wolf359 said:

It would seem that  generative AI is a direct threat to their business model as the majority of their users create still renders.

At this point AI can produce still renders of a quality that far exceeds what one can do with Daz content & Iray renders.
 
Daz  is trying to incorporate AI in a way that keeps users inside their eco system buying content [...]

Imo Daz should focus on ai tools that give users more control in rendering/postwork, integrated neatly into Daz Studio so it's super approachable. Like an ai render engine.

Something like a cloud hosted ai tune-up for Daz renders. Sends the albedo, normal and depth maps Daz Studio can already generate, along with a text prompt, into the cloud and applies a light dusting of realism or stylization or whatever. Users could buy content (even Daz's old pre-Iray stuff), assemble a scene, press a Cloud Ai Render button and get something shiny without needing complicated stable diffusion setup or a powerful GPU. Daz could make loras for its own characters so ai-Michael and ai-Victoria look good from any angle. etc.

Yellow is a great concept. You're basically modeling/sculpting with text, and it automatically applies the Daz rigging. But if it really took off, it could push users away from the shop, plus it doesn't solve the problem of Daz Iray or Filatoon needing to compete with ai render quality.

Kainjy said:

Victoria 9 (https://www.daz3d.com/soft-curls-ponytail-for-genesis-9-and-victoria-9) che fa il cosplay di Aloy di Horizon Zero Dawn (i capelli sono diversi)

Adoro Horizon Zero, infatti mi ha subito colpito la somiglianza. Visto che stavo proprio cercando un personaggio coi tratti un po' in stile Aloy, questa mi è sembrata perfetta. Grazie della dritta a entrambi.

Però avendo tutta la libreria basata su G8 non penso che prenderò Victoria 9. Vado a fare un giro sullo shop a caccia di tipe G8.

vangelrise said:

Ricerca intuizione lampo.

Qualcuno che riconosca il modello femminile? (è una G8 o G9, più probabile G9)

Victoria 9 (https://www.daz3d.com/soft-curls-ponytail-for-genesis-9-and-victoria-9) che fa il cosplay di Aloy di Horizon Zero Dawn (i capelli sono diversi)

Mi sembra Victoria 9 dalla skin.

Ma le texture possono essere convertite, per cui potrebbe anche essere G1 o V4.

Well, if I understand correctly, OP wanted to split characters' Body Morphs into Upper Body morphs and Lower Body morphs, then mix them together... rather than split a full character's morph into Head and Body morphs ~~

If so, the above ways of "splitting head / body" won't work...  Though I don't think folks frequently blend body shape in the above way (instead, folks most of the time directly blend the character's body morphs and/or tweaking with some PBMs).... technically, OP can make it in the way as below:

1) Create a D-Former with Weight Map to split a Genesis Base figure into Upper Body and Lower Body (ss1)
2) Split character's Body Morph into Upper / Lower by using the option of Attenuate By with Morph Loader Pro, e.g. create a Lower Body morph for Ally 9 (ss2)  (Remember to adjust rigging and save morph assets....)
3) Then blend Upper / Lower body morphs from different characters together... for instance, blend Upper Body Morph of Victoria 9 + Lower Body Morph of Ally 9 + Sarah 9's Head with certain % (ss3)

Save the D-Former as a D-Former Preset for future use. 

Edit: If OP have Shape Splitter, the script can work with this D-Former, for Genesis 9 as well ~~ (ss4)

I don't use Smart Content. I break my stuff up into multiple libraries. At present I have:

• Main Library (scenery, props, shader presets, miscellaneous)
• Animals 1 (older)
• Animals 2 (newer)
• Cloaks and MFDs (morphing fantasy dresses (older))
• Nature
• Vehicles
• Millennium 3 (Michael 3, Victoria 3, David 3, Stephanie 3)
• Millennum 4 (Michael 4, Victoria 4)
• Genesis 5
• Genesis 6
• Genesis 7
• Genesis 8
• Genesis 9
• Hivewire
• My Projects

I have a corresponding set of Poser libraries for the older models.

