I also got into Daz to create covers for my novels. 

If you are starting out, then look at investing in the Daz club, it comes on sale periodically, but it's well worth it for the vouchers and the amount you will save. You will more than make up for it, because trust me, when you start buying, the store just sucks you in, not to mention all the $1.99 items and stacked discounts up to 90% off at times. 

Daz has two render engines, 3Delight and Iray, Iray produces amazing results for static figures, and Genesis 3 has some awesome hair props etc. so you may want to take that into consideration when deciding. For your cover I would definitely recomment iray. (Keep in mind you will need a 64 bit OS though)

On the other hand the older items tend to come on sale with better discounts. eg V4=80% G1=70% G2=60% G3=50% etc, so you can pick up some bargains on the older items, especially if you are part of the club. That said, the older items still work on the newer figures. 

On top of the morphs, you definitely need a good hires skin texture. Victoria and Michael are always worth buying, but there are also the elite range of textures that are very good. 

At this point I have nothing, and am in the process of seeing if Carrara will work for my current project.  Below is a list of what my target needs and and would like to get an idea for budget on what I absolutely need to get started.  I do have some 3d modeling experience if that makes a difference.

First off I need high end characters for a book cover.  I am assuming that I should stick with Genesis figures.  I thought I will need the Genesis 2 Female(s) Morphs Bundle for posing, right?  So what are the must haves besides clothes, props, and scenery that I need to buy to make outstanding pictures.

Should I render in Daz Studio and use Carrara just to build?   Note later in the game I plan to animate which is why I may need Carrara.  Or would Blender work better for animation?  Would everything port over to Blender?  I like Blender but not sure how it works with Daz figures.

I see to have seen that the newest Victoria Genesis figure will not animate in Carrara.  Would I need two different Victoria figures if I want to animate later?  So which Victoria's do I need?

Any other helpful advice on what to buy, or a logical path to make make figures that later will be cell animated would be appreciated.

In order to use V4 skins on Genesis 2 Female you need this: http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-4-for-genesis-2-female

For Genesis 3 you can use this: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/?ViewProduct=113767

Mine's still as flawless as the day it arrived (and it arrived without a scratch too). No problems whatsoever. 

Same here. It gets really hot in my office in the summer, no air conditioning, and she was on the top of the bookcase for the better part of the year. I recently put her in the china hutch where it's more protected. And cooler.

Where did you find a free 3D printed Victoria? Did I miss something good?

DAZ did a promotion for their 3D printing service last year. 1000 customers were sent a 3D print of Victoria, (No one but DAZ knows how those 1000 people were selected.)

Hi everyone, I will just try and bundle up all my concerns to this one post. I have the latest version of D:S 64 bit, and I assume if its 32 or 64 the same applies. First of all I can say I like it the way it's layout is now..It has come a long ways..and I applaud Daz for sticking with it..but here comes that old ghost I have experienced time after time with different versions..the magical vanishung library..lol first off I noticed that my victoria 4.2 stuff was not showing up..(yeah no offense to Gen sttuff..but I still like V4 the most) but after some research I found that I need to convert it to metadate? I guess.. accoridng to the article it says any download not with the checkmark has to be done that way I guess.. wow I got a lot of V4 items with no checkmark. Does that mean I will have to manually do each and every one of them to get them to show up? Item 2 iRay.. so D:S recognized I had an nVidia card and set my rendering engine to iRay..and well it was the slowest thing on earth.. I swtched back to 3delight..and it sped up..What exactly is the purpose/point of iRay then? Is there another renderer faster than delight? .. I noticed one other one, but it says I need 2gb on my card..but I only have 1gb.. (it is a geforce gtx 560 ti) so I guess that would be useless. i dont plan to run out and buy new hardware either..this is a hobbie, not a career. PS: Maybe Daz can just make the library an independent plugin so we dont have to go through trying to find it..over and over again :) ..Oops almost forgot... Does Bryce sttill integrate with D:S? i/e bridge or whatever it's called..I thought tht was a nice feature in the older versions

Where did you find a free 3D printed Victoria? Did I miss something good?

