Yes, I need a list of what's going to be in the 2 products. The Victoria 9 HD product vs the Victoria 9 HD Pro Bundle product is important to know. $30 vs $80 is a very substantial difference in price for what could wind up being an oh so typical bundle of the typical generational Genesis introductory fashion model poses, a couple of hairs that are marginally different or even just reworked refits of old products, one bikini babesque fashion clothing outfit, and one mean mad fighting chick outfit. 

For the giant $50 extra on the Victoria 9 Pro Bundle I would totally expect the typical introductory Genesis 9 Female Head Morphs, Genesis 9 Female Body Morphs, and Genesis 9 Female Expressions to be included in that Victoria 9 HD Pro Bundle. I'm not sure about the HD morph because the Victoria 9 HD product standalone seems to imply HD is standard now.

mogaremolby said:

outrider42 said:

I don't understand why people instantly think G9 is going to crush their PC. And I equally don't understand why people would want to hold back progress for everybody else because they have a potato PC. Especially after it has been mentioned numerous times how easy it is to make this stuff work on a potato PC just in case it doesn't.

If you played video games, a 10 year PC would be even more screwed than it is for Daz. Modern games especially will not even start on a 2GB GPU from 2012. Meanwhile, you can use a CPU to render Iray if you run out of VRAM.

Technology moves forward. But that said, I don't think Genesis 9 is that radical of a leap to be so scared about. Are we really going to cry about a high quality texture? Are we really going to be terrified of a texture which can be reduced in size in less than 2 minutes? It will take less than 2 minutes to resize every Victoria 9 texture. And I am being extremely generous. Most of that time is you locating the folder. You then highlight all the textures. You then right click on your mouse. I am sure most of you know how to right click, right? Then in that menu you select the image resizer. You then select 'custom' and select the exact size you desire. The custom setting also lets you select the quality. You can lower the quality to reduce the image data size even more. You can click on the resizer settings to select whether you want to save new textures or replace the old ones completely. Once this is set, you can click accept. Then in about 10 seconds (and I say 10 only because I assume your PC must be slow), you will have replaced every single texture you had highlighted in Victoria 9's folder.

Does that sound impossible? Is that really so hard? I did this for several years myself when I started with Daz Studio. It was part of my routine. And this is not the only option. Again, it has been pointed out numerous times.

Today I find myself trying to upscale textures more than anything else. Especially environments. I am finding that many Daz environments seem to have very compressed textures. The texture might be 4K, but it is compressed to a ridiculous extreme. It really is getting on my nerves. I try to use AI image upscalers to enhance these poor quality textures. Sometimes it works. Sometimes the AI upscaling looks terrible. The point here is that is WAY WAY easier to downsize textures and compress them than it is to increase their quality. You cannot magically enhance a texture to save it. That is why it is so important to have good quality textures from the start. A good quality texture gives you options, and you can downsize easily if needed. A low quality texture doesn't give you many options.

You can reach a point of diminishing returns. That is true. But I see plenty of room for improvement in a lot of stuff I see. A good example are the ethnic textures that Daz gave us for 8.1 a while back. While this was a nice gesture, the textures themselves have been reduced in quality. As many of you probably know the textures come from past Genesis characters. The African skin is just Monique 7. I compared the original Monique textures to the 8.1 textures Daz gave us and the originals are better. I don't know if the conversion process caused this loss of detail, since Monique was a unique UV all of her textures needed to be converted, not just the "head" torso texture. But more than that, I can see a lot more compression in the new textures. So it appears to me they used a lower quality setting on the JPG when they made them. I really hope the Genesis 9 ethnic textures they are including are not as compressed. I am quite worried they will be.

Cloud gaming solve the issue for gaming on potato PCS. Their no cloud service for Daz3d. https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/what-is-cloud-gaming-explained/

Welp look like I'm eating crow tonight. But it seems like their is somewhat of a solid for Daz3d on potato PCS. And that is render farms. For those who can't afford to upgrade their PC or buy a new one. They can use renderfarms to create their renders. https://radarrender.com/best-render-farms-for-daz-studio-iray-2022/

onimusha said:

G8 was a huge improvement over G7 because it offered the same high level of detail without the massive resource consumption.

