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it is ridiculous
I certainly think it was. Mind you, my perspective of that time is of a window shopper/observer of this cottage industry, not really a buyer/artist. Quite different nowadays. And yes, the market was way more focused on fantasy/sci-fi than it is today. Not surprising when you think back to whom the dominant vendors of that era were. Still plenty of that today, mind you, but it's tempered with a lot of realism. It's kinda like how baseball went from a batter focused appeal to a pitcher focused appeal. And while it's true a lot of bad stuff for v4 has been deleted.. a lot of really cool stuff has suffered the same fate. 110.1
But as for working with v4.. it was a hobby kit, to put it mildly. Morph loading, aggregious pokethru, getting her smile to actually look human were all uphill battles. By the time that era was over for me, I was never loading a base v4; I was loading custom rigs with tailored morph loads. And getting all that cool stuff to fit on those custom morphs was a nightmare I'm glad we don't have today at all. I would either have to use the fitting room in poser pro 2014 or the earlier option which was to inject the matching morphs into the clothing via a program offered by the late Draagonstorm. All that morph injecting quickly bloated the scenes. I wasn't working on anything special back then; I wouldn't get a serious computer that could handle the firefly era until 2015. Ironically the jump to IRAY occurred a week later.
I generally concur with RawArt that the 'instability' caused by three successor models being brought forth and discarded in about half a decade("about" on the northern side of that half) was both part of v4's longevity (and I'd add part of the current state of vendor production in the DAZ industry), but far more was occurring in the community as well. Consolidations, wars, DAZ building it's modern 'stable' of artisans and it's current model and approach to supporting the community took years and lessons learned.
But the end result is that we are without doubt in a second golden age: the reign of the Ocho. Genesis 8 has been dutifully supported now for over three years and it's catolog is much like that of v4 in her heyday. I can visually confirm that.
I went back and did a poser image about a year ago and was reminded just how difficult it was to get something set up. I've also tried to use the RSA converter to get those old outfits onto G8.. I can see why DAZ didn't include reverse compatibilty for v4 after I tried it. We're in a better place now. Technology has jumped 10 years and it shows. As neat as that stuff is.. very little of it is still salvagable as technology has marched on.
I use both V4 era and new stuff, and feel there is gold in both.
If I had my druthers, I say update all the old V4 characters textures to Iray, and use those figures to populate scenes requiring groups.
You can still get a lot of milage out of the V4 sets, and they look so much bettter in the bacground, than Low Rez Larry...etc.
Just my 2 cents...
JD
I wouldn't say the golden age of creativity, but definately the golden age of content. Even today i occasionally find V4-era items that just catch my attention or deliver exactly what I need, often with no g3 or g8 equivalent available. My spending on this hobby has dropped extensively over the last couple years just because the available content isn't nearly as diverse as it used to be (in my opinion).
+1
Yes, the technology is old and using it was a pain in the back even when it was introduced, but the look and the variety of the clothing is missed, especially when talking about clothing that could be used in a scene where a woman was visiting her parents a century ago.
,...just saw the yesterday there is a Clothing Converter for Gen4 to G3. I rarely use Gen4 clothing on G3 due to distortions that often occur (particularly anything with a skirt as it gets an odd deformation in the middle that stretches the texture). May have to look into getting it.
This. This right here is why the current era of Daz content will, IMHO, always be the best.
The V4/M4 era is basically a time capsule of the pre-progressive revolution (for lack of a better term) in terms of content: heavy focus on cisheteronormative content and especially the male gaze. Lots of same-y, varying shades of white women and skimpwear that would require a gorillion miles of double-sided tape to wear. Any LGBTQ+ content was either treated as a joke (lol man in a dress, amirite?) or put in the adult content ghetto by default, even if it was tame cuddling poses.
