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The forums should be able to answer those questions but in short:
Daz figures have come in two separate configurations: two separate sexes and a single unimesh. Each has advatages and disadvantages. For example, when you make a utility, you often have to make two separate ones since the male and female are literally two separate figures so two separate so a product like https://www.daz3d.com/enhanced-facial-expressions-hd-for-genesis-9 has to be maddening twice for the two separate figures. A separate male and female does allow for sharper defined physiques for the less adept sculptors. Thus trade-offs...
There has been a general move to make areas like faces higher resolution while a place like the hips lower resolution; that started in the move from 8 to 8.1 which introduced the altered head and body uv's.
Next, Genesis 9 completed the move to FACS based expressions allowing for more realistic expression, better ability to have asymmetrical morphs.
I should point you to https://www.daz3d.com/introducing-genesis-9 and https://www.daz3d.com/blog/a-first-look-at-whats-coming-in-genesis-9 which going into what improvements Daz3d was trying to accomplish.
graphic card memory usage is way higher, which might can be superior?!?
FACS don't work nicley, if your character's face is shaped very different from the base figure.
There is not much of an advantage for G9.
It remains by the rule:
Specific characters need specific expressions.
That has always been the case and it will be with G9 despite of FACS.
BTW:
I don't really care, if a unisex figure is easier for vendors.
I am not a vendor, I am a customer and unisex figures are more difficult to me.
However, they may not be for other customers. And I think we'd be looking at 9.1 by now if g9 stuff wasn't selling
It's not simply different seams but different bounaries between surface groups - so there are areas on a single map on each that are on two different maps on the other. If DS 2025 ssupported per-map UVs it might be possible to have a control map using the G9 UVs to dtermine which G8 map, using the G8 UVs, should apply to a given area - but that would require a customisesd shader, so it coculdn't handle non-standard shaders, and I don't see any evidence that DS 2025/6 will support per-map UV options.
With my customer hat on, as a CUSTOMER Unisex is far easier for me.
It means a broad amount of content I only have to buy ONCE.
I don't have to vainly hope that that cool uniform gets made for both M&F, or I have to take extra time hoping I can cross gender autofit decently enough (oh no boob bubbles in the outfit, dammit!)
Much easier to have, say, a brother and sister, when they can share broad morph elements.
The lack of geometry baked around the belly button and nipples makes autofits and extreme shapes more reliable when fitting clothes and other items.
Fewer maps, fewer annoyances to deal with. And hey, I can save unnecessary geometry and texture load by removing mouths for all the figures with closed mouths.
The greater geometry around the face makes it a lot easier to do little tweaks, and I believe makes expressions more fluid without requiring HD stuff. (that's arguable, I'll grant you)
In short, as a user, I am VERY happy with G9 and I sincerely hope Daz never returns to gender split figures.
Face diversity is the only advantage of G9. It is admittedly a huge advantage, though.
Women sometimes wear men's shirts, there is cross-dressing, and there is unisex clothing - military/police/fire uniforms, coveralls, spacesuits, and such. Some of it wouldn't even show differences in the chest because of the outfit design. It certainly wouldn't be, "Men's version covers everything; women's version shows skin!"
Also, all clothing is unisex if you really think about it. It's just fabric to cover the bits society has deemeed needing hiding.
Fashion history is full of garments and style "switching genders" over time. A particularly notable example is high heels, an item that was exclusively masculine back in the day, and yet is almost exclusively feminine today. Wristwatches were once a women's item; men only carried pocket watches. T-shirts were the top of union suits, which was considered women's underwear. After the Stonewall riots many gay men adopted "radical drag," which mixed masculine and feminine extremes, which in turn influenced the glam rock bands of the 1980s. Skinny jeans were womenswear that became androgynous and then hipster fashion for men.
It's more likely than not that both you and your wife wear some garment or style that once would have been considered exclusive to the opposite gender.
All of this means that unisex clothing is extremely useful when depicting scenes from different eras (including the future!), celebrities (who often lead fashion), or any kind of character not bound by society's current norms. It's fine if that's not useful to you because you don't make those kinds of scenes – I will always support people making the kind of art they enjoy – but plenty of others do.
I am not G9's biggest fan, but a unisex base allows:
- Sharing of morphs on male and female figures for familial resemblance. You can actually have daughters who resemble their fathers, brothers who resemble their sisters, etc.
- Alien/anthro/fantasy creatures semi-automatically have support for males and females. This is particularly key as things like geografts and bend correctives are not easily ported between bases without technical knowledge - and in the case of things like SBH/dForce hair, not at all if it's generated from the figure rather than a scalp shell, as it often is for full body hair.
- Uniforms can actually be uniform. Sure, you might have to swap in a skirt or some trousers, but you natively have compatibility, without auto-fit mucking up all the weightmaps. There's one G8 school uniform set I use consistently because it's about the only one that actually fits both boys and girls.