G8 was also incredibly useful because artists went insane making content for it and it probably has more content than any figure DAZ has ever produced aside from maybe V4.

G9 is twice the price of any figure DAZ has ever released, has zero content, is untested, and it's highly unlikely to add more value to your workflow unless you're highly skilled and making incredibly true to life renders.

Victoria 9 is $10 more than Victoria 8 (but includes the HD add-on). Genesis 9 is, as usual, free.

G9 looks like a huge skip for at least a year. Seems like it will only be worth getting if the content support for it matches G8, which will probably still be getting even more content for years to come. Even then, I doubt I'll ever use G9 unless an artist makes a piece of content for it that is a must have perfect addition to a render I'm doing.

Frankly, I'm kind of bothered by all the posts that are saying "it looks great I'm going to buy it". This is telling DAZ to create new figures based on how they look and not what value they bring to your workflow.

I can't speak for other people, but if I said that I would mean that the features and demonstrated behaviour "looked" (seemed to be) great, it would not be a simple judgement of the prettiness of one or more images.

Victoria 8.1 Loving Life bundle looks like a good choice, as it includes both make and female anatomical elements (at least as described on the product page). Other 8.1 bundles (like the Bonnie 8.1 Roaring Twenties Bundle) also include the anatomical elements. 

Here is a link that filters the store to the Daz Original bundles. While there are more than just core characters, you can use it to look for one that you like, then check to make sure it has the anatomical elements.

https://www.daz3d.com/people-and-wearables-bundles#index=80&filtered=1

Here is the Bonnie 8.1 What's Included listing as an example of what to look for. The anatomical elements are usually listed at the end of the list:

Sevrin said:

Aabacus said:

Leana said:

G9 being there doesn't mean you have to use it exclusively from now on, your G8 and G8.1 will still work.

I think this point is lost on a lot of people. G8/8.1 isn't going to suddenly stop working.

It's not a matter of being unable to use assets we own.  I still use G3 figures and assets, but I'm not buying more G3 stuff, unless it's very, very deeply discounted.

G9 will be out in a few weeks and it looks interesting and promising and shiny.  G8 will no longer be attracting the best and brightest PAs.  It's a matter of no longer throwing more money at a soon-to-be-deprecated figure, and instead waiting to spend that same money on all the cool things PAs are working on for G9.  

But at the end of the day,  it is not the model that makes the artwork, its the time you put into it.  I have seen MANY good renders of older models still being used today and many artists don't feel like ever upgrading to g8f or g9f til they REALLY think it is necessary. And saying PA's are going to give up on making g8f is just ridiculous.  There are still many vendors on even Renderosity that still make Victoria 4 content, genesis/gen2/gen3, etc.  If vendors know there is STILL a money maker on certain models, they will CONTINUE to make content for that said model. 

butterflyfish said:

johnjohn808 said:

I have not come upon this question, Is this genesis 9 going to work on 4.15? That will be one of the big factors that determine whether I buy or just stay with 8 (I bought but dont use 8.1 stuff).

Everytime I upgrade, something I bought always stop working LOL

Jay said in the live stream that you would need 4.21 for Genesis 9. 

I wonder why that is? The ONLY reason Genesis 8 required a new version of Daz Studio when it released was because of the new PBR Skin shader. This makes me wonder if there is another Iray change that they are sticking on G9.

Meanwhile I can load Genesis 8 and 8.1 in very old versions of Daz Studio. The shaders do not load. And of course a number of plugins that came out after that version do not load. But the figures load perfectly fine otherwise. I cannot imagine anything else besides a shader that would cause G9 to not load. Now that I think about it, did Jay ever show any surface settings during the stream? He showed the UV at one point, but no surface settings.

Also curious if the new Iray has any mention of RTX 4000. Something that is really concerning me is the dead silence from the Iray Dev Blog. They have not posted since August 22. I would expect them to have something posted after the big Lovelace reveal by now. Iray is part of the Omniverse project, right? 

