Genesis 3 or Genesis 4?
adam_gragg
Posts: 141
So I've been fairly impressed with the new Genesis 3 figures coming out. I like the way they render, the way they move etc... etc... etc...
I was thinking about starting to purchase a few of the Pro sets, but then it occurred to me. If I were to buy a bunch of these sets with compatible hair, clothing, poses etc... what am I going to do with the Genesis 4 figures come out? Should I wait till then? But then it occurred to me again... I'd be in the exact same predicament when the Genesis 5 figures come out...
Any thoughts?
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When G4 comes out then your G3 figures won't stop working. What you bought for a figure doesn't become useless when the next generation is released...
No one knows when Generation 4 is coming out this year so go ahead and buy Gen 3 stuff until then :) im hoping for a June release :D
Or even if it will actually come out this year. That would be coherent with the past releases for genesis figures, but there has been no announcement by DAZ that they intend to stick to that schedule.
But Daz never announce these things in advance.
If you invest in G3, or not, is ultimately an answer just you can answer to yourself. Here's a few thoughts, though.
When I started out, everything was G2. In my naivity, and non understanding of all the generational issues, I also began buying stuff that was made for other generations, and learened the hard way about compatibility. There's a monetary "Ouch" factor involved in this, on top of lots of frustrations. Enter Iray into a previously 3Delight world as well...
On the bright side of things, this has taught me a lot about fitting things between generations, pose-mayham and other issues. I now have a pretty wide base of "older" stuff, and so far, everything plays nice together. My M4/V4 can share a scene with G2, the G1 creatures and figures also fit in well. They all can exchange materials and poses between them, with minor fixes (except for shoes).
Then came G3, which broke compatibility on lots of grounds. This meant I had to rebuy a lot of things, and start from scratch with a lot of things, that my accumulated previous generations already had. Where you needed a minor foot adjustment when using a G1 pose on G2, you now needed a full fledged converter to transfer a G2 pose to G3. Skins can't be used at all; it's not just a simple UV add on, but you need extra geometry if you want to "trade" between the generations.
I had to decide if I wanted to make that investment, or not. Various factors, outside of the purely financial ones, came into play. My project, begun before G3 hit the market, consists mostly of G2 characters. Transferring the morphs would be no problem (thanks to GenX), but everything else is bothersome. Also, I'm not a huge fan of G3; they look like a case of too much botox to me (even with the PAs really creating otherwise beautiful characters!).
The result was, that I - more or less - skipped G3. There are notable exceptions, like George, and a handful of other characters, and the occasional other product. Most of my G3 clothing, hair and poses is from the Platinum club. But other G3 new releases, I usually skip. Of course, I miss that there isn't much content released for G2, or the other, older generations. but as most others are investing heavily into G3, of course, the vendors produce for G3 rather than the older generations. They want to get a proper paycheck for their hard work at the end of the day, which I can understand. But at the end of the day, there's a lot less content "available" for me to purchase.
So... what does that mean for you? Two things: If you love G3, then, by all means, invest in it. It is you who needs to like the figure, and its your artwork they are in. When G4 will arrive (and no one does at the moment when that will be), there's every chance that you'll experience the same as I, and that you just don't like G4. Maybe G4 will break compatibility again, and you will be forced to invest even more, and find that you can't.
The second thing is, if money is an issue, don't discard the "old" generations. Financial-wise, as the older stuff shows up a lot in sales, it's worth a thought or two as well.
I hope these thoughts were useful; whatever you decide, I wish to you happy renderings!
If it aint broke why fix it, so m guessing we will see it this year
My advice would be to invest in the figure and content you like and WANT to use. There is no reason why a new figure would force you to give up on the older if it already allowed you to create what you wanted to do.
I don't know what G4 will bring and what will be the compatibilities available for G3 and previous genesis figure's contents.
But I can explain my experience with investing in G2 and then the happening of G3.
I bought some G3 stuff, and like everyone I like to play with the new shiny, but I still use G2 a lot.
For example that character I did a few months ago. It's G2F with morphs, geograft and all. http://yupasama.deviantart.com/art/Princesse-chevaleresse-613616550
Technically obsoleted by G3F ? maybe but G2F was already a fine figure and have many cool content to play with and push the enveloppe :)
Also , your "old" content is not useless even with the newer generation content. You can often retrofit newer contents. Cloths for G3 can be fitted with some tools to G2. Often it just work, sometimes you need to work on some distorsions, you will lost somes bones, and the content will be less flexible, but still usable with some care. Props officially made for G3 can still put on G2 (or even older figure), you can improvise with them and so on.
The same with shaders, materials, whatever jpeg/tiff/png textures you can grab.
And the REVERSE is also true. You can use a lot of old G2 contents with G3. Or you can mix them.
Even morphs from one figure can be transfered to an other. It can works nicely in a lot of case.
Geografts are of course quite tricky. But morphs let you already a lot of content to play with and try.
You can also go to the next step: use tools like ZBrush to fix sophisticated cloths and stuff, adds new details and morphs for an other figures. (slight modifications is not that difficult, just to learn the crazy interfaces of 3D softwares, but fixing some poking and just adapt to a pose is relatively easy).
Also, for example iray engine didn't make my old 3Dlight content useless. First, 3Dlight still works just fine, but also I can use the old materials with iray, I can convert to iray shader and tweak the setting, I can use the materials files with whatever shader I want, I can do anything. There is also some products on the store to help you to automatically convert. But really, the idea is to play with files and contents and mix them.
Also, with the TONS of contents for G3 already available (and all stuff from G2, G1, even previous ones with some work), with a slight dose of imagination, I'm sure you will have years of tweaking, mixing, editing of contents to create whatever scenes and images.
