Most of the G8 series so far seem to be character actors rather than "Stars". Unless you only do pin-ups, this can be a good thing.

Count me as another who wasn't all that impressed with the Pro Bundle contents. The hair is nice enough, but none of the outfits are things that I think I'll ever find a use for. The poses are rather nice, at least, and the add-on characters.

I do agree that her head is too big for her body, but that's an easy fix. And the makeup is awful. But then, the makeup is usually awful. I was rather glad to see her, and having the earlier versions and their discount, it was an easy purchase.

Stephanie is one of the iconic characters, but since Genesis launched, a lot of the reason that she existed disappeared. I can't really speak for the first couple of iterations, since I never got into using gen3 or earlier. But unless you were a modeler, I don't remember there being anything like the variety of morphing packages that are available now. If you wanted anything shorter than the stock V3 you had to scale -- which was not always convincing -- so there really was a need for a smaller female who was *built* smaller. And younger. Trying to make the gen3 and gen4 characters older or younger than they came was a struggle.

Stephanie4 was pretty special. She came late in the series. V4 originally launched at the end of '06 and Stephinie4 didn't show until something like 2010. And she showcased a lot of the development which had gone on under the hood in the preceeding 3 years.

For that matter, she hit the store with enough morphs to almost count as a teaser for Genesis. She came with (or launched with) a whole group of additional subcharacter morphs which added something like half a dozen new girls to your potential runtime. And iirc, you could *mix* them. This stretched the capabilities of gen4's unimesh like very little had before. The original Stephanie's were separate figures which shared a UV with Victoria. But gen4 had collected all of the DAZ base characters into a single mesh, with only a gender split.

It was pretty revolutionary, but Genesis went back and started over from the ground up, and once it was on the ground, you didn't specifically *need* a Stephanie base to get a smaller younger female. You could morph your own, practically from day 1. Later morphing packages like the NPM morphs helped a lot, but the potential was already there.

..S4 with the NPMs finally let me create a viable Gen4 teen character.

Personally, I think that Stephanie 8 came away looking younger than Victoria 8.  I don't care so much about the facial structure, but I do care that they just seemed to have "aged" Victoria 8.  Olympia looks okay IMO.  It really is just V8 that was off putting to me when she came out and so I have not really used her, but rather characters based on her.

I'm the opposite. The more I use Vicky 8, the more she grows on me ;). She's got the best skin of the G8's so far...she doesn't suffer from that overall orange look (fixed really easy, really...lol).

Laurie

Personally, I think that Stephanie 8 came away looking younger than Victoria 8.  I don't care so much about the facial structure, but I do care that they just seemed to have "aged" Victoria 8.  Olympia looks okay IMO.  It really is just V8 that was off putting to me when she came out and so I have not really used her, but rather characters based on her.

What blue dress is she wearing in the promo images?

https://www.daz3d.com/fw-nadine-hd-for-victoria-7

Most of the G8 series so far seem to be character actors rather than "Stars". Unless you only do pin-ups, this can be a good thing.

Count me as another who wasn't all that impressed with the Pro Bundle contents. The hair is nice enough, but none of the outfits are things that I think I'll ever find a use for. The poses are rather nice, at least, and the add-on characters.

I do agree that her head is too big for her body, but that's an easy fix. And the makeup is awful. But then, the makeup is usually awful. I was rather glad to see her, and having the earlier versions and their discount, it was an easy purchase.

Stephanie is one of the iconic characters, but since Genesis launched, a lot of the reason that she existed disappeared. I can't really speak for the first couple of iterations, since I never got into using gen3 or earlier. But unless you were a modeler, I don't remember there being anything like the variety of morphing packages that are available now. If you wanted anything shorter than the stock V3 you had to scale -- which was not always convincing -- so there really was a need for a smaller female who was *built* smaller. And younger. Trying to make the gen3 and gen4 characters older or younger than they came was a struggle.

Stephanie4 was pretty special. She came late in the series. V4 originally launched at the end of '06 and Stephinie4 didn't show until something like 2010. And she showcased a lot of the development which had gone on under the hood in the preceeding 3 years.

For that matter, she hit the store with enough morphs to almost count as a teaser for Genesis. She came with (or launched with) a whole group of additional subcharacter morphs which added something like half a dozen new girls to your potential runtime. And iirc, you could *mix* them. This stretched the capabilities of gen4's unimesh like very little had before. The original Stephanie's were separate figures which shared a UV with Victoria. But gen4 had collected all of the DAZ base characters into a single mesh, with only a gender split.

It was pretty revolutionary, but Genesis went back and started over from the ground up, and once it was on the ground, you didn't specifically *need* a Stephanie base to get a smaller younger female. You could morph your own, practically from day 1. Later morphing packages like the NPM morphs helped a lot, but the potential was already there.

