Sempie, no one forces you to use Iray and the latest Genesis Line with Studio.

3DL doesn't need a card, and you can render the V4 characters or older Genesis Generations with it. Like, I am still mostly using G2 in my workflow.

But it is true that newer content is mostly for G8 and Iray here in the store. And while I have no problem with smaller Iray scenes, I have saved a lot of money thanks to G8.

Sempie, no one forces you to use Iray and the latest Genesis Line with Studio.

3DL doesn't need a card, and you can render the V4 characters or older Genesis Generations with it. Like, I am still mostly using G2 in my workflow.

But it is true that newer content is mostly for G8 and Iray here in the store. And while I have no problem with smaller Iray scenes, I have saved a lot of money thanks to G8.

I think the least you would need for every Genesis Generation would be the basic morph sets - I only have these for Genesis 1, that was rather functional to start with, with a lot of morphs already built in. For Genesis 2 I have no morph packs, and, through some giveaways from the recent past, Victoria, Stephanie and Lee 6 - in fact, Genesis 2, for me, is still a very new and untried generation, for which I own next to nothing. For Genesis 3 I only have Mike and Vicky 7 during last november's give-away action - (missed out on the infamous big Glitch, though.) For Genesis 8 I have the base characters only, never even installed them yet. I think I only have the first Genesis generation to a point that I could be creative with it; Mike, Vicky, Stephanie 5 and the young teens, and a lot of morph extensions, even a couple of commercial characters, hairdos and clothing sets, and Wilmap really made a lot of clothes for them. (I'm not into fetish, steampunk or fantasy either. and some of the more recent historical clothes seem to be cosplay-oriented rather than accurate; I'm mostly into contemporary, period and historical stuff.)  I recently finaly did get AoA's lighting sets and the recent Reflective Radiance set for 3Delight during sales  - I was still on Überenvironment, which I found very unintuitive, never managed to wrap my mind around that one. My ancient Quadro 1700 died on me a couple of months ago so I got a new 4GB GTX 1050 ti, which would sort of support small iRay renders - I did manage to do a clothed V5 iRay render with a basic light setup in around 30 mins; the only iRay render I ever finished up till now. Maybe the new Render Throttle for iRay would help; the old one really boosted 3Delight, as I remember it. My DELL workstation my be 10 years old, but it still carries two quadcore Xeon CPUs and 36 GB RAM. So in a way, I could get started with DAZ Studio.

It's just that I'm more comfortable with Poser. I always liked Firefly more than I like 3Delight. EZSkin, a free python script, can marvelously add SSS to ancient skin texture sets, there's a very flexible and very free weightmapped Vicky 4, I've got most of her morph expansion packs, the more recent textures for V4 by Maddelirium, Sabby, Danae, Godin, Sav and others are excellent, Syltermermaid is releasing her old V4 characters for free, at about 10 per month; Mankahoo and others are still doing new hairdos for V4 for very reasonable prices. There's a lot of clothing sets for V4 and M4 that I still have wishlisted, and they usually have very good discounts during sales. There's some excellent free shaders for Firefly, like Bagginsbills' Car Shaders, and Colm's Render Studio lighting sets for Poser produce very nice results. I have Terradome 2 and some of the Dreamland Models suburban sets that are all Poser only. I'm comfortable with Poser, it does what I want it to do, and I never got around even to playing around with my new Studio content.

The thing with DAZ Studio, the way I see it, is, that to get the most out of it, you first have to fork out a lot of cash for the hardware - nVidia-cards with a lot of VRAM and cuda-cores aren't exactly cheap - and then have to invest like crazy in the Genesis line of characters, that aren't exactly cheap either. Pre-Genesis, often characters from the same generation could use each other's textures right out of the box; now every new base character seems to have it's own UV-mapping. Every new pro-pack for every new base charakter will set you back a hundred bucks or so and they get released by one per month and often more - not to mention all of the extra morph expansion packs an cross-generation plug-ins. Every two years or so, after releasing two dozen of base charakters or so, they release a new Genesis-generation and support for the previous Genesis generation mostly stops. (Victoria 4 lasted over six years, is still frequently used in Poser, and is still supported at other stores) Apart from Wilmap's clothing sets, there's not too much free stuff for the Genesis charakters. Also sets seem to be getting more and more expensive, with all of the extra detail and added shaders. To get the most out of Studio, it seems that you have to have at least a hundred dollars to spend every month, which I can't. Even with the free distribution of the base software, DAZ seems to be aimed at the relatively rich. That may be a good business model for DAZ, but it's not good for users with a lesser budget. In the old days, using Poser 4, I used free content only for almost two years (and there was a lot of it) before making my first purchases; that's sort of hard to imagine for people starting out fresh with DS 4.10....