I'm expected a G4 figure will still allow some kind of compatibility and mixing with previous figures. Like it was possible, with limits, with victoria-G1-G2 and now G3. And your old content will always be fine.
Agreed, I've even bought a fair few V4 and G1 items; they are at a much lower price, and those I've bought I've had a plan on how to use - otherwise I wouldn't have.
Content only becomes obsolete if you let it; it's you're cash, you decide how much value it gives you. Repeated uses makes any item you bought better value. :)
I loved Genesis 1 poligender and invested a lot on it and transfered to it all V3/M3 and V4/M4 I had and wanted. Skipped G2 more or less and jumped into G3F/M and iRay with "great gusto"
There is a HUGE difference between Posette and G3 but Generation 3 is so awesome that I, me, in my case, cannot envision enough improvemets in next generations as to start the compatibility/new morphs/new clothes race again
Maybe G7 some day *wink*
a good idea is,,
on textures 3DL and IRay
added a "LOW RESOLUTION TEXTURES"
could be usefull to create scene with several people in it.
now, about G3 vs G4
no problem if all clothes, props, accessories, poses, expressions is compatible with booth
I think you should remember that we consumers are the ones that set the standards. The product makers can go ahead and try making it but would anybody buy it? Genesis 3 should have at least a ten year life cycle if not more because we already have an amazingly life like models to work with... When Genesis 3 first rolled out and I was increadibly weary of it because of the backwards compatibility issues... I'm still hoping to work out how to put a V-4 skin on V7 character
The main think you should ask is do you think there would be a need to move to Genesis 4? Personally, I don't because I can already recreate any realistic post I want... Any revolutions to occure now are going to be in qaulity and realism of the skin and lighting.
When I switched from Genesis 2 to 3, the extra rigging in the expressions ... While of course they could always just keep adding more riggings and keep updating the characters but that wouldn't really be a profitable move when there is still a lot of things we can be doing with what we have.. In short.. plan on seeing lots of great new things for Genesis 3. You can't get much better then realistic already..
LMAO Yea you can get more realistic, just check out this
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wBX2Y
Beautiful.... Now you're really talking...What Genesis 3 character is she? Personally, I want to give a shout out to the people who made Aerial IBL Wide Skies HDRI...
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/36949/start
What a great product... Hope to see a lot more products like that.. Now all my characters can fly.. :) Need a rainbow too. :) What matters is we keep having fun... things are just going to get better. The best is yet to come :)
She isnt a Daz Studio Character she is a render made from high res Skin Scans in 3ds Max
"Skin made using modified maps from ICT's Digital Emily 2. Iris from TexturingXYZ. Retopologised scan geometry from 3d Scan Store via Wrap 3, then remodelled with Mudbox/3ds Max. Hair with Ornatrix plus Max Hair & Fur for the face hair. Rendered with Iray."
Yeah, and the mesh density on Digital Emily 2 is huge. Her full mesh is 467,464 polygons. That is about 10 TIMES the mesh resolution of a Genesis 3 figure...And the textures are 6000x6000 for just the raw diffuse.
And it's a refined 3D scan of actual woman. So yeah, it's going to look good. But processing it and using it requires a LOT more power than most people can afford a workstation to do......
Daz has a long way to go to make things look this good
Im glad someone had a set to speak out on this, guess mines are a wee bit smaller, lol....
but yeah, this stuff is expensive =/ im just now getting back into things, so last time i really invested in content was v3, so im way off... as i look thru the store, saying "how long will this last"... I dont mind investing, but id feel burned if a new release came out soon after.
So did you wait or go on a frenzy?
well I have to say, it's been an absolute pleasure reading these comments. You've all given me a lot to think about when deciding what I want to buy. thank you so much for your input. it's been extremely helpful
I wish to reiterate what oomu said and share my own character content woes over the past 13 years here.
When I started, the Generation 3 figures were top dog. (Genesis 3 is Generation 7 for those who dont know) I quickly grew to like Aiko3 due to being a fan of anime stuff and so I gathered and bought content just for that character. For 9 years I kept using Aiko3 all the time and she was my goto figure of choice. When the Generation 4 characters came out and later the Generation 5 (Genesis 1) I got a bit of content for both but never really adapted to the newer figures. I never felt that was a big enough technology jump or improvement to warrent the move. So while I wanted a better figure, since A3 has some glaring issues, it was not until a year after Genesis 2 Female was released that I ended up switching. I started to use G2F more and see all that it could do (including smile well) and as soon as I realized how well I could mix my own characters, I made the switch. And to be honest, I am not disappointed that I did. So take your time and look into things before you start making a major investment but even once you do, there is no rule stating you have to stop enjoying that figure in favor of another.
Can't wait to see Victoria 8 this month :D
You might have to!
We don't know when its due; we even don't know that there is a Genesis 4, although something to follow Genesis 3, considering what we know at the this time, seems certain.
Personally I'm in no hurry, but am curious what Daz will do. On balance I prefer G3 to G2 and prior, but not in all aspects.
I don't need better skin; I need better hair and cloth dynamics; does that require a move to Genesis 4?
I've no idea what changes would be required to Studio to accommodate such features - presuming they appear.
In the mean time, I have lots of tools, and not enough time to use them all; so I switch between them, often not because one is better but because if I don't it was a waste of cash.
... Besides it will be at least 6 months after the release of G4 (or whatever) before there is enough useful add-ons to support it - going on previous experience. With G3 I made some of my own tools, a couple I released as freebies, and a couple I didn't.