Honestly I don't see how 8.1 can improve the quality of these characters alone. Bluejaunte's gloss maps already provide the effect that the PBR Skin shader strives to do. The PBR Skin simply tiles these maps, which I think is not really the best way to go anyway. Tiling can do nice things and we have seen it with Victoria 8.1, but I believe that comes at the expense of the custom gloss maps which have an entire skin pattern on them. The new neck texture isn't a big deal either because many of bluejaunte's torso maps are already 8K in size. So the pixel density has been higher for a long time in his characters. I rather think that 8K+ textures are needed for these specific kinds of maps.

The main things that can be done for bluejaunte characters IMO would be better teeth. I think they are still just too perfect and white, and this stands out when contrasted with their imperfect skin. They need a bit of detail in them. I think the new 8.1 tear is pretty neat, as it can be used to blend in the lacrimal better than before. But like I also said this tear is super easy to convert to Genesis 8.0, barely an inconvenience. It took me like 60 seconds to do, at most, and I am slow. You just change the Scene ID on the 8.1 tear to 8.0, give it a funky name, and save it is a new prop for 8.0. Done. No high level Blender skills nor ninja magic required. And then there are the smiles, which bluejaunte creates custom HD morphs to do, so the rigging isn't even an issue. So I can't really think of anything that specifically makes 8.1 better. Most of the new features are simply new features of Daz Studio and Iray itself.

I do hope that whatever character is made has both the full classic 8.0 torso map, along with the neck texture. Then people can easily use the skin on 8.0 if they desire.

Steve K said:

I'm not a PC member, only seeing the clothes for $2.99, the bundle and character are full price.  Still a good buy.

https://www.daz3d.com/tres-chic-for-victoria-4-elite-and-aiko-4

Ah yes sorry I should add the $1.99 is a pc member price. It's been a good month for pc members so far.

I'm not a PC member, only seeing the clothes for $2.99, the bundle and character are full price.  Still a good buy.

https://www.daz3d.com/tres-chic-for-victoria-4-elite-and-aiko-4

Bunyip02 said:

Stezza said:

Great reading and images by all..

im on my iPad and have no pc access whilst on my dystopian road trip to Victoria.. but enjoying catching up on all the posts. 

Look out for those Dystopian Traffic Cops !!

and if you are catching the posts you are fatigued and you better have a bullbar  

Stezza said:

Great reading and images by all..

im on my iPad and have no pc access whilst on my dystopian road trip to Victoria.. but enjoying catching up on all the posts. 

Look out for those Dystopian Traffic Cops !!

Great reading and images by all..

im on my iPad and have no pc access whilst on my dystopian road trip to Victoria.. but enjoying catching up on all the posts. 

Thanks for the comments, SciFiFunk.  The basic lighting for the gas mask scene is an HDR from Bob Callawah and Cake One

See  https://www.daz3d.com/ultrahd-iray-hdri-with-dof-abandoned-urban-ruins.

That enables the reflection channel of the metal shaders that I applied to parts of the gas mask.  Trade-offs.  I really wanted the ground from a particular HDR in the pack.  I think it is #6.  Unfortunately, I was getting the best ground/lighting results using #6 with an angle that showed water that I didn't want and a portion of the sky was all wrong.  I experimented with a couple ways to address.  I tried placing a building to block out the portion of the sky I didn't like, but that had other results I didn't like.  A few experiments later, I decided on the fallen tree and similar trees.

With the basic light coming from the HDR, I placed two additional lights that made sense to me.  I placed a yellow-ish bulb light with the fire.  I placed a rim light (spot) above and behind the M6 figure to try to separate him from the background.  Ironically, I placed the gas mask last.  It is a prop for Victoria 4, not a conforming figure for M6.  The top strap of the gas mask completely thwarts the rim light on M6's head.  

I really should have changed the shaders for M6's clothes and created a rim light for the mouse at the end of the stick.

I can still replace the remains of the sky and the tree props using the multipass renders I included with my base render.  For example, here is the depth pass.  

How about this?  

