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I know they just added dForce and strand based hair, but it actually looks much less realistic to me than modeled hair pieces. More realistic hair is probably top of my wishlist. I constantly run into people who think well done photorealistic DS renders are pictures of real cosplayers, and a lot of what makes a figure realistic is in the artist's choices. But hair is usually a dead giveaway.
This is not the fault of the PAs making hair for Daz, it's just the tech available.
I agree. DAZ doesn't have to do anything. Just like they don't have to remain competitive or relevant.
I very much suspect you are right on this call.
Daz could just release a whatever character with an added heelbone (again) and a tweaked UV topology and call it Gen 9, but really, how much of an improvement would that be? What would necessitate such a radical yet technically minor change anyway?
If Daz really wants to up their game in character creation, it should involve the use of new figure technologies. StyleGANs and AI would help, but I'd even more expect things like automatic micropressure morphing, softbody physics, sub-skin muscle definition which automatically adjust skin deformations when posing. Technologies which are not possible with Gen8 (or older), simply because neither physics nor muscles are defined for these figures in any way, and cannot be implemented automatically. Sure, they could implement these technologies and release some generic one-size-hopefully-fits-all add-ons for older figures, but, I don't think such generic add-ons would ever yield the quality of figures purpose-build to make use of such technologies.
These technologies should be on the long term roadmap for Daz Studio, but will have to coincide with the release of figures making use of them. It will probably happen, sometime. But I don't really expect it to happen within the next 3 years. And thus, another 3 years of Gen 8 wouldn't surprise me either. I don't think that's a bad thing. People calling for a Gen 9 should first define their expectations of such a hypothetical Gen 9 figure. Not just "it's better". No, define what exactly should be "better", how to accomplish that "better". And currently, there isn't too much to make figures better than what we have, that would realisticly be usable on our slightly souped up home computers.
My 2 cents - I like thus approach very much, it works for me, and hopefully, others as well, because thus makes the Genesis line an even bigger platform. However, in the context of G9, this also means I have become independent from the figure generation.
There is no doubt they want realism in the way they look, looking at products offered, the forum's accolades for new products, the DAZ Galleries, and lots of other data. The customers want realistic 3D models. No doubt about it.
It's those that (still) like toons that are the outliers with regards to 3D.
Gaming world: Compare the original Wolfenstein 3D to whatever the the latest version of Wolfenstein looks like. Where cartoons have had any resurgence it was because lack of capable hardware forced the issue, eg mobile devices have to use more toon-like lighting and geometry methods.
Disney even is remaking classic toons into realistic movies. You can argue all you want that they succeeded or failed but they did try to make them look more realistic and solely to make money on the 'realism' as we all already know the stories.
We also know the story for any first person shooter you care to name: good guy, bad guy, shoot each other. Each new GPU release gets hoarded and scalped because they are crucial to enabling more realism in such new releases in the same old games, rehashed with more realism.
I will be interested to see Genesis 9. I expect that dForce, SBH, more use of nVidia SDKs, and more realism is very much a part of it. I think that while they'll invent new mechanisms to use old hair, clothing, and such (it is SW) they will make new G9 hair, clothing, and such that it completely breaks backwards compatibility. They did it for going from V4/M4 to Genesis.
Nope - no photorealistic movies ranked among the top animated movies of 2019 (the most recent year that counts as a year).
https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-animated-movies-2019/
That means absolutely nothing by itself. Also, the Lego movies ARE photorealistic.
Well, we do have some pretty good plastic shaders.
Nothing means nothing.
(See what I did there? Very deep. Can interpret 'nothing means nothing' in so many ways).
RE: Lego - so one of the top 5 animated movies was hybrid stop-motion / CGI, and you want to equate that with what vocal people in the forums call photoreal? Like Rankin and Bass claymation Christmas specials are photoreal? See link after my fan art Carrara lego models.
