Realistic skins are not one of my main areas (I'm normally into NPR), but others such as magaremoto have been getting excellent results https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4353841/#Comment_4353841

Did a basic comparison of G2F with a base skin and Ringo Monfort's DP Victoria 6 Carrara Shaders which have a nice Subsurface Scattering addition to the shaders https://www.daz3d.com/dp-victoria-6-carrara-shaders

Other users who enjoy working with Photo-Realistic are welcome to update the render settings !

 

thx Bunyi, this my latest effort to get good results using Philemo's PBR shading model on a G3 skin; it's pretty intuitive and gets fast renders, investigating yet though

The possibility to mix characters in Genesis it's amazing.  Unfortunately we can only mix females in G8F, and only mix males in G8M
It could be interesting if we can create "daughters" and "sons" from our characters, example:  50% Victoria 8 body, 50% Teen Josie 8, 50% Victoria 8 face, 50% Michael 8 face to create his daughter
The possibilities could be endless, what do you think? 
 

 

I would love to be able to make children who look like a mix of their "parents".

Exactly!! Would be amazing. 
 

The possibility to mix characters in Genesis it's amazing.  Unfortunately we can only mix females in G8F, and only mix males in G8M
It could be interesting if we can create "daughters" and "sons" from our characters, example:  50% Victoria 8 body, 50% Teen Josie 8, 50% Victoria 8 face, 50% Michael 8 face to create his daughter
The possibilities could be endless, what do you think? 
 

Thanks, everyone!  This is a lot of information to process, I'll be playing around with these settings for a while.  I had no idea render settings could make that kind of a difference, but I did suspect bump might have had something to do with it.  I just wasn't sure how.

I only have the HD maps for Victoria 7 and Elijah 7, those looked like some strong ones to me, and they were a good deal.  I don't have any for Gen 8 yet, but I'll pick some up when they go on sale.  I'll be sure to skip Landon's though lol.

And I've added AoA Advanced Lights to my wishlist, as well.

The possibility to mix characters in Genesis it's amazing.  Unfortunately we can only mix females in G8F, and only mix males in G8M
It could be interesting if we can create "daughters" and "sons" from our characters, example:  50% Victoria 8 body, 50% Teen Josie 8, 50% Victoria 8 face, 50% Michael 8 face to create his daughter
The possibilities could be endless, what do you think? 
 

I asked this in one discussion with no replies :(

I really want to know since I'm about to begin animating a short film and the most frustrating thing is with the clothing. This is what I asked:

" I have a question before I decide to purchase the VWD Cloth and Hair plugin. All I see are Daz propertiary models like Michael and Victoria, etc. I don't work with Daz models. I use my own models for my proyects. The question is: Is this plugin work with any other rigged models? I want this for Carrara since I have plans to make an animated short film and the problems I have is with the clothes."

Realistic skins are not one of my main areas (I'm normally into NPR), but others such as magaremoto have been getting excellent results https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4353841/#Comment_4353841

Did a basic comparison of G2F with a base skin and Ringo Monfort's DP Victoria 6 Carrara Shaders which have a nice Subsurface Scattering addition to the shaders https://www.daz3d.com/dp-victoria-6-carrara-shaders

Other users who enjoy working with Photo-Realistic are welcome to update the render settings !

I might be wrong but I think if you want to get these finer details in renders you will need to pump up the render quality settings, and the resolution level in the paremters tab. Your lighting will also need to be set up to bring them out.... a front-on strong light will probably wash-out the details. The character will also need the right skin maps (bump/normal/displacement), possibly individually adjusted. So it's not just one thing that needs to be right for fine skin details to be visible in renders.

Edit - Double posted with DR who gave a much better explanation than I gave.

You mentioned the render quality settings, which I somehow forgot, and also you are quite right about the bump/normal/displacement maps.

@Faeofthe3rdDimension - I have just had a play around with 3Delight settings, but I just can't get the lighting right so the figure comes out a dark orange.  However, I did find that Victoria 8 has got a surprisingly detailed face in terms of pores and wrinkles, so if you have that figure then it might be a good place to start.
 

so, in short, if i just want the easy way without having stuff double i can continue using SY Victoria 4 and Michael 4 Clones for Genesis 8 - if the item doesn't fit so well simply with the inbuilt G8 autofollow - but if i want new wardrobe items that fit at once, or if SY Victoria 4 and Michael 4 Clones for Genesis 8 doesn't bring good results, this would be the best option? is there a big quality difference in the final result between those 2 products (not counting the creation of new clothing obviously), i mean, can the difference be clearly seen once put on G8M?

except that there's no V4 option in this here, sadly ~
i wish more converters would cross gender, clones as well as UV tools (like i have awesome V4 textures i'd wish on G8M, but only the M4->G8M UV product...)

