Please explain the last flood of character faces and shapes
Piquant
Posts: 325
There must be a DAZ shift in shape and face policy and preference. I know this is a sensitive subject, so I'm trying to be as PC as possible. I go into the DAZ stores every day and looked at all of the latest "artists" shapes and faces. Why do they all look somewhat generic? The HID creations are a breath of fresh air, because they look handmade and human. They are attractive. What's going on? Again, has DAZ changed the rules for new artists? The company is now owned by TAFI, as I understand, so has TAFI imposed restrictions to keep the models more generic in nature. One thing is certain, for me anyway, my purchases of "models" will be drastically reduced as a result of the seemingly new trend. Is there anyone on staff with TAFI, and or DAZ that can explain?
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Comments
Moved to the Commons as it is not a Daz Studio topic.
Tafi isn't an external purchaser - as I understand it, it is a broader company that is used as the wrapper for Daz and for other activities not diectly related to Daz's main activity, but it is an internal evolution as far as ownership goes.
I can state with certainty that Daz's product team are not telling artists "your character's face isn't generic and ugly enough, take it back and do it again".
While there is some degree of products being turned down because they're not likely to sell well enough to justify the testing and marketing effort, characters being too attractive is not going to be one of those reasons.
If there's a trend in characters, it's driven by what the vendors want to do and what the customers are buying, not some dictat from Daz.
I just went and looked at the latest characters and I am not seeing anything different than usual. I guess it comes down to what each persons tastes are since I don't find the HID characters particually attractive.There are also plenty of morphs in the store to change any face to more your liking so you don't have to rely on what a PA puts out.
The most disappointing models have appeared within this last three months. The sudden rush of them within a relatively short span of time is what flagged my BETTER-GIVE-FEEDBACK-NOW alarm. "VOICEJD" addresses what I'm talking about the most and I thank you for understanding, instead of trying to push me out the door. I've been DAZ-active for quite a while now. I do agree that we've seen some superb models that were obviously built with loving care. To MY mind an excellent model should inspire some physical reaction, mental and otherwise, in the buyer; Not appearing to be just something to hang clothes and accessories upon. I mention HID's work, but there are others I've been compelled to support through a purchase. These last few months I've had the impression that models were being built to avoid cultural and/or religious bias. I liked this statement, VOICEJD, "I think the artists you dislike are probably trying too hard the other direction. They don't want it resemble a specific person and it ends up generic." If there are new artists reading this, use your humanity as a guide while building your models. Your models should make you sweat a little.
I love HID's characters, but I'm selective about which I buy for the simple fact that many of them look like the same person to my eyes. It's not a phenomenon that any artist is immune from, John. Each have their own particular style that's recognisable, and if an artist releases dozens of characters in one go - as has been happening recently - it's natural that your eye will more readily pick out the similarities between them. I don't know the mechanics of who has what access to the HD artist tools, but details from those can set a character apart. It's my understanding that not all artists have them? But I'll say this, there are plenty of fantastic base resolution shapes from very talented artists that I can apply HD morphs from my library to.
I've built a weight-mapped morph plugin for my own workflow and it has taught me a lot about each artist's process for creating characters. Weight-mapping means if you apply 2 or more morphs, the delta of each vertice that's shared across morphs is averaged based on the ratio of the slider set for each morph it appears in. In this way, I can add an unlimited number of morphs without going outside of the root range of the controlling slider I've created (I typically set it to 100-120%). Naturally, I've played about with weight-mapping subsets of my library based on particular artists. I think it's safe to say that most are working from their own custom base. Unsurprising. If I pick up a guitar and play 10 of my songs in a row, anyone with a musical ear is going to be able to start to pick apart my base and my process. Taylor Swift's songs are musical clones of one another and she does pretty well. Almost all of Nirvana's songs all have a melodic descending line hidden somewhere and they're still being listened to 30 years after the fact.
BTW, the above is not me ragging on any of the artists here. Quite the opposite - it's me learning about and appreciating what each artist brings to the store, and also about me branching out from the core artists I enjoy to find even more. Most of the new artists that have moved to Daz in the last weeks - or moved a larger bulk of their catalogue here - have something I like. How I go about drawing out those parts of interest and using them to help my incredibly limited 3D modelling skills is entirely on me. If you're looking at characters as a click and go - which is an entirely valid way to utilise characters - then you don't have to buy characters that you don't feel offer you much. You are the market.
What I would agree with is that the recent characters have not been particularly diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender or age - or not as diverse as I'd personally like. But there are plenty of options in the Daz Store as a whole (for character). Far better than elsewhere.
Are there any particular character types or features that you think are missing from the store? It may help artists to understand what specifically is desired. Or perhaps we could show you some options we know about that you may have missed.
Perhaps I'm somewhat critical of anything that looks mass-produced, and/or generic, because of how I've created characters in the recent past. I built two 8.1 models and one from a Genesis 3 base. It took me a great deal of time because they were works of love. I shaped each aspect of the faces and bodies, literally. I did not use any morph software other than the sliders for those individual aspects. Calves and forearms, for exaple, I dipped into the musculature to shape what I consider to be two of the most neglects body parts. Everyone labors over the heads and faces, or should, as do I, but you get my point. It takes me many months to finish one model. The two 8.1 models took a year each.
By the way, DAZ folks, I firmly believe that Victoria 8.1 is a solid digital masterpiece.
You presumably are not working full time, many PAs are - and so are more practiced, making them faster for a given task. If recent character designs are not working for you then that is a perfectly legitimate reaction and is not open to criticism by others, but you should not assume that it relfects shortcomings in the recent characters or lack of care and attention in their production.
I would also point out that if vendors were pouring an entire year's work into each character, the asking price for them would be utterly infeasible.
At a certain point, you have to accept that the products at Daz are still something of a "budget" option. (That's not to call them poor quality, by any means, but there's still only so much you can expect from characters that are regularly discounted to the point the creator only gets a very few bucks).
Agreed! I find the quality is sometimes amazing, especially all things considered. I also adjust things. Sometimes that eats a few hours. Usually well worth the effort, though.
Yes, you're all correct about the time it takes me to finish a model. I am not working on them full time. My point was that I poured my humanity into them. I did not have to deal with assembly-line workflows. The entire thrust of this thread was to point out a recent rush of generic-types. I was concerned that being PC, culturably sensitive, or religeously sensitive, was overshadowing character design. You've all told me that this is not the case, so I rest the issue at this time. I'm satisfied that truely human creativity remains part of the process. Also, eventually, a guy like me will speak up and help to balance out any trends that might be counter-creative.