I'm sorry, I hope this isn't ignorant, but I read the instructions, and followed the pictures in the picture in the promo, and I literally don't understand what to do.

I load the first script, every surface turns white and the character + geograft is selected in the scene browser, but then I get completely lost.  It says in step 3 to "apply the legacy material preset in the normal way"... I don't know what this refers to?

EDIT - OK, I read it through word-by-word (I don't know why I'm struggling so hard) and now it seems like I should have saved a Gen 9 material preset manually, and then apply that as "legacy material", correct?

 

EDIT 2- Alright, I think I got the "Legacy materials" thing right, because when I apply the material set I manually saved out from a regular Victoria 9 HD, textures actually apply.  I do the full body, mouth, eyelashes, and then the face still stays white.  When I click teh button "Genesis 9 UVs - 2. Apply UVs" it re-arranges the textures and some of them seem to fit better, but the lips texture is over teh nose and there's a whole bunch of other mismatched things.  I'm really sorry, but I'm not that big of an idiot, and if I'm struggling this hard I'd think I'm not going to be the only one.  Am I missing something obvious?

The key question is if this lack of engagement has any correlation to sales.

It certainly isn't due to threads repeating things said before, because of how these forums tend to bury old threads, and the fact that has been going on forever. Newer people who haven't seen the old threads will almost always make new threads. It isn't unique to Daz, though the poor forum search does make it much harder to find old threads, which encourages people to just make new ones. Additionally, the madly confusing sales we have often have usually invite some discussion, too, as people try to figure out how these sales work. So I would be concerned about this drop in interaction. Many users might not post in forums, but you can generally bet that people who do are highly invested in DS in some way. Either through time or money, or often both. This forum used to move so fast that it was hard to keep up even when checking daily. Now threads that haven't had new posts for days can still be on the first page. We used to see threads with dozens, even hundreds of posts for every core character, no matter what the reaction was. Now core characters have threads that barely get past a few pages long.

Here are some numbers. "Zack 9" has 20 total comments and now sits halfway down page 2. It isn't just because he's a male..."Karmen 9 HD" has 27 posts and sits on page 3. Neither of these characters have enough comments to reach a 2nd page, that used to be rare.

Meanwhile Olympia 8's thread has 11 pages of comments, well over 330. Time is not a factor, because nearly all of those came within her launch window period. She released on July 2017, and you can find that on page 11 there are comments from August 2017, just one single month later. So 330+ posts discussing Olympia 8 happened in just a month. Olympia 9 only has 4 pages of comments hitting 108 posts. Amelia 9 is approaching one month but only has 43 comments. Minerva 9, who released last December 2022, has about 107 comments.

Just looking at Olympia 8 to 9, the level of forum engagement dropped significantly, as Olympia 8 drew more than 3 times as many comments. Even a late G8 release like Sahara 8 has 8 pages of comments and 241 comments, again within her launch window.

However, this is where it gets concerning, because Genesis 9 initially had a lot of interest in the forum. The Genesis 9 announcement thread, which also previewed Victoria 9, has 38 pages of comments, that is well over 1000 comments. Moreover, all of them happened in the one month window September 2022 to October 2022. This demonstrates that it is indeed possible for a recent thread to get a lot of attention. But by the time Minerva 9 launched in December her release only garnered 108 comments.

The Victoria 8.1/Genesis 8.1 thread has 59 pages of comments. Not all are in the launch window, so I looked. Going one month (January-February 2021) there are still 54 pages of comments. That is over 1620 comments in just one month about the new 8.1. However, Arcadia 8.1 has only 2 pages with some 58 comments. The final G8.0, Topsy, has 5 pages, though I'll note that page 5 is at the 30 post limit, so basically 6 pages. That's 180 comments on a rather niche character.

I can't find the thread for Genesis 8's initial release, I am probably overlooking it.