The old Hooded Cloaks and Morphing Fantasy Dresses got their own library because all they shared UV maps, and hence textures, across several generations.

This scheme has the disadvantage that some clothing items that don't have separate installers for separate generations, and can't be handled strictly with the Daz Install Manager. It has the enormous advantage that I can almost always find what I'm looking for, except some of the really old Poser stuff, which looks at chaos from across the border on the far side.

When I was rendering in Daz Studio, I got frustrated enough to manually pull items out of the pestilential artist-name categories and arrange them by type of item, except in the rare cases when the artist is more useful than the item type. These days I don't care if Daz thinks I should remember to look for Crumbling Castle under the name of its maker, Third Underwater Rhinoceros, because I'm systematically exporting everything to Blender, into external directories.

(The external directories also suffer a bit from unavoidable fuzzy classification, and from the unsophistication of Windows' ability to associate images with directories. But I have even more differentiated categorization that usually makes sense to me.)

On a Mac you would want the .command file, but it may be that mac security updates will block that. Do you get a dialgue box when you load Victoria 4? If not, how about if you hold down the cmd key while double-clicking on its icon to load it?

Did you install the PowerLoader components for Victoria 4 (does the thumbnail have a scroll icon in the top corner)? If not you will need to do so or, if you don't mind simply configuring everything to load at once, simply go to the Content Library isntalled to then Runtime/Libraries/!DAZ (the path from the error message) and run DzCreateExPFiles-v4. You need one of those steps to generate the script files that load all the data for the morph sets, without them you just get the bare-bones figure.

I have not been able to access any of my earlier DS content which is Victoria and Michael, no point in asking me why this is the case, if I knew the answer I would perhaps be able to resolve the problem.

So some drastic action was required, which may be the end up being the answer but somehow I doubt it.

So I have copied my content library from my hard drive to an external drive which both gives me the opportunity to re install it from there and also to have a back up.

I have used DIM to remove the current version of DS from my machine, and all my installed content from my library.

From here I have re loaded DAZ Studio and the included content, which seems to have gone fine. That is DS opens and I am able to load G9 content that was included. 

Next I selectively manually loaded all the basic V4 and Victoria4   content that I have in my library, Victoria 4 base and shapes ++ and V4 Elite body shapes. I can now load V4.2 and V4.2 to V3 but keep getting this error message when I load V4.2. 

So somehow I am missing some component. I have followed the path for the missing file and it is not included in install file, which means it cannot be loaded. How can I overcome this problem.

Why am I doing this. Well because I have loads of Victoria content, characters, props and clothes, that I can use if I can get this content to work.

OrangeFalcon said:

TriCounter said:

Also all the Pro Bundles have now gone again, like they did when the character/add on started , which is shows very poor customer respect.

 

 

I used to get the Pro Bundles but sometimes they were just out of my price range.  I went to compare the price of the Tara 9 Pro Bundle, which was $229.99.  Both Tara Bundles right now, baseline, are $189.99, and the only item not in any of them that were in the pro bundle is Succubus Hierarchical Poses for Tara 9, priced at $18.99.  So that's $208.86 total instead.  I dunno if this applies to all of the bundle combinations and how they were split, but at least it isn't more than the Pro Bundle used to be.  And that isn't taking into account you can use a free coupon on the currently priced $64.99 Tara 9, get the other at $23.40, use some tokens and...yeah.  A great deal.  I paid $43.38 for the Pro Bundle, which was also a great deal, but it's definitely comparable to what we can do now, with Premier anyway.

With the free monthly coupon, I spend less for about the same amount for one of the new releases.  For that to work I need to take advantage of the reduced prices for having the non-free bundle in my cart with one of the buy-in products to reduce it, then plus the tokens.  I've gotten one of those down to $16.98 before.  I think one of the purposes is to also give us options and make it less of a mess, because some characters had the Pro, also the starter, then the MEGA, not to mention Victoria and Michael both had several themed bundles, Freja 9 had a couple...just too many bundles.  Now we have just the two and I like it better that way.

