It's not a bad idea to wait for the next sale, if you're not sure what you want/need. That having been said, if you pick up the things mentioned below I think you won't regret it (as long as you decide to stick with this hobby, that is).

Given that your primary goal is character creation, if you want to take advantage of today's sales and have money to burn, I'd recommend picking up Michael 5, Victoria 5 (and/or Stephanie 5), and the Genesis Evolutions morphs. There are some larger bundles that contain these items and would give you a better value, such as this:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/daz-bundles/genesis-michael-victoria-combo-bundle
or some combination of the Michael 5 Pro Suite http://www.daz3d.com/shop/daz-bundles/michael-5-pro-suite and the Victoria 5 Starter or Pro Bundle and/or the Stephanie 5 Starter or Pro Bundle.

Basically, if you're going to buy just one item, I'd go with the Michael Victoria Combo Bundle; if you're going to get two, get the M5 Pro Suite and either Victoria 5 or Stephanie 5 (or better yet, one of their starter or pro bundles). The Michael 5 clothing and hair tends to look good on women, too, which is why I emphasize that.

Note that this all assumes that you want to primarily use Genesis...if you prefer older figures like Victoria 4 and Michael 4 (and note that many people do), then you'd have a very different shopping list.

Also worth considering is the Photorealism Bundle: http://www.daz3d.com/shop/photo-realism-bundle (in addition to the above). The Photo Realism bundle was made for Victoria 4 and Michael 4, but the skins and hair can be used with Genesis as well and it's a great value...

If you're going to be spending more than about $20 today, you should seriously consider purchasing a monthly Platinum Club membership, as others have recommended. If you're planning to spend more than $70 or so, adding a PC membership will actually make the entire purchase cheaper. Also keep in mind that if you spend $50 you get Joanie for S5 free: http://www.daz3d.com/shop/stephanie-5-elite-texture-joanie/ (don't forget to add it to your cart). Joanie requires Stephanie 5, but go ahead and pick her up even if you're not buying S5 today...in case you wind up getting S5 in the future.

If you decide not to make a purchase today (or even if you do...) definitely pick up this free morph set which you can use to make customized Genesis characters: http://www.sharecg.com/v/58198/gallery/21/DAZ-Studio/DieTryings-182-V4-Morphs-for-Genesis

With Poser Pro 2012 (SR-3.1) running under Windows 8 Pro, any Genesis figure imported using the DSON Importer (1.0.0.27) causes Poser Pro 2012 to crash while trying to pose the figure.

After importing a Genesis figure and using dials to pose the figure, Poser Pro 2012 crashes after manipulating several dials.

This behavior does NOT occur with non-Genesis figures like Michael 4 in a scene alone. If an imported Genesis figure is in a scene with a non-Genesis figure, manipulating the dials on either figure causes Poser Pro 2012 to crash after moving several body parts.

Has anyone else noticed this?

The sales are almost over, but as uaual there are awesome last minute deals:

All Daz Originals, including Carrara and its plugins are at 70% off:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/daz-originals?compat_software=30&limit=30
Carrara 8 Pro is 69% off, almost 70% :)
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/carrara-8-pro

50% off Age of Armour store
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/age-of-armour
Some free addons for some store items:
http://www.ageofarmour.com/3d/free/index.php

Skies of Economy by DimensionTheory is on 33% intro sale:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/skies-of-economy

Not Carrara specific, but content for Carrara/DazStudio/Poser:
The most bang for the buck are the Pro Suites, that are 70% off:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/catalogsearch/result/?q=pro+suite&x=0&y=0
Examples:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/victoria-5-pro-suite
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/michael-5-pro-suite
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/michael-4-3d-model-pro-suite
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/victoria-4-3d-model-pro-suite
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/stephanie-5-pro-bundle

Also, if you purchase items over 30$, get a free item from:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/sales-promotions/november-freebies/

Also, if you purchase items over 50$, get the free item from:
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/stephanie-5-elite-texture-joanie/

Do not forget the 30% coupon you should have in your email inbox/spambox!

dyret said:

Is there a way to make a prop or hair item into a figure wich conforms to Genesis?

NO YOU MAY NOT! I forbid you to do it! You absolutely MUST NOT! :P :P

But have fun doing it anyway :)

What you might try doing is go to r.com or wherever, download clothing and translate it to Genesis. You'll need Victoria 4 shape for Genesis or Michael 4 shape for Genesis depending on the clothing you're converting. I found doing this helps one understand how conforming anything works with Genesis

I'd like to start a discussion on the measurments of Genesis, V5, M5, S5 and all other default characters that people have, just to make sure I'm seeing what everyone else is.

How I measure:
1. Create: Primitive: Cylinder
2. In the Create Primitive Dialog box, Select dimensions in inches and set the height to 1, hit accept
3. select the cylinder, in Parameters, hit the gear button and deselect PERCENT in the dialog.
4. Set the Y scale value of the cylinder to 72 (six feet) and adjust it till you can just see it over the crown of your figure's head. The value of Y at that point is your figure's height in inches. You can also do this in Centimeters should you choose.