There are some things I am concerned about with G9. We will indeed be starting over for the most part. Victoria 9 has a retail price of $60, which is $15 more than where it has been. Inflation sucks, but that seems a bit much. Daz needs to be careful here as we start to fall into a recession, spending on stuff like Daz is one of the first things I would imagine people do during a recession period.

While I like the unified base, the separate eye and mouth props are nice, and I like that V9 has 8K textures, IMO these aren't really major upgrades though. The textures in particular can be done on ANY model. I can have a 8K texture on Victoria 4 if I want to. Textures are not a new feature on a model. The unified base is cool, but it is not a 'must have' feature in my book. The eye and mouth thing is also appreciated, but I have dealt with it. The skeleton change is cool for those exporting, but doesn't appear to do much for people who are staying inside Daz Studio. Victoria 9 looks nice, but most of what we see is simply down to good artistry of the person(s) who designed her. We have plenty of great models for 8 and 8.1 that have also very realistic skins.

There is always talk about expressions, but that is more of a minor update to me. We have some nice expression morphs for past generations that look good as well. How well they pose kind of remains to be seen.

Realistic proportions? Again, that is simply down to artistry, and is something that can be done today on any model. I am not sure why Daz is acting like this has never been achieved before.

All in all it is just an updated Genesis figure. There is nothing mind blowing about that. When Daz hyped this to the moon, people start to hope for a mesh that genuinely acts like real skin.

What is in the freakin' bundle??? Are they doing the silly gen prop thing like they did before?

outrider42 said:

I don't understand why people instantly think G9 is going to crush their PC. And I equally don't understand why people would want to hold back progress for everybody else because they have a potato PC. Especially after it has been mentioned numerous times how easy it is to make this stuff work on a potato PC just in case it doesn't.

If you played video games, a 10 year PC would be even more screwed than it is for Daz. Modern games especially will not even start on a 2GB GPU from 2012. Meanwhile, you can use a CPU to render Iray if you run out of VRAM.

Technology moves forward. But that said, I don't think Genesis 9 is that radical of a leap to be so scared about. Are we really going to cry about a high quality texture? Are we really going to be terrified of a texture which can be reduced in size in less than 2 minutes? It will take less than 2 minutes to resize every Victoria 9 texture. And I am being extremely generous. Most of that time is you locating the folder. You then highlight all the textures. You then right click on your mouse. I am sure most of you know how to right click, right? Then in that menu you select the image resizer. You then select 'custom' and select the exact size you desire. The custom setting also lets you select the quality. You can lower the quality to reduce the image data size even more. You can click on the resizer settings to select whether you want to save new textures or replace the old ones completely. Once this is set, you can click accept. Then in about 10 seconds (and I say 10 only because I assume your PC must be slow), you will have replaced every single texture you had highlighted in Victoria 9's folder.

Does that sound impossible? Is that really so hard? I did this for several years myself when I started with Daz Studio. It was part of my routine. And this is not the only option. Again, it has been pointed out numerous times.

Today I find myself trying to upscale textures more than anything else. Especially environments. I am finding that many Daz environments seem to have very compressed textures. The texture might be 4K, but it is compressed to a ridiculous extreme. It really is getting on my nerves. I try to use AI image upscalers to enhance these poor quality textures. Sometimes it works. Sometimes the AI upscaling looks terrible. The point here is that is WAY WAY easier to downsize textures and compress them than it is to increase their quality. You cannot magically enhance a texture to save it. That is why it is so important to have good quality textures from the start. A good quality texture gives you options, and you can downsize easily if needed. A low quality texture doesn't give you many options.