IMHO, I think Daz content in particular is experiencing an ideological revolution due in part to shifting demographics and cultural norms. Unfortunately for some of the older users longing for the Good Old Days, hardcore V4-era skimpwear and tacky 2000's fashion is out and more modest (yet still sexy) wear is in. The racial disparities/ethnic stereotypes in "core" characters finally got addressed with Genesis 3 and has come a long way with Genesis 8's line. And we've now since had same-sex romantic couples poses in the main store proper as well as transgender morphs that aren't simply sticking certain geografted parts on the opposite sex and calling it a day.
I think things have been more creative these days than they were when I got into using Daz back in 2011, but ymmv.
Making this a V4 appreciation thread would have produced a more satisfying result.
...OK
Child character created from V4 a decade ago:
I used "Creativity" when I started the original post for expediency's sake. I realised now that it only served to mire the post in a semanticss tar pit, but, the horse is out of the barn so I let it stand.
Regardless, when I look back over the V4 era catalog, I see a lot of really interesting items that looked like they were made more to satisfy the Artists Creative Itch than to appease the corporate machine.Methinks that a lot of the items that were standard fare for V4 would be rejected as too "xyz" for the store nowdays. So, "creative freedom" may have been a better turn of phrase than "Creativity". I realise that crativity today is no less/more than it was then, only the freedom to pursue it and commercialize it has changed.
No. Absolutely not. More products for v8 than there ever were for v4. Glad we had this discussion. Have a nice day. :)
I do think there were more hobbyists making products just to see if they could as opposed to penny by penny analysis of what sells the most.
I also think, however, the quality of product has grown leaps and bounds now with more than ever possible.
I've been here a long time( just under a different name back in the day) when it wasn't daz3d but Zygote. My first figure was V1 but I didn't stay with her for long because V2 had just been released which had marked improvments in joint and facial movement. V3 was released and the joints and facial expressions were even better. V3 was flagship for many years at the time and I think I had every piece of content for her. I used her for everything as well as M3. Then of course there came V4/M4 which had great improvments however, even thought the joints improved they still had issues and it took 3 party content creators to produce fixes. The fixes improved things but it made V4 very heavy resource wise. But again I had every piece of content for her as well. V4, in my opinion, has most likely been daz3d's longest supported character even to this day. I still have V4/M4 on my drives and I use M4 for many things such as military themes (WWII). I still load them up from time to time just for a change.
I was a diehard poser user since the first version was released when poser belonged to Fractal Design. I've used every version of poser with exception of poser 5 and 8 heck I even bought a copy of poser pro 11. I didn't like DS at first becuse I felt the renders looked "toonish" and flat I also didn't dig the figures. It wasn't until Iray that I gave DS a try and haven't looked back. I never used the G1-G2 figures but used G3 a lot what a difference from V4/M4 in relationship to the joints and facial improvements. The the Genesis 8 figures came along and the technology blew my mind.
I think V4 will go down in history as the most popular creations from Daz. Tons of stuff was created for her by very talented content creators and still is to some degree today. But the technology and quality of the figures being created now surpass anything from the past and the possiblities endless. V4 had her run but she is going into retirement with much dignity.
I hear you... Quite often I find myself browsing through my library of V4 clothing to fit the idea I have in my head and not finding anything suitable made for the newer figures, especially when trying to find clothing that would fit a late 19th century scene that is not about princes/princesses/royalty/high society... Unfortunately, there are those that feel threatened if anyone is talking about products that are not the "latest and greatest", without even understanding what it is that's talked about.
Yes, really. After all Kyoto Kid's child V4 character is showing bare *shoulders*...
(whivh has to be one of the silliest constraints to pop up in the past year)
I think we're seeing some nostalgic amnesia here. People are remembering the best Generation 4 items while forgetting how many uninteresting items you had to look at on a Daz or Renderosity store page to find the good items. Daz's tendency to put out a high volume of new items may lead some of us to think to ourselves "I already have that" or just "Meh, I'll pass" so much of the time. I don't see a must-have item every day or every week now, but I wasn't seeing them every day or every week in the Generation 4 era either.