Here are my results:
Default Genesis Figure (Male, Female, Neuter) 5'10.5"
Victoria 5: 5'7"
Victoria 5 Supermodel: 5'10"
Michael 5: 6'3"
Michael 5 Heroic: 6'6"
Stephanie 5: 5'2" (plus, actually...)
Stephanie 5 Model Body: 5'6"
Stephanie 5 Curvy Body: 5'2" (same as S5 Default)

Victoria 4 and Stephanie 4 do not change the height of the default Genesis figure. I do not have Michael 4.

So I took the plunge and bought Carrara Pro during Black November.
Carrara 8 had integration for DAZ figures, but 8.5 of course lifts this to new levels with the integration of Genesis.
When you purchase Carrara Pro, you get tons of packages for download with lots of Victoria 4 and Michael 4 Carrara renderers and figures.
My question is now which of these are relevant to 8, but no longer to 8.5? I don't want to install something that might end up crashing my setup. Is it safe to install everything even if I plan to use 8.5 onwards?

Thanks in advance, J

I am having some issues loading Nye Hair in Poser 9 on Michael 4. When I load the hair, and even after the adjustments for M4, the hair loads at the base of his neck.

Any suggestions? :)

Clothes for the fourth generation figures (Michael 4, Victoria 4 and Kids 4) should work with AutoFit immediately - though things like robes tend to give mixed results, especially around the feet. You could make your own clone shapes for other figures, but that's the only way to get them without buying the ... Shape for Genesis.

Hi all,

I was wondering if anybody knows of anywhere where I can get a pilgrims outfit that would fit Michael 4 and also an outfit that would fit Victoria 4.2.

I highly appreciate all the help

Thank You

Hi Richard

Thanks for getting back to me.
I forgot to mention above that I am running OSX 10.8.2.
There are a few Morph folder, however the on I think I'm looking for is:
Documents/DAZ 3D/Studio/My Library/data/DAZ 3D/Genesis/Base/Morphs. Within the Morphs folder are three other folders which are:
DAZ 3D/base
Evolution
Michael 4
Victoria

I can guarantee no changes have been made to any of he folders, so as you can imagine I am confused as to why the content was there a week ago but not now.

I hope this helps Richard and look forward to you suggestions.

Thanks again
Mark

adacey said:

2nd pull (hopefully will go faster than the 1st)

Breaking the house - LA vol.6
Genesis Creature Creator Bundle
Michael 4 Base
Gothic Nights

Hmm, not too bad of a pull, M4 is a bit annoying since most of my content is Genesis, and having MFD stuff twice in a row is a bit rough, such is life.

Tag:adacey#2 "Not every princess gets rescued"

Okay, this one ended up being brutal. Breaking the house has an ivy prop that looks really nice but just crippled my machine for rendering, had to drop it to get it to render in time.

Other products used (think this is all of them):

Breaking the wall
Lord of Battles
Slicer
Hybrid Grunge Shaders
M4 and V4 skeletons
Raw Oagre
Hilly Surround

And just to clarify, there is an M4 base in this scene! I fit almost all of the Lord of Battles armor to M4 and posed M4 seperately from the M4 skeleton. This allowed me to do things like adjust the posing for the armor pieces that were passing through the ground independently of the M4 skeleton.

Hi Mosk :)

It's working ok for me here too..

Try this,...

Open Daz Studio, load Michael 4 using the Power-loaders to add the morphs,. then quit DS , jump back to carrara, and try loading Vlad again.

You will find that most people who have renders using Daz Studio or Poser are indeed using morphs to produce the charater, and Daz 3D models, as in the one Jimmy has posted. This means that you will need to have purchased the original models before you can use the morph packs. A lot of character morphs will also need the addition of the morphs++ pack

Michael 4 is here http://www.daz3d.com/shop/michael-4-base-male-3d-model/ A bundle including the base figure and the Morphs++ is here http://www.daz3d.com/shop/michael-4-complete/

Over the years, I have created hundreds of battle poses for David, but since there haven't been any new accessories for that character in years, I guess I should move on to newer, better supported characters, like Michael 4. The problem is, I would hate to lose all my poses. It took me many, many hours to make them. Is there a way to convert poses that were originally made for one character, so that you can load them onto another character?

I think Gen X can transfer shapes amazingly well, considering how different Genesis and Gen 4 models are topologically. Since Gen 4 is much higher poly and has different topology the shapes will not transfer exactly.

Things to bear in mind are that you will require the basic shape for Genesis that the morph is based on (e.g. V4, M4) and that if the morph uses add on morphs such as Morphs++ you will need these for your Gen 4 model. Some INJ files do not transfer due to the way they are scripted. These seem to be older ones that were made for Poser in mind, but that's just a guess: I've not had problems with newer characters, though. I've also successfully transferred a lot of creature creator shapes for M4, including the animal and alien heads, teeth, hand morphs, and others. Only a few of these morphs won't work (forked tongue is one I remember).