Sorry you are not able to enjoy this hobby on the level you would like to. I am sure there are many that are in the same boat or worse, it's the nature of life. DAZ is a business and they have to make money to stay open, just like any other business. DAZ has gone above and beyond to make it easier for everyone with the crazy sale prices they have. You just need to be patient and keep an eye out for the deals.

.The beauty of 3D is that you don't have to spend money to participate in it. DS is free and there are many modeling apps and image editing software on the web for free, so it's totally up to you what you get out of this 3D deal.

The thing with DAZ Studio, the way I see it, is, that to get the most out of it, you first have to fork out a lot of cash for the hardware - nVidia-cards with a lot of VRAM and cuda-cores aren't exactly cheap - and then have to invest like crazy in the Genesis line of characters, that aren't exactly cheap either. Pre-Genesis, often characters from the same generation could use each other's textures right out of the box; now every new base character seems to have it's own UV-mapping. Every new pro-pack for every new base charakter will set you back a hundred bucks or so and they get released by one per month and often more - not to mention all of the extra morph expansion packs an cross-generation plug-ins. Every two years or so, after releasing two dozen of base charakters or so, they release a new Genesis-generation and support for the previous Genesis generation mostly stops. (Victoria 4 lasted over six years, is still frequently used in Poser, and is still supported at other stores) Apart from Wilmap's clothing sets, there's not too much free stuff for the Genesis charakters. Also sets seem to be getting more and more expensive, with all of the extra detail and added shaders. To get the most out of Studio, it seems that you have to have at least a hundred dollars to spend every month, which I can't. Even with the free distribution of the base software, DAZ seems to be aimed at the relatively rich. That may be a good business model for DAZ, but it's not good for users with a lesser budget. In the old days, using Poser 4, I used free content only for almost two years (and there was a lot of it) before making my first purchases; that's sort of hard to imagine for people starting out fresh with DS 4.10....

This is as good as the "2D Victoria 4" some years back. : )

Is anyone still developing poser itself at this point? That's a serious question.

valid question. I know there was a small upgrade released 4 months ago, but haven't heard anything on a new version.

From a personal standpoint as a poser user also, if I wanted to take full advantage of the latest genesis figures, I would focus on daz studio and move on. It is just to much of a hassle and very limiting to my workflow.

There was an announcement from Smith Micro, simultaneous with the 11.1 upgrade, that Poser 12 was being worked on, with no specifics on the new features, but the release date should be not too far off..

Both Genesis and current state nVidia graphics cards are way out of my budget, I'm working on a ten year old workstation, so I'm sticking to Poser and my weightmapped Victoria 4.

The new Project Evolution female from CGBytes looks promising and seems to have some support, and may be an alternative to Genesis. No; not a big fan of the Poser native figures either, but I like the program itself. Never really got into DAZ Studio, from its first Beta versions onward; Poser is more intuitive for me.

I'm still on Poser and if I use DAZ Studio at all, than in 3Delight-mode. For people like me, only the older DAZ content is still interesting to me - along with some occasional new stuff like the afore mentioned David Brinnen or Jack Tomalin sets. So yes; I have to say, DAZ3D hardly has any interesting new content for me; shiny as it all may be; I'm just here for the old stuff I've missed.

https://www.daz3d.com/z-strike-a-pose-poses-for-genesis-8-female-and-victoria-8

They made Michael 7 for Michael 8. Can they make Victoria 7 for Victoria 8? And Victoria 5 for Victoria 8? If they do, I'll buy them!

On a related note, has anyone managed to get the various sculpted head morphs from Steve Kitt (that are on ShareCG) to work via morph loader pro?  I've been trying to get the Ayshea Brough morph from ShareCG to take using Victoria 4.2 as the target figure, but it gives me an error message:

- No deltas for morph, skipping mode

It says that it has created the morph successfully, but (as far as I can see/search) no new morph appears has appeared in my parameters or shaping list...

Just for fun, I tried importing Ayshea's head morph.obj into Daz, which just makes an invisible cube with no features/nodes.  Importing or bridging to Hexagon doesn't work (head shape never appears in Hexagon).

