Some PA's just lean to the stylized human more than the realistic model. One buys what one finds more appealing ;). I tend to think most of the generations have eyes that are too big and I tend to dial them down in size and a lot of the time, I move them down a little because they seem to high to me.

Also, from the looks of the images you have posted, have you customized the characters in some way? If you haven't you have another morph loading with the characters you mentioned because they don't look like the default characters.

Havos said:

I am curious to know why a HD character needs a normal map, apart from adding pores. I assume the large facial wrinkles and the like would be modelled into the HD morph, so should not need a normal map as well to further enhance these.

I see in the two images posted by sid that the one with the normals have deeper and more defined creases, why could that not have been done with HD alone?

Since G 8.1 Daz Originals core figures no longer use bump maps with PBR skin shader. Everything is now on the normalmap. PAs might be using bump maps on their characters, but core figures come without it.

It also means that Daz Originals characters now have two sets of normalmaps - one standard and one toned down for use with HD morphs.

marcus.ames said:

galien said:

marcus.ames said:

Bluejaunte's back on top of their game with Tyler, too.

I like the character, but I've opened a support ticket as the eyeball's tend to poke through the lower eyelid when simple expressions are applied.

 

Lyra/Young Lyra have the same issue, and before knowing I can do something like a support ticket, I always compensated by scaling the eyes down 3.5%. But yeah, I noticed the same after posing her a bit. Fingers crossed.

Thanks for confirming that you also have this issue.

For Tyler, the best solution I have found is to set the hidden Eyes morph "Eye Whole Size" back to zero.  When the character loads this is set to an increase of 20% (I don't understand why).

Found out its the body and head morph add on deleted the shin length and hip width now loads with no errors (well no duplicate errors)

Wonderland said:

Thanks, I looked more closely at the promos and when Josie or V9 skins are used on Minerva, the wrinkles go away but Minerva's skin on Josie gives Josie wrinkles. So the wrinkles are all in the texture which is fine by me since the morph or at least partial morph can be used to make her look younger and the skin on other characters make them look older so it has double purpose. 

Yep, just load the non-HD version of Minverva and use a younder skin and that seem to work well.

For reference I've attached a render with: Tyler 9, Minverva HD wearing Tyler, Minverva non-HD wearing Tyler. I love both options! Can't what to see some darker skins, I'll have to go have a look at the ones that come with gen 9.

^ Wearing Tyler! :D

There's also two normal map options, a basic version and a "HD" version, but the "HD Normal" does  not make the Minverva look as sharp.

The same image as above, but all wearing Minverva's base material and the "HD Normal"... if I've clicked all the butons correctly:

^ Wearing Minverva

Shimrian said:

Thank you @GhostofMacbeth and @plasma_ring. I couldn't resist and ended up buying the Christmas bundle so I could get the skin, the Iray Winter Light Kit (which looked perfect for an image I was working on) and to get the Steampunk and Sherlock Street Detective Bundle for $5 (which had some cute items that I really wanted)! Here is how G9 male at 100% and face older at 100% (from Genesis 9 Starter Essentials that everyone gets for free) looks with Minerva Mats loaded (no morphs, only skin). I tunred up FACS Detail Strength to 100%, but not sure if that was needed. I'm using eyebrows from the Essentials Expansion and Eyelashes from Starter Essentials (smaller). Michael probably would have looked better, but I wanted to see how the generic male looked. I'm not sure I like his nose, but w/e. I also added an image without the face at 100% older as I'm not sure how I like this morph at 100%.

I think the skin looks pretty good on males and can't wait to play with it more. :)

I like the second one a lot better. I don't think you can tell it was a female texture but it's interesting that he doesn't look old at all with skin that makes all the females look a lot older.

Thank you @GhostofMacbeth and @plasma_ring. I couldn't resist and ended up buying the Christmas bundle so I could get the skin, the Iray Winter Light Kit (which looked perfect for an image I was working on) and to get the Steampunk and Sherlock Street Detective Bundle for $5 (which had some cute items that I really wanted)! Here is how G9 male at 100% and face older at 100% (from Genesis 9 Starter Essentials that everyone gets for free) looks with Minerva Mats loaded (no morphs, only skin). I tunred up FACS Detail Strength to 100%, but not sure if that was needed. I'm using eyebrows from the Essentials Expansion and Eyelashes from Starter Essentials (smaller). Michael probably would have looked better, but I wanted to see how the generic male looked. I'm not sure I like his nose, but w/e. I also added an image without the face at 100% older as I'm not sure how I like this morph at 100%.

I think the skin looks pretty good on males and can't wait to play with it more. :)

Edit: added gray hair to older face.

Gordig said:

Wonderland said:

I'm pretty sure I posted this before, maybe it got deleted for some reason or was in a different thread?  But anyway here is Josie's skin on a mixed character with some Josie dialed in. I don't think her skin looks as bad as others are saying. Looks like normal human skin to me. I realized after rendering that the lips look off but I'm pretty sure that's an issue with my morph, not the texture. 

Like I said right before you first posted that render, I think the problem with Josie's skin in the promos isn't the detail map, but the lack of specularity. Promo Josie looks dessicated, while yours looks normal (no pun intended).

Personally I think almost all promo renders for DAZ core characters look awful. At least the first few. They often post more artistic renders towards the end, maybe by PAs or professional artists that are much better than the first several promos. I'm not sure what lighting they use but it's usually really awful. Sorry to insult anyone but I really think they should switch out their main promo artist (s). Thorne does great promos for their non-DAZ characters, too bad they didn't do the renders for the DAZ Originals. 

sid said:

Wonderland said:

Oh good to know, I was wondering what that beard was! Are the wrinkles modeled in or just normal map/textures?