This is from 2004 (Victoria 3 and Poser), rendered in a massive 800x600 pixels - and I think it took a considerable amount of time) and was one of the very first images where I thought, "This actually looks good."  At the time, I really thought I had nailed the realism.  Great to see today just how much things have moved along.

At the moment I use G8/G8.1, but I have a lot of stuff for Victoria 2.0/3.0, V4/M4 and G3. I do convert most of the old figures or use them for background. As I got a new workstation now, I will make a completely new setup for my mew workflow.

Started with Poser at about 20 years ago. Got Bryce and Carrara before they were aquired by Daz. Changed to Daz with V4/M4. Soon changed to Cinema 4D and used Daz as source for figures and objects. Even wrote some scripts in Daz and Cinema 4D to correct the axis and transfer additional information like JCMs. This didn't work for HD though. When Cinema 4D switched to a yearly license payment, I changed to Blender. Now Diffeomorphic is my transfer tool. By the way: My first order was Victoria 2.0 in 2002

https://www.daz3d.com/daz-dragon-3-victoria-8-and-michael-8-poses

 

 

By a crazy coincidence, my earliest order is dated exactly 22 years ago on this day in 2001. I bought product number 85, the Millennium Woman aka Victoria 1 for $19.95. That was a lot of money in those days. My 3D budget is such that even now, I still hesitate before spending that much.

As others have noted, the company was Zygote back then, so I can truthfully claim that I never came to DAZ. DAZ came to me. :D

hwgs1971 said:

@Censored, how did you get such amazing detail on those hands in your promo shots? Which Daz model did you use? I have hundreds of models and none look anywhere as realistic as yours. Is it heavily photoshopped? The original False Nails is one of my favorite products, I will definitely buy the Halloween version too. I just wish I could get the skin textures on my renders to look like yours

Heyy there! So I believe the character I used was Victoria with her original skin. I almost exclusively use the Core Daz Original models as I find their skin details to be absolutly incredible. I can't speak to other artists characters as I don't own many, but certainly the Core Daz ones never cease to amaze me. The trick I guess, if there ever was one, is (obviously useing the HD normals) and in the lighting. And avoiding flooding the details with harsh light. I believe Cake One's "Click N' Render (in this case I think the "IBL" Set)" HDRIs is a perfect tool for getting that nice lighting. Hope that helps!

AllenArt said:

Richard Haseltine said:

daveso said:

Diomede said:

My first purhase from what is now Daz3D included the Millenium Woman and the Millenium Man, which now are rerred to as Victoria 1 and Michael 1.  I am not sure if the company name had become Daz3D at that point or if it was still Zygote.  I do know that the figures were to be used in Poser, not Studio.  I go back to Poser 2.  My order history puts it later, so I may have purchased Michael 1 and Victoria 1 through a third party vendor.  My history according to my account lists my first Daz3D order as being October, 2003, and included Victoria 3.  I think that may reflect company mergers, sort of the way content I purchased from RDNA is now in the Daz3D accounts.

I had picked up a couple of the early characters free in a magazine CD. What mag was it? Unfortunately I finally got rid of them all, and the CDs ... I think it was Zygote when they fisrt came out, but it wasn;t long after that Digital Art Zone was spun off... if my memory is working.  
Just found this in Wikipedia -- Victoria 1 was released by then-Zygote in February 1999 and was the first named medium-resolution figure for use with Poser. She was originally released as 'The Millennium Woman', but the resulting colloquial shortening to "Millie"[4] led to Zygote renaming her as Victoria.[citation needed] Zygote also sold an anime-morphed character for Victoria named Aiko,[disputed – discuss] and each successive generation of Victoria has so far had an accompanying Aiko (whose facial morphs can vary between anime and a less exaggerated Asian).

My recollection was that Aiko (1) was Victoria 2 era - though of course Victoria/Michael 2 were essentially morph expansions for the first version (before the methods for adding a morph set had been fully worked out - though they did add new figures, the V2/M2 to P4 figures that had the body reshaped and rerigged to use clothes for the stock Poser 4 Female and Male).