You can reach a point of diminishing returns. That is true. But I see plenty of room for improvement in a lot of stuff I see. A good example are the ethnic textures that Daz gave us for 8.1 a while back. While this was a nice gesture, the textures themselves have been reduced in quality. As many of you probably know the textures come from past Genesis characters. The African skin is just Monique 7. I compared the original Monique textures to the 8.1 textures Daz gave us and the originals are better. I don't know if the conversion process caused this loss of detail, since Monique was a unique UV all of her textures needed to be converted, not just the "head" torso texture. But more than that, I can see a lot more compression in the new textures. So it appears to me they used a lower quality setting on the JPG when they made them. I really hope the Genesis 9 ethnic textures they are including are not as compressed. I am quite worried they will be.

Cloud gaming solve the issue for gaming on potato PCS. Their no cloud service for Daz3d. https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/what-is-cloud-gaming-explained/

outrider42 said:

I don't understand why people instantly think G9 is going to crush their PC. And I equally don't understand why people would want to hold back progress for everybody else because they have a potato PC. Especially after it has been mentioned numerous times how easy it is to make this stuff work on a potato PC just in case it doesn't.

If you played video games, a 10 year PC would be even more screwed than it is for Daz. Modern games especially will not even start on a 2GB GPU from 2012. Meanwhile, you can use a CPU to render Iray if you run out of VRAM.

Technology moves forward. But that said, I don't think Genesis 9 is that radical of a leap to be so scared about. Are we really going to cry about a high quality texture? Are we really going to be terrified of a texture which can be reduced in size in less than 2 minutes? It will take less than 2 minutes to resize every Victoria 9 texture. And I am being extremely generous. Most of that time is you locating the folder. You then highlight all the textures. You then right click on your mouse. I am sure most of you know how to right click, right? Then in that menu you select the image resizer. You then select 'custom' and select the exact size you desire. The custom setting also lets you select the quality. You can lower the quality to reduce the image data size even more. You can click on the resizer settings to select whether you want to save new textures or replace the old ones completely. Once this is set, you can click accept. Then in about 10 seconds (and I say 10 only because I assume your PC must be slow), you will have replaced every single texture you had highlighted in Victoria 9's folder.

Does that sound impossible? Is that really so hard? I did this for several years myself when I started with Daz Studio. It was part of my routine. And this is not the only option. Again, it has been pointed out numerous times.

Today I find myself trying to upscale textures more than anything else. Especially environments. I am finding that many Daz environments seem to have very compressed textures. The texture might be 4K, but it is compressed to a ridiculous extreme. It really is getting on my nerves. I try to use AI image upscalers to enhance these poor quality textures. Sometimes it works. Sometimes the AI upscaling looks terrible. The point here is that is WAY WAY easier to downsize textures and compress them than it is to increase their quality. You cannot magically enhance a texture to save it. That is why it is so important to have good quality textures from the start. A good quality texture gives you options, and you can downsize easily if needed. A low quality texture doesn't give you many options.

You can reach a point of diminishing returns. That is true. But I see plenty of room for improvement in a lot of stuff I see. A good example are the ethnic textures that Daz gave us for 8.1 a while back. While this was a nice gesture, the textures themselves have been reduced in quality. As many of you probably know the textures come from past Genesis characters. The African skin is just Monique 7. I compared the original Monique textures to the 8.1 textures Daz gave us and the originals are better. I don't know if the conversion process caused this loss of detail, since Monique was a unique UV all of her textures needed to be converted, not just the "head" torso texture. But more than that, I can see a lot more compression in the new textures. So it appears to me they used a lower quality setting on the JPG when they made them. I really hope the Genesis 9 ethnic textures they are including are not as compressed. I am quite worried they will be.

I don't think it a good idea to compare Daz3d to video games when it comes to potato PC's. Thanks to cloud gaming services such as GeForce Now,Shadow cloud gaming,Vortex,Which allows people to play steam games,by streaming with cloud service as long as their stable internet connection. You can the latest games. Even on a PC from a early 2000. That not adding Xbox gamepass Google stadia, Playstation now,etc.... Hell not just PC phones to. Two days ago I was playing CyberPunk 2077 using the geoforce now app on my OneNote plus 7 phone. Their really no cloud service for Daz3d. Their really no alternative for Daz3d user other getting a better PC if they don't have the money to upgrade.