I've had problems with some more extreme body shapes (e.g. very slim H4—although I don't have the H4 shape for Genesis, perhaps that helps). For example, sunken chests which cannot be corrected with Genesis morphs, and problems with eye scaling. These are only a few cases, though.

I think it's worthwhile if you have a good number of Gen 4 characters already, but if you have mostly Genesis stuff it's probably a bit of a luxury. Although I've bought a few Gen 4 characters with the intention of transferring them (and they all worked well), increasingly, new characters are coming out for both generations. I think now it would have to be pretty spectacular one way or another for me to buy a Gen 4 character.

Here are a few comparisons. M4 is at the front. Note that I dialled the Michael 4 shape into Genesis before dialling the Gen X shape. I think you can see that in most cases the M4 has more modelling (although adding a texture will make this less noticeable), but sometimes the transfer can be a bit of an improvement.

HI :)

The iconic shapes are just that, shapes. But what would you skin them with?

The "Shapes" are "Morphs" .... but they're also used as a BASE, for Auto-fit to adjust any clothing designed for those figures, and make it work on Genesis.

They also provide the UV mapping set's for those figures,. so that you can use textures for those figures on genesis.

Once you've installed the Iconic shapes,. you would see slider controls in the parameters section in DS, for Genesis, to allow you to adjust the shape of genesis,.. into Victoria 4, or Michael 4 etc..
these are genesis morph shapes,. they're not additional figures which need to be textured separately.

Hope it helps

Yes, though if you get a character that uses other morphs ( a lot of fourth generation characters use the Morphs ++ sets for the body shape so that clothes stand a chance of fitting) you will need those; however, I think the Homo Erectus sets are custom morphs made in a modeller and included in the product so for those you wouldn't need anything else.

Yes, selecting a UV Set (which means picking how a texture is wrapped around the figure) is done through the Surfaces pane in DS - for something like this all you'd do would be apply the textures, which would look bad for the M4 and K4 sets, then in the Surfaces pane with Genesis selected click the figure's name in the left-hand column, scroll down the list of properties to the bottom and under UV Set choose Michael 4 or Kids 4 as needed (Victoria 4 is the default mapping for Genesis).

This thread was actually in the wrong place, I realised, so I've moved it to Nuts n Bolts.

For P6 and P8 the latest figures that will work are the Gen 4 figures. The base figures are V4 (Victoria 4) M4 (Michael 4) and K4 (Kids 4)
ANd yes you will need these before you add anything extra for them They each have a morphs++ pack, which can be used to create new characters, and are often essential for many character sets that are sold in the store hear, or indeed elsewhere.
Genesis is actually the newest edition the the Daz Figure Family, but can only be used in Poser 9 or Poser 2012. with the DSON importer.
Genesis can of course be used with Daz Studio 4.5, which is currently available at 100% discount.

Hi spswafford
welcome :)

The latest version of Daz Studio 4.5 comes with the NEW (Genesis figure)
I'f you're new to this software you can start out by using that Genesis figure,. and you can expand the creative possibilities by purchasing additional figure shapes, skin textures, clothing and hair.

If you've been using Daz Studio for years , and perhaps started with Victoria 3, Michael 3 or Victoria 4 / Michael 4 models,. then you may already have a library of skin textures, clothing etc... built to fit those figures.

Normally,. (before genesis was developed) the clothing for Victoria 4, would only work on that model,. and the same applies to the other figures such as V3, M3. M4 etc... clothing was built to fit the figure.

NOW,. with Daz Studio, and Genesis,. the clothing for Victoria 4, or 3, can be used on the Genesis figure, and will adjust to fit that model,
If you also have the (Iconic shapes for genesis)
which provide the ability to either change the shape of genesis into one of those older figures,. or have

If you want to use V4/M4 clothing on Genesis, you'll need the (Iconic shapes for genesis) to supply the original shape, so that the new Auto-fit technology, can adjust "older clothing" and fit it to the new Genesis shape.

Hope that makes sense :)

Hello,
My name is Stefan. Sorry if this post is confusing. I have a lot rolling around in my head and I'm trying to get it out in a coherent post.

Recently found and picked up DS 4.5. I just found the tutorials on YouTube tonight.

I have been checking out the stuff in the store and noticed a lot of stuff geared toward V4, M4, and similar. I figure out V4 is Victoria 4 and M4 is Michael 4, an so on. When I did searches for V4 I found things like this,
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/victoria-4-2-complete/
and this,
http://www.daz3d.com/shop/people/women/v4-and-m4-shapes-for-genesis

I'm trying to figure out if one or both are "needed" to get where I can use the other stuff I see for V4. Hopefully this makes sense.

I'm sure I will have many more questions. Have to learn to crawl before you can walk. :)