No Longer the Yellow Brick Road!

Female characters still giving me fits. I tried G8F on both 4.15.02 and 4.15.0.15 and also G8.1F on 4.15.0.15 (which has become my preferred working platform now.) I did this on my laptop which has a GTX1080, 32 Gb RAM. Between each test I rebooted the computer. I also have 900 G8F characters, and only G8.1F and Victoria 8.1 and her HD. I also have 84 packages in Shaping for G8F and 161 Expressions and 871 Poses that are found in the Pose files, that would also include clothing pose files.

On 4.15.0.2 - G8F loaded in 9:49 minutes

On 4.15.0.15 - G8F loaded in 10:03 minutes

On 4.15.0.15 - G8.1F loaded in 12:01 minutes.

I had to do a user data reset in November 2020 and only recently finished getting most of the missing metadata and files back into Daz Studio. But after reviewing the comments from everyone, I think my next project will be to comb through the characters and uninstall those I have not used/touched since I did the initial test render. Many of those were included in Pro Bundles, along with pose packs that duplicated many of the same poses from one character to another. I already had to remove one character who caused issues.

My library is kept on a portable Seagate 4Tb external hard drive. It is. also getting full. So is my 8Tb drive on my desktop.

I work to keep my systems updated at all times for software. 

I have access to a plethora of BVH animations which I accessed for free one time.  I tried to add one of the BVH animations to a Michael 4 figure (the vacuum animation, to be exact), and it animates awkwardly.

I'd like to get clarification: what figures are these BVH animations compatible with?  I do not see Victoria 4 listed on the website from which I downloaded the animations, but I do see Victoria 3, if I remember correctly.

Spent a bit more time on this than I intended. That would be because I actually made a false start to it, got almost completely finished, and then hated the results. So I started over and re-did it. All in all, I'm mostly pleased with this version (and I made it under the deadline for a change).

This is a 2-page spread for a fanzine (the Collectors' Club Newsletter -- look for us on Facebook if you're interested in learning more or joining). "Anthems" is a feature that pairs superheroes and music. It's a silly thing, really, but fun. This issue I decided to tap into the power of SHAZAM and list one song for each letter of the magic word. As you can see, I chose a mostly classic rock theme. BTW, you should listen to the songs in order that they're listed; they make for a decent little playlist.

Figure is Victoria 4 with various morphs applied. Costume is a classic by the great Terry McG (can't recall if this was free at ShareCG or if I paid for it). All work was done in Poser Pro 11 and Clip Studio Paint. I did this the old-fashioned way: I rendered her in b&w and then manually colored the image. That's really the only way to duplicate the way comics are colored, especially when shooting for this look. Hair is Marisandra hair. Pose from MightyMite.

Mary Marvel © 2021 DC Comics

Leider hat noch nichts funktioniert. Was in Poser kein Problem ist, funktioniert in Daz3d aufgrund der dazeigenen duf. Datei nicht. Vermutlich habe ich die Textur auch falsch abgelegt. Leider ist mein Englisch nicht so gut, um international nachzuhaken. Es stellt sich für mich also die Frage: kann ich eine Bilddatei .jpg usw. in eine .duf Datei umwandeln und wo lege ich eine Textur ( z.B. Victoria 8) ab. ... ( Daz ist ja mittlerweile auch ziemlich unübersichtlich geworden )

intercept789 said:

So is Face Mojo going to be updated to allow use with Victoria 8.1?

 Yup! The update should have went live Feb. 25th.

algovincian said:

Richard Haseltine said:

algovincian said:

Bejaymac said:

peteanderson1212 said:

Considering some/a lot of the expression morphs from 8.0 aren't going to work on 8.1, hopefully they can update this asset in regards so that the 8.1 figure doesn't go about hunting for the 8.0 expression morphs. My loadup times are 10 times larger with 8.1 figures, and my log file is like 2000 times larger than the normal log file when loading a 8.0 figure. 

 

Long load times are down to a couple of issues.