IIRC, Aiko 1 was basically a morph of Stephanie, who herself was a female version of Michael 1. I think. LOL Was soooo long ago and I'm getting old now. 

Stephanie was indeed built from Michael's mesh, but was released after V2 and M2 (which were basically V1 and M1 with extra morphs).

Richard Haseltine said:

daveso said:

Diomede said:

My first purhase from what is now Daz3D included the Millenium Woman and the Millenium Man, which now are rerred to as Victoria 1 and Michael 1.  I am not sure if the company name had become Daz3D at that point or if it was still Zygote.  I do know that the figures were to be used in Poser, not Studio.  I go back to Poser 2.  My order history puts it later, so I may have purchased Michael 1 and Victoria 1 through a third party vendor.  My history according to my account lists my first Daz3D order as being October, 2003, and included Victoria 3.  I think that may reflect company mergers, sort of the way content I purchased from RDNA is now in the Daz3D accounts.

I had picked up a couple of the early characters free in a magazine CD. What mag was it? Unfortunately I finally got rid of them all, and the CDs ... I think it was Zygote when they fisrt came out, but it wasn;t long after that Digital Art Zone was spun off... if my memory is working.  
Just found this in Wikipedia -- Victoria 1 was released by then-Zygote in February 1999 and was the first named medium-resolution figure for use with Poser. She was originally released as 'The Millennium Woman', but the resulting colloquial shortening to "Millie"[4] led to Zygote renaming her as Victoria.[citation needed] Zygote also sold an anime-morphed character for Victoria named Aiko,[disputed – discuss] and each successive generation of Victoria has so far had an accompanying Aiko (whose facial morphs can vary between anime and a less exaggerated Asian).

My recollection was that Aiko (1) was Victoria 2 era - though of course Victoria/Michael 2 were essentially morph expansions for the first version (before the methods for adding a morph set had been fully worked out - though they did add new figures, the V2/M2 to P4 figures that had the body reshaped and rerigged to use clothes for the stock Poser 4 Female and Male).

IIRC, Aiko 1 was basically a morph of Stephanie, who herself was a female version of Michael 1. I think. LOL Was soooo long ago and I'm getting old now. 

Leana said:

Richard Haseltine said:

daveso said:

Diomede said:

My first purhase from what is now Daz3D included the Millenium Woman and the Millenium Man, which now are rerred to as Victoria 1 and Michael 1.  I am not sure if the company name had become Daz3D at that point or if it was still Zygote.  I do know that the figures were to be used in Poser, not Studio.  I go back to Poser 2.  My order history puts it later, so I may have purchased Michael 1 and Victoria 1 through a third party vendor.  My history according to my account lists my first Daz3D order as being October, 2003, and included Victoria 3.  I think that may reflect company mergers, sort of the way content I purchased from RDNA is now in the Daz3D accounts.

I had picked up a couple of the early characters free in a magazine CD. What mag was it? Unfortunately I finally got rid of them all, and the CDs ... I think it was Zygote when they fisrt came out, but it wasn;t long after that Digital Art Zone was spun off... if my memory is working.  
Just found this in Wikipedia -- Victoria 1 was released by then-Zygote in February 1999 and was the first named medium-resolution figure for use with Poser. She was originally released as 'The Millennium Woman', but the resulting colloquial shortening to "Millie"[4] led to Zygote renaming her as Victoria.[citation needed] Zygote also sold an anime-morphed character for Victoria named Aiko,[disputed – discuss] and each successive generation of Victoria has so far had an accompanying Aiko (whose facial morphs can vary between anime and a less exaggerated Asian).

My recollection was that Aiko (1) was Victoria 2 era - though of course Victoria/Michael 2 were essentially morph expansions for the first version (before the methods for adding a morph set had been fully worked out - though they did add new figures, the V2/M2 to P4 figures that had the body reshaped and rerigged to use clothes for the stock Poser 4 Female and Male).

