Are the artists/teams that made V4 & M4 the same as the ones that made Genesis and the Genesis 2 fig
Timbales
Posts: 2,364
I'm just curious, because there seem to be more individual morphs and dial customization options on the G4 figures compared to the newer models. Is it because of the changes in mesh? or a change in the teams that developed them?
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More the former than the latter, but I'd think the main reason is the rigging, as weight mapping makes a lot of the corrective morphs required just to contort V4 around irrelevant. The end benefit is that the Genesis figures can do a lot more while consuming less system resources, though there were a few things that were cut going from Gen 4 to Gen 5 that returned with Gen 6, such as the better toe rigging and the eye surface.
More the former than the latter, but I'd think the main reason is the rigging, as weight mapping makes a lot of the corrective morphs required just to contort V4 around irrelevant. The end benefit is that the Genesis figures can do a lot more while consuming less system resources, though there were a few things that were cut going from Gen 4 to Gen 5 that returned with Gen 6, such as the better toe rigging and the eye surface.
I agree about the rigging, but I'm thinking more about the different shapes that could be dialed to make figures more unique looking.
Example: Victoria 4.2 Morphs ++ package - 275 head morphs, 192 body morphs
compared to the Genesis2 Female Head Morphs - 192 & Female Body Morphs - 120 body morphs
The teams that developed each were different, but there are people on the V6 team that were on the V4 team. The difference in the team isn't the reason in the morph differences though.
One other point is that the current V4 is 4.2, which came out two years after the original V4. IIRC, the original V4 in 2006 didn't take inject morphs, which was the reason for moving to 4.1 a year later, which had... 193 head morphs. (source http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/public/read_me/index/5381/5381_v4facemagic-guide.pdf ) V4.2 followed in 2008 and one of the main differences was the inclusion of a set of male morphs. And then, of course, there's the fact that V4.X was designed as the base of the Gen4 female figure system, whereas with Genesis that's the basic figure and for Genesis 6 it's the G2F figure.
Are there plans for expanded morphs for the G2 figures?
In a way you are comparing apples to oranges...because, once you start adding in V6, Teen Josie, Olympia and the rest you are adding in a lot more morphs, too.
Each new character brings in new morphs because you can literally dial in how much of each character's features you want and blend them together, which is far more flexibility than Gen 4 ever had.
Also, there are the Genesis Head and Body Morph Resource Kits for Genesis 1 and 2M and 2F. I think those probably address what you are referring to.
In a way, yes it is apples and oranges.
V4.2 Morphs ++ , besides individual feature morphs, had Becky, Brigette, Emma, Eva, Kerstin, Lisa, Maria & Monique. The you had all the Stephanie 4 morphs to add to the mix. Now with G2 with have (sister) figures like we did with Stephanie 4, but there are fewer options for dial spins.
I understand that the Genesis + figures are newer with improved meshes and greater details and more realistic geometries, but there doesn't seem to be the ease of customizing with the G2 figures with store bought products.
That is true, and they seem to offer a lot, but I'm a little confused as to why they aren't Daz Original products. It also seems like more things to buy to get the features I'm used to with the previous generation.
And all Zev0's stuff...
Actually, I'm surprised that there are so many DAZ Originals...it seems to me that they've been more on providing a 'base' figure and counting on the community to provide the 'extras'.
I can't say I agree with that. I think V4 with S4 and muscle morphs had more flexibility than the current G2 characters.
Disagree, as I'd say the pairing of just V6 and Teen Josie K.O.s the tag team of V4 & S4 when it comes to range, but even if that's what you believe, let's not forget that S4 wasn't even introduced until June of 2010, a whopping 4 years after the first release of V4.0, two years after Aiko 4 (2008) and a year after The Girl 4 (2009). That's basically one new female figure a year. Whereas it's been only seven MONTHS since G2F hit the market, and in that time we've got, in addition to the aforementioned V6 and Teen Josie, Gia, Olympia and the Girl 6, pl;us the G2F creature creator morphs and the HD sets... and that's before we count all the PA generated shapes. And as to why to let the PAs generate so much of the content, that would obviously be because it's working out quite well for everyone given that we're getting over five times the product in the same time period.
And, interestingly enough, since this thread got me wondering, I loaded up just V4.2 and the ++ Morphs, and it looks like only about 120 of the old girl's body morphs are actually for shaping, while quite a few are paired movement morphs for things like adjusting the stretch/bend of the figure when the torso twists. Do they even count that on the weight mapped figures?
