Out with the old, In with the new V8
SnowPheonix
Posts: 896
Just sharing my perspective....
With Genesis 8 out of the bag... an update that caught me totally off guard.. Here I thought it had already gotten as good as it was going to get.. silly me. So now I don't want to spend any money on Genesis 3.. period. It's obsolete this week and while its true that you can put the old wine skins on the new wine, so far in my testing, the results haven't been very nice. The skin has been updated which means even if I can transfer the skins, I loose the added value of sub-surface updates that will go into the new characters... so if you want the best of the best, you have to be willing to wait for it and invest in that.
I won't be buying any Genesis 3 or earlier and to be honest, I'm really fussy about exactly what it is I'm willing to invest in... because thats what all this is to me, an investment that I expect to have a return from... so excuse me if I'm not sentimental but the updates are a great investment. I'm looking for morphs.. I'm happy that my investment in Genesis clothings doesn't just go in the poopers and I don't have to wait months for the product to have the backdating... so I'm happy to buy clothing that is well designed but then my favorite outfits are the ones that have about a thousand different options like the Gesesis Supersuit..
Even then I would imagine that the with more articulation points, thats going to effect clothing somehow... Anyways.. Hopefully Zev0 and my favorites are hard on the case making all my favorite Genesis 8 goodies... Hope you don't take too long to release G8M... I can't wait to see the new Michael 8 now that I know he's coming. No doubt it will be amazing too.. Keep up the great work.
Is there a way to easily delete everything pre-genesis from my collection?
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Comments
Yeah, just copy you old Library to external archive HD and then uninstall all DAZ products. Once uninstall is done delete the remaining residual folders and then reinstall DAZ SW and only the products you want.
Yeah, that sounds about as easy as it's going to get... I'm such a graphics junky, I've almost filled up my hard drive so I'll have to commit to that soon but even that.. Thanks for the advice... It's strange because on the one hand I love having such a varity of options in my hard drive but the funny thing is.. I never use any of it.. I always find myself gravitating towards my favorites like the Genesis Supersuit.. the outfits with a lot of options...
Operation Cleansweep is coming soon.. thanks and happy rendering.. btw.. do you have any favoites in Genesis 8 yet?
If you really think Gen3 is obsolete, you are way off the mark. G8 has yet to be established and only time will tell how long that will take.
My favorite in Genesis 8 is Elizabeth (maybe because of her similarity to G3F LY Stormy) even though I haven't bought her yet as I don't do many realistic style renders. I have only bought the head & body morph packs & the expressions pack.
Thanks for sharing your good opinion. When I compare the two characters side by side... it's no compitition to me. According to Arthur C. Clarke any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.... so far (and DAZ should take this as a compliment) it appears the new characters are magic and the old ones look flat and dull. The revolution is here, hope you enjoy it. Happy rendering!
LOL, yes Clarke is right, however you do have to accept the word "sufficiently" in it's correct context. G8 is not much more advanced than G3. An improvement in some areas, I will grant. Worse in others such as base resolution. Hardly bedazzeling technology that looks like magic. :)
Less than 400 polys. And it's how the content artists (PAs) can manipulate the polys, with or without access to advanced tools that we can't use, that determines what a given character looks like, not the number of polygons they have available to work with.
For me, it's always been about the skin of the character and the key advancement that I love about G8 is just that... Now every picture I've made with V8 has an added sense of realism and I recognize brilliant work when I see it. My character have only been as good as the tools that I use to produce them and its ironic that the last improvement DAZ talks about is the most important to me.. "Skin Material Advancements"... those advancement made the G3 obsolete in my good opinion... It's no good putting old wine into new wine skins... you don't get to take advantage of the new tech ... yet. Maybe somebody will create a default sub surface ... who knows.
The biggest difference between Genesis 3 and 8 are material presets. Genesis 8 is using the extra specular channels that have been added to the IrayUber default shader. Transfer the textures and setting to Genesis 3 and she will look just as good.
Personally I've found that while underlying technology matters, materials, composition, lighting, etc.
A skilled artist can make V4 renders that blow away V8 renders from even somewhat less skilled artists.
The new bits in the shader adds some colored noise which breaks up the too perfect skin look some textures have.
Yes, no doubt there is some grand master graphic artist that can make some fairly cool V4 renders but beyond that, no way....V4 as a character predates IRAY so simply from a material stand point you'll loose that advantage including all the sub-surface goodies.. then of course you have articulation points that mean V4 simple can't make any of the same expressions or have the same accuracy in poses... so...No .. V4 sucks in comparrison. No doubt it has its uses as easy load low resolutoin background characters whose details don't matter.
Verily a challenge, sirrah! The gloves have been tossed!
"it's how the content artists (PAs) can manipulate the polys... not the number of polygons they have available to work with."
So daywalker, you seem to be suggesting that some people can make wonderful, realistic characters with a 20 poly figure. Have you got any examples? Now that would be magic!
Spend some time with the new character... Clearly you haven't given it a chance because there really is no compitition here
Might help if'n you attach the image....
Come on .. give her a chance.. she's a nice girl.. looks great and she's got a nice smile.. Show her some love.. You'll forget all about that other stuff... Go V8..
No examples, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make. You're getting caught up in the perception that there aren't enough polygons to work with in the base mesh when you're actually impacting a lot more than the four you see when moving vertices around on a low poly mesh. PAs have reached the point that they understand that each moved vertex is affecting at minimum 16 polygons at the first level of subdivison, depending on the settings of your move tool, for example.
