Today I decided to spend a little time playing around with the new La Femme figure to see if she could be fitted into my current workflow. I still need to run some more tests to see how well she adapts to Victoria 4 poses. To be honest, I should have worked on her expression a little more, but overall I like some of the new features the figure has to offer. The fabric draping was simulated in the Cloth Room.

As usual, this was created with Poser Pro 11 and Clip Studio Paint.

Dear Daz family, I'm new to the daz 3D community and I got several Pro packs when they were on special which includes animals/actors/anthropomorphic creatures like the lizard man, centaur and Minotaur along with Michael 4 Victoria 4 (their variance) and freak 4. I'm overwhelmed with trying to fit clothing and understanding the mechanics of all these conversions, UV mapping, converting,batching, skins,morphs and what not. Also a lot of the clothing I get doesn't seem to fit right on other characters and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Perhaps I'm just not understanding the process. I was wondering if there was a flow chart available, for example, an M4 character might have an arrow pointing to what generation it is, followed by what converters/uv maps/batching/etc (with links to purchasable content) depending on your goal. The flowchart would eventually lead to the current Genesis, which I assume is the goal since it'll have more options available and flexibility. Would Following the flowchart in reverse allow you to change from a Genesis model back to the previous one? Would there be a reason to do so? If not a flow chart, how about a spreadsheet or a web page with drop-down menus that you select a model name or version and then it would list all that was said above. Is there anything of that nature available? A visual aid would be a big help here. Thank you for your time and any advice would be appreciated.

There's also the compatibility matrix, though it only goes up to Genesis 2 (Brodie 6, NOV20-2014). I don't know why they abandoned it.

Title: Her Most Treasured Possession

Statement Used: “GypsyAngel owns this?” Entry # 1

Products Used: Eilish for Genesis 3 Female, Robbus Goblin HD for Genesis 3 Male, Sapphire HD for Victoria 7, ColorWerks Hair Shaders for Iray (Mokie)

Story:

They all stared intently at the dimension vortex. Would she come through? The great creator … the one who could save their world. The fairies had risked all in travelling through the vortex to acquire something the creator would cross worlds to retrieve. They had barely made it back in their allotted time. Eilish hadn’t wanted to steal from her, but GypsyAngel was their last hope.

Had they done the right thing? The Mokie seemed an odd choice. It was lifeless and Eilish could sense no magic in it. The fairies had said GypsyAngel kept it by her side at night, sometimes cradled in her arms. They insisted it was her most treasured possession.

Additional Products: 

3 Gate Pass, NeoIndia Braid for Genesis 2 Females(s) and Genesis 3 Female(s), Sapphire Outfit for Genesis 3 Female(s), Exotic Leather Shader Presets 1 for Iray, Long Leather Coat and Hat for Genesis 3 Female(s), Dark Storm Outfit, Mr Cogsworth, Ktarya Outfit for Genesis 3 Female(s) and Genesis (8) Female(s), Look at Me Pose Control, Lori Hair for Genesis 3 and 8 Female(s), Tonal Rage - Tone Mapping Toolkit for Iray, Studio Light Pro HDRI Iray Wow Lights, Rim Light Rig Iray, Ron’s Fireflies, Ron’s Dry Ice, Ron’s Trees

Sorry to necromance the thread, but does anyone know the exact day Victoria 4.1 was released?  I got the month and year but not when in April 2008.  My email address does not have emails that go that far back.

How do I find the readme's for Victoria 4 or other stuff?

Either because you are watching it or it is an iray thing.  Are you using iray?

Both. I'm not really rendering anything I'm that excited about. I don't have the props I need but I wanted to try things out.

And I totally forgot I was going to write this morning. I've not even opened plot factory or my docs. I'm a terrible person.

I am too busy getting bogged down with seemingly unimportant details than writing.   When was Genesis released?  I think Victoria 4 was released in 2006 or 2007?

Bought this old Ooh La La V4 dress at the $2.99 sale to check it out, looked like good quality work. It is indeed well done and converts well to Iray.

Other stuff used (converted to Iray):
School Hallway  -  https://www.daz3d.com/catalog/product/view/id/20823
Jasmina for Victoria 4 and Genesis 2 Female(s)  -  https://www.daz3d.com/catalog/product/view/id/19256
Amy Hair  -  https://www.daz3d.com/catalog/product/view/id/25142

Thought I'd take some time off from re-re-re-rendering the same scene to put this together as an example. Here, Victoria and Michael are the parents of Charlotte, with different amounts of each parent dialed in. These are all simple character dials, so it wouldn't scale smoothly to more intensively dial-spun characters (unless one converted those characters to their own dials), but it will give you some idea of how well this approach would work for what you're trying to achieve.