Daz does not need a Genesis 9 female figure or male figure for Dazaholics to make Lego fanart.
https://stopmotionexplosion.com/blogs/blog/12044545-is-the-lego-movie-stop-motion-or-cgi
I think we are conflating terms in the discussion. A stylistic art choice doesn't preclude one from working with a technically photoreal technology. Micropressure, muscle movement, soft-body physics, and all those goodies could perfectly enhance any given Pixar movie, and Kung Fu Panda would have given quite a different impression if the fur hadn't been quite as polished. Daz should strive to give customers the best tools they can, and customers should use them to realize their vision, be it photorealistic portraits of noir detectives or cancan dancing troll troupes. There's no conflict of interest here, and nobody is going to lose anything if our tools get upgraded.
It's WAY easier to make things less realistic than more realistic. Render settings and shaders can bring things away from photorealism, so I don't see why there's a cry for "no photorealism".
I suspect it has more to do with fear of hardware not being able to render photorealism rather than an artistic esthetic. Which is a valid fear. With HD everything, super high res textures, etc, the lower end computers are going to fall farther behind. But I suspect that's why alternative render engines, and scripts that lower poly-count, texture size, etc will always have a place in the 3D community.
Progress toward Photorealism will be made, imo. There's no holding that back. You can accept it gracefully or you can fight it kicking and screaming, but it's something that 3D art has been moving toward for years.
Will you be buying it?
at this point, no.
An excellent argument... for DAZ's place in the marketplace to strive for realism. Note how different the styles of the figures look from each other. Was Laika going to buy Pixar's Toy Story models to make their film? Absolutely not. These are studios building models in their own, highly stylized way. Laika's models are even physical! So having a storefront like DAZ switch to only making more stylized models that are more distintively separate from realism just means limiting any audience who doesn't like the style DAZ decides to go with.
If you want something that highly stylized, you are going to model it to fit your vision.
Clarification
Speaking only for myself, I am not opposing upgrades in Daz technology or people who want to pursue photo-realism. Somewhere in this thread, I have said I would buy Genesis 9 when it comes out.
But, there are people who seem to equate photo-realism with 'Unwilling' suspension of disbelief. By unwilling, I refer to a skeptical observer who is trying to reject an image and can tell that it is not a photograph. Some advocates of this view keep talking about how the market is going in that direction and Daz will collapse if it does not devote the overwhelming amount of its resources to skin pores, etc.
No. I disagree. The entertainment market is still very much about the Willing suspension of disbelief. Disney is built on the willing, not the unwilling. Game engines are built on the willing, not the unwilling. The market is not moving in the direction of the unwilling. At least, not the market as defined as revenues from entertainment or game revenues - which is billions of dollars.
So, yeah, improve the tools of realism. Hooray! But the top revenue producers do not serve the unwilling suspension of disbelief. Having said that, maybe soon it will flip when lawyers want to use deepfake to defend their clients, or frame unfortunate victims.
I would go for a more realistic genesis generation, provided, that I do not have to start everything from scratch. I would appreaciate if e.g. G8 clothing would still fit with the new generation. Quit a lot of G3 stuff fits with G8. Some don't, no matter what. Regarding photorealism, if you browse the gallery, there are some really stunning examples what you already can do with the current generations. Some renders are almost indistinguishable from real life photographs.
What I do miss are more realistic environments. You can generate quite nice ones, e.g. using UltraScenery, but that is a real resource hog, sometimes.
Personally, I would like DAZ be more flexible when it comes to rendering hardware. Iray is nice, but that is bound to Nvidia hardware - or CPU renders. Same applies to dForce. So, why offer Mac software? No modern Mac will utilize Nvidia hardware.
For gaming it has diminishing returns that the industry's been reckoning with. It costs an immense amount of money to keep chasing realism as a selling point. When the gaming market was smaller, that kind of thing used to be a point of pride--like, "Wow, this game is so realistic you need a cutting edge rig to play it!" and then that would mean bragging rights for hardcore gamers who could. Now that gaming is a mainstream pastime, there's a smaller audience that cares about that, and a bigger market that cares more about it looking good.
I don't see realism talked about in the industry as much as immersion, and the former isn't 100% necessary for the latter.