If you've been doing this for more than a few years, a lot of your purchases are likely driven by the need to keep up with new figures: You need a skimpwear outfit for your sorceress because that V4 one doesn't fit on G8F without a lot of extra steps, so you buy one. Or you buy because of new features: "I already have a tuxedo that fits centaurs, but this one has Iray materials and dForce!".
Our opinions about the content for various generations are partially dependent on short-term trends regarding subgenres. Genesis 8 has had great content for ancient Egypt; Genesis 2 had very little content for ancient Egypt. Markets for genres and subgenres heat up and cool down. Markets get saturated. Your favorite genre may be hot now, or it was hot recently, or it might be cold or even dead. I don't think that means that the overall creative or conceptual quality of new products has either improved or deteriorated.
As usual, I have an opinion. :D
I started making content just before M4 came out. After three or four failures at fantasy outfits that sold terribly, I then went into making a bunch of contemporary cloth, and that did much better. It seemed to be what people wanted from me at the time. Occasionally I would do something crazier, like me and Fuseling's old Wasteland Vagabond at Renderosity or the gothic stuff I did for Genesis, but that content almost never paid enough to reward the effort. I would spend 20-40 hours on something and earn $100 after the split. In some places that's a living, but not where I lived then or now.
I had to continue to be conservative with my product choices over time, because the farther "out there" a product was, the more likely Daz would decline it or people wouldn't buy it. And over time, as my income grew and this became my only job, it was more and more crucial to keep the turnover coming. So I focused on the categories that paid well. I still love strange and different things, but I don't make them very often because it takes a long time to make them functional and I can't guarantee something won't happen like happened with this, where I threw lots of effort and time into making something, Daz made me redo it three times and still didn't like it, and ultimately I made it a freebie because to keep earning money I couldn't waste more time. I wasted a month and got nothing.
So a more usual policy for me is to make things I know people are likely to buy from me: utilities, water, restraints, pose plus prop combos, character morphs but only early in a figure cycle before glut sets in. Then, when I want to experiment with something in a category that's riskier, like this weirdness or this, if it doesn't pay off I'm still solvent. Those did really well, and so did my fiery people set, but I couldn't know that for sure when I made them. They struck a chord with me, so I tried them when I could afford to. Even then, I only gave them each like a week and a half, a tenable risk. I've made other such gambits over time that did not pay off.
I probably won't stop gambling with my time, because that's how I keep from getting burnt out while still maintaining a schedule, but there aren't many things I can spend two weeks or less on and give the results it would take to sell something truly fantastical and different even if I definitely had the skills to pull it off.
Sometimes I use V4. Victoria 4 doesn't use a lot of video card memory. I use V4 and Genesis 1. I hardly use Genesis 3 or 8. I do have old projects with Victoria 4 that I want to finish. Plus, I bought a ttton of clothes and hair for her. I might as well use these clothes and hair on V4 and Genesis 1. I gotta run and do some chores.
...agreed.
However the top she's wearing is from 3DU's Teen Ashley which at the time until Thorne's Tommi was the only "young" Gen4 character available here.
Yeah creating younger characters i nteh Gen4 days with only V4 really did push the creativity quite a bit as she was all we had until K4 (which came close to the end of the generation along with M4) or the Gen3 kids/pre teens/teens which were poorly supported (with no "unimesh" each had their own exclusive line of clothing).
I never liked the 6 foot something Julia Roberts lookalike, and with no real height or age morphs until very late, was what got me into making morphs myself. The drawback being that no clothes would fit if I didn't recreate those morphs on the clothing as well, making me eventually get off the train around 2011 in frustration, until I found DS 4.8 and Genesis 3 in 2016
...back then a small group of us was working on creating a younger character from V4. There was even a thread devoted to the project it titled "Lil' Vicky". The target was 8 years old and I think I came fairly close. with the first attempt. The one posted above involved a bit more refinement.
