Vic (or Mike) as to (Gen)esis X

mpam76895_15961369c9

As I've somewhat managed to get Studio to find more items I've been perusing the rather large inventory I never knew was there. I've several versions of Vic, Mike and Gen 2 and 3. Besides noting what is Required... for whichever (recently released) model, what are some determining factors which would make one go with one series or model over another? 

 

sriesch

In no particular order, here are several reasons to pick one generation over the other:

Improved/unique features: Some of the newer generations bend much more realistically than the older generations, which can have nasty angles or odd distortions.  I believe expressions may have improved with the most recent generation of figures, although I've not tried them. Genesis1 has the ability for male and female clothing to be used by the same figure (although with potential texture distortion) which increases the available wardrobe options.  There may be other features or overall improved designs due to experience learned from previous generations that could be applied to newer versions, or features that were great that got removed from newer versions.

Price: Brand new figures are often far more expensive than the older figures.  You may be able to purchase a lot more products if you don't need the latest version.

Availability: A lot of older products get retired, and are no longer available, with more dissapearing every day.  If you stick to older products, you will have a shorter time in which to purchase them, and have already lost your chance to get some of them.

Quantity of clothing/accessories:  Some figures have far more or less clothing and accessories available than others.  Although I've not checked myself, I'm under the impression that generation 4 had the longest run and thus the most options in terms of volume of products, whereas some of the newer generations whipped past pretty quick with fewer products available for them, and obviously whatever the current generation is has just started and would probably have fewer products available at this exact moment, although one can't really predict how many it will end up with once people stop making them.

Compatibility: Some products for one generation can sometimes be used with more or less success on another generation.  Depending on what you need and what you have available, this may or may not influence your buying decisions.

Ability to find stuff in your content library:  I have way too much stuff, I'll openly admit that.  I can't remember what's where.  I badly wish I had only a single generation simply so that I didn't have to try to dig through multiple piles of stuff only to discover product A is over THERE where I wasn't looking for it, and isn't compatible with product B, so I have to guess during scene creation which figure is statistically most likely to be useable without getting halfway into the scene and needing to replace it with a different one in order to use the clothing I wanted to use.  I can't imaging how people might do it with, say, ALL the generations.  ack.  But it must work for some people.

mpam76895_15961369c9

That last paragraph says much. Thanks for sharing. 

sriesch

Just to clarify the last paragraph, I meant that I wished that all the stuff I had was for the same generation, not that I wished I had less stuff.  :-)

Dondec

With regard to navigating content:

The Daz content library has gotten pretty good now, but there are still some things that it doesn’t find (especially content you’ve purchased elsewhere, manually installed Poser stuff). I’ve been using PzDB 1.3 which is inexpensive PC product that can be found on the Internet. Like DAZ, it can work with multiple libraries and I do recommend multiple libraries to group products by generation (GEN 4 and Poser figures/props, Genesis, Genesis 2, Genesis 3).  Everything else that doesn’t fit into that category goes into my regular Daz library.

Keeping things in separate libraries means you can search for products by generation in the Content Library. Just choose the library that contains that particular generation.

If you do use an external database manager (or even if you’re wondering why some Daz purchased content doesn’t appear) you need to understand that Poser stuff and manually installed content goes into a Runtime folder inside your main Daz library folder. For Daz to recognize it you need to create a separate line item under “Poser Formats” for each library that has a Runtime folder in your DAZ Content Directory Manager. It took me a long time to figure that out.