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Are they not inferior quality compared to newer gen clothes and hair though?
In my opinion, the clothing can often be higher quality because it relies less on dforce, so has modeled in seams and details that would collapse or explode if dforced.
Not necessarily.
Hmmmm. Every day is a school day
Honestly, a lot of the older stuff that is more form-fitting is way higher quality to what we get now in clothing that is all D-force. While D-force handles draping really well, there are details that it just can't handle that are often present in older clothing models. The drawback of older stuff is that often it is only form-fitting, unless it's something like a large skirt that has its own bones for movement.
G3 characters are great in the middle distance. My G9 library is large (it's where I started with Daz), but I still grab G3 assets that are useful in pics. In the attached image, the 3 foreground characters are G9. The other diners behind them are G3 figures. And the blurry smudges out on the street are LowPi characters. I made this about 2 months ago (and bought the G3 assets during the December sales).
(The dining room is https://www.daz3d.com/hotel-restaurant )
That Hotel Restaurant looks good. It should serve well for my ongoing Seniors renders.
I placed it on my wishlist,
I get some use out of the clothes, depending on the outfit... for the hair, even with new shaders I find it looks clumpy and like it hasn't been washed in a week. It clashes with any of the characters in my scene who are sporting G8/G9 hair. However, if that's the look you're going for, or if you're putting it on someone far enough away that you can't tell, it's useful for variety.
I never really considered using older gens for distance characters. Are they a lot less resource heavy than G8?
Genesis and G2 are noticeably lighter. G3 uses same UV as G8 for the base figure. So textures can be freely interchanged and are often similar dimensions, file size, etc. broadly speaking, G and G2 outfits are also lighter.
The default textures for G3 tend to be lighter than for G8. Sure, you could apply lighter textures to G9 and set the SubD to 0 or 1 and get similar reductions. But, assuming they aren't going to be reused in other scenes, why waste a lot of time when you can just load it, hair, clothes, pose, done. (And I have used G1 and G2 as well. I just find the G3 better looking when the depth of field can't completely mask their features.
The weight issue... Depends who made the stuff, too.
Not in any practical sense because it always comes down to the hair and the clothing. The best way to handle background characters is to simply turn subd to 0, base on G8, use simple hair from the G1/G2 era, and simple clothes. Don't use shoes and extra trinkets if not necessary, frame so you hide feet if possible, that sort of thing. The memory load on your GPU will be just as light with G8 that way. Can't speak for G9 as I don't use it, but i've done lots of comparisons between G1 through G8 and now I just use G8 for everything this way. Makes it so much simpler to use G8 for everything. If my main character is a background character in another scene its very easy to make the small changes necessary to maintain continuity.
Old doesn't automatically equate to junk. I still buy some Generation 4 and 3 items simply because they haven't been made for later generations.
If you have a 3Dmodelling program it is fairly easy to refit items to fit other characters I use ZBrush but Hexagon would work equally well and modo was for free recently and is a good modelling program.
I still buy older figures and outfits because I actually like the way they look and I render them in the foreground. I buy some G9 stuff for the same reason. I've messed with converting older figures to newer generations and I'm not convinced it's worth the effort - They usually exist just fine in their native generation. Textures can be updated to iray with shader application. Maps can be adjusted. Plus the HD features don't convert, anyway.
Yes, SubD is the main thing on the GPU. And this trick doesn't work with recurring figures. But there are considerations beyond render time/vram. For one-offs (a random diner) the scene load time for a G3 figure is much faster than for your main figure generation because you have many more morphs/assets in your main generation. My library for G9 is enormous and creating a new generic G9 character is slow before materials and shape morphs are applied. G3 figures, for me, load in 10-15 seconds by comparison. Put a dozen G3 figures in a scene file and load time is tolerable. Put a dozen G9 figures in a scene file and load time is a coffee break. This is the real difference between a scene with a handful of figures and a scene with a roomful of figures.
Thanks for your input. I think I may have to re-install the G3 stuff for use as background characters and save on resources a bit.
I think that the older figures work quite well, sometimes better than newer ones, when working with a deliberately stylized or toonish render. Sometimes it takes more time and effort to make a g8 figure look less realistic than using g1 or g2 in the first place. Using some of the available shader and material conversions, the results can be quite good.
I can understand what you mean. For me that's not an issue though as I don't use toon figures.
any free stuff showing up anywhere?
This is where the freebie announcements happen most often, and nothing since 4/17:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/622671/an-attempt-of-a-limited-time-freebie-message-only-email-alert-thread-part-2#latest
@FizzleMyth, just a tiny note on your UE freebies standard disclaimer
> I always switch to the Professional license (since it’s free and gives you more).
It doesn't actually give you more. If you are making >$100k a year in your company or whatever structure that you're selling your work for at the moment of purchase, you must purchase Professional.
Otherwise, you can just get Personal. The underlying rights are the same, it doesn't even matter if you end up making >$100k next year. Of course, Professional doesn't hurt but... yeah, it also doesn't help.