Any suggestions?

I'm looking at the HD add-ons on offer today as related items, and have some questions about how these HD elements work with other characters. Actually, the question might be more about character mixing.

Let's say I load up the Genesis 8 basic figure, then apply Victoria 8. Then I apply a "for Victoria 8" character. Then maybe I use dials to mix characters. Some of these characters are HD and some are not. What takes precedence?

If I have Victoria 8 HD, will a child of that character type also have the HD elements?

If I use a child of the character that is HD, does it matter if Victoria 8 is HD or not?

How does applying a child character over a parent character differ from just mixing them via the morph dials?

Hi guys, 

I don't know if anyone has had this problem with this product I bought,

https://www.daz3d.com/walks-animation-collection-victoria-8

But, when I insert a aniblock or animation, it doesn't display on the Animate2 timeline. 

The object is moving, but I have no reference or aniblocks below.

Has anyone else had this problem, or is this supposed to work like this?

Winton  

Greetings,

This could be fun. :)

So...DAZ used to make figures for Poser.  They came out with their own application which was, fundamentally, Poser compatible, DAZ Studio.  Eventually they wanted to do MORE than what Poser could do with the figures (because the DAZ company was fundamentally driven by the folks who made the main figures) so they came out with 'Genesis', as the follow-on to V4/M4...some 5+ years after V4 debuted.  Anyway, Genesis was amazing, a single figure that could be made male or female, handled subdivision nicely, and had a ton of other useful features.  It was amazing and everybody was angry.  Oh, and they made DAZ Studio Pro free.  Which was amazing.  And everybody was angry.  Partly because Poser couldn't use it.  Smith Micro just wasn't pushing the technology, because they didn't have the modelers to think about HOW to push the technology to make better people.  There's lots of arguments about who's right and who's left.  Don't care.

Then Victoria 5 and Michael 5 were based on Genesis technology, and they were pretty cool.  Then DAZ decided that their old store was breaking REALLY badly, like losing stuff and failing miserably, and so they changed to a new store software.  And it was amazing, and everybody was angry.  (In fairness it had a lot of bugs early on, and it still is lacking certain nice features, but it's using modern technology, so folks have been able to build software to smooth over some of those lacks.) . Oh, and it had its own forum, and the old forums were lost in the transition.  They hung in there in archive form for a while, but eventually they just went away.  The 'art zone' was more quick to go.

Eventually DAZ added a gallery area, and it was pretty darn cool, but everybody was angry.  (It still would be nice if they supported content warning tags, so folks could post less family friendly items, but that raises other issues.  Don't care.)

Anyway, so Genesis was a single body that morphed into a male and female, and after a while, folks LOVED it, because you could mix and match morphs across everybody in various ways, and it made KILLER monsters.  It also included Autofit, which over time got really good at taking Gen4 items and fitting them to Genesis, and there were ways to apply the textures easily to Genesis.  Also Genesis Generation X allowed folks to migrate Gen4 morphs into Genesis, and it was cool.

So two years later, Genesis 2 came out and they split the base into Female and Male again (G2M and G2F) because it turns out that modeling clothes for a single base causes significant problems especially with breast bridging.  Victoria 6 came out first, and six-ish months later Michael 6.

And Genesis 2 had other cool features, and it was amazing, and everybody was angry.  If I recall correctly this was when HD morphs came in, which allowed you to pose in low resolution and render in VERY high definition, allowing for skin, knee, knuckle, and more, details.  Genesis Generation X2 came out to move morphs around, and G2F used V5's UV, so a lot of the characters moved over.  (I'm really over simplifying this, sorry...)  It was really nice, and folks made some good things for it, and a lot of people still use it as their base character.

Anyway, it did okay...  So two years later Genesis 3 came out and they...gods, you know, I forget.  They made a bunch of changes, and frankly it's one of my favorite models.  Anyway, they did some things that made G3F amazing, and everybody was angry.  They came out with Victoria 7, and a few months later Michael 7.  This is also when they introduced Iray, a new rendering technology which kicks such amazing major ass that everybody's angry about it. (Mostly that they can't get the best video cards with GPUs to make that rendering technology blazingly fast, because those same video cards are the main fuel of the cryptocurrency frenzy.)