It was a free gift they sent to some people. We assumed it was sent to people who had bought a lot of stuff from Daz although they never said how they decided who got one. You didn't have to apply or ask them, they just sent it.

Where did you find a free 3D printed Victoria? Did I miss something good?

I'm not talking about the frequently reported hands or arms breaking off.

Mine just spontaneously cracked lengthwise through the torso, just one side of center. The two sides of the split were warped, so no way to glue it back together. If it had been a wood carving or musical instrument, I'd have suspected humidity, but not in a resin/filler composite material. I'm guessing poorly cured resin, creating a heck of a lot of stress. I've seen this in composite materials before.

Does anyone know what house printed these, so I'll know who to aviod in the future?

OK, I'm an admitted skeptic concerning Victoria 7, as seen by my activity in recent discussions.  So, I decided, skeptic that I am, to see just how flexible V7 really is.  So I dug up a picture of a contortionist I found years ago.  I know that Genesis can't do this, and had never tried contorting G2, so I wanted to see if I could break V7. 

Hmm.  Turns out she does pretty good.  Can't get the pose exactly, because V7 needs a third abdomen to do this, but not bad I would say.  Does this convince me to go out and buy G3 stuff... the jury is still out.

It will need some postwork to add the flow of tea into the cup.

[Edit - need to resize the ref pic, it's too big]

Wow!

Don't think you are limited to one or the other, use both.

Heck i even use the venerable V3(victoria 3) on occasion for back ground characters and sometimes primary characters. It's purly a look thing.

The main reason for using V4 over G3f is how much ram each takes up.

At present my full load v4(morphs++, elite, reby, NBM, plus a few extras) takes about 500-600MB of ram with a character applied.

G3f with way to many characters, takes over 1GB per load.

The biggest advantage of V4 over Genesis series is that instead of every single dial you own loading with the character, you can pick and choose what does and does not load. Basically you have alot more control.

The next advantage, for v4, is the voluminous amout of stuff for her. Although you can use, with add ons, 99% of it on the genesis series figures.

I've used all sorts of V4 stuff on Genesis, g2 and g3.

That's Genesis 3? Pout

 

Here's what the autofit is like this is G2 Victoria 6 so it's not too bad very usable ! it's up to you.

 

Looks amazing. For some reason I see a character wearing this kicking through a brick wall or tearing a door off its hinges... Definitely something to get when I can. :)

Entry #2

Title:Ifrit Priestess

Artist: Mark D. Olsen (MDO2010)

Requirements:
Used the ocean primitive for the floor with a custom shader.
Used the fire primitive for the flames at the character's feet.
Modeled a couple low poly buildings and some minarets in the Vertex Modeller to create the background "City of Brass."

Products Used:
Victoria 4
Vandra for v4 with custom maps including alpha and glow
Ron's Ripsand Tears
DM Chroncles
DM Fantasy Musings

Jewelry from:
Malvada for V4
Sorceress for v4
Salome for v4 (renderosity)

WIP
First Concept Test
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1021243/#Comment_1021243
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1022243/#Comment_1022243

Scene setup and final-ish render
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1033381/#Comment_1033381
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1033723/#Comment_1033723

Modeled Item, Final Render and Final with Postwork
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1033849/#Comment_1033849

.

That's Genesis 3? Pout

 

Here's what the autofit is like this is G2 Victoria 6 so it's not too bad very usable ! it's up to you.

Here's a shot of Victoria 7 in the gold and silver!