1) DS has always been poor at dealing with large amounts of complicated ERC, it basically bogs down the program causing it to load slower and slower the more it has to deal with, DS4 can handle far more ERC than DS1, 2 or 3 could but it still has limits.

2) Genesis 8 is an enormous cluster**** of complicated ERC, damn near every DSF file in the morphs folder is overloaded with ERC, and DS just can't cope with it.

Lets take Victoria 8 as an example -

CTRLVictoria8.dsf = 2 ERC
FHMVictoria8.dsf  = 531 ERC
FBMVictoria8.dsf  = 933 ERC

That is just 3 of the 52 DSF files she comes with, and all the rest have ERC in them, so a couple of thousand ERC for each DO character you have installed. Add in some of the other characters in this store, and things like AFE, or Zev0's products and you could easily be hitting a million plus ERC when you load G8F.

Then there's 8.1, not only does it have to load all it's own ERC, but with 4.15+ it also has to deal with all 8.0's crap as well.

One general concept that I've employed in the past when developing real-time applications is to setup as much as possible ahead of time, leaving less to do at runtime. I'm wondering if this approach might be useful in this case.

My understanding is that numerous small files (relatively speaking) need to be read from disk when a figure is loaded. Once read in, then the structures/references must be setup in memory.

I'm wondering if this can't be done pre-runtime, with the result being a single large file (basically a memory dump) with the references already setup for a given figure. This single large file could then be read into memory when loading the figure. This pre-runtime process could be repeated whenever new content was installed (again, pre-runtime).

I'm guessing there would be complications with pointers, etc. as it's not a simple fixed memory situation but rather a general purpose computing situation that must run on unknown hardware. I'm not suggesting it would be trivial and I'm certain there are things that I'm not aware (obviously I didn't write the code for DS), but it may still be worth investigating. The long load times take much of the joy out of using DS (and actively discourage spending money on large libraries).

- Greg

DzCreateExPFiles-v4.bat and so on did this for the fourth geenation figures. Some people hated it, and frequently got in a mess with it.

DS already has the DSON cache.

I wasn't around for that era, but I read this page:

https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207530923-Why-is-the-update-from-Victoria-4-0-to-Victoria-4-X-What-is-ExP-technology-

Unless I'm not understanding something, the whole ExP/INJ system didn't really function like what I'm suggesting at all - there would be no selective injecting or anything like that at runtime.

I googled the DSON cache and found several threads about it (questions with no answers). It seems obvious that it doesn't function to sufficiently speed load times, though.

Something really needs to be done about the load/delete times, and un-installing content that you've paid for isn't really a solution. I know I've pretty much stopped buying figures because DS is getting unusable from a practical standpoint. I'm know not the only one.

- Greg

or maybe the system wouldn't greatly - or at all - speed loading, and that's why the cache seems to do limited good. It may well be that such a system was considered and rejected as having too little benefit for its cost in other respects (such as adding new content in a way that doesn't confuse the average user).

Richard Haseltine said:

algovincian said:

Bejaymac said:

peteanderson1212 said:

Considering some/a lot of the expression morphs from 8.0 aren't going to work on 8.1, hopefully they can update this asset in regards so that the 8.1 figure doesn't go about hunting for the 8.0 expression morphs. My loadup times are 10 times larger with 8.1 figures, and my log file is like 2000 times larger than the normal log file when loading a 8.0 figure. 

 

Long load times are down to a couple of issues.

1) DS has always been poor at dealing with large amounts of complicated ERC, it basically bogs down the program causing it to load slower and slower the more it has to deal with, DS4 can handle far more ERC than DS1, 2 or 3 could but it still has limits.

2) Genesis 8 is an enormous cluster**** of complicated ERC, damn near every DSF file in the morphs folder is overloaded with ERC, and DS just can't cope with it.

Lets take Victoria 8 as an example -

CTRLVictoria8.dsf = 2 ERC
FHMVictoria8.dsf  = 531 ERC
FBMVictoria8.dsf  = 933 ERC

That is just 3 of the 52 DSF files she comes with, and all the rest have ERC in them, so a couple of thousand ERC for each DO character you have installed. Add in some of the other characters in this store, and things like AFE, or Zev0's products and you could easily be hitting a million plus ERC when you load G8F.