The first Aiko was a character for Stephanie, so yes that would be Generation 2.

Thanks, I had a niggling idea that Stephanie (1) was involved.

Richard Haseltine said:

daveso said:

Diomede said:

My first purhase from what is now Daz3D included the Millenium Woman and the Millenium Man, which now are rerred to as Victoria 1 and Michael 1.  I am not sure if the company name had become Daz3D at that point or if it was still Zygote.  I do know that the figures were to be used in Poser, not Studio.  I go back to Poser 2.  My order history puts it later, so I may have purchased Michael 1 and Victoria 1 through a third party vendor.  My history according to my account lists my first Daz3D order as being October, 2003, and included Victoria 3.  I think that may reflect company mergers, sort of the way content I purchased from RDNA is now in the Daz3D accounts.

I had picked up a couple of the early characters free in a magazine CD. What mag was it? Unfortunately I finally got rid of them all, and the CDs ... I think it was Zygote when they fisrt came out, but it wasn;t long after that Digital Art Zone was spun off... if my memory is working.  
Just found this in Wikipedia -- Victoria 1 was released by then-Zygote in February 1999 and was the first named medium-resolution figure for use with Poser. She was originally released as 'The Millennium Woman', but the resulting colloquial shortening to "Millie"[4] led to Zygote renaming her as Victoria.[citation needed] Zygote also sold an anime-morphed character for Victoria named Aiko,[disputed – discuss] and each successive generation of Victoria has so far had an accompanying Aiko (whose facial morphs can vary between anime and a less exaggerated Asian).

My recollection was that Aiko (1) was Victoria 2 era - though of course Victoria/Michael 2 were essentially morph expansions for the first version (before the methods for adding a morph set had been fully worked out - though they did add new figures, the V2/M2 to P4 figures that had the body reshaped and rerigged to use clothes for the stock Poser 4 Female and Male).

The first Aiko was a character for Stephanie, so yes that would be Generation 2.

daveso said:

Diomede said:

My first purhase from what is now Daz3D included the Millenium Woman and the Millenium Man, which now are rerred to as Victoria 1 and Michael 1.  I am not sure if the company name had become Daz3D at that point or if it was still Zygote.  I do know that the figures were to be used in Poser, not Studio.  I go back to Poser 2.  My order history puts it later, so I may have purchased Michael 1 and Victoria 1 through a third party vendor.  My history according to my account lists my first Daz3D order as being October, 2003, and included Victoria 3.  I think that may reflect company mergers, sort of the way content I purchased from RDNA is now in the Daz3D accounts.

I had picked up a couple of the early characters free in a magazine CD. What mag was it? Unfortunately I finally got rid of them all, and the CDs ... I think it was Zygote when they fisrt came out, but it wasn;t long after that Digital Art Zone was spun off... if my memory is working.  
Just found this in Wikipedia -- Victoria 1 was released by then-Zygote in February 1999 and was the first named medium-resolution figure for use with Poser. She was originally released as 'The Millennium Woman', but the resulting colloquial shortening to "Millie"[4] led to Zygote renaming her as Victoria.[citation needed] Zygote also sold an anime-morphed character for Victoria named Aiko,[disputed – discuss] and each successive generation of Victoria has so far had an accompanying Aiko (whose facial morphs can vary between anime and a less exaggerated Asian).

My recollection was that Aiko (1) was Victoria 2 era - though of course Victoria/Michael 2 were essentially morph expansions for the first version (before the methods for adding a morph set had been fully worked out - though they did add new figures, the V2/M2 to P4 figures that had the body reshaped and rerigged to use clothes for the stock Poser 4 Female and Male).

The first is image is Ghostofmacbeth's very first orc for Michael 1 or 2 rendered in Poser 4 (can't rightly remember which Mike...lol). The second image is the Zygote/Daz triggerfish wearing some of the first textures I ever did, rendered in Vue 3 I believe and the third image is rendered in Poser and the human figure is Victoria 3 if memory serves. :) Anything earlier was lost in a hard drive crash years ago.