Hmm until Daz implements hair technology that was not invented
in 2002 and PROPERLY models eyelid and eyeball geometry,
no amount of fan worship will make me be impressed by
Genesis 8
correctly modeled human eyes
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=358&t=1455122
The eyeballs are round if there is no other geometry close to them; what I see happening is that the mesh tries to conform to the head shape, which causes it to look distorted. The issue with the eyelids is more complex, but can be solved by tweaking them somewhat.
Here's a Victoria 4 figure with an octopus which is of similar age, all massaged into Iray.
While yes, V4 has some specific issues, the fact is that for a lot of renders she looks just fine.
Personally, my suggestion for most users is to polish their skills with the cheapest available content, and only once they start hitting the limits of what they have to worry about refined details. A blank-eyed waif with terrible composition and lighting? Don't bother spending hundreds of dollars on better figures, learn how to make it not be terrible, first.
Well folk can't help it if it takes hours of tweaks and halted renders to find expressions that aren't totally fake looking. The nearly-naked Sinead O'Connor look is popular for a reason too. It's not that the people creating such renders don't have artistic sensibilities; they do very much so, and so limit themselves in a way that the tech limits them. This being DAZ Studio you really can't blame them for wanting DAZ Studio to competently allow them to configure and customize all those things in DAZ Studio easily. Yes, it has gotten better and the building blocks are falling into place to make all these end customer artists capable of expressing there artistic visions but the problem is once it is done right really new clothing and environments would be about the only thing left to sell new in the DAZ 3D store, well, and these bizarre four-armed creatures that never soo the light of day in the current business development cycle.
One thing I've discovered that had me fleeing from the Power Poser quick is there are no-limits on those dots. I guess I will use Power Power as fine tuning and only very numeric entries & sliders fidling as I've two left hands.
You can't seriously even begin to say that is a contender to compare to V8... I don't think I've ever seen a better example to make my case ... Clearly you jest... From arms that are far too skinny and have a bit of a tube effect going on with the skin that lacks depth.. OK, she looks pretty good for V4 and I've even seen a lot better.. even in 3delight I've made some decent renders for the day but the difference is... V8 makes it easy for everybody.. You shouldn't have to spend hours learning how to light a character just right so that it looks like a good render..
Clearly we will never agree.. but I am curious to see what you can make with V8.. if you own it. Me... I feel like I can't make a bad render because they all just look so damn pretty.. :)
I say Thank you DAZ for making a great product...
You make some interesting point but I don't see 'the problem' from a customer perspective in getting updated technology. Of course they will always have a need for different characters.... There is an infinant variety of models... Genesis 8 is just the beginning.. I'm still hoping to see a todler and infant posable base. The whole reason we name the characters is that each one should have a unique look like this example from Gen... You forget we can also have Avatar type aliens that are friendly and that can go in infanant directions too. The only limits any of us have is our IMAGINATION. Then of course there are andriods, hobbits, giants, dwarfs and flat out robots.. Then of course every animal in the spectrum could benefit from a high tech update... I'd love to see a realistic looking Eagle.. Eagle 3 would be AWESOME.
Keep dreaming of new things... stay awesome. :) The key is to focus on the solutions....
'You shouldn't have to spend hours learning how to light a character' yeah we'll just have to disagree.
When I buy a digital camera l buy something like a Sony a6300. LOL. Or actually since I'm so poor, something that I can afford, like I still have and use my 2006 Panasonic Lumix FZ6 Point & Shoot. Yes, that camera made pictures that are beautiful, artististic, and professional quality. How much time did I spend reading about photography or the camera manual to use that camera? None.
That is what the goal of consumer products in a nutshell.
In making any honest assesment of the viability of a character's ability to honestly recreate the intended subject... The human body.. If it was just lighting up skins I'd agree with you but articulation points means technology wins the day. You simply can't do the same poses that you can do with the new models. Anyways, you didn't even say if you've tried V8.. which one is your favorite? Mine is Rebecka.. :)
My two cents on the debate:
Yes, a master can make a better piece of art with rudimentary tools than a novice can make with the best tools. But the master can make so much better with the best tools. if you have the money, great. If not, stay with what you know.
I haven't tried V8, I have tried G8. I only bought G3 stuff two months ago, because I only find it useful to use a figure with lots of options. Maybe in 2 years just before G9 comes out I'll buy V8. :)
But I'm also evaluating things and finding that I'm not all that hot on G3, and that, functionally, Genesis/Genesis 2 is fine for most purposes and everything else I said.
As for 'honest assessment,' my goal is making artwork. Accurately replicating every aspect of the human body is a subset of that goal. Also, again, we're right in the start of the product cycle, so there's a LOT of content that just doesn't exist for G8.
Aging morphs are, IMO, vital to make characters look more real. Vascularity, musculature... at least given texture compatibility and SB3, the texture issue is mostly handled. Ethnic variation (the grab bag morphs probably do a fair amount of this, so there's that). And so on.
But I don't like the whole 'bend/twist' bone structure of G3/G8, and so far none of the V8 stuff has struck me as noticeably better than G3 (or G2)
Well GF8 is definately easier to light without learning more about lighting and using presets so I can't complain about that although of course there is room for improvement or there had better be if DAZ's business model isn't going to need to switch over to perpetually selling Genesis 8 characters and associated products.