Then there's 8.1, not only does it have to load all it's own ERC, but with 4.15+ it also has to deal with all 8.0's crap as well.

One general concept that I've employed in the past when developing real-time applications is to setup as much as possible ahead of time, leaving less to do at runtime. I'm wondering if this approach might be useful in this case.

My understanding is that numerous small files (relatively speaking) need to be read from disk when a figure is loaded. Once read in, then the structures/references must be setup in memory.

I'm wondering if this can't be done pre-runtime, with the result being a single large file (basically a memory dump) with the references already setup for a given figure. This single large file could then be read into memory when loading the figure. This pre-runtime process could be repeated whenever new content was installed (again, pre-runtime).

I'm guessing there would be complications with pointers, etc. as it's not a simple fixed memory situation but rather a general purpose computing situation that must run on unknown hardware. I'm not suggesting it would be trivial and I'm certain there are things that I'm not aware (obviously I didn't write the code for DS), but it may still be worth investigating. The long load times take much of the joy out of using DS (and actively discourage spending money on large libraries).

- Greg

DzCreateExPFiles-v4.bat and so on did this for the fourth geenation figures. Some people hated it, and frequently got in a mess with it.

DS already has the DSON cache.

I wasn't around for that era, but I read this page:

https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/207530923-Why-is-the-update-from-Victoria-4-0-to-Victoria-4-X-What-is-ExP-technology-

Unless I'm not understanding something, the whole ExP/INJ system didn't really function like what I'm suggesting at all - there would be no selective injecting or anything like that at runtime.

I googled the DSON cache and found several threads about it (questions with no answers). It seems obvious that it doesn't function to sufficiently speed load times, though.

Something really needs to be done about the load/delete times, and un-installing content that you've paid for isn't really a solution. I know I've pretty much stopped buying figures because DS is getting unusable from a practical standpoint. I'm know not the only one.

- Greg

algovincian said:

Bejaymac said:

peteanderson1212 said:

Considering some/a lot of the expression morphs from 8.0 aren't going to work on 8.1, hopefully they can update this asset in regards so that the 8.1 figure doesn't go about hunting for the 8.0 expression morphs. My loadup times are 10 times larger with 8.1 figures, and my log file is like 2000 times larger than the normal log file when loading a 8.0 figure. 

 

Long load times are down to a couple of issues.

1) DS has always been poor at dealing with large amounts of complicated ERC, it basically bogs down the program causing it to load slower and slower the more it has to deal with, DS4 can handle far more ERC than DS1, 2 or 3 could but it still has limits.

2) Genesis 8 is an enormous cluster**** of complicated ERC, damn near every DSF file in the morphs folder is overloaded with ERC, and DS just can't cope with it.

Lets take Victoria 8 as an example -

CTRLVictoria8.dsf = 2 ERC
FHMVictoria8.dsf  = 531 ERC
FBMVictoria8.dsf  = 933 ERC

That is just 3 of the 52 DSF files she comes with, and all the rest have ERC in them, so a couple of thousand ERC for each DO character you have installed. Add in some of the other characters in this store, and things like AFE, or Zev0's products and you could easily be hitting a million plus ERC when you load G8F.

Then there's 8.1, not only does it have to load all it's own ERC, but with 4.15+ it also has to deal with all 8.0's crap as well.

One general concept that I've employed in the past when developing real-time applications is to setup as much as possible ahead of time, leaving less to do at runtime. I'm wondering if this approach might be useful in this case.

My understanding is that numerous small files (relatively speaking) need to be read from disk when a figure is loaded. Once read in, then the structures/references must be setup in memory.

I'm wondering if this can't be done pre-runtime, with the result being a single large file (basically a memory dump) with the references already setup for a given figure. This single large file could then be read into memory when loading the figure. This pre-runtime process could be repeated whenever new content was installed (again, pre-runtime).