 

 

Diomede said:

My first purhase from what is now Daz3D included the Millenium Woman and the Millenium Man, which now are rerred to as Victoria 1 and Michael 1.  I am not sure if the company name had become Daz3D at that point or if it was still Zygote.  I do know that the figures were to be used in Poser, not Studio.  I go back to Poser 2.  My order history puts it later, so I may have purchased Michael 1 and Victoria 1 through a third party vendor.  My history according to my account lists my first Daz3D order as being October, 2003, and included Victoria 3.  I think that may reflect company mergers, sort of the way content I purchased from RDNA is now in the Daz3D accounts.

I had picked up a couple of the early characters free in a magazine CD. What mag was it? Unfortunately I finally got rid of them all, and the CDs ... I think it was Zygote when they fisrt came out, but it wasn;t long after that Digital Art Zone was spun off... if my memory is working.  
Just found this in Wikipedia -- Victoria 1 was released by then-Zygote in February 1999 and was the first named medium-resolution figure for use with Poser. She was originally released as 'The Millennium Woman', but the resulting colloquial shortening to "Millie"[4] led to Zygote renaming her as Victoria.[citation needed] Zygote also sold an anime-morphed character for Victoria named Aiko,[disputed – discuss] and each successive generation of Victoria has so far had an accompanying Aiko (whose facial morphs can vary between anime and a less exaggerated Asian).
 

 

In October 2003 Over at Rendo before joining up here, I used poser   until Daz implemented Iray then I only used Daz.  My first purchases were made around the time of Victoria / Michael  1 and 2 Zygote days

My first purhase from what is now Daz3D included the Millenium Woman and the Millenium Man, which now are rerred to as Victoria 1 and Michael 1.  I am not sure if the company name had become Daz3D at that point or if it was still Zygote.  I do know that the figures were to be used in Poser, not Studio.  I go back to Poser 2.  My order history puts it later, so I may have purchased Michael 1 and Victoria 1 through a third party vendor.  My history according to my account lists my first Daz3D order as being October, 2003, and included Victoria 3.  I think that may reflect company mergers, sort of the way content I purchased from RDNA is now in the Daz3D accounts.

Padone said:

Keep in mind that blender doesn't work as daz studio. In daz studio it is common to mix figures, in blender this makes little sense. We import the baked final shape but then corrective morphs are from the base figure so they are different from daz studio. There's an option in easy import named "baked correctives" that will import all the corrective morphs, this is good to get a single custom figure as Victoria 8 for example, but will be extremely heavy for a mix of figures.

Thanks. Yeah, I've learned this the hard way.
 

As I can't switch fully to Blender, that means I'm stuck with Daz. Unfortunately.

2002, for the free offer of Victoria 1 LoRez. For use in Poser 4. DAZ Studio was not even in development in those days.

 

Wow, this casual enquiry really made me stop to think about when I actually started with DAZ Studio.

I had been playing with some free Zygote models and that led me to DAZ. I started playing with DAZ Bryce on Thursday September 7th, 2006 and DAZ Studio on Sunday October 28th, 2007.

DAZ Studio was so different from Poser that I did not start working with it until 2012 and the genesis of Genesis reached a tipping point for content. I think I was a Poser 6.0 user starting in the spring 2005.

I dabbled in Vue, but abandoned it due to the purchsed model DRM encryption restrictions. That was why I started with Bryce in 2006, which also started me into making my own basic OBJ models and bringing them into Bryce and Poser.

Until 2012, I was mainly using Poser. with Victoria/Michael Generation 3 and 4. I started buying Generation 3 and 4 content from the DAZ store in 2008 and Renderosity in 2009.

Wow, has it really been that long!?

 

SOME ZYGOTE GOODNESS:

https://www.zygotebody.com/

https://www.zygotebody.com/#