I really am not going to go into it, too much, but we lost a few good forum members and PA's to the inevitable march of time, including the one who did Genesis Generation X.  So invariably DAZ came out with Genesis 8 (?!) after two years.  So Genesis 8 was named because we really, really don't want the confusion of 'Genesis 4' being the latest thing and 'Generation 4 (V4/M4/etc.)'.  Since Victoria was using these incremental numberings, they just moved Genesis forward to Genesis 8, and pushed out a Victoria 8 and Michael 8, so everything's in sync.  So now it's harder to move morphs to Genesis 8, but Genesis 8 also finally changed the fundamental UV mapping used, so you REALLY can't move V4 character textures to G8 either, without a lot of work.  So...that happened, and they made AMAZINGLY realistic characters with it.

And everybody was angry.

And DAZ added 'dForce' which allowed them to do dynamic+conforming clothing built into DAZ, and it works really nicely (although it explodes sometimes, it's getting better), and shockingly not as many people were angry about that.

Oh, and somewhere in there they added a whole thing where you could download encrypted products to prevent piracy, and everybody was SUPER angry, and one brave user suggested that the items should 'unlock' after a year, and DAZ agreed, and there was much rejoicing, and then DAZ released maybe 100 items out of the THOUSANDS they release per year since then that were actually encrypted.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So...

Here we are, on a new forum, new store, new platform (DAZ Studio) with a new rendering technology (Iray), dynamics technology (dForce), character technology (Genesis 8, with a ton of other 'little' technologies included like dual quaternion skinning, HD morphs and more), and...well...pretty much the same old sales, and everybody's pretty much copacetic right now.

But something will change in the next few months, and everybody will be angry for a little while, and then they'll make it work.  Because that's what we do.  Because ultimately it's more fun to make it work than to stay angry.  Some folks will find their hill to die on, and decide not to move forward, but everybody else will find new ways of working, and new amazing things that they can do.  Because the entire community is about creation, not about being angry.  And that's [profanity removed] awesome.

So yeah.  That's the abbreviated history.  And oh my god, I made so many mistakes above, but it was fun to write. :)

--  Morgan

Hi all

I used to be into this scene years ago - probably a little too much. I ran a little site we'll just call RM for short. I've decided to try again and use some restraint this time. For now anyway. LOL

However, things are a little different now so can someone catch me up here? When I bailed it was Victoria 4, Stephanie, Aiko and The Girl and I think I was using Poser 6. Now I see Genesis X, Daz Studio, no PC library of 1000's of free Daz goodies. I can probably resurrect my old archives from my official Daz back up product discs but will any of that older stuff work with today's DS? Also, is Poser still a thing or is DS the cat's meow? 

Thanks in advance for any abbreviated history I can get out of this.

The artist formerly known as Grandpoobah.

Hello, I have a problem. Is it possible to do something in DAZ Studio 3 like Source FilmMaker? I mean Rig, SFM has the option to load the rig body script for models, thanks to which, for example, the character can press the button with his hand, and the rest of the body is not move (realism in motion), it is also about attaching a hand to an object, so that using the object, it would look realistically, Unfortunately, for example, the figure victoria 4 moves the whole body when the hand is glued to the object. Is it possible? I am very sorry for my English, I hope you understand what I mean.

Personally I don't see the need, dial spin pick a beard and hair and you can get the vision you want not some else's vision.

So, then why are we buying figures/characters instead of morphs in the store?

Why is there a hundred  page (I'm exaggerating) thread about Victoria 8's looks? Aside from the direction Daz took, also every nuance about her appearance.....

Man, every People product here is someone else's vision. 

Until you buy it and do what you will.

I just think it would open up a new category and in reverse, you could buy a 7th disciple garb outfit and kit bash it to whatever- or take ANY well created character and do exactly that, spin it to your direction.
We sell a D-force Monk's robe, why not a Dforce Biblical robe?

Why not a ten commandments prop?

A parting-red sea prop? etc.....

All those things can be used just as well as the kit bash Mad Max desert wasteland or Aladdin Bazaar....same idea....

 

Most of us do enjoy creating our own characters and do buy a lot of morphs to make our own characters. I rarely use a character as is, except to test it (and Minto!) There is no one set look for religious figures, I'm sure if you add Ollie to some characters you could come up with characters similar to what you are looking for. Throughout history, artists have depicted religious figures in a variety of different ways, so why not use those dials and your imagination? Personally I would prefer political figures for satirical art but I guess that could be done with FaceGen, and I don't think the images could be posted here...

