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I'd say, Daz Genesis 3 figures are fine (instead of g8 or g8.1). For one thing, Daz works faster with g3 than g8.
If you focus on obtaining Genesis 3 -compatible poses, clothing, etc. well, those assets will often be cheaper, especially when you hunt through sales deals. And, a lot can even be found for free. Because they're older / legacy.
Genesis 3 is 3dDelight-compatible, but I would consider standardising on IRay, to be forward compatible.
Genesis 3 is more retro-looking, and, I think, that retro, stylised look is cute-looking / 3D-cartoon looking.
A side note on historical versioning...
Victoria-6 is equivalent to Genesis-2.
Victoria-7 is equivalent to Genesis-3.
There are various other xxx-7 character assets too, which will be g3 equivalent.
Daz then jumped from Genesis-3 to Genesis-8 to unify the versioning with Victoria et al.
Talking of the even-older Genesis 2 (g2) figures - they're clunky to pose, etc. but are low-resource, and you can populate a scene with g2 figures without much rendering overhead. I use that trick myself, sometimes, with some distant figures in the background sometimes being g2s.
I have started to flirt with incorporating some g3 characters into some of my art, inspired by that retro-look I love.
However, I'm mostly sticking with g8, though, and g8.1, as such figures are, in most ways, higher-quality, have betting posing, expressions, and other capabilities.
There's a Genesis 8...?
Where have I been?
Who am I even... the world is a lie...
I've kept my Genesis and G2 figures active for years for background use for exactly this reason. That said, keep in mind that one of the main reasons that Genesis 1 will almost always load and save faster than the newer figures is the simple fact that there was hardly anything made specifically for Genesis 1, with the vast majority of the characters made for it using V4 generation skins and many really being just V4 gen characters that came with a morph to apply that shape to Genesis. By comparison, there's been a mega-behind full of add ons and characters released for G8, and in my experience it's the damn morphs, not the textures, that are really causing most of the slow down in the whole process, as one of the fundamental design mis-thinks of the Genesis products is that every single one of the morphs that you've got loaded has to be added onto that base figure every time you load a figure, even if they're not being used. By comparison, materials only load for that one specific character or item. Add in the inevitable errors that occur when something isn't where it thinks it is, which has sadly become much too common in recent years due to the death b7y attrition of QC, plus memory hungry things like fibermesh brows and LIE overlays, and it can take an eternity just for DS to find everything. In my own experience, just going through and deleting most of the redundant expressions sped both G3 and G8 up by a huge margin. At least Riversoft's new Turbo-loader products, which I've purchased but haven't had a chance to use yet, promise to finally address this.
Don't feel bad. I still use Genesis 3. It's not hard though to use Genesis 8 clothing (except high heels - possible I'm sure just not easy) by doing the scene identifier trick.
Fully functional G8F using 12MB of VRAM with clothing and hair;
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7213201/#Comment_7213201
Wait, have I missed this for so long - so Genesis 8 uses the same UV as Genesis 3 Base Female? So I can use the textures for Genesis 8 Female figures on Genesis 3 Females? (I realize the Iray shaders are very different).
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-character-uvs-for-genesis-8-female
It would explain this from the description: "Genesis 8 Female can already wear any skin that uses the Genesis 3 Female Base Female UV Set."
Yes, the UV is the same for G3 and G8. G8.1 can also use it => 2.5 generations of figures can use the same G3/G8 materials
....I have all 4 however, someteimes the clothing converters don't convert every peice of clothing. Also 3D eybrows on G8 characters beome "painted ones" after conversion. Fortunately I have the Brow Remover and Real Eyebrows contant to get around it as well as Zevo's Skin Builder.
OMG, that's awesome!
I feel like such a bonehead I never knew or realized this. I am not sure if I should bang my head on the desk, or jump for joy. Maybe I'll do both.
...as to UVs be careful as I discovered some textures have hierarchal presets and will not transfer. This applies to skin, hair, and sometimes clothing.
There is a way to make them work but I find it a bit of a bother.
As to older generation genesis characters/figures, I still use G2 for background characters and G1 for some of the toon and special characters that were not updated to later generations.
The clothing converters I am having trouble with are the Gen4 to G3 ones as for some reason they don't "see" the Poser Content folder which is where these install. My system sees it fine so not sure what the issue is..
That shouldn't bother me at all, because I'll go in and manually point to the textures.