I personally found V4 far more limiting than the Genesis figures, which is why I made the switch from Poser to Daz Studio in the first place. Sure there are tons of morphs, but many of them were to correct bending issues which rarely occur on Genesis figures due to the weight-mapping. In terms of basic shaping, the beauty of Genesis is the ability to blend various morphs together seamlessly. This was not so much the case with V4 as more extreme morphs didn't play nicely with others, making many of them exclusive to that figure alone. In my experience, there are more morph combinations that will break V4 than there are ones which will break Genesis.
But overall I think the main reason there are fewer morphs is because Genesis is more malleable by default. If I want to make a slightly shorter V5 or V6, I can do so effortlessly. V4 requires a considerable bit more tweaking to get the same results and multiple morphs for a job which would take a single dial on Genesis figures.
Given that G2F is still fairly new to the scene and Victoria waited a long time to get those upgrades, that they're that close on morphs already shows that G2F is likely going to be a lot more customizable than V4 ever was in the end.
In terms of body, I do agree with you guys. But in terms of faces, I don't think G2 has caught up to the Gen 4 series yet.
Emphasis on yet...
And for me Genesis (I haven't tried any on G2 yet) was very easy to sculpt...especially face morphs (I've still got a bunch of WIPs for Genesis that I haven't done anything with...) and if I'm finding it easy, the more experienced, especially those with Z-brush, will probably find it a lot easier.
Another thing...you have to add in things like the troll/gorilla/Anubis (for original Genesis, at least...haven't checked to see what's out in that area for G2), because unlike the previous generations, Genesis (1 &2 ) get all those nifty critters too.
Emphasis on yet...
.
That's why I've asked if more face morphs are in development, like the Gen 4 figures, or if the focus is going to be on new figures.
It was great to be able to dial spin a unique look.
I have not used V4 much but if I recall, all the face and body morphs for each character shape were shape specific meaning that morphs for one didn't really work well with another character where as Genesis and Genesis 2 work differently so you dont need as many to do the same job.
in the beginning, there was something about genesis being a single mesh. couldn't make body parts invisible back then.
The earlier versions of DS couldn't make genesis' body parts invisible. The newer versions can.
Emphasis on yet...
And for me Genesis (I haven't tried any on G2 yet) was very easy to sculpt...especially face morphs (I've still got a bunch of WIPs for Genesis that I haven't done anything with...) and if I'm finding it easy, the more experienced, especially those with Z-brush, will probably find it a lot easier.
Another thing...you have to add in things like the troll/gorilla/Anubis (for original Genesis, at least...haven't checked to see what's out in that area for G2), because unlike the previous generations, Genesis (1 &2 ) get all those nifty critters too.
For sheer versatility, Genesis is the undisputed king (or Queen, depending on how you roll the dials) and probably will be for some time to come. G2F and G2M are intentionally more focused, but still have more overall range than the G4s, something exhibited by the fact that we've already got teen sets for both genders whereas in V4's era we had to fallback to Gen 3 and Luke and Laura, though I think the real power lies in the fact that you have so many PA produced morph sets. Zev0's sets alone go way beyond what was even possible with the pre-Genesis generations, and with GenX 2 hitting in the next couple of days, the only thing we're really lacking right now is some of the ethnic sets.
If one wants to compare the abilities - pure morphing and the bang for the buck needed to get the results, not counting HD and such - I think it would look like this:
3rd place: Generation 4. Because even if you only want G4, let's say, you MUST buy V4 and Morphs++. The same with F4 and H4 - to get them, one needs M4 and Morphs++. They are gender-oriented as well, so getting androgynous figures, for example, is difficult. Fitting clothes can be an issue, especially when changing the figure's gender.
2nd place: Gen2F and Gen2M. Good because of their realism and the fact you can only buy Olympia, for instance, without buying V6. However, they are still gender-stuck (good only if you want hyperrealism, anatomy renders for example) and fitting clothes... well, it isn't the best.
1st place: Genesis. It is not gender-dependent, autofit works well in most cases and the amount of morphs (including androgynous and antropomorphic ones) gives great flexibility.
Swap 2nd and 1st. The amount of morphs you saw to make that flexibility was provided because there was a massive amount of correctives behind the scenes. You add a new morph, you have to had a bunch of hidden morphs to compensate for the androgynous shape. Autofitting to female shapes made the boob shrink wrap that's less common in G2. The flexibility comes because the PAs made it possible with lots of work you didn't see.
The new GenX version to be released will definitely put Genesis2 back on top in terms of flexibility:) This means all Genesis1 morphs + GenX converted ones from Gen4\3 figures, as well as its native G2 morphs all on one figure. Genesis1 cannot get all Genesis2 morphs so Genesis2 will be the most versatile figure platform. So you can have all your V3\V4 and M3\M4, Genesis1 morphs all on Genesis2. That is way more than what V4 or any other figure platform has on offer:)
I'm glad for that. Right now, it's difficult to get M6 to look different.