Yes, there is a difference but I don't know if it is huge difference.  I don't have the clones (before my time) to say more.   I do know that Sickleyield thinks this conversion process is magical 

Yep, I also belong to the group of people (unfortunately, apparently a minority) which find the "world of the beautiful and rich" rather boring.

My recommendation on the topic AWKWARD are the   https://www.daz3d.com/shy-girl-poses-for-teen-josie-8-and-victoria-8 ; poses. I use those very often.

My top list would be poses and smart props related to carrying, lifting and pulling of bags, chests etc.

so, in short, if i just want the easy way without having stuff double i can continue using SY Victoria 4 and Michael 4 Clones for Genesis 8 - if the item doesn't fit so well simply with the inbuilt G8 autofollow - but if i want new wardrobe items that fit at once, or if SY Victoria 4 and Michael 4 Clones for Genesis 8 doesn't bring good results, this would be the best option? is there a big quality difference in the final result between those 2 products (not counting the creation of new clothing obviously), i mean, can the difference be clearly seen once put on G8M?

except that there's no V4 option in this here, sadly ~
i wish more converters would cross gender, clones as well as UV tools (like i have awesome V4 textures i'd wish on G8M, but only the M4->G8M UV product...)

Just a couple of additional notes regarding the creation of the morph sliders as I described. As I mentioned, many of the properties entered when you create your slider (Step 1 in my post) can be edited anytime you wish afterwards. For example, in the case of mine, I probably shouldn't have named it Head when it was actually full body. I may have better chosen to also put it in a different category. Additionally, as stated, I can add custom colours to the slider to more easily differentiate my own morphs and an icon if I wish. If anyone has created a slider and wishes to know how to edit the properties, that is a fairly easy task to both explain and do. Say the word.

I tend not to create morph sliders for all my characters. While it certainly can be convenient when I decide to use them, there is a downside of sorts, that may be relatively specific to my own circumstances. I have a lot of morphs. Looking at Genesis 3 Female for example, I have, of course, the base morphs that come with the figure, which includes both adjustment morphs and poses. I then have a number of the DAZ3D base characters for G3F, such as Victoria 7, Aiko 7, The Girl 7, etc., and each of those come with morphs and poses. Then there are a significant number of PA characters and freebies, that add their own head, body and full sliders to the mix. Then I have a number of clones for earlier figures. On top of all that, there are the add-on morph packages for G3F that I have, such as the DAZ3D Head and Body Morph packages, the 200 Plus - Head & Face Morphs for Genesis 3 Female(s) and a number of other packages. All of this means that a lot (hundreds) of sliders get loaded every time I load a copy of G3F. Wading through them all can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, and so that is why I tend not to create additional sliders for all my own characters as well. Things are a little crowded in there already and there are other ways that I can save and access my custom characters if needed.

Finally, the Shaping tab. Old habits die hard and I've grown accustomed to working in the Parameters tab. However, there is a downside to the Parameters tab that relates in part to the foreging point. The Parameters tab, with the root node selected shows all the parameters, represented by sliders, for that figure, including both shaping morphs and poses. The Shaping tab, on the other hand, displays only the shaping morphs and not poses. This not only reduces the number of sliders, but also avoids inadvertently using a posing slider to modify your character instead of a shaping slider. It will work, but can cause potential unexpected results when posing your character later. I should admit that there are times when some of those pose controls look like exactly what I want to achieve, and yes, I do tend to use them anyways.

95% of my renders are very simple scenes these days as I tend to do a lot of postwork and aim for a very stylised look. I usually use one of the the horse models and/or Genesis 1 or even Victoria 4 as after all these years I'm so behind it's what I'm familiar and comfortable with :-)

Well, if you're solely doing simple scenes with older resources, the GTX 1050 Ti would probably serve you acceptably, given older assets generally have much smaller texture resolutions, which is the part of a render that most eats memory, so 4GB VRAM goes a lot further as far as scene complexity with these older models. Still, if there's any question about whether you might want to use newer resources or more complex scenes either now or in the foreseeable future, I would definitely suggest upgrading beyond there. I'm acutely aware of the limitations of the GTX 1050 Ti's VRAM in these contexts (and I don't really need to have that much in a scene before it can take hours to render).