I made my own shaders to convert Genesis 3 figures to use Dual Lobe Specular, and Chromatic SSS. Takes some manual fiddling but is worth it IMO.
One thing that has irked me for a while is that most of the skin textures for characters here use JPGs, and use overly aggressive compression at that. I've bought a few Genesis 8 figures when sales have been good, but also with a closer eye towards ones with good textures like Babina 8 whom the forum sold me on.
8.1 - NO THANKS.
It's hard to get around the fact that DS is really just an off shoot of Poser, and, IIRC, at one point jpeg was really the only practical solution, so it remains the default standard and, as the original post here made clear, may often be the best compromise for what is actually viable for the average user on the average system. To be honest, I can't really say that I like the look I've seen for many of the newest PBR skins either, though I admit that's based completely on what I've seen in the promo images and from other users since I've found it surprisingly easy to just say "no" to 8.1. And, in the end, no matter how good the image textures are, the truth is that it never, ever, going to look 100% perfectly real until the base figures actually duplicate ever single bit of every real object perfectly, and the rendering software perfectly duplicates the actual composition of light and the way it affects the human body and other objects, which not even the state of the art in CG tech has yet come close to achieving, let alone any of the systems that are openly available for purchase on the market. Food for thought - For all their massive budgets and ridiculously large box office grosses, the effects work for Marvel Studios is still rendered at a "lowly" 2K (uprezzed, not re-rendered, to 4k for Imax and UHD,) and everything else is done with smoke and mirrors, so that image that you're seeing on the screen at the local multi-plex is lower in resolution than the image maps for the individual surfaces of DAZ figures back in the days of Victoria 4.
Totally agree.
I don't need this Increment
I think it's important to note that you do not need to use the PBR Skin shader to be able to use G8.1. I don't like the new skin shader. But I do like G8.1 for the superior emoting capabilities. I continue to use the Uber Shader and all of my favorite frankenskins on G8.1 just fine. I wouldn't let the fact that you might not like the way the PBR Skin shader looks dissuade you from using G8.1. If you use G8, then there's no reason to not use G8.1 becuase you can load any G8 character as a G8.1 character and get that improved emoting capability.
...I actually use Skin Builder 3, Beautiful Skins for G3, Growing up Skins for G3M, and N.G.S. Anagenessis 2 frequently, particularly with G8 conversions. I have no expertise in creating skin shaders from scratch.
...I didn't buy into G8 as "full bore" as I did with G3 as the minor changes didn't warant the cost. Not the ;least bit interested in 8.1 (or 8.2 if and when that is released).
For G8 I only went with the characters that added something unique. I don't have an G8 versions of the "standard" Daz figures except Vicky who I got for free on a "loyalty deal" banner.
Oh, I have a list of reasons for not liking the G8.1s, the PBR skins are just what was most pertinent to the conversation, with my biggest issue being that the G8.1s were never necessary at all, except perhaps in the brain of some marketing person. Beyond the PBR skins, the "big improvement" was the FACS facial controller upgrade, which had already been created by an second party, Faux2D, and was, in fact, already available for both G8 and G3, and working in DS 4.12. AFAIK, there's no reason the PBR skins couldn't have been added on to existing bases using the existing UV maps either, assuming that anyone actually wants them, but instead someone at DAZ decided to make the whole thing require a upgrade to a newer and buggier version in order to get any of the "newer" product. And let's not even go into some of the bizzaro design choices that have gone into the new "base" figures...
On the positive side, I'm spending a lot less at DAZ now since I'm not even bothering to look at anything that says 8.1. Great for me, probaby sucks to be which ever DAZ employees were counting on my old spending habits to put their kids through law school. Sorry kids, looks like you're going to end up as barrista instead of barristers.
Again...I don't go out of my way to buy 8.1 products either. But if you use G8 characters or morphs or skins...you can use all of those on G8.1. At no increased cost to you. Nobody had to buy into 8.1...it all came as updates to the base Essentials packages.
When I was on an older GPU I couldn't update past DS 4.12, so yes at that point I couldn't really utilize 8.1. But if you have an RTX card, there's really no reason to not update to at least 4.15. I haven't noticed any decrease in stability in doing so. In fact, since going to an RTX card, I haven't had a render fail once yet, and it's been since August. Prior to that, on my old 1080TI, Daz would crash a lot and renders would fail all the time. That's more a fault of NIVIDA's phasing out of GTX support than a fault of Daz.
