I can't check at the moment but it may be the way they are implemented - Diffuse overlay vs on the map, or you may be using painted Diffuse Overlay brows on Stephanie and mesh brows on Victoria 8

Stephanie 8 does not show her (MDL) eyebrows in 'Texture Shaded' work env. but most other figures do

Hi all would be great if you could help me with this one, can't find an answer in the forum or anywhere else.

I had an entire forum question prepared why my Stephanie 8 does not show her eyebrows even when I click on her a dedicated "MDL Eyebrows ON" tile while e.g. Victoria 8 never has this problem, but then I found out that Stephanie 8 does show the eyebrows from her own Smart Content tiles but you just can't see them in the 'Texture Shaded' work environment, but as soon as you switch to 'Filament (PBR)' or 'NVIDIA Iray' you can actually see them. Victoria 8's eyebrows show just fine in the 'Texture Shaded' work environment even when I put them on Stephanie 8's face (which I did as a workaround thinking the eyebrows were really absent on Stephanie 8).

Is there a way to show Stephanie 8's own eyebrows in the  'Texture Shaded' work environment and why doesn't Victoria 8 eyebrows (and many other figures) have the same 'visibilty' problem in the 'Texture Shaded' work environment?

Different issue, somewhat related, part from my initially prepared forum question:
"I know that expert users often do not have much use for standard eyebrows, but beginners like me are befuddled why anyone at DAZ corp. thought that making browless figures default was a good idea; I so wish there was a global setting to get rid of all that browless craziness until I am ready to do my own artsy eyebrows customization etc."

Is there such a setting? 

Thx!

How do you load a Victoria 4 base in Daz?  I don't understand anything Victoria as it seems the installation gives "runtime" files but nothing in figures...  The instructions say it should be in "daz people", but install has no such folder...  I have the Victoria 4 starter Bundle and it has the folders:  Geometries, libraries, support, textures and weblinks.

JasonSWrench said:

I think part of the problem is the target market for DAZ seems to have changed on their end. At one point, they really were targeting hobbyists and people wanting to get into 3D art. Overtime, this model seems to have shifted. I don’t know many hobbiests who could keep up purchasing at these prices. I used to wake up in the middle of the night to see what was new (and more often than not buy something). I have 16,600+ pieces in my install manager. Honestly, I have enough content to play with till the cows come home (hell, I have a DAZ cow). But I’ve watched as my buying power at DAZ has dwindled. The prices have gone up and amount of content one gets has simply dwindled. I used to flock to the new pro releases. Now, I rarely purchase a new DAZ figure because they’re outlandishly priced with hardly any supporting content. DAZ also does not seem to appreciate its customers any more. Maybe I was just lucky to start DAZ when I did, but they’ve changed, and not for the better, in the last few years. I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

Great post!

So true.

JasonSWrench said:

I think part of the problem is the target market for DAZ seems to have changed on their end. At one point, they really were targeting hobbyists and people wanting to get into 3D art. Overtime, this model seems to have shifted. I don’t know many hobbiests who could keep up purchasing at these prices. I used to wake up in the middle of the night to see what was new (and more often than not buy something). I have 16,600+ pieces in my install manager. Honestly, I have enough content to play with till the cows come home (hell, I have a DAZ cow). But I’ve watched as my buying power at DAZ has dwindled. The prices have gone up and amount of content one gets has simply dwindled. I used to flock to the new pro releases. Now, I rarely purchase a new DAZ figure because they’re outlandishly priced with hardly any supporting content. DAZ also does not seem to appreciate its customers any more. Maybe I was just lucky to start DAZ when I did, but they’ve changed, and not for the better, in the last few years. I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

...agreed.  

I've been here long enough to remember 99¢ PC items, straightforward sales without a bunch of gimmicks or hoops to jump through, and vouchers for having a gallery submission accepted, as well as for those in the PC (that didn't have a minimum purchase limit). I remember when March Madness was the biggest sale event of the year next to the PA sale in fall. Today both are pretty much  "ho hum" and even the PC (or Daz+) sales have been losing their lustre (last year's PC+ sale frequently required buying themed bundles as the key to unlock additional savings and specials).  I can understand the effects of inflation on prices, like PC items going up in price from .99¢ over time (though adjusted for inflation alone, a 99¢ item in 2007 would be about 1.35$ today instead of 4.99$).  All this branching into other realms like Avatars, NFTs, merchandising, and Enterprise licensing  has been leaving the original core of community behind more and more. 

Hobbyists don't usually make much if anything off their work and a good many of us are on limited incomes as well and feel we are being feeling priced out of the hobby with some of the moves and changes that have occurred over the years.

JasonSWrench said:

Rod Wise Driggo said:

JasonSWrench said:

I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

Those have been the days. Unfortunately I stored my 3D printed Vicky in a box with other stuff so that her hands came off. Need to fix that with some plastic glue someday ;-)

 

Rod: My Vicki only lost one hand. Thankfully, glue worked just fine. She’s still sitting on a shelf in my living room.