Artini said:

nonesuch00 said:

I'm looking forward to this Victoria 9 & company. The expressions are so extremely improved and the way fat looks too.

Yes, I am looking forward to Victoria 9 and Genesis 9 items, too.

I like expressions a lot, especially animated.

It is a pity, that Daz is not willing to reveal a details of the V9 bundle.

I also wonder, how and if Victoria 9 will transfer to Unity using Daz to Unity bridge.

Anyhow, great work on this new generation of the figures - well done.

 

You mean unreal engine? Daz3d figures since G2 have always work will with unity even without A bridge. True you had to put some work in to fix it. But their were tiny problem. And usually take a minute or two to fix baby less. but unreal engine was a complete nightmare to bring a Genesis figure into unreal. Even with the Unreal bridge it still a pain.

AllenArt said:

Tynkere said

To topic:  I've asked this at V9 topic itself.  Either no one knows, or maybe I didn't phrase question very well.  No answers yet, so one last try since two topics and Richard seems to be doing his best to close multi-topics!

Have cast of characters.  One of them is V8 based, now converted to G8.1 -- take advantage of facial expressions, etc.

Save custum G8.1F as "properties."  Would preset load onto V9?  (zero V9 body, head, etc.) take advantage of mesh, bones, etc., while keeping appearance and shape of reoccuring character.

Otherwise I'm stuck at G3, G8 and G8.1.   Verdict might still be out if I'm more into story telling with renders.  : )

 

No, it would not work unless/until someone like Riversoft or Zevo made a character converter (if it's even possible, and at this point, I have no idea if it is).

OK.  Thanks.  Explains lack of replies.   Either no one knows or many peoples' questions get overlooked in the shuffle!

Back to normal programming.  "Does anyone know if store will have dForce dung pile for DAZ Horse version 9.  Also, can Victoria 9 be made to look like the Hivewire horse?"  

--Kind regards

Bruce

 

I am not inclined to preorder the bundle without knowing what is in it. But if I preorder Victoria 9 HD and then when the bundle comes out decide I want it, can I cancel my preorder for V9 and receive a refund?

Are we going to get updates finally on certain scripts and assets to use for gen 9, like skin builder, certain grafts, character conversions from g8f to g9f, etc?  Cause I would HATE to lose all the money I spent on all the g8f characters etc.  Grafts and scripts I know will have to be new and morphs, but I would love to be able to reuse my g8f characters again on g9f.  If anyone knows if certain updated scripts are coming, would be great.

Diomede said:

Is the following correct based on what I am reading above?

One could 

1) Model clothing mesh for targeted gender (base male 9 or female 9).

2) Adjust the mesh and save separately for (a) the default unigender 9, and for (b) the other gender (base male 9 or base female 9)

3) Rig clothing mesh once for the targeted gender in transfer utility, and use 'reverse deformation' or similar to get to default uni-gender rigging based on targeted gender mesh.

4) Substitute your adjusted uni-gender 9 mesh obj from (step 2) for the mesh attached to transfer utility rigging of uni-gender 9 outcomes in (step 3), just like it was a character full body morph.

5) Treat the non-target-gender 9 base (male or female) like it was a supported character full body morph and substitute its adjusted obj from step 2.

6) Adjust weightmaps for all 3 base versions (female 9, male 9, and unigender 9).

7) Repeat obj substitutions and rigging adjustments for other full body morph supported characters like Victoria 9, Michael 9, Aiko 9, Brute 9,...

Seems like a lot of extra work for the PAs, but cross-gender use should be a lot easier.  Or maybe I am wrong and it could be even easier than that?  Or maybe I am wrong and it could be a lot harder than that?  Still a little confused, but I think I see a work flow. 

I hope that more information is forthcoming and would appreciate thoughts on a workflow.

Sounds right to me. 

In regards to workflow some of that will depend on what type of item you're making. If it's obviously feminine clothing you might only ensure that it works with the male base as you wouldn't expect it to be used with male characters unless there are characters who would identify as feminine. Then you might include them.