Received commands: daz3dim://download/e10f586910e6a71124c0119bf2f93969/file_id/8928-02
requestLinksAsProducts file_id 8928-02
Product 8928-2:M4 Elite Texture: Rob StudioCF has invalid tag: CloudAvailable
Processed 1 products with 1 unique product downloads
Installing product : Julie Hair
Could not extract file : D:/Documents/My DAZ 3D Library/Runtime/WebLinks/DAZ Productions, Inc/DAZ Free Weekly Download.pzs
Product installation failed : Julie Hair
Install Queue finished in 0 min 0.2 sec.
Installing product : Victoria 4.2 Base
Could not extract file : D:/Documents/My DAZ 3D Library/Runtime/WebLinks/DAZ Productions, Inc/DAZ Free Weekly Download.pzs
Product installation failed : Victoria 4.2 Base
Install Queue finished in 0 min 1.6 sec.
Installing product : FIRE! Campfire and Cooking Set
Could not extract file : D:/Documents/My DAZ 3D Library/Runtime/WebLinks/DAZ Productions, Inc/DAZ Free Weekly Download.pzs
Product installation failed : FIRE! Campfire and Cooking Set
Install Queue finished in 0 min 0.8 sec.
Installing product : Neve for V4
Product successfully installed : Neve for V4
Install Queue finished in 0 min 1.3 sec.
Installing product : Winter Princess Hair
Product successfully installed : Winter Princess Hair
Install Queue finished in 0 min 1.1 sec.
Installing product : Apteromata Finery
Product successfully installed : Apteromata Finery
Install Queue finished in 0 min 4.0 sec.

Can someone please help me figure out how to fix this?  When I clicked on "Figures" in Smart Content, it used to show the Genesis male and female, etc.  Now, all of the places where the Genesis Starter Essentials should be placed just show a Daz3D box.  I can click that box to explore all of the contents, but they are all just jumbled into a single window pane.  They're no longer categorized like they should be.  Is there any way I can fix this so the content gets properly categorized?  Please see the attached picture.  I put a red box around the issue.  There should be male and female character like how Aiko and Victoria 5 show up, but instead I just have two boxes.  One is Genesis 3 SE and the other is Genesis SE.  This has made Daz3D unusable.

HI Marcus :)

Glad you liked it,. and thanks for the VWD info.

The renders were all done as fast tests (200 samples per frame),. so I didn't bother with render passes,. the last one, with the misty background was also a test of Carrara's volumetric clouds in the OctaneRender 3 beta

There are only four figures in that scene,. Victoria 4.2,. Genesis 2 female,. Genesis 2 male,(x2)  I just used a replicator to create the soldiers and hand-maidens.

Argus :)

nice clip,.

I was thinking of adding some Carrara softbody stuff,. since these dynamic sim's are obj models (rather than rigged),. it should be possible to use "Soft-body attach" to pin additional things to these,. and use the surface relicators (with a distribution map) to add things like buttons.,. or add Carrara hair to collars and cuff's, or a fur coat.

The same should be possible with the sim results fom VWD.

I also just discovered that the little checkbox for "Use Limits" in the DS Clothing control panel,. Opens up the settings for much greater limits.,.

If you've setup some shading domains to create the different "panels" on the garment,.. that allows you to have different dynamics settings for those areas.

but to be honest,. jackets and jeans are amongst the least dynamic clothing items,. it's probably easier to make those into conforming clothing and add a couple of morphs to shape some motion, then just animate those over time. but it's fun right now, just testing different stuff

Please add item below,
AJ Bene03 which includes a beachwear for Genesis2 Female, with 6 sample materials and fitting morphs for Victoria 6 and Charlize.

http://amarijun.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/daz-studio-genesis2-female-beachwear-bene03/

end

“AJ Hydrangea” beachwear for Genesis 2 Female,
The raffle bikini with frilly bra with the motif of hydrangea macrophylla flowers.

http://amarijun.wordpress.com/2014/05/10/aj-hydrangea-beachwear-for-genesis-2-female/

who would be able reupload ???
author removed the page ...

It was already on texture shaded

And Victoria 6 is ok, see new image

Image removed - please zoom to show only the head and shoulders or switch to smooth shaded view when taking a screen shot with a nude character.