J

Mine has been in the wars too, lost both hands at various times and is currently awaiting futher surgery to reattach the right hand :(

Rod Wise Driggo said:

JasonSWrench said:

I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

Those have been the days. Unfortunately I stored my 3D printed Vicky in a box with other stuff so that her hands came off. Need to fix that with some plastic glue someday ;-)

 

Rod: My Vicki only lost one hand. Thankfully, glue worked just fine. She’s still sitting on a shelf in my living room.

J

JasonSWrench said:

I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

Those have been the days. Unfortunately I stored my 3D printed Vicky in a box with other stuff so that her hands came off. Need to fix that with some plastic glue someday ;-)

There are a few exceptions - the old Anne Marie Goddard Digitial Clone for Victoria 3 and cotnent from Flipped Normals come to mind, they should all have a note on the product page - but generally your 2D renders of 3D content are yours to use as you wish, including for commercial purposes.

I think part of the problem is the target market for DAZ seems to have changed on their end. At one point, they really were targeting hobbyists and people wanting to get into 3D art. Overtime, this model seems to have shifted. I don’t know many hobbiests who could keep up purchasing at these prices. I used to wake up in the middle of the night to see what was new (and more often than not buy something). I have 16,600+ pieces in my install manager. Honestly, I have enough content to play with till the cows come home (hell, I have a DAZ cow). But I’ve watched as my buying power at DAZ has dwindled. The prices have gone up and amount of content one gets has simply dwindled. I used to flock to the new pro releases. Now, I rarely purchase a new DAZ figure because they’re outlandishly priced with hardly any supporting content. DAZ also does not seem to appreciate its customers any more. Maybe I was just lucky to start DAZ when I did, but they’ve changed, and not for the better, in the last few years. I will miss the company that sent me a free 3D printed Victoria in the mail for being a good customer. I can’t imagine this new DAZ doing something like that. 

@Miss_Yami I was going to suggest starting with Margot for Victoria 8's head morph and using Zelara 8's skin because it has the same skin and lip colouring. You'll have to dial with your morph packs from there. Caprice Hair or Claudia Hair might morph into something similar to the photos. (Claudia will have to be set at -100 for X Scale in order to flip the part to the opposite side).

I am looking for a high quality PBR skin, like Victoria 8.1 quality, with a large mole on top of the breast. This story involves no nudity so this mole should be visible with a low cut dress. Agma comes close to what I am looking for, if only the skin was of Victoria 8.1 quality.

https://www.daz3d.com/agma-hd-for-genesis-8-and-81-female

But it's not clear from your answer if...

...if it's intentional?

.. it's a bug / mistake by the developers?

.. I made something wrong?

The promo page for Victoria 8.1 says "Enhanced Power Pose Panel for Face". Quote from: https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-1#facial

But from what I see, this is everything but enhanced. Power Pose is totally unusable for Genesis 8.1

What's going on?

Thanks!

Looks like this one: https://www.renderosity.com/rr/mod/bcs/dforce-school-uniform-for-victoria-8/129387

The terms are, unfortunately, used somewhat losely.

A morph is a ne shape, created by direct manipulation of the mesh and stored as the differences between the base shape and the morphed shape (the deltas). Morphs have their own "channels", slots in the figure or node specification which have the name, label, links to other properties and - for a morph - the deltas.

An Inj is, proeprly, a pose to load deltas and other properties into an existing channel. It may either do so to provide the morph data for user-configuration (e.g. the Victoria 4 morph sets) or to lod oen or morph morphs and set their values (character Inj poses). An Inj pose cannot actually create a new channel, however, so adding new morph sets to existing figures used to require (mutually incopatible) new figure loaders. However, not every Inj pose is in fact injecting anything - the label was applied to poses that simply set existing property values, and was also used for figures that do not use an injection system at all

Not mentioned in your post, but the fourth generation Daz figures introuduced the ExP (Extensible Property) system which allowed a new morph pack to add itself to a collection of files that was read on loading the figure, and those could create new channels for new morph sets into which morphs could be injected. Daz Studio can use PowerLoader to handle these figures, which both reads in the channel set up and loads the morphs ready for use.

The Genesis figures have a super-exP system - no need for configuration files, they scan a specified sub-folder in the Data folder and load the channels for all properties found there, then load the deltas when the proeprty gets a non-zero value. Unfortunately as figures get more and more properties there is a notable slow-down and loading and, to an extent, using the figure - an issue that has becoem very apparent with Genesis 8 Female in particular. Whethere Daz Studio 5 and/or Genesis 9 will find a way to refine the process further to adderss this issue while retaining the desired flexibility remains to be seen.

A preset is just a file for aplying certain values. A shaping preset aplies values to shaping properties.

--------------------

GenX will get you to Genesis 3 - sadly its author died and so it was never updated for Genesis 8, nor is it likely to be updated for Daz Studio 5. XTransfer can handle the last step, however https://www.daz3d.com/xtransfer--genesis-3-to-genesis-8-converter

Amazingly this worked, just the thumb bones are sticking out. When you open the jaws, the skeleton's teeth still are "glued together" and stretch like rubber. Do a geometry edit (ALT+SHIFT+G), look under Surfaces in Tool Settings and hide / delete the "lower teeth" and "upper teeth" polygons. The G8 head got working teeth already.