I want to modify Victoria 8 HD addon in Zbrush so I can add more detail like pores, skin anamolies, detail in the feet, hands, veins, things that should've been done properl in the HD addon but were neglected due to laziness.  The Genesis 7 HD addons were very well done, but Genesis 8 HD addons are pretty bad.

I can GOZ the figure from DAZ to Zbrush, but it only exports the lowest subdivision level. Is there anyway to export the higher sub division levels?

Does the loyalty discount only work once? I want to make sure I have an "optimal cart" if it's only going to work one time. 

I just used it to get a gift card. Then it worked again on a second cart. So, it looks like it is multiuse like last months Victoria's birthday coupons.

While I really appreciate the coupon, it is a bit disconcerting to realize that I just bought the Jane 8 Pro bundle and addons yesterday for $75 and could have got it for $60 if I had waited just one more day. Oh well. Such is life

Ok, thank you.

And yeah, that sucks about the pro bundle. I've had the opposite happen too before, where I think "Ok, if I wait another day or two maybe a gift card sale will come up that I can purchase first before buying the pro bundle or some other sale that will make the pro bundle sale more tempting" and then BAM, the bundle sale was gone. lol Timing can be tricky with these sales sometimes.

This is why these loyalty coupons are good. I just bought a bunch of stuff that were not even on my wishlist--stuff that I would not have bought otherwise. Can we please have them be based on item purchases (no matter what method is used), as opposed to just the giftcard purchases (for people who use store credit)? Please, please, please? :)))))))))))))))))))

Yes please, please, please!

I qualified for this loyalty coupon, possibly because I just bought a substantial GC last week - but I missed out on the Victoria Birthday ones despite buying a GC that qualifying week, so it doesn't even seem completely consistent.

Does the loyalty discount only work once? I want to make sure I have an "optimal cart" if it's only going to work one time. 

I just used it to get a gift card. Then it worked again on a second cart. So, it looks like it is multiuse like last months Victoria's birthday coupons.

While I really appreciate the coupon, it is a bit disconcerting to realize that I just bought the Jane 8 Pro bundle and addons yesterday for $75 and could have got it for $60 if I had waited just one more day. Oh well. Such is life

There's a Loyalty coupon out for 20% off. Can anyone confirm if it can be used multiple times?

I must be disloyal.  
I have spent qute a bit over the past several weeks, but it was all gift card money, so that must not count...

Yeah, it's probably still the giftcard purchase that counts. I finally got one of these coupons, but I did buy a giftcard last week, so it's probably that.
I really wish the actual spending would count, not the giftcard itself.

But the Gift Card is the actual spending (for money). Excluding actual purchases of GCs and then counting other cash purchases and purchases with GCs would, I suspect, be a nightmare.

I usually only buy a giftcard once a month, and then buy stuff with store credit. If there were coupons every week (like there were during the Victoria celebration), and these coupons were based on the previous week's spending, then I only get one coupon, even though I might have spent more money during that month than someone who doesn't use store credit. For example, there were maybe four (?) Victoria coupons, and I did not get a single one of them, even though my spending was well over a thousand dollars during that time.
A simple solution could be to count every sale, except for giftcards--and not separate cash purchases and store credit purchases.

IN general, autofit has it limitations.

And particular for items with "shared" mesh. And by "shared" I mean mesh which potentially can be affected by more than one region. Like a dress where noth legs can affect it. I assume autofit will weigth each vertex to the closest skin surface.

Possible solutions:

* You can manually edit the weigth map, But this migth not be sufficient

* You can do one or more corrective morphs

* You can use some of the tools offered in the shop

like https://www.daz3d.com/rssy-clothing-converter-from-victoria-4-to-genesis-8-female

* You can try using dforce on the clothing

Looks like a combination of Leony and Gwyn from Riaya

Title: Chance Meeting

Statement used: "Hmmm... GypsyAngel was definitely here."   Entry #1

Stuff Used:  Apartment Floor, 

Casual Jeans and T-Shirt for Genesis and Genesis 2 Female(s), 

Hip Hop Outfit for Genesis 3 Male(s), 

Mace for Genesis 3 Male , 

Story:  Jordon and Sarah were on their way out to their favorite resteraunt when Scott and Angelia came out of their apartment. Scott was carrying Angelia because she had hurt her ankle while being chased by Scott in their apartment, so he was taking her to the hospital. Jordon didn't like their neighbours at all because they were always too loud. 