Like with your custom morphs the tough part was clothing fits. Couldn't use any of the Gen3 kids or teen clothing as third party conversion utilities only worked for swapping the clothing to the full adult version of V4. Likewise V4 clothing was designed to accommodate her bust so the mesh and textures would distort badly in the upper chest region when fitted to a very petite or flat chested figure. As every Gen4 character had it's own exclusive clothing fits swapping clothing could not befit on a different model without a lot of extra work manually fitting (which had to be re-adjusted after posing) or a conversion tool (this was somewhat eased with the V4 unimesh concept that made a same set of clothing interchangeable between V4, A4, SP4 and G4),
That makes sense. When I started to really work with DS, it was already easy and surprisingly cheap to grab an enormous pile of morphs, fixes, and content for the M4/V4 figures. I find it's not any more difficult to work with fully outfitted V4 than with any later figure. For me, her retirement party can wait.
Not sure if i would agree, many "very popular"games are stylized very much (e.g. Fortnite, Warcraft, Zelda etc.) though i would agree that "overall audience" there prefers realistic more than stylized one, which is why visual masterpiece like Okami (which imitated traditional ink painting) are rare.
You mean we had a bit more products that were "created because author thought it's cool" rather than "created because would sell decently" ?
I really miss some more weird horror/gothic/punk products from that time, modern replacements do not always match the tone of that era.
I would really love to hear from @Oskarsson, as their products were always very experimental and surreal already in v4 era.
I complain about high heels, but I definitely don't go for photorealism in my artistic renders. I just don't like the look of heels on my fantasy warrior goddesses. I can't even walk across my driveway in heels, so it hurts my brain to consider a woman running into battle in them without breaking her ankle and getting stabbed while doing it. It's just not my bag. I know that's "classic fantasy" but I still don't care for them. The same goes for boob plate, boob windows, and belly button windows. You can still do "stylized" without "nearly naked". I think there's definitely room for artistic and creative fantasy renders that don't involve bikinis and high heels.
...I keep thinking of all those Sci Fi settings where there are grates or other irregularities in the metal flooring that the heroine in spike heeled boots trying to run on in order to escape from the BEM that's chasing her.
i think the golden age started with Posette.
i came over to daz when i stumbled on a promo for aiko3. began with v3
had heard Judy and V2 were the same mesh. m3 had the wriggly arms but was lightyears better than Dork and Don
Anti-gravity belts, jet packs, wings.
What got me interested in 3D art started with the CGI movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and later Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I decided I wanted to do animation as a result of those two movies and several series I had seen with CGI. I haven't exactly done any animation thanks to usually having a too old computer, lack of money and a serious lack of knowledge, not to mention the software I used either wasn't designed for it or was still progressing.
I came to Daz when Gen 3 was current, loved the V4 and V4.1 and then 4.2 and so many stores with so much content (not just clothes), it boggled the mind. Some were bad, some were good, I tended to rely mostly on free stuff since my income barely reached modest. I too was amazed by the clothes made by Aery Soul and following name changes, especially the rigging, which was so much better then the majority of other creators. There was Xurge, whose textures were absolutely beautiful in their detail. Then of course there was PhilosophersEgg and the animal morphs created that were exceptional.
I didn't know what to make of Genesis1, though it's concept of both genders in one model was interesting and inspiring. What really took off for me was G2, a vast improvement over G1. I didn't think much of the G3's or G8's, though tend to use mostly G2 and G8 now.
That aside I still really like a lot of the stuff made for Gen4 and some of Gen3 clothing. Getting them onto any of the Genesis figures however, was a battle, till I took them to Hexagon and made them fit. Only problem was the rigging and morphs were now gone. Instead I learned how to make them fit and then use MorphLoader/Pro and retained the rigging and morphs...they now fit whatever model I want them on. Most recently was one of Aery Sould V3 outfits on G2F. I found it was not that difficult to do. Now I want to make my own outfits, in similar fashion to the creators who's stuff I liked so much.
As far as Golden Age is concerned, I think I agree with Chumly on this one. At the same time I also agree with what others say about how things were back then, with so many stores and creative freedom and the rest. I find a lot of what's made today lacking, almost as if there's no soul/heart going into the creations.