I don't want to knock any PA or the work they do, but the G4 figures were released with a lot of morphs, where they Genesis & Genesis 2 figures didn't have that immediate, Daz Original morph options out of the gate.
I'm glad for that. Right now, it's difficult to get M6 to look different.
I don't want to knock any PA or the work they do, but the G4 figures were released with a lot of morphs, where they Genesis & Genesis 2 figures didn't have that immediate, Daz Original morph options out of the gate.
No, it actually took a while to get all those morphs. And the females got far more than the males (remember the 3 sliders for the Elite morphs?), including a (sort of) scaling option with Steph 4. (I ended up trying to duplicate it with the M4 version of Santo) And you could do nowhere near what you could do with Genesis without breaking compatibility with clothing.
I agree with TimG, the Version 4s had many more individual morphs and where better for creating unique facial characters and David 3's musculature and morph sets haven't been topped by any figure.
Recycled morphs seems to be one of the reasons Daz didn't bother providing many of the finer adjustment morphs to Genesis that and the Genesis1 mesh was too low poly to carry fine detail.
Many of the auto added recycled morphs also look kind of awful compared to sets that have been created and refined to each figure by the artist.
I'd much rather be able to create unique characters with a multitude of morphs packages, than have 1 homogenised character every couple of months, that gets churned out Hallmark card style.
The HD morphs look good but you sacrifice performance versus the lean Genesis mesh, could have just produced a higher polygon version genesis 2 figure and not bothered with the HD morphs.
Are you sure M4 and M4 Morphs ++ were not released at the same time?
I had to buy morphs++ for V4 (without which, the hands were all but useless) and elite morphs (not all that useful). Still debating the HD morphs, but the head and body morphs for G2 are far better than the ones for G4. Calling M4 and V4 G4 kind of confuses things. Makes them sound more advanced than G2.
Are you sure M4 and M4 Morphs ++ were not released at the same time?
I'm speaking of the whole set. Even then, they weren't as flexible as Genesis, especially when it comes to scaling.
I think the emphasis of Genesis is on unique characters, so at face value you wouldn't need as many morphs as you needed in Gen4. You needed that many in Gen4 so you could have more of a range and still have a universal set of morphs as a guide to fit the clothing. No one really made custom body morphs in Gen4 because you would have to find ways to fit them in clothing. Even with with all the morphs, vendors only did a subset of them and you would need a tool like Morphing Clothes to get the rest of the morphs into clothing. Genesis really takes care of the clothing issue and you would need less of a subset to work with.
The shapes in Genesis give a base to start with and then you would modify it from there, similar to M4 or V4. However if you need to take out features you didn't like, you would have to fall back to a modelling tool, and Genesis is no different. You can use magnets or hexagon or another tool to fix the mesh and bring it back.
I'm speaking of the whole set. Even then, they weren't as flexible as Genesis, especially when it comes to scaling.
I think the emphasis of Genesis is on unique characters, so at face value you wouldn't need as many morphs as you needed in Gen4. You needed that many in Gen4 so you could have more of a range and still have a universal set of morphs as a guide to fit the clothing. No one really made custom body morphs in Gen4 because you would have to find ways to fit them in clothing. Even with with all the morphs, vendors only did a subset of them and you would need a tool like Morphing Clothes to get the rest of the morphs into clothing. Genesis really takes care of the clothing issue and you would need less of a subset to work with.
The shapes in Genesis give a base to start with and then you would modify it from there, similar to M4 or V4. However if you need to take out features you didn't like, you would have to fall back to a modelling tool, and Genesis is no different. You can use magnets or hexagon or another tool to fix the mesh and bring it back.
I'm not talking about Genesis as a whole. I'm talking about the ability to make different looking figures, especially faces on the figure as it's released by Daz right from the start. I'm asking about the different approaches that are being taken for these newer figures and asking what the reasons may be.
I've stated and conceded that Genesis and the G2F/M figures are of higher quality in terms of geometry, bending and details. I don't need to be told by other users how I can work around what isn't there.
Me, personally, I wish that Capsces had created on of her morphsets for Genesis.
Please don't give me the "just add A5, G5 etc. to the morph list and you will see how many morphs there are".
I LIKE Genesis, but ...
In this case it is comparing the apples and pears - full faces versus single morphs I can dial in and out to change individual things in a face/body.
Eye size, distance, height in face and the same for everything from the top of the head to the neck.
And the body morphs ... *sigh*