Old content is sometimes super awesome
Oso3D
Posts: 15,095
So I just picked up http://www.daz3d.com/multi-morphing-hat-for-michael-3 , frustrated by some of the hat options out there. And I was shocked at how useful it was -- effectively you get 16 hats in one, with some limited ability to mix styles. Now, I'd also love something with options to morph brim and crown very specifically, but... this is basically 16 hats for $10. And, with fresh/good textures, it looks great.
Sure, it doesn't auto-fit well, but with hats that's not terribly important -- place it in the right position, scale it a little to fit the head, and bam. It also helps that I have Sickleyield's Hat/hair rigging thing, to help it work right with various hairstyles.
So, what really old content have you found surprisingly robust? (Other than V4/M4, which is a topic in of itself)

Comments
A lot of old PC items are still really good, especially since Jen has updated a good number of them recently.
Hair or props (jewelry or weapons, for example) made for older figures can also be quite useful.
No resource ages in my digital toybox. There were a few props from the DS 2.x days that stopped loading, but if I want to do a certain picture and Vickie 3 has the stuff, she gets the job.
The only stuff that really falls apart is large complex stuff with everything as one object/material. That's... hard to work with.
Like, I got this free 'farmhouse.' The windows and walls were all one thing... meh.
Ironically I can fit far more V3 and M3 figures in any DAZ studio scene than any of the later or triax figures
they use less RAM and I have some very nice textures for them.
so certainly still use them
If I recall I got 30 dressed haired figures in opposed to 15 naked genesis before I hit 15 GB of RAM
poor sheep, 30 clothed people watching 15 naked people hitting 15 Sheep
This is a great idea for a thread.
One of my favorite things to do is find old content on sharecg and update as much of it as possible, materials/textures, throwing some SubD on it, whatever it can handle.
I also recently started buying M4 Content and I have to be real here for a second and say some, maybe most, of the M4 content more than holds up.
I really wanted a certain type of jacket for this render, and I found one in HardCorp for M4.
http://www.daz3d.com/hardcore-m4
Getting some of the old cr2's to fit g3m is a pain but the content is so cool it's worth the trouble.
Wow, that's an awesome render!
I was going to do a render with the hat I mentioned, but got distracted and used a different hat. Though still Genesis!
I'm always using some of the old Redhouse sets. The shops and the Study in particular are ones that I'm always going back to.
Agree.
Same here, and I purchased the Study more than 10 years ago...
This is one reason that while I'm a little sad that the market is moving on to Genesis 3 and I'm not ready, there's SO MUCH STUFF still out there to use.
I mean, I still have a wishlist of Daz items at around 530+, and that's not even talking about some of the other sites out there.
I still use the old Modern Apartment, AKA Apartment 39. I keep forgetting that I have all the alternate furniture for it too. The DAZ MFD in all the various generations still has lots of life because there are so many textures available for it and they're all compatible. I use the Generic SciFi Corridor a lot too.
Some old content:
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Toaster-on-the-counter-582559303
The toaster is from http://www.daz3d.com/countertop-appliances . Old! The flatware I think is also fairly old.
I've been having loads of fun with M4/V4 anatomical stuff. There's pretty much nothing like it since.
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/The-Wick-578079586
And here's something from that SFCS SciFI Construction set:
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Eartine-Station-574741752
Generic Sci Fi Corridor with A3 Mulberry...
http://slimerjspud.deviantart.com/art/Don-t-Look-Now-434722049
"Bambi and Thumper" in Apt 39 after they took care of that pesky 007 fella...
http://slimerjspud.deviantart.com/art/Bambi-and-Thumper-296557309
Thank you both for the kind words, I was like a kid in a candy store when I was working on it, lol.
Oh man, I can already tell this thread is going to make buy things. Both of those sets actually look really useful and worth having.
I found the Generic SciFi Corridor better looking but less useful, if that makes sense -- the set is a bunch of parts you can assemble, while the Generic Corridors are great if you pretty much want THAT corridor.
Here's another useful, though more recent and more expensive, option: http://www.daz3d.com/easy-snap-sci-fi-corridors
Oh, and while we're chatting about figures, I found this recently and was gobsmacked. Very cool, very unique, and very free: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/v4-dryad-conforming-figure-forposer/75975
(And it converts pretty reasonably to Genesis and probably later)
Makes me feel old ;)
...Bunny Dazed for V4 fit to G2F, The bagpipes are an old freebie no longer available.
Rendered in Iray.
Not old, Jack, seasoned!!
My latest WIP includes the Fairytale Collectin -- Fantasy Castle. It has a lot of material preset packages for it and I needed a dark gothic type castle. I'm still trying to track down where in my library the Darktale preset is, but I think it will look great rendered in Iray as the base model renders nicely with it. I've managed to pick up lot of older content through the PC sales and I want to see just how much of it I can convert to Iray. So far, everything I've tried has looked awesome!
One of my dearest oldies, amongst many, many others, is the RHS Stage Coach. I found wonderful things in the PC/PC+ treasure chest. But it is also right that the PC+ vendors keep up a high standard until today.
As a newbie to DAZ I don't have much in the way of the old characters but I've picked up older stuff in sales and found it useful. I think the oldest thing I have is eagle that I've used in several renders.
(a newbie render with it: http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/90204/ )
Not quite as old but it impressed me with all the bones it had, making it very poseable. mystikoi
(New User Contest render with it: http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#images/97333/ )
Mandy for Victoria 3 with Madelia Hair and necklace from Diamonds, all converted to iray.
http://www.daz3d.com/mandy
http://www.daz3d.com/madelia-hair
http://www.daz3d.com/diamonds
Totally forgot about that one.. it was pretty cool wasn't it?
I still get a ton of mileage out of the Dream Home set. It's practically a steal at the current price as well, so I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't already have it. A lot of the older sets really aged well, and many are also great for some low poly background details for bigger scenes. 3D Universes's Toon Girl Sadie was one of my first purchases on this site, and I still get plenty of use out of her and Sam as well, despite owning the newer Genesis ones.
Sometimes it's great to dig out all of the older content and just have a big render-off. Hmm... not a bad idea actually.
I've been kitbashing a lot of older models with newer textures and they all look amazing.
One other thing I've noticed about the old stuff is that many of them are simply more visually interesting than some of the current content -- clothing and suits, in particular. Of course, many have poor/low-quality textures by today's standards but just as many are simply amazing.
I use a lot of old content for G3F especially if it comes to hair a lot of old hair does look much as good as the new hair products but are less recource eating. And to new content, some of G2M and G3M clothes fit much better to G3F as some clothes made for G3F, maybe clothes made for G3F should run through the auto fit tool
I'd have to say the Home One stuff: https://www.daz3d.com/home-one-bundle
It comes with so many props and so much of it's poseable/morphable. Always a nice surprise while building a scene...'there's a morph for *that*?! cool!'
https://www.daz3d.com/fashion-studio
This one is still great when you want a behind the scenes type render.
Edit: and I bought it back in 2005.