Initially there won't be a lot of characters so you'll most likely be looking at ensuring it works with the base, the female base and the male base plus whichever figures you prefer to include.

When asking about which core figures need to be included in genesis 8 I was told it was up to the person creating the outfit.

There are too many core figures to do them all and not everyone will own them all unless they get provided to the vendor by Daz. Hivewire would provide the base character to vendors who were trying to make stuff but they were in a different situation to Daz. I don't know what the vendors here are provided with or at what cost.

Once the morphs are released you would want to create custom morphs for any that needed to be done. You would have to test eache morph to see if it required a custom morph.

I'm trying to work out my own workflow for creating at the moment. 

Esha's series of tutorials can be very useful I have her rigging one. Which I've find helpful and I also have Arki's one for complex garments using dforce.

Congratulations on victoria 9 she looks amazing,

Genesis9 kind of reminds me of genesis 1 with the cross gender morphing which l love genesis for that cross beasty morphing without changing character sets.   Perhaps Rawart will make some great characters for genesis9

 But alias I have enough 3d content and so many different versions of studio and victoria's to last me the rest of my life.  so I'll wait a few years and get victoria 9 when she a freebie.

3DRT said:

ragamuffin57 said:

Flameburst said:

Paintbox said:

Flameburst said:

3DRT said:

Curious to know what everyone thinks of Genesis 9 vs Metahuman in terms of realism. Personally I prefer the skin and hair of Metahuman but the geometry of G9 looks better (at a cursory glance at least). I really hope we get some improvements to the base skin shader in DAZ. 8K textures is nice but all the pores in the world won't fix plastic-looking skin. 

I personally prefer daz in terms of shader work etc. You can't really compare a real time render engine with a off line render engine like Iray. Iray is slower and can calculate better results. The thing with some of daz model is that they try to make the faces too perfect sometimes and steer away from symmetry which causes a drop in believeability and realism but lately their stuff is looking better and better

As someone who has spent a lot of time in the realism thread, Victoria 9 still falls in the either the waxy/plastic look typical of Daz Renders. The SSS is not as advanced as other human solutions out there (check out the realism thread for more references and in-depth talk)

So while the geometry and skin itself is really good what Jay showed, the render still lags behind on the hidden elephant in the room which is uncanny skin rendering where something is "off"

Yes true.

If you zoom into V9's skin in the promo renders, the sss looks off because it looks like the bump maps are too strong  or the SSS is not strong enough. It does look scratchy and plasticy. What I meant was that Iray would be a better render engine than Unreal 5 because it's not realtime. So being an offline render engine it gets better results, anti aliasing and smoothing whereas the SSS does need more work. Be nice to get results closer to Arnold render engine where its uses a "random walk" method to calculate realistic distribiution of light through the skin

Agreed yes I was also disappointed and have been for a while a company whose main sales are humanoid figures I would have thought they would be ahead of the game in trying to get the best in the realms of realism. not everyone wants realism I know. But if you are up there with realistic rendering capabilities then other non-realistic renders would be a doddle to achieve but unfortunately, Daz lag sorely behind other applications. Perhaps Daz 5 if it ever arrives might bring a few more bells and whistles to achieve better realism.

G9, while definitely a step-up from its predecessor, is still firmly in the lifelike mannequin territory. There's only really so far you can do so much by adding more texture detail before hitting diminishing returns when it comes to realism. I think there's more to be gained by concentrating on more realistic eyes and skin shaders, which are typically the first dead giveway. All that said, hyper-realism is not for for everyone and the only way to truly achieve it is probably with some sort of AI post-processor that takes a 3D face and replaces it with a "real" face. 

Absolutely, actually I think when it comes to realism, there is more to gain in the shader territory then the taking the mapping detail to 11, which we could already do in 8.1

Honestly questioning why they didn't go that route honestly.

AllenArt said:

Tobias said:

AllenArt said:

Tobias said:

So this reminds me of the time when Scott 6 came out after Victoria 7.  Does this mean that Michael 9 won't be out until spring or summer?