Wolfenstein: The New Order still has what I would consider Daz-level stylization in its character designs. That not only helps communicate ideas, but a stylized game still looks good two years down the line, or even ten. The most photorealistic game I can think of is Death Stranding, a passion project (albeit a very expensive one that made a lot of money) made by a director who wanted to put his buddies and favorite actors in a game. The characters are still subtly stylized, with deliberate choices made in their skin textures and coloring and movements. But even so, once the novelty factor wears off, the models look weird when they do real human things in mundane situations.
The Last of Us Part 2 is a good example of where I think the industry is trending and where big studios will choose to focus their efforts. The characters are realistic enough that they fit into environments that look like real places, but you probably wouldn't mistake a screenshot of one of the characters for a photograph. This is useful in storytelling because it makes them more-real-than-real emotionally and doesn't distract the audience as much when a character model moves in a way a human being wouldn't. The FFVII remake has very realistic elements, but the characters are stylized. Those examples aren't really toony, but this approach lets studios express an art style that sets them apart in the market.
To me, most Daz characters fall in that area and work well for it. I think the main advancement I want to see overall is anything that makes it easier to make deliberate choices about the way characters and their attached props behave in the scene.
+1
Sure, but history shows that once new technologies, like SBH, dForce and Iray get introduced, that's what gets made, and users with lower-end systems who can't or don't want to invest in new gear get left behind. Daz has to calculate whether they want to do that, or else gamble that whatever leap toward realism they make will be big enough to satisfy people who want photorealism and whether that will justify abandoning users who can't or won't keep up.
In a way, Daz is the Facebook of the 3D world. It has some bells and whistles, but it's not cutting edge, and it's not what the kids are interested in using. I don't think that will change, no matter what Daz does, and the company won't be able to be all things to all people. By running ahead of their most profitable customer base, who I'm guessing, like Facebook's are mostly older, they could end up losing them without having anything much at the other end to show for it.
Anyway, this is all speculation, since Daz isn't talking.
Best Reviewed is not equal to Highest Money Earners.
And the realistic movies of prior toons did make a lot of money. They aren't doing those if they are losing money on such toon to realism rehashes. Not for one second.
Anyway, here are the top money makers for 2020, realizing much of the earnings are warped by covid-19.
https://www.the-numbers.com/market/2020/top-grossing-movies
The only trend I see in that list at the link above from prior years and decades is an unnatural obsession with excessive realistic violence.
Here is an analysis of top grossing animations on a variety of characteristics. (eg., In 60% of their top list, the protagonist was not human - prepare to be outraged by a variety of trends). If by realism someone means having more control over facial muscles for more complex expressions, yes, by all means. Let us have more of that, which as @plasma_ring describes is more control by the artist. Animators have more computer control of dragon facial expressions, monster hair, etc. over time. If by realism, someone means that the animators depicted human skin in such a way that the observer had a hard time telling it was not a photograph, I don't believe this analysis supports that view.
https://www.aaastateofplay.com/an-analysis-of-the-top-50-highest-grossing-animated-films-of-all-time/
I find gigabyte character downloads exceedingly tedious. We already have those in G8. Well, nothing tops the gigabyte set of throw pillows I got once as a freebie. Why? Why hundreds of megabytes for a set of wands? How much more swollen can we make a character or prop download? And it's still not terribly realistic without a lot of work. And then you set up your scene with these overweight things. And you probably use iray and run out of ram on your gpu. And then you're rendering on the CPU, anyway. It's annoying!
A V4 character can be lovely and a G8 character can look like an awkward block of plastic. It depends on the lighting, posing, textures, scene setup, etc. I'm not saying what I will or won't do with G9. I can't tell that 'til we get there. I can say, with some exceptions, I enjoy the older content a lot more than the newer content. If it's a bit less realistic, it's also less complicated to work with, renders faster, and so on. That's my 2 cents right there.
