Rod Wise Driggo said:

Well todays promotion (extra 15% off) is at least not working for Vicky 8.1 (bundle) owners. As soon as I removed Michael 8.1 from card the discount disappeared.

I own both Michael 8.1 bundles and one of the 2 Victoria 8.1 bundles but the orange banner (15% off on  featured artists and new releases) isn't working for me either.

I can't get the free Genesis 3 deal to work at all. I have over $30 in my cart including an Eyes new release and Victoria 8.1 but the Genesis items remain stubbornly unfree!

justanother__boy_ca94588ae2 said:

Serious question;

Please do let me know if you've got any tips/tricks/advice/techniques/whatever that you've picked up from here or came up with yourself or whatever :)

For photorealistic tips on Daz3D, these 52 pages are quite full of tips, tricks, advice, and techniques.

Here are a couple of tips if you want the cliff notes:

1. Use high resolution skin textures that include good details in bump, sss, normal maps. If you need a specific example, try Daz3D Victoria 7 or 8.

2. Use high quality hair on your character. If you need a specific example, try something from vendor OutOfTouch.

3. Use well crafted lighting in your scene. If you need a specific example, try something from vendor PaperTiger.

4. Play with camera and render settings. For specific examples try 50mm camera lens and Spectral Rendering on.

Tricks: If you spend the time to go through steps 1 through 4 above, you will find yourself with "something" as a result. Now take everything you learned and pick a different character, like Mousso's Louisiana HD and go through steps 2 through 4 and you will find "something different".

Advice: At that point you will be caught up to begin at Page 1 of this topic. Hopefully your curiosity will be piqued and you are excited enough to devour these 52 pages to glean the tips and tricks you may not have understood at the beginning of the journey. Everyone here will welcome your questions and discoveries that you can share.

Techniques: I haven't even mentioned poses, environment, storytelling, or asked you what it is you want to do. Show us :)

I think it would be really helpful if Daz created official language PAs can use to indicate how their 8.1 characters are organized. It doesn't have to be witty or complex, just standardized--similar to how a light set can exist in multiple forms and PAs usually indicate in their titles or description copy that they're offering mesh lights or HDRIs, etc.

The main issue I see without that is that functionally, an 8.1 character can easily be no different from an 8 apart from being built on the base with different facial expressions. Or they can be like Victoria and Michael 8.1 and use the new shader and new UVs. Perception-wise, since the new UV is a part of the character no matter what and the shader was very much promoted as an 8.1 feature, officially separating out the expressions, use of the UVs, and the shader setup into distinct features would probably cause less confusion (and less pressure on PAs). 

Zilvergrafix said:

Why we need a new product or character?, G8.1 uses all your previous G8 characters and textures can be created too, I'm having a lot of emails asking for my fake ImmaGram and me answering "no, she is not a daz product, no she is not for sale, no no and no!"

https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/user/4954432911441920#gallery=popular&page=1&image=1121872

and is only Victoria 8.1 with low SSS value, a heavy Headlamp, and Perspective OFF.

if no new characters are comming that evidences something...Genesis 9 is on the way.

 

All no new 8,1 characters mean, is that there are so far no new 8.1 characters.

It isn't evidence. It is data, and you need a lot more data to form opinions - opinions that are going to be, well: off.

Why we need a new product or character?, G8.1 uses all your previous G8 characters and textures can be created too, I'm having a lot of emails asking for my fake ImmaGram and me answering "no, she is not a daz product, no she is not for sale, no no and no!"

https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/user/4954432911441920#gallery=popular&page=1&image=1121872

and is only Victoria 8.1 with low SSS value, a heavy Headlamp, and Perspective OFF.

if no new characters are comming that evidences something...Genesis 9 is on the way.

daveso said:

Big hoopla over 8.1 new features, but I see no products utilizing those features.
I suppose lots of character products have been in the pipeline for awhile that don't use them, but you would think they would be popping up in abundance. 
Or does 8.1 specific textures not matter? 

Other than Victoria 8.1, nope.

I returned the only character claiming to be 8.1, which I'd bought hoping to see what the PA had done.

Never Mind!  It's Victoria 8 skin. I totally missed it in the corner.

https://www.daz3d.com/frost-maiden-hd-for-genesis-8-female

A couple of the promo shots show her with non-frosty skin, and it's definitely not part ofthe product. I know it's a long shot, but I'd love to know what/whose skin mat that is.

I also use Michael/Victoria 8.1 material presets as a base and apply the diffuse/specular/normal maps of my custom figures.

For a better quality I use Map Transfer to convert G8 Torso maps into G8.1 Head maps. The figures with shaved hair are no longer suddenly blurred.

nicstt said:

melissastjames said:

nicstt said:

I wouldn't save a material preset personally.

I'd want to at least try out the new shader with 8.1 and the V8.1 if you have the new Victoria.

Just plug the textures in the appropriate slots and change the UVs to Basic Female (iirc its name).

It's a matter of personal preference, but I have highly customized my Uber Shader presets and they look better than what the new PBR shader can provide in its current state of lacking scatter and transmit intensity. They added a couple new features, but took away something essential (to me). 

I have NGS2, and have been using it in preference to whatever was provided during G8, although I am now experimenting with V8.1 and like it.

Yeah, I have NGS2 and...well, I'll leave it at that, lol. I know some folks love it. I do a lot of custom tweaking to maps and shader settings, and I have the Uber Shader working exactly how I want it to work for what I want to do with it, and unfortunately, while Daz added some new toys with the PBR Shader, they also took away other stuff that I consider essential (to me).  

alicesacco_d28bc20fdb said:

So, any charachter who is adult and who have a pro bundle contain genitalia? I don't necessarily need to buy Victoria 8?

