This is Genevieve as a brunette. Body - Victoria 9. I think she has in this image a bit of a young Monica Bellucci vibe (or so I like to think ) I titled the image "Arabian Days".

Enjoy!

Right now I don't see much reason. Sure you can convert all your stuff to G9 and make it work...but at that point why not just use a G8 figure instead?

The main things I like are the unified mesh and separate eyes and mouth. But these are not exactly revolutionary advances. G9 will need a lot more content to get me truly on board.

The thing I find most baffling is that Daz had a whole month to get this right, and still managed to botch the launch so badly. The slow trickle of content also makes it feel like this was just not planned very well. Where are the freakin morph packs? Converters? After all this hype, it doesn't feel like Daz put their best effort into this. Who is commanding this ship???

You have a chicken and egg situation here. You need G9 to storm out of the gate with a ton of content, otherwise you run a real risk of users being slow to adopt. If users are slow to adopt...that translates to slow sales for the PAs who jump on board. So this can become a serious problem. We need the content that lets users make the most of G9, and we needed that content yesterday.

The worst problem that Genesis 9 has is that Genesis 8 exists. You have an uphill battle to convince users to jump on board. I think Daz needs to be just as aggressive as they were in the early G8 days. Remember those buy this new G8 core and get 2 or 3 others free? The whole world is sliding into recession right now, Daz needs to sweeten the pot by offering a lot more free content with Genesis 9 products.

Also if you suck at lighting or posing people in a believable way, Genesis 9 is not going to make you any better. Most of the changes are pretty minor in scope. Victoria 9 has some nice textures...but that can be done with any model and there are plenty of G8 models that have amazing textures and quality.

The UV layout is weird to me. Did they really have to pull the ears out of the head like that? The body UV has these real skinny strips sticking out at the ends. The male gen mat IMO is pretty wack. You have a triangle with empty space in the middle, with the other parts split in half flanking it. There is no flow on the male gen UV, and you pretty much need a 3D painting app just to make a simple edit on this texture. I don't get how this is better.

AllenArt said:

Chatjd said:

Richard mentioned in the "Mid-way through 2022 a new Sales... Thread that the morph packs are due next week some time:

Richard Haseltine said:

Daz is aware of the morph requirement issue. Unfortunately they cannot release the morph packs today, but they wil be out as early as possible next week we are told.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7784941/#Comment_7784941

Next week???!! Almost may as well be next year...all the shine's worn off already as it is. Next week I'll be on to something else. Sheesh.... 

Daz should change their motto to "Hurry up and wait...". I had to wait for the figure after buying it. Now we're expected to buy all this **** for G9 and can't even really do anything with it until god knows when. Most of the stuff that HAS come out for G9 so far relies on those missing morphs in some way. Way to go Daz. I remember a day when Daz did most everything right - products were correct on release, the company didn't breathe a word of of a figure or software release until everything was ready to go. Wow, how times have changed.

I'll be back if and when the head and body morphs show up...

+1

Gogger said:

YIKES.
I just got an email from DAZ saying they miss me as I haven't been around much, with an incentive to come back:
"Better yet, we have an exclusive offer just for you! Return to Daz today and use this Coupon Code to get an EXTRA $10 OFF* Victoria 9 HD."

I had one of those. The code didn't work. I'm not going to put a ticket into customer service. I can't be bothered. 

colongraphics said:

I purchased Victoria 9 because, with discounts, it came out to only $20.00, and the figure might be useful for some projects later. That said, I have figures and characters from Michael and Victoria 3 all the way to 8.1, and assets for them. I won't be depending on V9 any time soon.

that is one thing..I have Vi,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, 8.1 .. at some point I guess I almost have to have V9.  

colongraphics said:

I purchased Victoria 9 because, with discounts, it came out to only $20.00, and the figure might be useful for some projects later. That said, I have figures and characters from Michael and Victoria 3 all the way to 8.1, and assets for them. I won't be depending on V9 any time soon.

that is one thing..I have Vi,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, 8.1 .. at some point I guess I almost have to have V9.  

plasma_ring said:

Some ZBrush crimes combined with Victoria's asymmetry morphs and Nathy's Fantasy Shaping. You can actually change G9's face a lot with the asymmetry morphs just by dialing them up to a high strength in equal proportions.

The face on the stylized Vicky is mostly her morph at 100%, the feminine face at 100%, and then the masculine morph at something like 20% (at that level it just balances the features out). 

For some reason I was always really nervous about sculpting on G8/8.1 and now I'm just ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

Wow....love these! 

Peter Wade said:

If I remember it rightly I bought head and body morphs and an expression set almost as soon as each generation was released. I would like to have been able to do the same for Genesis 9.

