the same ol' same ol' clothing we've seen for every other generation. This is the object of the game. But nobody is yet putting a gun to our heads to stay in the game.
The original post lost me after the first thousand or two words but I was rescued by the excellent small paragraph summary (thank you!, sometimes less is more). But the argument resonates with me and eases my already existing conviction that G3 was going to be of no use to me. Now, I can sleep at night knowing that my credit card can have a break.
If they added a really cool procedural 'graft stuff onto bodies' for G3, they'd have me.
I'd also like a magical talking pony.
"You made a statement concerning the quality of the UV mapping."
Fine, I should have said 'topology'. It's better anyway with the arms and legs on separate UV islands now to allow more detail, but that comes at a cost.
"For me, the improved rigging and weight mapping is reason enough."
And the lack of texture compatibility is a massive step back for many of us. Like I said, whether she is viewed as a step forwards or backwards is dependent on the user and their needs.
Thank you :) until now I was thinking I that I am the only one still using v4.2 and M4. Well the bending problems you can minimize with the smoothing modifier and what also is a good tool is the overhaul for v4.2 and m4 for DS by i13 unfortunatelly it has no magnets but some of these morphs are very helpfull also without magnets. If you use the smooting midifier for v4.2 or m4 you should apply the smoothing modifier also on the clothes but that is no big thing :)
Probably be a product out to chunk her head on the G2F body.... that's been done in the past.
Really? It always seemed to me that WIlbur would rather not have had to deal with Mr. Ed.
Here is the rear view, G3F on the left, G2F on the right.
I have to agree with the OP, the topology on the G3F mesh is simply a huge step backward. Funny how soon we forget, but the "new improved topology" was one of the big bullet points for both Genesis and Genesis 2. Look at any in-depth tutorial on the creation of a human mesh, and proper polygon flow/topology to match the underlying muscle and skeletal structure is very important for proper animation, especially proper animation of muscle flex.
I really like the way G3F bends, but the lack of good topology does put a big damper on my enthusiasm for her. This may be a good move for using G3F as a gaming asset, but it definitely goes counter to what you would expect for a figure to be used in Maya, 3DS Max, or any of the "pro" applications, as good polygon topology is VERY important for realistic animation.
The over simplified topology does make it easier for content creators and for autofit to work well since they can use simple mostly square polygons to match the underlying figure topology. But, IMHO it is a huge step backwards, and counter to all the DAZ marketing hype for Genesis and Genesis 2 (and why their figure were better than other available options). Can't say as I understand the step back at all.
I'm glad I read this thread before I spent money on V7. To me, she doesn't do anything that V6 (yeah, I still call her Vicki) doesn't do. However, the logic of the map design is intriguing (it would make for scar design and dirt textures much easier), and some of the third party addons look superior. But if the mesh is this "primitive," then V7 is a step backwards for me. Here, I was just about to bite the bullet, pick up the base model, and see how difficult it would be to transfer one of my recurring characters. Saved a bunch of time, too.