I seriously doubt that they are jumping from Genesis 3 to Genesis 8.....    

 

I think it would make sense to sync up the number in Genesis 8 with Victoria/Michael 8.

• Microsoft Windows jumped from 8 to 10.
• The second generation Xbox skipped it from calling it Xbox 2. Naming it Xbox "3"60 was a smart move having a three in there because Xbox 2 vs Playstation 3 would make the Playstation seem newer. 

Companies don't always name their products in linear order and skip numbers when it makes sense.

looks bit like a bit of Victoria 7 with other morphs

The textures are Motif's "MORE Textures & Styles for Shadowdancer" over at rendo. They're great. I just added the default iray shader to them with no tweaks. Set is still available for sale. 

Yep, the shoes are separate - item by themselves. I'll try again later and really crank up the smoothing, see if that helps. Or...maybe making her feet invisible before I autofit? Wonder if that would work.  

A real quick & dirty one of Victoria 7 wearing the Shadow Dancer for V4.

Shoes: egads cherpenbeck, how'd you get your boots so good? I had smoothing set to 6 and they are still lumpy.

Those textures are fantastic! I wonder why this set had trouble transfering the shoes yet Aiko3 (@Cherpenbeck) one, didn't. Usually, I've found transfering V3/4->V7 easier in regards to fit than trying to fit A3->V7. I guess another option would be to parent the shoes? Are the shoes separate from the shin-guard?

 

A real quick & dirty one of Victoria 7 wearing the Shadow Dancer for V4.

Shoes: egads cherpenbeck, how'd you get your boots so good? I had smoothing set to 6 and they are still lumpy.

Those textures are fantastic! I wonder why this set had trouble transfering the shoes yet Aiko3 (@Cherpenbeck) one, didn't. Usually, I've found transfering V3/4->V7 easier in regards to fit than trying to fit A3->V7. I guess another option would be to parent the shoes? Are the shoes separate from the shin-guard?

A real quick & dirty one of Victoria 7 wearing the Shadow Dancer for V4. 

Problems: if you autofit the belt that has the holster attached, the holster disappears. I've seen this happen with a few accessories - sword sheath with sword attached, sword disappears. Loading it and then parenting it to V7 helps, and then just fiddling with the morphs when you pose her. Here I autofitted, and then loaded the holster separately and then just moved it around till i could get an approximate fit. 

Shoes: egads cherpenbeck, how'd you get your boots so good? I had smoothing set to 6 and they are still lumpy. Flat boots/shoes fit much better going from V4 -> V7 generally - high heels are usually a no hope. But I had trouble with her shoes here as you can see. The legtie isn't so good either - the tie itself is good, but again, if you are autofitting the knife/dagger will disappear and I loaded the knife separately, but didn't spend much time in moving it around.

I really like Shadow Dancer - a nice simple outfit but good for action scenes. Could suit sci fi with the right textures, and fits contemporary as well if you don't use the guns. Not skimpy or overly sexy, but suits a fighter.  

 

 I guess I don't understand the problem. Every G3F skin will work on every G3F character. Here are a couple of examples.

You know, just make every skin work on every character and figure.  Every clothing item work on every character and figure.  Every hair model.  Like others have said - all this confusion MAKES ME BUY LESS OF EVERYTHING.  Oh - only iRay - don't buy.  Oh - only Genesis 3 male - don't buy.  If whatever it is isn't essentially compatible with everything I already own - then DON'T BUY.

 

Yes, you can use any skin on any character, but with multiple UV maps, you can't mix-and-match components of different skins. You can't take, say, the diffuse map (color) from Victoria and use it with the normal map (texture) from Bethany.

The posting on Facebook says the new genesis 8 figures are coming June 20th.. I assume it meant to say Victoria 8

This was apparently incorrect information (according to DAZ_Steve) from an error from a third party scheduling service they were using. More info can be found here:

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2506386/#Comment_2506386

The posting on Facebook says the new genesis 8 figures are coming June 20th.. I assume it meant to say Victoria 8

Probably not — remember, it's possible to have character sets for the Genesis base figure that don't need the Victoria/Michael character. And I'm fairly sure the last couple of Genesis generations came out a month or three before any of the "big name" characters. The head and body morph packs are more important, if they come out at the same time as the base, then at least we've got a bit of flexibility to play around with.

...just scanning the first page of the store pretty much all of the PA G3 characters I see are priced (list) at between 18 and 20$ (rounding up the 5¢ to an even dollar amount). Yes for a couple weeks they are 30% off but that still puts thm at between 13 - 15$ each (and PC coupons don't apply to new PA releases).  That may not sound like a lot to some but on my budget it is.  Bundles are usually right out for me as I don't have the funds to drop 60$ to 90$ at one shot (hence the large number of Stonemason items on my wishlist for example) and many also have clothing (skimp and/or fantasy wear) I wouldn't use.

Most of the time when I purchase a single DO figure, it has already passed the new release stage, often goes on sale (Daz seems to do a number of DO based and figure themed sales) and I have my PC coupon to take another 6$ off.  A few were also "luck of the orange banner" (including the V7 Pro bundle which I got at a deep discount during  the PC sale last year - the total order along with 8 PC items coming to just over 15$). 

As to converting skins from older characters, I just am not all that savvy with it.  Even with third party utilities, there is cleanup that needs to be done in PS to eliminate seams and other imperfections which I am just not good at doing.