- More clothes are unisex than people might think, at least within the realm of Daz Studio where clothes automatically follow your body shape. Running shoes, workboots, many jeans, some t-shirts, socks, hi-vis work jackets, etc.
- You might actually find more armour for women that doesn't bare their tits or midriff.
- Sometimes, you just want a male version of a female shape (or vice versa). Most of my teen boy characters are actually masculinised G8F morphs because there was much more choice of good teen girls than boys.
- Shapeshifting or other magical/technological/alien body transformation is a common enough concept in fiction (whether willing or unwilling), and now you have the option to seamlessly morph between male and female shapes.
Now, some may argue that these things come with compromises they're unhappy with... but, in of themselves, all of these things are at least desirable goals, even if the implementation might not impress you.
I can only think that this is a rhetorical question. Nonetheless, G9 Core Figure skin uniformly looks more like human skin than G8 Core Figure skin, which was markedly inconsistent in quality. G8.1 made notable strides toward more consistent realism but often included a case of psoraisis. Now that my main female characters (8.1) wear G9 skin, they look more realistic, and I no longer have to fiddle with skin settings to lessen the appearance of their chronic psoraisis (now nonexistent).
Skin material is independent from the figure. The only quality thing is how effective the UV map has been set.
You could even have ultra realistic skin on Poser 3's Posette.
The UV mapping has been better on G8, than G9.
additionally:
Male body shapes actually do look fine to me on male G9.
I just can't make it to get a decent female body shape out of G9, nor have I seen a single decent female body shape for G9 in any store, which gets even worse, if applying a pose.
The G9 feminine is a portrait figure only.
I like the unisex better because the artists have to think about how humans differentiate during biological development. They start out the visibly the same except for the invisible to us DNA, and then they morph into their forms, even in old age they are morphing still.
I prefer a single base for both genders, too. It seems that a lot of creatures created for Genesis 2,3,and 8 tended toward only male versions, although there are some exeptions. On the other hand, I get that some people want to use the newest figures, but that doesn't make the older ones obselete. I just use each figure for what it's best for, with the content I have.
On the topic of Normals and HD:
(Alien Cat from ArtStation)
Seems we're going down that G9 rabbit hole again. I'm not going with you. If you must, that thread is over here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/598286/getting-on-the-9-train-or-not/ ;
Plus, you know, G9 is not exactly new any more. It's well-supported and there are lots of helper products for it.
With regard to mixing, you sort of can - You can morph the object and apply that normal map. You can also vary the effect of normal maps. So, it's not necessarily either-or. But only PAs have the HD tools. So, there is that. But Oso's sample demonstrates that you can get pretty good illusion of high resolution out of lower-res mesh using normal maps; and that's kinda the point of normal mapping.
If the question is whether Normal maps can look as good as HD morphs, I think that demonstrates 'yes' (there are some, ahem, 'edge cases' where you need really sharp points or whatnot with a silhouette that is really tight).
Now if it's as FUNCTIONAL as HD morphs, I'll grant you. Mixing HD morphs is a distinct advantage. Now you CAN mix Normals in Photoshop or something, and it's even easier if the Normals are confined to specific areas (because you can mask out the rest easily).
Conversely, HD morphs that are not intended to go together can sometimes look... really bad when combined. Also you NEED to have a lot of SubD for HD to look good, whereas you can get away with much less with Normals.
So yes, HD morphs are handy, but, in my experience, they aren't as absolutely critical to good looking surfaces as some folks suggest.
Here's another example, where I baked the HD morphs to Normals. Yes, the silhouette is slightly less detailed, but it would be REALLY hard to notice in almost all renders:
https://www.deviantart.com/willbear/art/Exile-Comparison-675291549
There must be a reason then, why " we're going down that G9 rabbit hole again".
"Beating a dead horse" would count as a reason.
In this respect, I have asked many times what people complaining about G9 actually want. (I usually get ignored).
Looking at the five answers I can actually imagine:
1) Daz should change the G9 base.
Impossible (at least, by any reasonable definition of what is possible). Changing G9 would break any characters or clothing built on it.
2) Force vendors to stop using G9 and go back to G8.
Would start a riot, both from those creators who prefer working with G9, and from those users who want G9. And it's not like we're getting no G8 content. We're actually still getting quite a lot more than two years after it was officially superseded.
3) Force vendors to develop everything for both G8 and G9.
Would basically double the development work for some products, so prices would have to rise to match. Those vendors who've decided this is viable for them are already doing this. The vendors who didn't want to do this would move to other stores where Daz couldn't force them.
4) Bury G9 and create a new G10.
No-one would agree on what they want G10 to be any more than they have G9, except now you'd have people whining about having to buy all the basic generation resources all over again.
5) "Give us the HD tools!"
It is extremely clear this is not going to happen. Also, as previously discussed, HD really isn't as useful or necessary as some people think it is. Anyone who could get meaningful use out of the HD tools should already be capable of creating normal maps, displacement maps or geografts to add to the mesh density.