Extra Stuff Used: Buccaneer Basic Textures, Buccaneer Basic for Genesis , Freak 5 Starter Bundle , V5 Summer Set , Victoria 5 , Advanced DAZ Studio Light Bundle , Nox Hair for Genesis 3 Male(s) & Female(s)​ , Vidal Braids for Genesis 2 Female(s)​ , Jordan Hair​

Title: Chance Meeting

Statement used: "Hmmm... GypsyAngel was definitely here."   Entry #1

Stuff Used:  Apartment Floor, 

Casual Jeans and T-Shirt for Genesis and Genesis 2 Female(s), 

Hip Hop Outfit for Genesis 3 Male(s), 

Mace for Genesis 3 Male , 

Story:  Jordon and Sarah were on their way out to their favorite resteraunt when Scott and Angelia came out of their apartment. Scott was carrying Angelia because she had hurt her ankle while being chased by Scott in their apartment, so he was taking her to the hospital. Jordon didn't like their neighbours at all because they were always too loud. 

Extra Stuff Used: Buccaneer Basic Textures, Buccaneer Basic for Genesis , Freak 5 Starter Bundle , V5 Summer Set , Victoria 5 , Advanced DAZ Studio Light Bundle , Nox Hair for Genesis 3 Male(s) & Female(s)​ , Vidal Braids for Genesis 2 Female(s)​ , Jordan Hair​

Edited to fix spelling mistakes

@plasma_ring: Thanks for showing us Beautiful skin for Iray! I like how you managed to achieve a toon look. Would you say this effect works due to your specific lighting you use?

I'm glad it's helpful! :D

Certain types of lighting really enhance the effect, especially using warm colors. I usually render sprites and portraits in a black or near-black environment like the ones found in Render Studio 2.0 - Volumetric Plus, The Void, or Tenebroso, and dramatic lighting works best in my experience since distinct light, shadow, angles, and planes all contribute to the painterly feel. For the examples in my original post I used Render Studio 2.0 and ElianeCK's Dramatic Lights 1 and 2. It's not a realistic effect, so it doesn't look as desirably unrealistic in very realistic lighting, if that makes sense.

I did a workflow experiment using the default sun-sky settings and it didn't turn out too bad. I think with the right combo of props and composition it would probably work fine--I'm just always rendering Gotham City overcast or at night (sun? I don't know her). 

That said, I think messing with it in realistic lighting makes it easier to see why it looks "toony" and not just shiny. As Novica pointed out, the high reflectivity is because it's metallic, but it also tends to have deeper shadows. Lemme pull out my trusty comparison shots again:

Beautiful Skin looks like it has a very, very subtle dark aura that by providence or design helps enhance areas that are often defined by linework in comic-style art, like the jawline and nose. I'm not sure if this is also due to the metal-like properties (I don't know the first thing about shaders except that they look like delicious candy) but it's more of a penciling vs. the inked outline effect of shaders like Sketchy.  Edit: I checked settings and it is probably definitely the metallicity!

Caveat: It's more pronounced on some characters than others, and I've tested this on one character where it was either not visible or too faint for me to see (Lyra). After some swapping skins and characters around it seems to have something to do with the skin itself; I'm using the complete presets that keep the original texture and not the Victoria or base G8F settings.

And this is why I lower the default bump--it's very aggressive, to the point where it looks like severe pitting on some characters (it's freckles! But backwards).

Setting up characters with it might be frustrating for people who aren't comfortable tweaking skin settings, but I'm suggesting it for a kind of a niche, off the wall purpose anyway. If you do like playing with skin settings though, it's super fun and interesting! 

.

Since we are enjoying a good whine 

I occasionally come across this rather annoying discontinued  product in my library 

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/169/start

it was a morph pack for some really old Zygote clothing for V1 to update it to V2 apparently 

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/azproduct/169

destinied to never be useable in any way 

my own silly fault for buying it but it was only a couple dollars I see

the sad thing it was actually years before I realised I cannot use it 

I have it too but as part of the Victoria 2 Bundle which also contains the clothing pack it's for.  Got the whole thing for less than $10 here at DAZ.

 

 

I actually have all those others things listed  too but not that one pack, bought separately 

its no biggie just raising as it was a classic case of something being very unclear in its product description, it simply sounded like an upgrade for V2 but irrelevant as no longer in the store

the Original Poster’s example is pretty clear in its description that it’s a texture addon so has no case in my opinion at all.

.

Since we are enjoying a good whine 

I occasionally come across this rather annoying discontinued  product in my library 

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/169/start

it was a morph pack for some really old Zygote clothing for V1 to update it to V2 apparently 

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/artzone/azproduct/169

destinied to never be useable in any way 

my own silly fault for buying it but it was only a couple dollars I see

the sad thing it was actually years before I realised I cannot use it 

I have it too but as part of the Victoria 2 Bundle which also contains the clothing pack it's for.  Got the whole thing for less than $10 here at DAZ.