All the cool clothes are for older figures
Strobe_Light
Posts: 264
in The Commons
I've noticed that a lot of interesting looking clothes are for older characters and I just think it's kind of annoying that a lot of sci-fi or cute outfits are for older figures.
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Yep. Of course, one of the major problems with any new generation of figure is that the selection is always going to be fairly limited for the first year or two, and that's amplified by the fact that the gatekeepers at DAZ seem to have certain things that they really like and things that they don't, so there's always a press to regurgitate new varients on those themes over and over and over again. By comparison, the figures that have had longer periods in active use as a primary"main" figure have had time for their selection to fill out beyond the inevitible skimpwear, ridiculous armor with high heels, fairy outfits made of leaves, school uniforms, etc.
There are plenty of ways to use older assets on the current generation. There are converters, there's autofitting, which works a lot of the time, there's changing scene identification to that of the figure in use.
Many PAs make assets to earn their livelihoods and produce what sells. It can take a long time to produce assets, and PAs can't afford to spend their time producing for niche audiences, especially at the prices Daz customers expect. There's no great conspiracy afoot.
...I prefer fitted clothing over dForce as it has a much smaller impact on the workflow. Spending 10 - 15 or more minutes running a sim for each character and pose really puts a dent in the enthusiasm.
I have a Titan-X GPU with 3072 cores and 12 GB of GDDR5 memory which is no slouch when it comes to rendering but dForce sims tend to be a real drag. I had no issue paying a little more for clothing by PAs like Aave Nainen who put additional morphs into it to make their clothing content drape and move better. Granted there are some issues with certain Gen4 clothing where portions stretch or deform when autofit to a newer Genesis figure (such as G3) which can seriously affect the texture.
I know about the Gen4 - G3 converter (and have it), but for some reason it doesn't see my older Runtime folder where all my Gen 4 clothing is installed, just the Daz Library one.
I meant older figures like V4 and the Kids 4. The kids 4 is a real shame since theres so many cute outfit but since i use genesis 8 kid figures I can't really use them and while theres a few people who make childrens clothes the selection is very limited.
And there are autofit add-ons for different figures for improving autofit (those in red boxes here). Here's a randomly picked old Genesis 1 clothing set on a G8F character, using the Genesis autofit option, works fine for shoes and everything. There may be poke through using certain poses but that can usually be fixed by playing with the smoothing modifier and collision settings (which I've done here, for the pullover). Or using tools like Mesh Grabber etc., there are many options.
You can force most of clothing onto newer figures. Only real problem are heeled shoes. We have autofit clones, scripted converters, mesh graber, fit control and ultimate fixer morphs... Most of things can be forced on G3 and G3.
If you're not showing skin, you can turn off visibility on any bones from the figure that are poking through.
https://forum.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/547311/how-to-apply-kids-4-poses-clothing-to-genesis-8-solved
That's mostly due to some old school PAs not adapting their work to present characters, as they refuse/are unwilling to make anything for newer characters because some are still stuck reminiscing about V4/Aiko3 in order to do anything new for the present characters, while others are just plain overwhelmed/too weary to keep up.
Sure, there's something to be said about learning from the past, but you don't learn anything new by being stuck there!
It's pretty ironic; people who refuse to adapt to anything new in an industry/community that relies almost exclusively on new tech, imagine if these same people were in charge of special effects in the movie/game industry, we'd be still be using shaky clay and low poly animations like in the "money for nothing video" by dire straits...
I do love classic Ray Harryhausen flicks, but I would not like it so much if that was the only height of what people have accomplished with the craft, and just stuck to dynamation only...
EDIT: Went on a tangent there, so I made it less visible...
...much of what I like to the older clothing and I do agree there are some really nice styles that we've never seen again (I was surprised when I saw that The 3D Wizard actually updated the versatile JeanZ for V4 to G3, I had been auto fitting the original for years) As I mentioned sometimes simply auto fitting would cause stretched or distorted polys that would affect the textures and a lot of older clothing content will not accept a smoothing modifier to improve the fit or eliminate poke through.
I also hear you on kids clothing. I have about everything that came out for K4 (which wasn't much given how Genesis followed on its heels) as many adult styles are just not appropriate.