I am willing to be amazed by some magnificent solution which I have not already imagined and addressed, but as someone who has a much better technical understanding of this than many, I can assure you that solutions that might seem simple or obvious are far more likely to actually be impossible.
First, I don't really think people feel compelled to tell any particular forum member what they actually want. And I don't think it's helpful for any particular forum member to throw gas on the fire. Maybe I'm not helping, either. I'm summarizing my own opinionated observations.
It seems to me, the dissatisfaction is more along the lines of bend issues, skin issues, and the continued obsessive devotion to G9F at the expense of G9M. And yes, that is an odd comment in light of the alleged unified base, but I've observed there is an actual delineation between feminine and masculine in the store. The latter frequently gets the short end of the stick, if daily store offerings are any guide. This is not a new development. Don't see a correction on the horizon.
i would move further along and note that prices for new content are rising and G9 has brought us rented content, the death of pro bundles, increasingly stingy character bundles, and a close relationship between G9 and the rather expensive Premier subscription, especially for the actual Daz marquis characters.
the bend issues may be down to mixing morphs in an incompatible way, not activating corrective morphs, etc. The problems are sometimes visible in promo images. There are fixes. Some folks are satisfied, others not.
The skin issues don't seem to bother everyone equally. Mostly, there are a ton more female skins than males - see the above mentioned gender divide. And yes, I've heard about sales numbers from PAs. At least there are some male characters with matching content. I actually like some of the g8.1 male characters and go to those.
The final factor may be figure fatigue. Folks who have been here longer and have huge libraries seem to be more critical than folks who arrived recently. A lot of us have enough stuff to last us til we die or move on to another activity, so we're harder to impress. It's not universal. But it speaks to climbing the mountain yet again. If folks are still balking about G9, what on earth will happen if/when g10 arrives?
To end on a positive note, I'll say some of the work done for G9 is really beautiful. Good stuff!
When G10 is released I'm sure we'll hear complaints from G9 users "Oh why is there no more G9 content", and yes they will be beating a dead horse.
Yes it a dead horse, but dead horse are pretty annoying.
First, the DAZ marketplace becomes pretty much obsolete to me, because it is all abou an inferior figure.
Second the way that the G9 mesh is designed is leading to horrible mesh bendings, and therefor to ugly poses.
The splitting off of Eyey balls, mouth and what ever to be separate figures makes it more complicated than helpful.
The unisex layout requiers more layers of JCMs, so more data.
One layer of JCMs for the core figure, one layer for male and female base and a third layer for the character morph, which almost no vendor want to invest the time for.
The female base looks again like a stylized Barbie, but unlike G8F it semms even harder to correct this with custom sculpting.
It must be difficult for most Vendors as well, because no Vendor seemed to have been able ( or willing) to get rid of this Barbie like body characteristics.
I pretty much have collected everything from this shop, that is useful to me for G8F.
I wish, I could use G9 hair, but restrictions with sbh makes that impossible.
And no, I just cannot accept, that I am restricted from purchasing an HD tool, here, although the formula could be easy.
For sale, but free for vendors.
Only environments are left useful to me inthe DAZ shop.
I am stuck here with my character here.
If there was an easy way of migrating my character with geografts, geoshells, MCMs and JCMs to another plattform, I'd be already gone.
I am just thinking, that DAZ Studio will go down the same route as Poser did.
G9 is as horrible to me as Victoria 4 used to be.
G3 is what brought me to DAZ studio, G9 is what gets me away from it.
G10 could be quite close. I would expect that DAZ will use Studio 2025 to introduce some new features to support better figures, so that would be a great opportunity to release a G10 line of characters. It would be great if they can create localised subdivision, so that a user could subdivide one part of the body without subdividing the whole figure..
Nah, I don't belief that.
Since G9 is actually all male and works great as a male base figure, it needed an advanced G9F, yeah, but I doubt, that this going to happen.
- Daz is still regularly releasing G8 compatible content.
- I've asked you to explain your "the G9 mesh forces horrible bends" point before, because your assertions are constantly that it's bad without explaining why it's bad. This was my dissection of it last time around:
- Again, "split off eyeballs/mouth/etc" is a loose assertion that something is a problem without actually explaining what the problem is.
- "More data" is basically trivial. Textures almost always take up massively more drive space than morphs (well, maybe not HD morphs, but exceedingly few characters have high SubD JCMs). More control links might have a valid point, because that slows down figure loading and posing to a degree, but that's not what you said.
- There is nothing that stops G9 taking almost exactly the figure same shapes as G8. They are both humanoid meshes with extensive morphing capability. I am extremely sceptical of anyone who cannot manipulate G9's shaping at the SD level to make it look and bend almost exactly like G8F, yet claims they would actually be able to make use of HD tools.
~~~~~
In any case, these are still all complaints rather than any actual proposal of a solution.
Bad joint bendings is pretty much self explaining, by looking at G9 femine character joints when posing.
I don't understand, what more to say about it.
The main question is: Does it look like human posing or more like Poser4 Victoria 4 posing?
what does it more look like?