Personally I don't see the need, dial spin pick a beard and hair and you can get the vision you want not some else's vision.

So, then why are we buying figures/characters instead of morphs in the store?

Why is there a hundred  page (I'm exaggerating) thread about Victoria 8's looks? Aside from the direction Daz took, also every nuance about her appearance.....

Man, every People product here is someone else's vision. 

Until you buy it and do what you will.

I just think it would open up a new category and in reverse, you could buy a 7th disciple garb outfit and kit bash it to whatever- or take ANY well created character and do exactly that, spin it to your direction.
We sell a D-force Monk's robe, why not a Dforce Biblical robe?

Why not a ten commandments prop?

A parting-red sea prop? etc.....

All those things can be used just as well as the kit bash Mad Max desert wasteland or Aladdin Bazaar....same idea....

Character Reboot - Savatar

Here is my Genesis 1 original in 3Delight.  I couldn't stand the hair, but that's the best short hair I had at the time.  The one on the right is another 3DL rendition with longer hair and AoA's Subsurface shaders:  (I was such a noob at the time that she has the dreaded elf ear effect going on in her hair that I didn't know how to fix).

Here she is in Arki's Rune Armor.  I had added a little more green.

To begin the reboot, I used G8 and the character Aurelia.  I removed her face morph and added two morphs converted from G1 using GenX2 and SingularBlues' script: Victoria 5 and Branwen (love her lips!).  I used a combination of morphs from Zev0's 200 Plus Face Morphs and RareStone's Face Morphs.  The ears came from converted morphs from DD Resource Ears for G1.  There's one morph which creates a curve in the ears that I absolutely love.  To make her face long, I lowered her jaw, then lowered her mouth and nose. 

The next step was to remove her eyebrows using Brow Remover and add G8F's brows.  I used Arki's EYEdeas for the eyebrows and used the morphs to make them slanted, something I had not been able to do with G1. I colored her skin with a bluish green on Base Color and a neutraled yellow green for Translucency Color.  Aurelia's translucency maps had red noses and ears which didn't look good with the green, so I replaced those maps with the main skin tone map.

For the eyes, I added a green emissive shader to the cornea and eye moisture surfaces while keeping the maps.  I toned down the lumens, but the cornea was still too bright.

I replaced the iris maps with my own rendition of a blind (no iris or pupil) texture.  Now you can barely see the iris/pupil underneath the glow, which is the effect I wanted.  She is wearing Morley Hair.

Victoria 8 and TJ8 for sure. Others might be a mix of them.

Well personally, my ambition is to earn enough to get rid of the day job; I don't need a fortune. Although a forune would be most welcome!

If you are good and consistant at making poses then you should do fairly well.  Dont worry about the overlap.  It really cannot be avoided with poses.  Just do what you like and go with it.  Start with your strong points and when you have built up enough of a back catalog, you can start looking to other areas if you wish.  If you are not making poses for a specific character such as Aiko or one of the teens then I would simply suggest that you stick with the base shape and Victoria/Michael.

Something we all must learn to do with any product we want to sell, is to decide when its done.  We all have to fight off the "thinking like a customer" where having a 1000+ options would be so cool but you  have to consider your time and the return you want for the product.  Some things that have taken little time have sold well and some things that have taken quite a while have not sold well.  But that can go either way.

I tried searching for a safari outfit and pith hat for the Victoria 4 figure yesterday, and couldn't find anything.  Are there any free versions available?

There are some V4 shoes, shorts, and long pants that might work for you at http://mamomamo.candypop.jp/Freestuff/CCP012.html

Karth's Mountie jacket for M4 http://www.sharecg.com/v/42635/browse/11/Poser/Mountie-Set-for-M4 could be fitted to V4. 

I forgot to specify, I would prefer khaki shorts.  I don't know if the shorts on the above link are the khaki type.

The pith hat in the post above is, however, interesting.

WTF? For khaki, just change the color of the texture file.

I strongly suggest for your next request that you post pictures of what you want.

I need Help !!! Please could someone tell me what would cause DS to lock up when I try to delete a Genesis based charater G1, G2, G3 or G8. victoria 4 STAR Cookie none of the legacy figures cause DS to lock up. I also cannot perform a "Select All" or do a " Fit To" operation on any Genesis base characters. I have tried to reinstall DS 10 and have tried to reinstall the genesis characters and it still freezes. Anybody.......Please! Thanks!!!

Kwan