One way I get around fitting issues is to go through an older Genesis figure like Genesis1 or 2 which has the appropriate clone, save it as a "wearable preset" for that version, then autofit it to Genesis 3 or 8. I wonder if autofitting and saving the K4 clothing to the Genesis1 child (as I believe there is a K4 fit clone for G1) as a wearable preset might not work. I haven't tried that one yet.
I've never had much success adapting previous generation clothes for G8. I have bought PA scripted converters and also tried it myself following tutorials from the likes of SickleYield but the success has been very limited. My biggest problem is probably due to my way of working in that I work exclusively with morphed characters - and I mean my own creations from morph dials. The more you stray from the standard G8 the more difficult it becomes to get converted clothing to fit - especialy when posed. The other problem is that most of those legacy clothes are conforming and not designed for dForce and I will not accept artificially draped cloth.
So I have fairly expensive converters sitting in my library and rarely used. Mind you, I have lots of unused products in my library - mostly legacy clothing.
This is exactly why I prefer dForce clothing: I'd rather not rely on the creator to have accounted for every possible use of their item. Even that's understating the case, because it's not a matter of not wanting to rely on the creator; I CAN'T rely on that, because I do a lot of poses and scenarios that clothing makers clearly didn't anticipate. I don't want to be confined to how PAs expect me to use their products.
...yeah, I'm in the same boat here with G3. I probably have at least as much invested in morph, shaping, and other merchant resources as I have in actual characters. I also agree that cross generation fitting even with autofit still lends itself to fit issues, particularly since a number of my custom characters for my writings are more slender and petite instead of the standard fashion model hunk or pinup most clothing content is modelled for. The issue with clothing fits and characters who are more slight of build (particularly female) has been an issue since I started here a long time ago. It seems clothing is created for certain "ideal" shape but stray too far outside in any direction from the "Daz norm" for a person one would more likely see while walking down the street, and that's when things begin to break down. Hence I often have to go into the hidden parameters and JCMs to make what corrections I can.
dForce theoretically would make the process simpler and less prone to distortion, but without state of the art hardware, sims are just too bloody time consuming. It still isn't the "magic bullet" either as hard items like buckles, clasps, zippers and buttons that do not have rigidity designed in tend to deform badly (this also happens to an extent in conforming clothing as well) and I've sene collisions between say leggings or sleeves and with the character as well, even in poses that are not extreme.which sometimes abort the process.
To tell the truth I don't think issues with clothing fits will ever be totally solved without the individual artist such as Marble or myself creating clothing specifically to fit each custom character we create. In the real world clothing comes in various sizes and shapes, but 3D clothing is a "one size fits all" affair that is expected to fit on an adult, a child, a heavy set person, a slender one, and so on. Without being able to somehow mimic the "unstable molecules" created by the comic book character Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four™, 3D clothing fits will always present issues when deviating from the base figure shape.
I agree - dForce is half-baked IMHO. Painfully slow, explosion prone and not without strange quirks such as the way the simulation seems to be attracted to body parts (like a stray finger) that are away from the cloth. But it's all we have unless we export to another application such as Marvelous Designer (if one has that). I do hope that dForce improvement is a priority as I use it several times over in just about every scene.
...yeah I hoped to get MD before the switch to subscription but just didn't have the funds for a ver. 9 personal licence at the time It's also the last version that supported W7. I actually wrote and asked about it when I had some extra cash to spare, but even given my situation which I described they said they no longer sell older versions of the software anymore.
This doesn't have to be an "either/or" issue. It's like the Smart Content/Content Library issue. There's no need to pick a tribe.
Somethings work better with dForce, like skirts and dresses, and some don't benefit, like jeans. Some hair,, especially most of the dForce cloth hair is superb, and also some of the strand-based hairs, some are great without it. Yes, dForce could be more reliable, and certainly faster, but I'm glad some kind of dynamic system is available at all.
...the difference was in Poser, dynamic cloth made up a small percentage of clothing and hair content compared to dForce in Daz today. Poser dynamics were excruciatingly slow as that was in the day when everything was accomplished on the old single threaded 2 and 4 core CPUs, GPUs never figured into what we did unless one was into games. We didn't have the faster more powerful hardware available today. oc course which comes with a price. dForce also requires a GPU for optimum performance, a component which for the last couple years was ridiculously expensive (fortunately prices are finally coming down to earth but for how long?).