Thanks for your post, I wasted already 2 days on figuring this out! A shame the author of this fine kit doesn't update it to G8! The inner organs (apart from the breast, which needs some mesh editing) already work fine.

1. Add V4 Skeleton, G1 and G8 to the scene.
2. Autofit V4 Skeleton to Genesis.
Figure Design dropdown: Victoria 4 
Item Type: None
3. Autofit V4 Skeleton to Genesis 8.
Figure Design dropdown: Genesis
Item Type: None or Full body, doesn't seem to matter.

For the last few months, I have become pretty good and mixing and matching textures across different products, and also in using the 'Shader' packs. It's nice. Very nice. Being able to take any cloth and make it work with any other Shader. Gives me endless variety. 
I even end up using these large collection of Iray Shaders on Hair, and get unique effects. It works beautifully. 
Now, I am thinking, is there a way to change the Skin Appearance, in a similar fashion? Like, take the Skin from one figure and apply to another figure? Or, are there 'Skin Packs', like how we have a 'Shader Packs'? 
For example, I would love to take the Skin Texture of Rosa Maria and apply it to, say, Ana Lucia. Or, Ana Lucia skin to Victoria. That would awesome. 

kj_54e8eded70 said:

I've been a devoted Daz user and customer for over 15 years, and don't expect that will change - but it's slowing down like their Iray renderer - and that's the main reason.
Daz has a real penchant for fixing things that aren't broken. I don't know what was wrong with the original Genesis figure, and now they're up to Genesis 8 with very limited backward compatibility - and there is almost no support or new products for Genesis 2 or earlier (though a lot of people still seem to like Victoria 4, cumbersome and limited as she seems now).
And that's part of the problem.
The other thing is Iray. Was this really an improvement over 3Delight? It certainly takes longer (I have a fairly powerful machine, and an Iray render can take hours - if it renders at all). I understood nearly all of the 3Delight settings, but the Iray ones are incomprehensible to anybody but a professional Hollywood lighting director. And the biggest frustration is there are certain props and figures (mainly hair) that I cannot use at all in 3Delight!
Here is an example: This is a prop (the Mobile Home) with Iray textures and settings. The scene has a photo backdrop (see unrendered scene). Yet, observe what happens when I attempt to render the scene! I tried playing with the "Cutout opacity"( How is that different from just plain "opacity"?), but I could not get the background to show.  Even when I hid windows in the Scene window.
The only workaround I can think of is to render the scene twice, once with and once without the building, the FIIP it. 
It would be nice not to have to do that, however. Is there any way to change the textures? Reduce their resolution? Most of my renders wind up as the basis of cartoons anyway, so detail is not that much of a concern.
On the positive side, I like the slight reflection in the glass - something I've never achieved successfully with 3Delight.

Was the backdrop on a bit of geometry - e.g. a skydome? Iray doesn't - in Photoreal mode - have an  option to turn off shadow casting the way 3Delight does. Another possibility to check is the Thin Walled setting for the glass in the Surfaces pane.

Cutout Opacity is intended fro just that - making a cutout on a surface. it isn't intended for making items present but see-through, the expectation is that other properties (translucence) will be used for that.

I don't know what was wrong with the original Genesis figure

The unified base figure, while great in theory, made creating content for Genesis very complex. 

there is almost no support or new products for Genesis 2 or earlier

That's always the case after a while when a new figure is released: most customers have moved to the new figure and don't buy content for previous figures anymore, so product for them don't sell much anymore, so vendors stop making new ones because they need to make products which actually bring them money and enable them to pay for their rent and food.

There are converters which enable you to use content made for newer figures on the older ones though.

(though a lot of people still seem to like Victoria 4, cumbersome and limited as she seems now).

Victoria 4 is the last figure natively compatible with Poser that Daz released, and for a long time there wasn't any real alternative for Poser users, so they kept using her and buying new content created for her.

Morphia was Capsces' morphs for the Base V4, basically the counterpart of Morphus as Victoria and Michael are seen as counterparts. 

For the Generations the extra characters morphs were made there was 

Boris (M2) and Roxanne (V2)

Brom (M3) and Rayne(V3) 

Morphus (M4) and Morphia (V4)

Though there were also a few more during the Generation 3 Days

Boopsie (The Girl), Kioki (Aiko 3), Hitoro (Hiro) Chublies (Millenium Baby 3)

And then there were sets for the Poser extra figures like Terai Yuki 2, Miki 2, Mavka, Kiki, Krystal, Ichiro, Kit, Sadie, etc

As to why they were pulled I believe a lot of the Morph sets ended up being bought out by Daz and subsequently Vaulted as their base figure got too old, or were removed after the base figure was vaulted. (After all it doesn't make a lot of sense keeping, as an example, Rayne on sale if Daz no longer sells Victoria 3)