Greetings,

Funny...Josie 8's mouth was too small, IMO.  That said, my wife's instant reaction on seeing Stephanie 8 was, 'Her head's too big.'  I think she's right; I think some judicious head-shrinking, and the right lens (and none of that truly awful makeup) will make her a distinct character without looking awkward.  Or, no more awkward than you'd expect from the girl-next-door.

...it's the kind of thing that makes me wonder if someone built her head without taking into account that she's petite, and so the head ended up outsized.  But as a professional myself, I really find it aggravating when folks who don't know my field as well as I do make presumptions on whether I've done something right or not.

Stephanie has always had a very distinct face, and Steph 8 continues that trend.  The thing about distinct faces is that not everybody's going to find them appealing, and that's okay.

--  Morgan

 

+1.

I can't really understand what these complains are about, either. I mean, I see people with similar face forms every day on the street, or when I look into the mirror. Famous singer Björk has a mouth shaped similar to Steph 8.

I know that this are just polygons and maps, but reading such comments, as a female person who also has "squarish" features... um, yeah. I guess I'll just stay away from reading threads about new character releases in the future.

+1

I said it back when Victoria 8 was released and I'll repeat it as often as I have to; I actually had a female supervisor at a previous job that makes the G8 DO females look like beauty queens. They do not look male to me, when remembering mistaking her for a man the first time I saw her. Every woman is beautiful in her own unique way, even if most folks don't want to believe that.

English Bob, I am interested in getting the sweater with a shirt collar as depicted in this photo:

I heard it's compatible with Victoria 4.  Where can I get it to, and is it free?

Frankly, looking at Victoria, Olympia, Stephanie, & their Pro Bundles, I suspect that Daz has begun phoning it in (halfheartedly going through the motions), as though their attention is elsewhere. In the mostly defunct art of journalism, three examples were considered a trend. I hope they get their act together, because I really liked Ophelia 7, and I hoped she was a taste of things to come.

Extreme Closeup: High Fashion Makeup for Genesis 3 Females          FWSA Cadence for Victoria 7

Showing the default Cadence, then the makeups. I don't like the hairline of the hair, was wondering if the makeup LIE was doing it but as you can see from the original, it's not. Since I was testing the makeups for myself, I just left the hair alone. Then I thought you might like to see these, so just ignore the hairline.  I did change the lips on one of them, they were a bright pink. I'll note the color I used for you.

What I'm going to do- I will do Stephanie 8 in this EXACT SAME LIGHT SETUP and we'll see about the color of her skin. I'll be off and on the thread all day today, showing some things for you in between doing errands. I know there's concern about her skin color and level of detail, so we'll check that out using lighting that has been established on another character. I'll try some of the various Pro-Studio lights since that's my mainstay and you're used to see those lights/ what they can do.

The first is the default, the second is eyeshadow 17, blush 2, lips 4.

The third is FF01 and fourth is FF06 and put this color in Surfaces pane, in the base color  122  130  134

The fifth one is FF07 and last one is FF08

I'm looking at this G3F character in megafastgrab: https://www.daz3d.com/blanca-for-victoria-7 The promos look wonderful, but not sure whether that's due to the undoubted skill of the vendor or whether she really looks like that. Also, it's bugging me that she reminds me of an actress that I can't place. Anyone have her and can give some thoughts?

Still has an extremely masculine face. Diversity is fine and all, but Victoria 8 and Olympia 8 are already masculine women.

Ditto. I loved that V8 had stronger features. It's the same look that I tend to dial on purpose. But S8 looks like her, O8 looks like her...they've all got that chin. So much sameface in the DAZ flagship line. I expect them to have distinctive looks.

Also in the first couple portraits she legitimately looks like a drag queen (yet the full body she does not). I have to wonder if the focal lengths on the camera aren't being adjusted for closeups, it can cause that same effect.

Still has an extremely masculine face. Diversity is fine and all, but Victoria 8 and Olympia 8 are already masculine women.

I don't see it. 

I think y'all are just used to the super idealized femminine faces that borderline on looking cartoonish.

Anyhow, as much as I love the Stephanie line, ehhh... I think I might need to think a little bit before plunking down on her. I haven't really gotten into Genesis 8 as much as I'd hoped I would, but some of the items look really useful, at least.

Does anyone who has Steph 5 and Steph 6 and Steph 8 feel like doing a comparison render, particularly for the faces and skins? I've just been playing with Steph 6 and I can't for the life of me figure out why I ignored her for so long, she's fantastic. So I'm curious how they all look next to each other. 

(Or maybe a Victoria 8, Olympia 8 and Steph 8 comparison as a few peeps are saying they all look the same and I'm curious)

Ha! i had that with Olympia 8 - Olympia 7 is my favourite figure hands down ever. I adore her. So I got Olympia 8 and wanted to cry. Her shape is fine, but good gravy, her skin is dreadful.  