I agree. I have the latest Public Beta, but my General Release version is still 4.8 and I use that for all my real work. I render in 3Delight and mostly use Genesis 1. I buy outfits and poses for newer figures and convert them.if they fill a need and are on sale. I have quite a few characters for G3 but rarely use most of them. I don't have any G8 characters except ones I got for free. It's very unlikely that I'll buy G9.
exactly. i've noticed horrific texture sizes (like a bump map that have 10K dimensions) that are completely unoptimized and creating issues with DAZ in general because there's no set maximum of dimensions a texture map by the DAZ approval team. hell i could make it almost 20K in dimensions and it'll still be approved.
Under the surface I feel like some part of this discussion is over what Daz Studio is supposed to be, or who it's ultimately "for." It looks like Daz is modernizing as a company and looking for new markets, and it's not super clear where they'll land. For a while I remember their advertisements more or less described it as an animation program, and now it seems like they're positioning themselves to serve the broader 3D art market and game developers. I think they're making really smart moves, but in that brand refresh there's a bit of distance from static rendering in Daz Studio as a selling point.
I've read some comments from a few people around the Daz community who are actually a bit hostile toward rendering as an art form, and those comments were pretty harsh to folks who want to keep doing it. Basically, "That's dead and dated, in a while the software will be for other things, so get used to it." Any advancements to technology for things like animation and game dev will probably make rendering easier, but anything could happen if DS were to become a widely-used industry product instead of a 3D-for-the-rest-of-us thing. Hardware requirements going up, enterprise pricing, a focus on products that are meant to be used in other 3D software, or even DS development being dropped. It wouldn't be the first time a beloved software product with a loyal userbase went, "Oops, it looks like major studios are using our stuff, time for a subscription fee" or similar. A lot of digital art tools are gated from casual use because their primary market is companies that can spend $500,000 a year on software licenses to make $10million+ products.
I don't actually think that'll happen because people who use DS for rendering are obviously spending a lot of money and the software is still really good for that while not being competitive for other uses. But if you spin out the idea that a greater focus on photorealism and advanced tech might mean people get left behind, there are some reasonable fears in there.
yeah the hardware and other requirements like a $1200 phone for facial mocap just make it impossible fir me on my budget
I have been using a lot of legacy stuff lately to populate my scenes as they load so easily without RAM bloat
we have a split
the ones with unlimited budgets who want the latest
the struggling ones who still have a DAZ addiction
I am trying to make a move away from buying new content
my continuous PC+ spending has been on legacy stuff
@Fixmypcmike and @BloodPawWerewolf Thank you for your thoughts. Nice to know I'm not alone!
@Plasma_Ring You've got a lot packed in that post. I have not seen much of the hostility you describe. There are always detractors for any creative endeavor, and they're easily ignored. I think hardware requirements are already going up, major studios already use Daz products, and we can see Daz making an effort to make their products more compatible with other software. I've no idea where that will lead.
@WendyLuvsCatz I think there is some truth to that idea of a market split. We'll have to see what happens with that.
yeah I don't want to deny users new tech if they can afford it
but the plebs probably actually purchase more of the cheaper content as cannot afford Marvelous Designer and Adobe products to make it
I used to see Platinum Club that way, simpler items with optional addons
sadly not the case now, there seems a weird policy not to sell addons to products older than a certain date or we could still get lovely new MFD textures, cape textures etc to match other outfits like they used to
many old time textures had versions available for several outfits and sets, hell I even use the Cycloramas still in iray
I have taken to rendering textures by posing new outfits over templates!
My guess is Genesis 9 will come soon after Poser has official support for Genesis 8. And the new figure will be completely incompatible with Poser for the dumbest reason imaginable. Like they decided to combine the arm and foot textures into one file or something.
or mispelling the hidden nodes like they did to break Carrara compatibility
I really do think the earlier comments about a GAN AI is the way forward.
I have no idea how to create a GAN, but I conceptually know how they work and have read papers about GAN's improving photorealism in CGI.
There's no reason a GAN couldn't be set up to "realify" a CGI image and make it look far more convincing. In fact, I imagine this wouldbe trivial to accomplish if someone had the knowledge and resources.