Sigh... It's hardly "no increased cost" if upgrading comes at the risk of jeopardizing a stabile running system that I use every day, makes utilities go wonky or non-operational, and adversely affects rendering time and quality... all of which have been documented issues with the newer versions. I've gone this route with DAZ (and many other software companies) way too many times in the past and loading their upgrades has a nasty habit of breaking things, many of which have never been fixxed despite years of complaints... and given that DAZ Customer Service is now a pale echo of what it once was, the odds are likely that there'll be little improvement in the near future. As I've noted, the only "real" benefit that I see to G8.1 is the FACS system, but given that I'd already bought that as an stand-alone upgrade before 8.1 came along, that already was a non-starter.
I've been running a Titan RTX for years, so the card is not and never has been an issue for me. That said, if you were having constant crashing with a 1080i, which was a near top-of-the-line card only a few years ago, does passing that blame onto NVIDIA really cut the mustard? Rather, a least some shade has to go to DAZ for not taking into account the fact that not everyone using their free program is going to instantly run out and buy a new $1000+ graphics card and working proactively to mitigate issues.
So use the Public Build to try the newer DS out without jeopardising your running General Release (and dieally back up your isntallers too, so you can roll back even if something does go wrong).
Genesis 8.1 is not intended to be a full new version, as the number implies it's an incremental update incorporating several features. Most of the new features will work on Genesis 8 if desired, except for the enw UVs which depend on the new surface grouping.
If NVIDIA updates their achitechture, Daz has to follow suit. I was mad as hell that my 1080TI that worked perfectly on DS 4.11 started to suffer with DS 4.12 and couldn't really handle much of anything with 4.15. But that's because of the way NVIDIA was changing the Iray architecture (that they own). That's not the fault of Daz...they had to update their program to follow suit. And as I said, since updating to a new card and a new system, I haven't had any stability issues whatsoever (since August).
And yes, having to drop $$$ on a new system in order to stay relevent with a newer Daz Studio and Iray render engine was not fun...but I didn't upgrade for just that, I'm a gamer too. Even new games coming out are less and less optimized for GTX cards. That's the way of things. I get it, we don't have to like it, but it is what it is and I'm not going to put all the blame on Daz. If you want to blame someone, blame NVIDIA and the computing industry at large. Computing components have never stayed relevant for long, especially graphics cards...and you can't expect these companies to hold the class back in order to keep old components relevant. That's not how they make money. Again, it sucks, but it is what it is. I learned that lesson the day I decided to get into PC gaming over console gaming.
And as Richard said, you can try out the beta versions if you don't want to lose your solid older version. You can even keep a copy of your solid older version if you do update the regular build. I have copies of DS going back to 4.12.
I actually bought the character converters to go back and forth from G3 and G8 myself. When I was doing the renders of my last D&D PC, she exists in both G3 and G8 flavors, starting with Blaire for G3. I still haven't tried out the G8 to G3 direction, but I probably will just for better access to certain clothing items in the G3 library.
There is going to be very little difference between 3 and 8, presuming you have the same number of characters and morphs.
8.1 might be a little more due to the extra texture zone, but there aren't many of those.
when I go shopping on this website i try to find characters, poses and hair that I can apply to Genesis 3 and 8 easily. I haven't bought many human characters for Genesis 8 since the New Years week sale - 4 and a half months. I think I bought 3 or 4 during the flash sale and March Madness. I have found that items for Genesis 3 characters are cheaper.
Not exactly. Companies can, and often do, opt to develop a path that doesn't force users to immediately upgrade. Does it mean not getting all the whistles and bells that come with that new version? Yes. And if you, the customer, is fine with that, they can't instantly force you to change, hence the reason Microsoft supports multiple versions of older programs for years. To go any further here would require far more supposition and guessing than I'm sure the mods would allow... but would anyone argue that the way that the whole older cards aren't working properly bombshell hit this community, and how it directly affects the number of people who want to upgrade beyond 4.12 or whatever other version folks have decided to draw their lines in the sand, has been less than adequately handled? For that matter, AFAIK, there is still no obvious notice of potential issues outside of buried in these forums, which vast majority of DS users have not nor ever will bother to read, despite the percentage of DS users using those cards and the cost of newer graphic cards skyrocketing to the point where the cost of upgrading is beyond the reach of the very customers that DAZ is trying to sell to.
...since 4.12, my Titan X has effectively become a GTX 1070 with 3072 cores.