Around New Year's Day, I picked up the Tara bundle with my coupon, plus the Succubus Add-on & the 3 other items I wanted for 90+% off. I already had the Lilithra Hair as an Advent freebie. So spent about $8 and was - & still am - very happy. 

TriCounter said:

Also all the Pro Bundles have now gone again, like they did when the character/add on started , which is shows very poor customer respect.

 

 

I used to get the Pro Bundles but sometimes they were just out of my price range.  I went to compare the price of the Tara 9 Pro Bundle, which was $229.99.  Both Tara Bundles right now, baseline, are $189.99, and the only item not in any of them that were in the pro bundle is Succubus Hierarchical Poses for Tara 9, priced at $18.99.  So that's $208.86 total instead.  I dunno if this applies to all of the bundle combinations and how they were split, but at least it isn't more than the Pro Bundle used to be.  And that isn't taking into account you can use a free coupon on the currently priced $64.99 Tara 9, get the other at $23.40, use some tokens and...yeah.  A great deal.  I paid $43.38 for the Pro Bundle, which was also a great deal, but it's definitely comparable to what we can do now, with Premier anyway.

With the free monthly coupon, I spend less for about the same amount for one of the new releases.  For that to work I need to take advantage of the reduced prices for having the non-free bundle in my cart with one of the buy-in products to reduce it, then plus the tokens.  I've gotten one of those down to $16.98 before.  I think one of the purposes is to also give us options and make it less of a mess, because some characters had the Pro, also the starter, then the MEGA, not to mention Victoria and Michael both had several themed bundles, Freja 9 had a couple...just too many bundles.  Now we have just the two and I like it better that way.

May I ask why you want to convert the hair to conforming?

Conforming figures need to have a skeleton to conform to a figure, whereas a hair HR2 file does not. You should be able to apply HR2 hair to any figure and then use translation dials and scale dials to make it fit better.

On the other hand if you want to convert the HR2 hair to a conforming figure, you'd need to rig it to fit a specific character because the joint centers vary between one figure to the next. So if you rig the hair to fit, say, Victoria 4, it wouldn't conform correctly to another figure with different joint centers.

Also, copying the HR2 file to the characters folder, and then changing the extensions to CR2 won't make it conforming. It still loads in as a prop. Most likely because it does need a skeleton.

Nothing special, just loaded stock Victoria 9, and then the hair. Also had similar issues with Addy's Evie character. Let me know if you have trouble reproducing.

Hi, my Alpha tester helped me with the promos, and she provided me with the dial values for the Sofiana Main Promo girl below.

Ally 9 : 25%
CJ Mercia : 50%
Victoria 9 : 25%

The skin textures are from Ally 9.

The surface tab shows that makeup is enabled and some makeup textures are applied, with a random texture name stored in a temporary folder. It's likely that my A-tester used some layered makeup, but she can't recall which specific one, as she has many installed.

She does remember, however, that she modified the materials of the Genesis 9 skin and reduced the Dual Lobe Specular Weight using a map she created herself for the Genesis 9 scalp, in order to prevent the skin from overglowing due to the strong backlight.

The light used is "DTLP5 - Light Probe 16 - Soft" from iRadiance - Light Probe HDR Lighting for Iray - Expansion 4.

Happy rendering!

Ho fatto un  render veloce utilizzando le texture di Victoria 8 e mi sembra renda di più di quelle base...

Non vedo l'ora di vedere cosa riesce a tirare fuori il bravo @Crios 

SilverGirl said:

OrangeFalcon said:

SilverGirl said:

3DSaga said:

This is getting to be the time of year where a subscription would be useful- March Madness is approaching. I wonder if we'll see a Pre-March Madness Sale.

March 1 is on a Saturday this year... so maybe they'll start with a weekend thing? Or maybe it'll be like December where they didn't actually start things off until Monday... 