Does anybody else think that Olympia 8 and now Stephanie 8 look kinda unfinished? I quite liked Victoria 8, but then O8 looked as if they just changed V8s body, tinkered slightly with the face and said "good enough". Olympia 7 has a very distinct face, O8 (to me, at least) has not - and now Stephanie seems like the same thing: smaller body, but nearly the same kind of face. I sincerely hope it will be different for Gia 8 and Eva 8 - G7 is my favourite character by far.

Does anybody else think that Olympia 8 and now Stephanie 8 look kinda unfinished? I quite liked Victoria 8, but then O8 looked as if they just changed V8s body, tinkered slightly with the face and said "good enough". Olympia 7 has a very distinct face, O8 (to me, at least) has not - and now Stephanie seems like the same thing: smaller body, but nearly the same kind of face. I sincerely hope it will be different for Gia 8 and Eva 8 - G7 is my favourite character by far.

Not working for me financially either. Wrong week always. Mind you, I had JUST checked out 4 minutes before with my LAST $8 store credit and Steph arrived. :headdesk: 

Just a heads up for owners of previous Stephanies.....there's no orange banner, but it looks like there is an 'exclusive message" in the account area. 

Thanks for the heads up.

Sigh.  As usual, it expires right before I can take advantage.  I'm not investing in Gen 8 not because I don't want to, but because timing of release sale to funding has not worked to my favor more or less since the arrival of Victoria 8...

Ah well.  I can still finish getting all the stuff I want for previous generations. :)

Just a heads up for owners of previous Stephanies.....there's no orange banner, but it looks like there is an 'exclusive message" in the account area. 

Thanks for the heads up.

Sigh.  As usual, it expires right before I can take advantage.  I'm not investing in Gen 8 not because I don't want to, but because timing of release sale to funding has not worked to my favor more or less since the arrival of Victoria 8...

Ah well.  I can still finish getting all the stuff I want for previous generations. :)

I was just saying to a friend, that I think I'm in the minority here, liking the more mature, more "mannish" look of V8's face. I don't have her yet, but every time I look at her face, I really like it. I have Olympia 8, and while I like her shape (and I actually don't find her very masculine looking), I absolutely LOATHE her skin. I keep thinking I wish I could swap Olympia for Victoria LOL I'm reserving judgement on Stephanie 8 till I see more customers renders, as I feel they are more of a selling point for me than the store promos. I think her skin looks orange like O8's in most of the promos....and I can't work out why her foot looks so bizarre in that one promo......but I'm kinda liking her face.  

Still has an extremely masculine face. Diversity is fine and all, but Victoria 8 and Olimpya 8 are already masculine women.

Still has an extremely masculine face. Diversity is fine and all, but Victoria 8 and Olympia 8 are already masculine women.

Wanted to create a clean thread reguarding this issue cause this came up during a different issue I was having.  Since re-installing DAZ on my brand new computer, I am no longer able to search for custom added products in Smart Content tab by Artist.  I did find that all of my custom products seem to be showing up in Smart Content and seem to be working with a few caveats.

I have an external drive called "Backup 1 HDD" which has all of my DAZ and third party content.  Everything worked correctly on my old computer including my custom Metadata for 3rd party products.  All were searchable by artist in SmartContent and with correct categories, product types, etc.  Aside from some known problem products that are still missing metadata from the DAZ store itself.

Here is my setup:

Backup 1 HDD / DAZ 3D >

• > 3rd Party (Runtime subfolder for Rendo content, etc)
• > Studio > My Library > Runtime > Support (all DAZ 3D* files, my custom ones as Local_User* and my UserData_1.dsx has correct date stamp from last export)
• > Studio > My DAZ Connect Library  > Data > Cloud

So here are a few oddities I noticed... I have searched through the SmartContent categories and most of my custom Products are in fact showing up if I do not load a character into scene, but if I load up say Victoria 4, some will not show up in SmartContent anymore even though the metadata defined them as compatible with V4.  Nothing is searchable by Artist anymore and when I try to load some of the products, it gives me an  "unsupported product" error.  This of course didn't happen before because I was very careful to assign proper compatibility base, etc.  Also, I used to be able to highlight all the products and "merge into scene" and they would all load up.  Now that doesn't work either.  I need to double click each item individually.

FYI - I followed this doc 100% to customize dozens of third party products and it worked great up until now.  I even created proper thumbnail jpg's!

http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/userguide/creating_content/packaging/tutorials/adding_metadata/start

So if there are any Metadata and custom product gurus out there... I could use some help here.  It took me a whole week to do all of this custom work in the first place.

Thanks!