My brother sticks to the principle of "Buy nice, or buy twice" - if/when he's upgrading computer parts, he always upgrades to the best components he can, because it's cheaper than doing lots of incremental upgrades, it means a better computer now, and it means longer before he next needs to upgrade.

Thank you everyone for all of your input, I really appreciate it. After reading it all I'm going to to try and stretch to the 1060 6gb but will check my MB first to see if I have any power connectors left free.

@MattyManx that looks very useful, I'll add it to my basket and pick it up asap thank you.

95% of my renders are very simple scenes these days as I tend to do a lot of postwork and aim for a very stylised look. I usually use one of the the horse models and/or Genesis 1 or even Victoria 4 as after all these years I'm so behind it's what I'm familiar and comfortable with :-)

I opened DAZ studio 3 advanced

sat scratching my head as the User Interface reminded me why I used Carrara and Poser 

but I recall figure Mixer and was wondering how to use it to fit Millenium Kids and Laura, Maddie etc clothes to Victoria 3, Aiko 3 etc, I recalled I could using it and transfer active morphs and saving a new cr2 with a script

but it was so long ago

and I just wasted a few hours of my life when Clothes converter did it easily 

You could use them with Caymen's V4 to G8F geoshell

https://www.daz3d.com/legacy-uvs-for-genesis-8-victoria-4

Ooooohhhhhhh...

Do you happen to know whether this product can deal with Touchdown Star, particularly the shoulders?

I'm currently using SY's M4/V4 clones, but the shoulders just never look quite right...

I don't have Touchdown Star, but I am pretty sure the shoulders are not going to be right.  They will follow the arms.  Sorry.

Ooooohhhhhhh...

Do you happen to know whether this product can deal with Touchdown Star, particularly the shoulders?

I'm currently using SY's M4/V4 clones, but the shoulders just never look quite right...

dial spinning is pretty easy and one of the vaunted features of Daz Studio.

This is one of those great arguments/counter arguments that gets tossed about as one side expects the other to accept things they do not.

So, in other words, once Daz released Victoria 8 and Victor 8, they need to never make any other figures because, you know dial-spinning and morphs.

What they want -is for you to settle with GOOD ENOUGH. And shifting a character over shoudl be good enough. How dare you want a fully created product? The nerve!

As they make thread after thread lauding, applauding or debating and hating every figure that's released.

Because THAT seems normal. To have soooo many choices you can thumb your nose at less-than-perfection.

And yes, people don't want to do work, but I'd challenge you to find another hobby that doesn't involve any effort beyond unboxing yarn or miniatures or trains.

Which would be to suggest that YARN only needs to be sold in WHITE and the buyer can dye it themselves because...you know...inks and dyes and to suggest otherwise is being lazy.

I did some tests using Genesis 8 and 4 characters that I have under various lighting settings,

This one is at the default settings by clicking on the Default button at the top using the default HDRI but with Draw Dome turned off.

2019-02-18 22:43:31.745 Total Rendering Time: 55 minutes 47.51 seconds
Genesis 8 Base
Akira
Hailey
Victoria 8
Teen Kaylee 8

Click on image for full size.

This one is an HDRI with a black background and various light spots.

2019-02-19 08:11:14.822 Total Rendering Time: 1 hours 11 minutes 51.65 seconds

HDR Black

Genesis 8 Base
Akira
Hailey
Victoria 8
Teen Kaylee 8

Click on image for full size.

This one has the same lights but is a White background HDRI

2019-02-19 10:03:07.761 Total Rendering Time: 1 hours 35 minutes 22.47 seconds

HDR White

Genesis 8 Base
Akira
Hailey
Victoria 8
Teen Kaylee 8

Click on image for full size.

This one is using my default settings using Sun and Sky set to 21/06/2018 14:30 with the dome turned to 300.

2019-02-19 11:09:33.302 Total Rendering Time: 56 minutes 12.28 seconds

My Render Settings Sun and Sky 21/06/2018 14:30

Genesis 8 Base
Akira
Hailey
Victoria 8
Teen Kaylee 8

Click on image for full size.