I'm guessing there would be complications with pointers, etc. as it's not a simple fixed memory situation but rather a general purpose computing situation that must run on unknown hardware. I'm not suggesting it would be trivial and I'm certain there are things that I'm not aware (obviously I didn't write the code for DS), but it may still be worth investigating. The long load times take much of the joy out of using DS (and actively discourage spending money on large libraries).

- Greg

DzCreateExPFiles-v4.bat and so on did this for the fourth geenation figures. Some people hated it, and frequently got in a mess with it.

DS already has the DSON cache.

Bejaymac said:

peteanderson1212 said:

Considering some/a lot of the expression morphs from 8.0 aren't going to work on 8.1, hopefully they can update this asset in regards so that the 8.1 figure doesn't go about hunting for the 8.0 expression morphs. My loadup times are 10 times larger with 8.1 figures, and my log file is like 2000 times larger than the normal log file when loading a 8.0 figure. 

 

Long load times are down to a couple of issues.

1) DS has always been poor at dealing with large amounts of complicated ERC, it basically bogs down the program causing it to load slower and slower the more it has to deal with, DS4 can handle far more ERC than DS1, 2 or 3 could but it still has limits.

2) Genesis 8 is an enormous cluster**** of complicated ERC, damn near every DSF file in the morphs folder is overloaded with ERC, and DS just can't cope with it.

Lets take Victoria 8 as an example -

CTRLVictoria8.dsf = 2 ERC
FHMVictoria8.dsf  = 531 ERC
FBMVictoria8.dsf  = 933 ERC

That is just 3 of the 52 DSF files she comes with, and all the rest have ERC in them, so a couple of thousand ERC for each DO character you have installed. Add in some of the other characters in this store, and things like AFE, or Zev0's products and you could easily be hitting a million plus ERC when you load G8F.

Then there's 8.1, not only does it have to load all it's own ERC, but with 4.15+ it also has to deal with all 8.0's crap as well.

One general concept that I've employed in the past when developing real-time applications is to setup as much as possible ahead of time, leaving less to do at runtime. I'm wondering if this approach might be useful in this case.

My understanding is that numerous small files (relatively speaking) need to be read from disk when a figure is loaded. Once read in, then the structures/references must be setup in memory.

I'm wondering if this can't be done pre-runtime, with the result being a single large file (basically a memory dump) with the references already setup for a given figure. This single large file could then be read into memory when loading the figure. This pre-runtime process could be repeated whenever new content was installed (again, pre-runtime).

I'm guessing there would be complications with pointers, etc. as it's not a simple fixed memory situation but rather a general purpose computing situation that must run on unknown hardware. I'm not suggesting it would be trivial and I'm certain there are things that I'm not aware (obviously I didn't write the code for DS), but it may still be worth investigating. The long load times take much of the joy out of using DS (and actively discourage spending money on large libraries).

- Greg

peteanderson1212 said:

Considering some/a lot of the expression morphs from 8.0 aren't going to work on 8.1, hopefully they can update this asset in regards so that the 8.1 figure doesn't go about hunting for the 8.0 expression morphs. My loadup times are 10 times larger with 8.1 figures, and my log file is like 2000 times larger than the normal log file when loading a 8.0 figure. 

Long load times are down to a couple of issues.

1) DS has always been poor at dealing with large amounts of complicated ERC, it basically bogs down the program causing it to load slower and slower the more it has to deal with, DS4 can handle far more ERC than DS1, 2 or 3 could but it still has limits.

2) Genesis 8 is an enormous cluster**** of complicated ERC, damn near every DSF file in the morphs folder is overloaded with ERC, and DS just can't cope with it.

Lets take Victoria 8 as an example -

CTRLVictoria8.dsf = 2 ERC
FHMVictoria8.dsf  = 531 ERC
FBMVictoria8.dsf  = 933 ERC

That is just 3 of the 52 DSF files she comes with, and all the rest have ERC in them, so a couple of thousand ERC for each DO character you have installed. Add in some of the other characters in this store, and things like AFE, or Zev0's products and you could easily be hitting a million plus ERC when you load G8F.