The expression set released with Victoria 9 works just fine on Base Genesis 9. 

rosseliani said:

Peter Wade said:

The earlier Genesis figures all have expressions in a sub-folder under Pose Controls for the head. I've looked there for Victoria 9 and there is a Visemes folder but no Expressions. Have they moved the expressions somewhere else or are they not available yet?

I suppose this means we have to wait for expressions to be sold seperatly. It's a bit annoying having a new figure and no way to control the expression on the face.

24 expression dials for V9 here, I don't know if they work on the base G9: https://www.daz3d.com/emotions-expressions-for-victoria-9

Thank you for showing these to me. They look good even if they are for Vicky 9 only. I am going to buy them. 

Thought I would share my Victoria De Fae v1 ;)

I purchased Victoria 9 because, with discounts, it came out to only $20.00, and the figure might be useful for some projects later. That said, I have figures and characters from Michael and Victoria 3 all the way to 8.1, and assets for them. I won't be depending on V9 any time soon.

Some ZBrush crimes combined with Victoria's asymmetry morphs and Nathy's Fantasy Shaping. You can actually change G9's face a lot with the asymmetry morphs just by dialing them up to a high strength in equal proportions.

The face on the stylized Vicky is mostly her morph at 100%, the feminine face at 100%, and then the masculine morph at something like 20% (at that level it just balances the features out). 

For some reason I was always really nervous about sculpting on G8/8.1 and now I'm just ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

There are a metric ton of dails under Head>Pose Controls that allow you to create just about any expression you could ever want. Also they released an expression set for Victoria 9 which should work just fine for any G9 figure. https://www.daz3d.com/emotions-expressions-for-victoria-9

nightwolf1982 said:

In order for 8K textures to make a difference, you'd have to either be rendering extremely close up or rendering 8K sized images.  I'm pretty sure the human eye can't distinguish 12 pixels vs 24 pixels at one milimeter.

Not to mention, plenty monitors don't even have that density. 1920*1080 is still a pretty common screen resolution. Now, if you render a simple image of Vicky 9, then how many pixels will some bodypart (head, arms, nails) take on that screen? Does that amount somehow compare to the texture size for that bodypart (taking into consideration that not the entire bodypart might be visible)? Meaning, 2k textures are generally enough for most renders, 4k textures are way more than enough, while they're just right for most renders meant for 4k monitors, and 8k textures are overkill. The main use I can see for 8k textures, is for printing. For professional artists, 8k textures will make a huge difference, allowing them to make both better close ups and larger prints. So I see Genesis 9 with its inclination to 8k textures more as a figure for professional artists making advertisements and bookcovers and stuff like that, but overkill for hobbyists. Some vendors here in the Daz Store will probably support 2k and 4k for a while, but I also expect some vendors (and not necessarily the best ones) to totally embrace 8k and not look back.

If anything, I do think Daz should look into splitting the store into a hobbyist and a professional segment, possibly encouraging vendors to make and sell seperate versions of their products for both. Add a link at the top to navigate between the two for those who so wish, but segregate them. This should also allow Daz to create a seperate, more professional looking storefront for corporate business, where they can leave out the older products and flashy advertisements. Professional bussinesses (not necessarily professional artists, that's a totally different group, especially the independent ones) won't be looking for Victoria 4.2 or Genesis 2. They'll want photorealism. No need to bog down their shopping experience with old stuff.
Another problem that Daz can then solve, is pricing: things do get more expensive, and some hobbyists are dropping out now. One product, two version? Well, make the higher quality one a bit more expensive, and the lower quality just slightly cheaper. There are now two seperate customer bases to keep an eye on, and both can be kept happy with a product that suits their requirements, at a pricepoint that better suits their budget.
Different customers expect a different shopping experience, and corporations and hobbyists are the ones furthest apart from eachother in this regard.

rosseliani said:

Peter Wade said:

The earlier Genesis figures all have expressions in a sub-folder under Pose Controls for the head. I've looked there for Victoria 9 and there is a Visemes folder but no Expressions. Have they moved the expressions somewhere else or are they not available yet?

I suppose this means we have to wait for expressions to be sold seperatly. It's a bit annoying having a new figure and no way to control the expression on the face.

24 expression dials for V9 here, I don't know if they work on the base G9: https://www.daz3d.com/emotions-expressions-for-victoria-9

They do work on the base G9, but they are not like the standard expressions that we usually get. They move eyes as well as the face, which I don't really care for. Normally with most new generations, they release an expressions pack, a head morph pack and a body morph pack. We haven't seen those yet and I have NO idea when we will. The base is pretty useless without them, as is most of the stuff in the store for G9 so far. A lot of it relies on those missing morphs. Daz has been totally bass ackwards on this whole release.

Well it is Saturday and still no Victoria 9 bundle in my Product Library and no word from CS

Richard Haseltine said:

benniewoodell said:

Yep, no FAQ ever surfaced. There was a blog post about it, but it just reiterated everything that was on the info page already. 

That was the FAQ, I think - Daz was not necessarily going to answer every question.