Starting March Madness on that Saturday sounds feasible.  For March let's get a Celtic character bundle.  I'd like a character who can rival Victoria in her medieval-ness, too.  Extra points if it comes with a unicorn or another mythic creature.  Or even a centaur shape.  We need more centaur love.

A unicorn was released somewhat recently for Horse 3.... but I took one look at it and was grateful I'd caved and gotten the one for Horse 2 instead of holding out.  

If we're going Celtic mythic, a selkie would be prety cool.

Yeah, we need a better Unicorn for Daz Horse 3.  I'd be on board for a selkie, too.  Anything majestic, really.

OrangeFalcon said:

SilverGirl said:

3DSaga said:

This is getting to be the time of year where a subscription would be useful- March Madness is approaching. I wonder if we'll see a Pre-March Madness Sale.

March 1 is on a Saturday this year... so maybe they'll start with a weekend thing? Or maybe it'll be like December where they didn't actually start things off until Monday... 

Starting March Madness on that Saturday sounds feasible.  For March let's get a Celtic character bundle.  I'd like a character who can rival Victoria in her medieval-ness, too.  Extra points if it comes with a unicorn or another mythic creature.  Or even a centaur shape.  We need more centaur love.

A unicorn was released somewhat recently for Horse 3.... but I took one look at it and was grateful I'd caved and gotten the one for Horse 2 instead of holding out.  

If we're going Celtic mythic, a selkie would be prety cool.

OrangeFalcon said:

SilverGirl said:

3DSaga said:

This is getting to be the time of year where a subscription would be useful- March Madness is approaching. I wonder if we'll see a Pre-March Madness Sale.

March 1 is on a Saturday this year... so maybe they'll start with a weekend thing? Or maybe it'll be like December where they didn't actually start things off until Monday... 

Starting March Madness on that Saturday sounds feasible.  For March let's get a Celtic character bundle.  I'd like a character who can rival Victoria in her medieval-ness, too.  Extra points if it comes with a unicorn or another mythic creature.  Or even a centaur shape.  We need more centaur love.

I would be happy if some things on my WL were included in some aspect of March Madness. Hopefully a nice representation of the broad span of themes in the DAZ store would be included. 

SilverGirl said:

3DSaga said:

This is getting to be the time of year where a subscription would be useful- March Madness is approaching. I wonder if we'll see a Pre-March Madness Sale.

March 1 is on a Saturday this year... so maybe they'll start with a weekend thing? Or maybe it'll be like December where they didn't actually start things off until Monday... 

Starting March Madness on that Saturday sounds feasible.  For March let's get a Celtic character bundle.  I'd like a character who can rival Victoria in her medieval-ness, too.  Extra points if it comes with a unicorn or another mythic creature.  Or even a centaur shape.  We need more centaur love.

Pretty good product.  I like anime stuff so it was an no brainer for me.  It works very quickly and works okay with morphs.  I set them all at 50%.  The only issue, which isn't so much as an issue but as a logical conclusion, is that any preset expression you use won't look as great when used on a non-anime morph.  Here I have Sylvia 9 with one of Vicky's expressions, and the eyes closed perfectly.  I applied the makeup after activating the anime morph and it was flawless.

Wagner Demon anime morph here looks good, but the Wagner expression looks a bit off.  With one of Mikey's expressions, it looks much better.  This is a testament to how good the anime morph actually is-I wouldn't expect those preset expressions to look great on these heads.

Next was Lycan 9.  It didn't do much to him, mostly increasing the size of the eyes, but there's a noticable difference.

Mercilus was the only one that had a slight issue with his preset expression, with some of the fangs hanging outside.  I like the look though.

How about an elf?  Lianna 9's elvish features morphed pretty well.

Last but not least, last year's incredible February character, Tara.  I had to do an evil expression with her-with one of Victoria 9's.  It actually came out well.

As a bonus, here's a Zahara morph with a Filatoon skin.  Also took FeSoul's Teddy Hair and added a toon shader, too.  It works!