Then there's 8.1, not only does it have to load all it's own ERC, but with 4.15+ it also has to deal with all 8.0's crap as well.

PerttiA said:

blaz said:

Damn it, I knew they were older products but I thought they got updated to work with 8.1.

I know about the folder workaround but I was hoping to avoid it since my expression library is not that big.

The textures aren't really a problem since DAZ did a great job. And we have Map Transfer...

 

Thanks for all the answers.

I don't understand why the size of your expression library makes you want to avoid the workaround/fix...

Making the G8 base expressions (and any expressions that are using them) work on G8.1 requires removing dummy/placeholder expressions that are installed to G8.1 morph folders - These dummy/placeholder expression files have no other function than to prevent the base G8 expressions from loading. 

The dummy/placeholder files are located in;

...\Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Female 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Base Pose Head\ (255 files)
...\Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Female 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Expressions\ (24 files)
...\Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Male 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Base Pose Head\ (255 files)
...\Data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Male 8_1\Morphs\Daz 3D\Expressions\ (24 files)

Please make sure you are removing the files from G8.1 morph folders and not G8 morph folders.

@PerttiA That's the most concise explanation I've seen yet. I will resist saying something snarky about Daz' failing to provide this information. Now, would you happen to know why Daz might have felt it was useful or necessary to prevent the loading of these files?

@certaintree38 Thanks for your explanation. I waded through several pages of the Victoria 8.1 thread looking for this info.

@jonsebask04 I'm thinking she's Tara 2 HD.

nicstt said:

outrider42 said:

Guys...the "special shaders" can be applied to literally anything. They are not exclusive to Genesis 8.1. The only changes are the UV map, which is of debatable importance, and the new face rig. Every other "feature" marketed for 8.1 is available very easily for 8.0.

The new PBR shader can use tiles for the details, which means the UV map does not matter. You could apply the PBR shader to Genesis 1,2,3 as well, or even Victoria 3 if you wanted to. Or a banana.

I just want you guys to understand that most of what you are buying here is marketing. Even the face rig that 8.1 uses has roots in 8.0 as a purchased product. So why be bothered by a character actually being for 8.0? You can simply load that character on 8.1 and get all of the advertised benefits of 8.1.

After all, just because a character is 8.1 does not mean that character uses PBR Skin Shader. That is the PA's choice to use it or not.

Thus the advertising on the character is not technically wrong, because this character CAN be used for 8.1, just like all 8.0 characters can be. It may be a bit misleading, but I believe this PA is not a native English speaker and is perhaps as confused as many customers are about 8.1. IMO Daz has failed to create a clear guideline for them.

It's not about the shader but the new UVs; the extra map (the head) is there to give better detail around the neck. 

 

Shader & UV improvements

• Genesis 8.1 adds a new PBR (Physically Based Rendering) skin shader.
• The Genesis 8.1 skin shader introduces improvements for Subsurface Scattering (less waxy skin), resulting in incredibly lifelike skin.
• Added support to leverage MicroSkin tiling micro normal maps from our partners at Texturing.xyz
• New processes and resources in our pipeline have been added to ensure details between sculpts and textures better match, resulting in greater realism.
• Updated UVs for better pixel density and better seams.
• All these combined create a better looking skin in Genesis 8.1.
• Update your Daz Studio Default Resources package (DIM or DazCentral) to 4.15+ to access our new skin shader for Genesis 8.1 characters.

taken from: https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-1 ;

...so now instead of having a seam that is hidden almost entirely by hair, you now have a seam that runs and smacks you upside the face by going right across the collarbone. I still don't see how that's a good change. 

If the pixel density were such a huge issue as to be noticeable on a super close-up (I've never even noticed it as an issue when composing any of my pieces), one could have simply upscaled the body to 8k to off-set the 4k head map. It's not the best solution in the world, but with the improved upscale algorithms out there, it's a better option than putting a seam across the collarbone, imo.