 

A basic rule of shopping at DAZ that I figured out a long time ago - EVERY item goes on sale for at at least 50% off the "list" price within a few months of passing new release status, while DAZ Originals get an even steeper discount  of at least 65% and often 70% off.  If an item is both a DAZ Original AND a P.A. Product, or produced by two P.A. together, there are also usually stacking discounts.  Therefore, unless you absolutely have to have the item the day it comes out or have a pressing need for it for some reason, like a commercial gig, it's a lot more financially sound to just say "yep, I want that" and make a note to buy it when the price drops.  Because it absolutely will drop, often before you even get a chance to use it.  Zev0 is one of the very few vendors that I automatically buy from on Day 1, as his stuff is usually immediately applicable to just about everything I do.

As for converting skins, if you want to convert to G3F or M, Cayman Studio's legacy UV sets are ridiculously easy to use and provide seamless conversion of everything back through Victoria 3 (he's the other vendor who has automatic Day 1 status for me), while Sickleyield's Beautiful SKins or NGS Anagennesis 2 both make converting the textures to Iray a snap.  

 

...agh trying to respond on my phone. Need to keep this short as inserting paragraph breaks is a total pain. I rarely use the actual character shape/morphs (as I use morph resource content instead) so just buying them for the skin is still a bit of a waste. I miss the Gen3/4 days whwn you could purchase texture packs. I do have Beautiful Skins for G3 and they do make a good "starting point" as they require a tonne of micro-adjusting in the surfaces tab to get subtile nuances. I will say that the albino skin I created with SBP3 is far better than the one I made off the lightest option in Beautiful Skins. As I don't do much fantasy work I have little use for non natural skin shades. As I finally have SBP3 converting skin maps or having to purchase character content (unless it fits a specific need) is no longer a concern.

Wait, Genesis3 is compatible wit Carrara? It always crashes when I've tried to load a G3 model. G, G2 and Victoria/Michael 5 have worked okay.
I still can't decide which I want to stick with and start building a library. I feel like the knowledge of different character series is kinda like that of guitars, or drums, where you gain an understanding of the different types of wood and such, and the different tones they provide, etc.  As you use the different DAZ characters, it seems you gain an understanding of what each generation brings to the table.
Anyway, I'm rambling :p. 

Do their morphs show if you load the base Genesis (for Victoria 5) or Genesis 3 Female (for Olympia 6)? Do they appear in the Content Library pane under Daz Studio Formats>Install folder>PeopleGenesis>Character or Daz Studio Formats>Install folder>PeopleGenesis 2 Female>Character?

I recently downloaded DAZ3d onto a new computer (Windows 10) and using DIM installed 70 of my old files, two of them being the figures Olympia 6 and Victoria 5.  The Install manager shows them as "installed", but I can't find them in Smart Content - Actors, Wardrobes and Props under Figures.  In fact, I can't fine 'em anywhere.  Anyone know where I should look to find them and get them into Smart Content?

The posting on Facebook says the new genesis 8 figures are coming June 20th.. I assume it meant to say Victoria 8

I'll split the difference. There are certain instances when a different uv is fairly necessary. Things like the Minotaur, or even super toony shapes like Star, can really benefit from a different uv set like, basically anytime the shape changes drastically there can be stretching issues. However the difference between Victoria and Olympia isn't really going to create noticable stretching.

is this really about not wanting to buy the character base to get the uvs template?

I think it's the inverse.  Getting a great skin like Rune 7, but not being able to easily use it with a lot of the commercial products that are designed around the base G3F.  Not to mention that if there's sufficent demand, some P.A. may decide to market an adapter to take the skin up to the next generation of product, but given that there are only one or two vendors who're even supporting the Victoria 7 maps, my guess is that every single skin for a base figure for Genesis 3 other than G3F and G3M will become functionally obsolete when Genesis 4 is released. And as for the "superior fit" argument, that only works if I want to use that specific character EXACTLY as she or he comes out of the box.  The minute I start dialing in other morphs, I might as well be using the base maps, and how many people actually render their characters exactly the way they come shipped?  Ten percent?         

I realized I have several of Darwin's Mishap characters I haven't rendered yet. This gave me ample opportunity to mess around with painting on water droplets. You can decide which one you prefer. I didn't do them exactly alike. Maybe next time. 

I definitely prefer the second one. Who are they? 

FWSA Taia HD for Victoria 7

Parker by darwins mishap

Not quite what I meant. Are you using them as "named characters" of your own, in your fictional universe, and who are those characters? 

FWSA Taia HD for Victoria 7

Parker by darwins mishap

Well most designers use templates for ads and banners to save them time. They are created in advance. They can put all the text in and just shift colors of fonts or whatever when the photos arrive. 

If Victoria 8 really is coming out soon though...some pa's would already have the figure to design content for her probably for sometime now as content development takes a while. So Vicky is likely already out just not released for sale.

True, but due to things like NDAs (Non-Dislcosure Agreements), they can't outright say so; and yes, companies do take violation of them very seriously.

So we skip 4,5,6,7? It makes more sense for Genesis 8 to be the basis for Victoria 8, etc. The previous way was too confusing.

Windows 3.11, Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10. Did I miss anyone? 
Just sayin'... it isn't like there isn't some sort of precedent for this in the industry. :D 

 

You missed Windows 95, Windows 98(SE) and Windows XP.

So we skip 4,5,6,7? It makes more sense for Genesis 8 to be the basis for Victoria 8, etc. The previous way was too confusing.

Windows 3.11, Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10. Did I miss anyone? 
Just sayin'... it isn't like there isn't some sort of precedent for this in the industry. :D