Here is her HD with the default load, and second almost exactly the same render but with the normal map removed

 

Thanks, I looked more closely at the promos and when Josie or V9 skins are used on Minerva, the wrinkles go away but Minerva's skin on Josie gives Josie wrinkles. So the wrinkles are all in the texture which is fine by me since the morph or at least partial morph can be used to make her look younger and the skin on other characters make them look older so it has double purpose. 

Shimrian said:

Anyone have an image of the skin on a version of Michael or Male G9 with age turned up? I tried using the Casey skin on a female with horrible results and wondered how this skin looked on a male. Woud love to create an older male like Stellan Skarsgård or someone similar. I know I can't get the lines in fully yet without good G9 aging morphs, but still curious how it would look with what's currently available. I'd also still love to know what hair is used on the main promo image for Minerva 9 HD. If it was included in one of the bundles, I'd likely buy them, but I can't find it. :(

Also, thank you @sid for adding the images with and without the normal map. :)

Edit: Adding a comment for what @CHWT mentioned earlier on her body. I  don't see this as a body of a 30 year old. I definitely see aging around the chest area, neck, elbows and knees which seems appropriate for someone around 50-60 (I'm guessing that is the age range). Those are the first areas that start show aging (outside of the face) for someone that age that is still in shape. Maybe hands too? I'm not sure. I don't think turning 60 means you have to be out of shape.

Maybe my perception is jaded because when my mom was 60, my friends couldn't believe it and thought she was 45 at the most (yay, genetics). I still think she has appropriate body aging for someone under 60 (that is in shape). She is supposed to be mature, not ancient! Look at Christie Brinkley on sports illustrated at 67! While I'm sure those images were enhanced/brushed up, that's far older than this model is supposed to be. If you want saggy, you might want to wait for Mabel. :)

I think this character is great, I'm just hoping the skin looks as good on a male character as it does on a female character. I wish the artist added a sceenshot on how that would look. :)

Here's Michael with Minerva's skin. I like it a lot, except that the chest normals do the thing where there's an emphasis line under the breasts. They look like they'll be easy enough to edit out, but still. 

I was also using a mix of Michael and Victoria's skins for one of my characters and immediately switched out Vicky's for Minerva's and dialed in some of her HD details. He finally looks more his age (also he's kind of a granny at heart--this pic is from a WIP of him sitting on his porch in a rocking chair knitting lol). 

Havos said:

I am curious to know why a HD character needs a normal map, apart from adding pores. I assume the large facial wrinkles and the like would be modelled into the HD morph, so should not need a normal map as well to further enhance these.

I see in the two images posted by sid that the one with the normals have deeper and more defined creases, why could that not have been done with HD alone?

Normals are mostly an option for adding the appearance of the HD details without having the character's subdivision cranked up to the level you'd need to show the sculpted version. So with both you have a lot of options for striking a reasonable balance between the strength of the effect and the resources you need for the scene. I actually use normals over HD details most of the time unless I have a character whose actual physical features are very sharp and angular, since I can often see a noticeable difference in that case. The character I posted above has very soft, rounded features for the most part so I'll probably combine Michael and Minerva's normals to get the details I want (unless/until an older guy comes out with normals I like better).  

At the very least their ERC links to joint and morph corrections will not work.

Please remember to put the Viewport in Smooth Sahded mode if you are going to show a nude figure.

Alistair's morph was fixed - redownload and reinstall through DIM, daz Central, or Daz Studio (depending on how you get your content).

I installed Alistair character but suddenly it always auto apply whenever I create new charcter or add new basic figure. It not big deal as I can manually set the value to 0% but it still an extra work for me. Any way how to permanently disabled the auto apply for this? And I don't want to uninstall this cahracter because I use it in my other character.

In the attachment, I only add the G8.1 Basic Male figure and as you can see the Alistair body and head are auto apply.

halasdanny_a45c7352f3 said:

 I had the same problem,  and I found the offending morph. You need to go to where your library is installed. Find the data folder, and follow this address: data\Daz 3D\Genesis 8\Male\Morphs\DAZ 3D\Body and then delete the DSF file called aaaa. It's fixed the error message for me.

Thank you so much! It's works. No more annoying pop up. 

I am curious to know why a HD character needs a normal map, apart from adding pores. I assume the large facial wrinkles and the like would be modelled into the HD morph, so should not need a normal map as well to further enhance these.

I see in the two images posted by sid that the one with the normals have deeper and more defined creases, why could that not have been done with HD alone?

I was wondering, what actually does happen in this case, outside of the errors? Does one morph over ride the other, do they apply together, or something else? I'm just wondering if, beyong getting the error message, I'm getting degraded performance if I don't uninstall one.

Wonderland said:

I'm pretty sure I posted this before, maybe it got deleted for some reason or was in a different thread?  But anyway here is Josie's skin on a mixed character with some Josie dialed in. I don't think her skin looks as bad as others are saying. Looks like normal human skin to me. I realized after rendering that the lips look off but I'm pretty sure that's an issue with my morph, not the texture. 

Like I said right before you first posted that render, I think the problem with Josie's skin in the promos isn't the detail map, but the lack of specularity. Promo Josie looks dessicated, while yours looks normal (no pun intended).

 I had the same problem,  and I found the offending morph. You need to go to where your library is installed. Find the data folder, and follow this address: data\Daz 3D\Genesis 8\Male\Morphs\DAZ 3D\Body and then delete the DSF file called aaaa. It's fixed the error message for me.

I'm pretty sure I posted this before, maybe it got deleted for some reason or was in a different thread?  But anyway here is Josie's skin on a mixed character with some Josie dialed in. I don't think her skin looks as bad as others are saying. Looks like normal human skin to me. I realized after rendering that the lips look off but I'm pretty sure that's an issue with my morph, not the texture.