Yeah, but they didn't really answer any questions that were out there to be quite honest, which fueled so much speculation. Jay tried to give answers in his tutorials when he could, and a couple of PAs I saw chime in with what they thought they were allowed to talk about, but an actual, official FAQ would have been nice because some questions could have been answered at least. There was so much talk about nipples for the longest time, which would have been the absolute furthest thing I'd had thought would be an issue. That's something that could have been answered to squash so many worries, and I mean so many worries as I don't think I've seen the word nipple so much in my life as I have the past month lol. The 8K maps. I've seen posts all week asking where they were, and we've come to find it's only the normal maps in a second layer or something along those lines, and something with the legs, I haven't really paid attention to the answer because I didn't buy the character as nothing was being answered. That's something to go in a FAQ, what maps exactly are 8K? Folks could have then figured out if their rigs could handle the new generation because there was a lot of worry about that too. This is one of those instances where nothing should have been said about an FAQ if all they were going to do was write a blog post that contained the same information we could have found on the Victoria 9 info page. But, seeing as this whole week has rolled out, I get it. 

Peter Wade said:

The earlier Genesis figures all have expressions in a sub-folder under Pose Controls for the head. I've looked there for Victoria 9 and there is a Visemes folder but no Expressions. Have they moved the expressions somewhere else or are they not available yet?

I suppose this means we have to wait for expressions to be sold seperatly. It's a bit annoying having a new figure and no way to control the expression on the face.

24 expression dials for V9 here, I don't know if they work on the base G9: https://www.daz3d.com/emotions-expressions-for-victoria-9

nwleee_a52bfead84 said:

I'm glad I'm not the only one disappointed with the way Daz rolled out G9.  First of all the Victoria 9 character....two skin choices, freckled and vitiligo?!?!  I will never use vitiligo (and I read a lot of other people won't either), I just don't understand why they didn't offer freckled and just a regular skin texture (with no moles, freckles, blemishes, warts, or big patches of different colored skin).
Also not releasing a morph pack, with body and face morphs is also hard to understand. Instead we get a "starter pack" with a million choices of eyebrows and eyelashes.
As shadowhawk1 said, this release is a train wreck. Poor planning, poor implementation.

I mostly see complaints about botched presale and issues with people not figuring out the difference between the starter essentials, the character essentials, and what comes with them and what comes with the Victoria bundle. Here I agree Daz dropped the proverbial ball, and it has been more or less a textbook example on how not to handle sales. I'm usually not big on the whole demanding apology thing, unless it comes with a monetary compensation, but I'd be happy to join the torches and pitchforks folks if this happened to me. Actually I do believe Daz should come out and apologize to those who preordered in the form of, say, "Sorry, we screwed up your pre-orders. Here's $15. Get yourself character essentials or something nice" voucher.

This doesn't affect me, mind you, since I didn't buy Victoria. Even less preordered her.

It's not because of the skins though. It's just that I don't do a lot of female renders. Yet, I firmly disagree on the skin "issue" and it's mostly the same few people complaining about stuff like that on forums. Still, the forums are hardly a good representative of the situation since people who are unsatisfied tend to be louder here - and I doubt Daz releases any info about how well Victoria sold and/or how many refunds were demanded, and about how many of those were because people didn't like the skin.

The thing is that there are only so many ways to create a skin with "with no moles, freckles, blemishes, warts, or big patches of different colored skin" (as you put it) before they all look the same and for that we have base skins which do perfectly good job on it in my opinion. I mean how many real skins come blemish free anyway? If you check yours, I bet you have at least a few moles if nothing else. I'd rather have interesting and varied characters and skins, and my concern is that because of the few complains Daz and some PAs might get idea that people don't want such skins. I firmly believe that is not the case. Besides I still believe the idea was partially to illustrate highly detailed skin details.

This doesn't affect me currently but I'm fully hoping we get some nice and interesting skins with Michael release, too. Now the way how this is implemented is of course up to debate and I'm not against having unblemished base skins (which we technically already have). As long as I also get something more than just a bland basic skin and a character shape for my money.

YMMV and of course there's always the refund way if you want to protest. It's bound to show Daz your dissatisfaction - or at least the poor (likely overworked) support guy or gal who has to process it manually.

Edit: weird double entry

sberlins said:

ted-berlin said:

Siciliano1969 said:

OK just got Victoria 9 HD bundle - tested everything all there so far and from what I say so far homerun by DAZ!  I love this character!  

Lucky one. So no common solution for everybody. Still not seeing the bundled items as purchased. Ticket is filed since yesterday. Please DAZ give me a happy weekend.

 

It appears they are getting out in dribs and dabs.  Mine finally showed up also. 

 Must be really slow dribs and dabs. But at least i got the freebies some minutes ago in DC. Nothing from the Victoria 9 HD Intro bundle yet .