The armor looks a bit impractical for stealth, not to mention the danger of impaling yourself on one of those spikes.  I wonder what the outfit looks like without the armor.

I do like the character and the hair.

I am tempted to get the Stealth bundle.  First time I've considered purchasing a bundle in a while.

Maybe. Cause, who gives a crap about males, right? Daz doesn't much ;)

 

 

Very true.  Someday, I half expect an announcement that Daz will no longer be making any male base characters at all. 

And, unfortunately, the majority of the user base doesn't give a crap about males either.

If that ever happens then I can definitely start saving my money. ;).

Why woudl daz go to the trouble of making the Genssi 9 base an intergender shape if they did not intended to support male characters? Why would they commission or buy out products for the male bundles? In any event, this is not being rleased after Genesis 9 - just after we learnt it was coming.

ragamuffin57 said:

Flameburst said:

Paintbox said:

Flameburst said:

3DRT said:

Curious to know what everyone thinks of Genesis 9 vs Metahuman in terms of realism. Personally I prefer the skin and hair of Metahuman but the geometry of G9 looks better (at a cursory glance at least). I really hope we get some improvements to the base skin shader in DAZ. 8K textures is nice but all the pores in the world won't fix plastic-looking skin. 

I personally prefer daz in terms of shader work etc. You can't really compare a real time render engine with a off line render engine like Iray. Iray is slower and can calculate better results. The thing with some of daz model is that they try to make the faces too perfect sometimes and steer away from symmetry which causes a drop in believeability and realism but lately their stuff is looking better and better

As someone who has spent a lot of time in the realism thread, Victoria 9 still falls in the either the waxy/plastic look typical of Daz Renders. The SSS is not as advanced as other human solutions out there (check out the realism thread for more references and in-depth talk)

So while the geometry and skin itself is really good what Jay showed, the render still lags behind on the hidden elephant in the room which is uncanny skin rendering where something is "off"

Yes true.

If you zoom into V9's skin in the promo renders, the sss looks off because it looks like the bump maps are too strong  or the SSS is not strong enough. It does look scratchy and plasticy. What I meant was that Iray would be a better render engine than Unreal 5 because it's not realtime. So being an offline render engine it gets better results, anti aliasing and smoothing whereas the SSS does need more work. Be nice to get results closer to Arnold render engine where its uses a "random walk" method to calculate realistic distribiution of light through the skin

Agreed yes I was also disappointed and have been for a while a company whose main sales are humanoid figures I would have thought they would be ahead of the game in trying to get the best in the realms of realism. not everyone wants realism I know. But if you are up there with realistic rendering capabilities then other non-realistic renders would be a doddle to achieve but unfortunately, Daz lag sorely behind other applications. Perhaps Daz 5 if it ever arrives might bring a few more bells and whistles to achieve better realism.

G9, while definitely a step-up from its predecessor, is still firmly in the lifelike mannequin territory. There's only really so far you can do so much by adding more texture detail before hitting diminishing returns when it comes to realism. I think there's more to be gained by concentrating on more realistic eyes and skin shaders, which are typically the first dead giveway. All that said, hyper-realism is not for for everyone and the only way to truly achieve it is probably with some sort of AI post-processor that takes a 3D face and replaces it with a "real" face. 

Moved to the Commons as it is not a Daz Studio topic, and closed as there is alrady an official thread on Genesis 9/Victoria 9 https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/591351/genesis-9-coming-soon-preorder-victoria-9-hd-today#latest

Charlie Judge said:

I am not inclined to preorder the bundle without knowing what is in it. But if I preorder Victoria 9 HD and then when the bundle comes out decide I want it, can I cancel my preorder for V9 and receive a refund?

Agreed. I got V9 HD only because I like her look. Don't care about missing out on the bundle, since I usually don't care for the ones that come with most of the Victoria's. I might eventually pick it up much later, at a steep discount.

I am not inclined to preorder the bundle without knowing what is in it. But if I preorder Victoria 9 HD and then when the bundle comes out decide I want it, can I cancel my preorder for V9 and receive a refund?