As I mentioned a Titan-X is no a slouch but without the level of compute power and dedicated compute cores that newer cards have, it still means long sim times, sometimes approaching and even exceeding render times . As someone who crates involved scenes with multiple character and often has to tweak poses, that sim time adds up to put a huge dent in the workflow. Consequenltly I have purchased very little in the way of new clothing content
dForce would be great, if it could be used in addition to the morphs, but when it's exclusively dForce, no morphs what so ever - A dress looks like a sack of potatoes before it's simulated, again and again, everytime you make a change in the pose...
And then, there's in some cases the option to convert the character instead of the clothes.
Personally, would like to see more fitted clothes instead of dForce as well. Or, ideally, fitted clothes with dForce enabled, though I do understand that that's way more elaborate.
I'd like ability to completely convert older characters to G8/8.1. Especially G3 ones. UVs are same with G8, but of course HD morphs can't be converted so there's no point in even trying with some of them.
Anneka and Damien don't have any non-prettyfied devilish equivalents, but those characters take most of their detailing from HD morphs. Tara 2 and Torment are not valid replacements because they are too nice-looking.
Satine G3 takes most of her aged body details from HD morph as well. Does not look well at all in rim lightning if aging details are done with normalmaps only.
Bethany 7 has unique body type, but to fully work this character needs HD morph as well.
Rune 7 is a muscular type that also need HD morph to work best (although with this one I'd applaud if the artists didn't equip her with permanent silicone breast armor).
Sure all of them are usable as G3 just fine... Except for their shoulders, armpits, biceps and elbows looking bad in certain poses because G3 rig and JCMs look plain obsolete when placed side-by-side with G8+.
None of those characters will ever see G8+ reissue so ability to truly convert them would be nice.
thing is, it all can be done
by the PAs
they could try reselling G8.1 versions
there is plenty of projection options for the HD mesh as long as one can create the morph
hell I can even project most of them onto V4 etc with Zbrush and there is better softwares out there specifically for that
it would be nice though if DAZ or a PA working with them did release another iconic shapes collection from previous generations with their HD morphs
I will admit to not being a good customer for 8.1 though
if I ever can afford the hardware needed and get over some differences I have about Crypto (say they make it environmently friendly for example), that might change
There are no DAZ gatekeepers. If there were, I wouldn't have a store.
Frustration with broadly repeated trends should be directed at the customer base, not people trying to make a living making the customer base happy.
Just the kind of thing a member of the Daz star chamber might say!
Seriously though, I was reminded of this
The sounds of silence...
Different album.
I think the original poster's observation was that there is a sameness to assets on offer for the latest generation of figures. Doesn't matter what the reason is. While beautifully made, they seem to be variations on the same themes. No use blaming PAs; they are understandably trying to maximize their time and return on investment on making well made products compatible with the latest technology being used by the rendering software. That can represent a trap for the consumers and hobbyists, though. They either spend more money and time trying to keep up with the latest hardware and software--because what they have already may not be backwards compatible--or they work on configuring this setting using that software and fiddling with the other thing so they use what they have to make artwork that pleases them. For limited genres.
Me, I'm taking a step back. I'll continue to purchase and wishlist new stuff, but the bulk of my current purchases are Genesis and Generation 4 and 3Delight compatible, even going back as far as M3 and V3. They are limited in many ways, especially compared with the latest generation of figures, Iray, and DForce. I understand those limitations, though, and I'll be able to create characters and work like I used to that span multiple genres while being compatible with both my hardware and my wallet. I just have to be creative, which is really the point of all this.
My apologies for the long post.
...I felt I hit that niche with G3. That was until more "diverse" and interesting characters (many which use custom morphs and sculpting) were released for G8 beyond the normal "Daz Stable" Now I'm finding myself having to consider picking up on merchant resource utilities for G8 which sort of makes the heavy investment I made in G3 years ago somewhat moot.
It's not like one can trade in old 3D content and utilities to recoup a bit of the cost like one can do when buying the newest car.
I don't see the problem with using G3, and I started after G8 was already a thing. I use G3 and G8 assets together all the time. I still buy stuff for G2.
...G3 just didn't have as long a run as G8 or the number of more diverse and "unique" base characters. Save for the centaurs most G3 figures were still pretty much the same basic Daz line-up with a couple demons and vamps thrown in.
One of the issues between G8 and G3 is the increased use of hierarchical presets that need workarounds to use. I've tried to apply G8 skins to G3 only to get error messages.