No, just check the What's Included section on the product page for the bundle.

So, any charachter who is adult and who have a pro bundle contain genitalia? I don't necessarily need to buy Victoria 8?

alicesacco_d28bc20fdb said:

I didn't see adult pro bundle in the shop.
I goty the male genitalia (for G8Male) from The brute

Victoria 8 Pro Bundle, or pretty much any other Name 8 Pro Bundle that isn't a teen or stylised character - also some of the themed bundles that seem to have replaced the Prro bundles for new named characters include the Anatomical Elements.

melissastjames said:

nicstt said:

I wouldn't save a material preset personally.

I'd want to at least try out the new shader with 8.1 and the V8.1 if you have the new Victoria.

Just plug the textures in the appropriate slots and change the UVs to Basic Female (iirc its name).

It's a matter of personal preference, but I have highly customized my Uber Shader presets and they look better than what the new PBR shader can provide in its current state of lacking scatter and transmit intensity. They added a couple new features, but took away something essential (to me). 

I have NGS2, and have been using it in preference to whatever was provided during G8, although I am now experimenting with V8.1 and like it.

Cheers, I get a lot of questions and speculation from my users about the background of that character and the other lead lady in the game. I shant spam this conversation with links though, it's available for free out there.

Sadly it's not a problem with exposure flipping from default. I'd already set the exposure on that scene when I originally saved it (by modifying the film ISO) so that was saved with the image.

I'm wondering now if it's the exposure per se, because looking at the clothes, they seem to be pretty similarly lit, so I'm wondering if it could be a skin issue (skin's Elizabeth for Victoria 8 with some teaks to the color and translucency to change the skintone). I'm wondering if that's started to react differently to lighting recently.

Attached an image lit up with the same (homebaked) HDRI and (nearly) identical lighting setup, and you can see it even more clearly there.

The character skin's Rebekah for vic 8 with similar tweaks. There's almost no discernable seam in the sweater between the old and new render where they join up, but with the skintone it's a very striking difference. 

Zilvergrafix said:

Rod Wise Driggo said:

Like this. Some more details on shaders and lights applied?

Nothing from the outer world:

1. Simple Genesis 8 female
2. Iray Uber Shader
3. a free HDR from HDR Haven https://hdrihaven.com/hdri/?h=studio_small_03
4. and 15 years of experience. 

Zero Victoria 8.1, Zero Daz PBR Skin shader, no HD textures and no postwork, raw render as my iray viewport confirms. 

The only (remotely noticeable) thing that 8.1 has over 8 is the eye movement.  

Rod Wise Driggo said:

Like this. Some more details on shaders and lights applied?

Nothing from the outer world:

1. Simple Genesis 8 female
2. Iray Uber Shader
3. a free HDR from HDR Haven https://hdrihaven.com/hdri/?h=studio_small_03
4. and 15 years of experience. 

Zero Victoria 8.1, Zero Daz PBR Skin shader, no HD textures and no postwork, raw render as my iray viewport confirms. 

Zilvergrafix said:

jd641 said:

Leana said:

Go to Edit > Preferences > Content tab, and check what option is selected for "when loading a .duf character" option, my guess is that your preference is set to "always load a new figure".

Yep, that's exactly what I had. I have a big problem though, I've tried the other two options and I do get the dialogue but for some reason when it's not set to "always load a new figure" Studio hangs/crashes when trying to apply the presets.

468 users don't have this problem anymore:

Hilarious... nothing more! No Maps were worked over nothing... so basicly it's just the shape and the shapes are useless without the possibility to upgrade the skin textures itself. A character is a set of shapes AND textures to get an overall realistic or artistic look. Sure, we could just take the victoria skin and change the skin tone with psd or gimp, but thats not the same. Skin textures have often a ton of information in them. To port a whole figure or character one would have to create new 8.1 maps, by using the 8.0 figure, putting the maps on it, mark new seams and bake new textures... If the textures would just "stay" as they are. With real shaders from the real skins, as they were created, this would be an easy task to do... but it seams NOBODY the **** cares that sells charecters here... at least i see no updates in my DIM since i bought 8.1 victoria and michael! 
 

Does Victoria 8.1 Eyebrow have morphs so you can customize its shape?

If not, has anyone made a series of morphs for her eyebrows that lets you mold it into many shapes; from thinner to thicker, longer & shorter, move the outer up & down, move mid up & down, move outer up & down, etc.

melissastjames said:

Luciel said:

melissastjames said:

So has anybody found visemes for G8.1? I had them for G8 but can't find them on G8.1...

The only way i've found to get visemes on 8.1 is to load an 8 character onto the 8.1 base. 

This will add the visemes in the normal place (head/visemes, and they still work), and then you can load an 8.1 character over that.

So basically, load basic 8.1, load any Genesis 8 ontop of that, and then load the 8.1 character after for visemes. 

Ok, so I loaded a base G8.1F and then tried to load Angharad 8 over that...and DAZ is like NOPE. Hangs. Cntrl+Alt+Delete. 

I suppose the question remains...ARE THERE SUPPOSED TO BE VISEMES FOR 8.1 AND IF NO, WHY NOT? 

I would really like to know that too.  I have Anilip 2 and the visemes it provides do appear on an 8.1 character, however the product page doesn't list 8.1 as supported whereas G8 wardrobe items seem to list 8.1.  I don't want to commit to 8.1 characters if Anilip doesn't work (it's on my to-be-tested list).

I have seen the slow "overload" time of a G8 character on a G8.1 base; it's significantly slower to load a G8F over Genesis 8.1 Basic Female than to load either Victoria 8.1 or Victoria 8.  I assumed it was because of the fix-ups for the torso texture.