Returning after a long break - what are the new "essentials"?

therry_e35e822bb8

Hello all. I played a lot with Daz Studio and Carrara almost ten years ago. Back then (if I recall correctly) it was "almost necessary" to get Victoria 4.x Pro Bundle, and then various other characters / animals / what ever one wanted.

Now I am considering returning, but I am a little confused. Some basic Genesis 8.1 stuff seem to be included with current Daz Studio, but what after that? Victoria is no more special (with all the "pro" morphs etc) as she used to be? Or? Are there some bundles that I should look at? Anything I should not miss?

Another guestion: Daz Central seems to remember my previous purchases (at least A LOT of them). Although very old, I am probably able to use most of them with current Daz Studio, right? (Like Victoria 4.2 stuff and many other characters of the era.)

Sadly Carrara was abandonded already back in the days, so that will probably be replaced with Blender then...

Thank you in advance!

Richard Haseltine

Yes, most Poser content will work as it always has.

As for the essentials, whata re you wanting to do? Head and Body morphs for the figure(s) you intend to use would probably be on the list, but not absolutely required - especially if you can model - and beyond that it's wide open.

therry_e35e822bb8

You mean, for example, Daz Originals "Genesis 8 Female Body Morphs" and "Genesis 8 Female Head Morphs" (SKUs 42073 and 42075)? Also there seems to be some quite random (and hard to find) bundles containing "anatomical elements"..

Leana

All the pro bundles for Genesis 8 core characters ("Name 8" Daz original characters) and all bundles for Genesis 8.1 core characters include the anatomical elements, except those for underage or toon/stylized characters.

They're the same in all bundles, so choose the bundles you like best.

therry_e35e822bb8

Ok, thank you two for comments I will probably play a little more with what I already have and try to make some kind of wish list for new content... at least there seems to still be a lot to choose from.

alexhcowley

If you're looking for somewhere to park your assortment of Victorias, Michaels and other figures, you can do no better than Howie Farkes's Ultrascenery. This amazing product is easy to use, with a very straightforward, tabbed interface. The fact that there are - literally - about two dozen add-ons for it tells you everything you need to know about it. 

Cheers,

Alex.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/466351/ultrascenery-new-territory-commercial/p1

therry_e35e822bb8

Back in the days I bought quite a many of HowieFarkes' amazing Carrara Scenes Nice that there are now some (well, actually more than there were) compatible with currently maintained software. Very very nice those are, although at least the Carrara scenes were quite resource consuming.

Matt_Castle

therry_e35e822bb8 said:

Victoria is no more special (with all the "pro" morphs etc) as she used to be?

To copy an explanation of mine from elsewhere: 

Okay, figure generations:

Over time, Daz has produced nine generations of base figure:

- Generation 1 had base figures called (eventually) Victoria 1 and Michael 1. (Originally Victoria was "The Millennium Woman", but that kept getting shortened to Millie, which Daz didn't really like).
- Generation 2 was Victoria 2 and Michael 2
- Generation 3 was Victoria 3 and Michael 3
- Generation 4 was Victoria 4 and Michael 4. (With 4.1 and 4.2 updates for Vicky that changed minor things).

All of these generations had a number of derivative figures that used the base Victoria and Michael meshes and morphed/retextured them to become new characters.

- Generation 5 was called Genesis. This generation was an androgynous one that tried to unify the male and female figures. There were still Victoria 5 and Michael 5 figures, but these were now based on the Genesis base.
- Generation 6 was Genesis 2, but the figures were split back into male and female (too many problems with fitting clothes). Again, there were Victoria 6 and Michael 6, but again these were morphs based on the Genesis 2 Female and Male bases.
- Generation 7 was Genesis 3, again Male and Female. Victoria 7 and Michael 7 remained the flagship figure morphs.
- Generation 8 was Genesis 8, which was when Daz decided to address the confusion between the different Genesis number and Generation number. The base mesh this time is actually very similar to Genesis 3 in shape, with the main alteration being a change from a T-pose to an A-pose.
- And the eighth-and-a-bit generation is Genesis 8.1. This is actually a refinement of Genesis 8, retaining the same vertex count, skeleton, and pose, allowing it to be almost fully backcompatible with Genesis 8 content.

On which point, I should note: Mostly, content is only natively compatible with its own base generation. Things such as clothes and hair (being standalone meshes) can make use of tools to refit them to other generations, but figure morphs naturally require their base figure to build upon (just being a set of morph vectors and textures).

~~~~~

As far as some, but not all of my personal favourites that get regular use:

- The base Daz Original "Genesis 8 Female Body Morphs", "Genesis 8 Female Head Morphs" and the equivalent Male versions.The similar expressions are a *maybe*, as they don't natively work on G8.1 (although they can be made to).

These aren't *essential*, but they're extremely useful and also widely used. While the Genesis bases all have auto-follow capability meaning that clothing can try to adapt to any morph applied, clothing still benefits from the author fitting it to a morph, and these are the most widely supported morphs for that. (Particularly useful when it comes to breasts, which are an area auto-follow struggles with).

- "Scene Optimizer"

Most assets these days are intended for Iray rendering, and Iray has the issue that it will only run on a GPU (NVidia only) if the scene fits entirely into the card's VRAM, and instead runs (very slowly) on the CPU. Scene Optimiser helps you downsize textures that are out of focus or distant in order to save memory and thus run (apparently) larger scenes.

- Resource Saver Shader Collection

Does a somewhat similar job to the above, but it does it by providing a heap of generic low-memory shader presets that you can apply to things that aren't particularly in focus.

- SPEX for Genesis

*Bit* of an odd-one-out in most people's essentials lists, but an absolutely fantasic pair of extremely morphable spectacles that can be easily used on any figure generation. The shaders are still for 3Delight, but can be extremely easily updated for Iray.

On which note:

- RSSY 3DL to Iray Converter

Helps a lot with converting 3DL materials to work with the new Iray renderer.

- Fit Control

Adds loads of extra adjustment morphs to clothing.

- Mesh Grabber

Okay, not actually one of my favourites (I tend to export to Blender for the same job), but a lot of people swear by it.

- Ultimate Pose Mixer

Gives a lot of quick presets for rapidly locking off parts of a pose so that they can be preserved while you load another pose preset.

therry_e35e822bb8

Thank you Matt_Castle for detailed description about figure generations... I was quite sure that Victoria held a some special position back in the days, thanks for confirming and further clarifying things.