The big announcement on September 21, 2022 - place your bets!

algovincian

Mattymanx said:

Pendraia said:

Mattymanx said:

Leonides02 said:

Mattymanx said:

Just to correct a misunderstanding that is going around:

The Genesis 9 texture maps are NOT 8K they are 4K except for the nail maps which are 1K.  The skin DETAIL maps are up to 8K.  Arms, legs, body and head detail maps are each 8K.  The male and female genital maps are 4K and the nail details are only 1K.  The detail maps are optional and do not load by default.

What is the difference between a texture map and a detail map?

 

Texture maps being your regular set of diffuse, spec and normal maps.  The detail maps are normal maps that are loaded in the PBR skin shader under the detail section, normal map channel.

Thanks for pointing this out Matty!

 

You're welcome Pendraia!

That's definitely not what the official advertising says and illustrates:

https://www.daz3d.com/daz-3d-prerelease

It even shows different maps. It's not really a misunderstanding, so much as incorrect info in the advertising. Maybe somebody could let DAZ know.

- Greg

 

Charlie Judge

I am not inclined to preorder the bundle without knowing what is in it. But if I preorder Victoria 9 HD and then when the bundle comes out decide I want it, can I cancel my preorder for V9 and receive a refund?

MimicMolly

Charlie Judge said:

I am not inclined to preorder the bundle without knowing what is in it. But if I preorder Victoria 9 HD and then when the bundle comes out decide I want it, can I cancel my preorder for V9 and receive a refund?

Agreed. I got V9 HD only because I like her look. Don't care about missing out on the bundle, since I usually don't care for the ones that come with most of the Victoria's. I might eventually pick it up much later, at a steep discount.

Mattymanx

algovincian said:

Mattymanx said:

Pendraia said:

Mattymanx said:

Leonides02 said:

Mattymanx said:

Just to correct a misunderstanding that is going around:

The Genesis 9 texture maps are NOT 8K they are 4K except for the nail maps which are 1K.  The skin DETAIL maps are up to 8K.  Arms, legs, body and head detail maps are each 8K.  The male and female genital maps are 4K and the nail details are only 1K.  The detail maps are optional and do not load by default.

What is the difference between a texture map and a detail map?

 

Texture maps being your regular set of diffuse, spec and normal maps.  The detail maps are normal maps that are loaded in the PBR skin shader under the detail section, normal map channel.

Thanks for pointing this out Matty!

 

You're welcome Pendraia!

That's definitely not what the official advertising says and illustrates:

https://www.daz3d.com/daz-3d-prerelease

It even shows different maps. It's not really a misunderstanding, so much as incorrect info in the advertising. Maybe somebody could let DAZ know.

- Greg

 

Sorry, That would be V9 and not the base.  The info I gave was for the base.

 

3DRT

ragamuffin57 said:

Flameburst said:

Paintbox said:

Flameburst said:

3DRT said:

Curious to know what everyone thinks of Genesis 9 vs Metahuman in terms of realism. Personally I prefer the skin and hair of Metahuman but the geometry of G9 looks better (at a cursory glance at least). I really hope we get some improvements to the base skin shader in DAZ. 8K textures is nice but all the pores in the world won't fix plastic-looking skin. 

I personally prefer daz in terms of shader work etc. You can't really compare a real time render engine with a off line render engine like Iray. Iray is slower and can calculate better results. The thing with some of daz model is that they try to make the faces too perfect sometimes and steer away from symmetry which causes a drop in believeability and realism but lately their stuff is looking better and better

As someone who has spent a lot of time in the realism thread, Victoria 9 still falls in the either the waxy/plastic look typical of Daz Renders. The SSS is not as advanced as other human solutions out there (check out the realism thread for more references and in-depth talk)

So while the geometry and skin itself is really good what Jay showed, the render still lags behind on the hidden elephant in the room which is uncanny skin rendering where something is "off"

Yes true.

If you zoom into V9's skin in the promo renders, the sss looks off because it looks like the bump maps are too strong  or the SSS is not strong enough. It does look scratchy and plasticy. What I meant was that Iray would be a better render engine than Unreal 5 because it's not realtime. So being an offline render engine it gets better results, anti aliasing and smoothing whereas the SSS does need more work. Be nice to get results closer to Arnold render engine where its uses a "random walk" method to calculate realistic distribiution of light through the skin

Agreed yes I was also disappointed and have been for a while a company whose main sales are humanoid figures I would have thought they would be ahead of the game in trying to get the best in the realms of realism. not everyone wants realism I know. But if you are up there with realistic rendering capabilities then other non-realistic renders would be a doddle to achieve but unfortunately, Daz lag sorely behind other applications. Perhaps Daz 5 if it ever arrives might bring a few more bells and whistles to achieve better realism.

G9, while definitely a step-up from its predecessor, is still firmly in the lifelike mannequin territory. There's only really so far you can do so much by adding more texture detail before hitting diminishing returns when it comes to realism. I think there's more to be gained by concentrating on more realistic eyes and skin shaders, which are typically the first dead giveway. All that said, hyper-realism is not for for everyone and the only way to truly achieve it is probably with some sort of AI post-processor that takes a 3D face and replaces it with a "real" face. 

Mada

Mattymanx said:

algovincian said:

Mattymanx said:

Pendraia said:

Mattymanx said:

Leonides02 said:

Mattymanx said:

Just to correct a misunderstanding that is going around:

The Genesis 9 texture maps are NOT 8K they are 4K except for the nail maps which are 1K.  The skin DETAIL maps are up to 8K.  Arms, legs, body and head detail maps are each 8K.  The male and female genital maps are 4K and the nail details are only 1K.  The detail maps are optional and do not load by default.

What is the difference between a texture map and a detail map?

 

Texture maps being your regular set of diffuse, spec and normal maps.  The detail maps are normal maps that are loaded in the PBR skin shader under the detail section, normal map channel.

Thanks for pointing this out Matty!

 

You're welcome Pendraia!

That's definitely not what the official advertising says and illustrates:

https://www.daz3d.com/daz-3d-prerelease

It even shows different maps. It's not really a misunderstanding, so much as incorrect info in the advertising. Maybe somebody could let DAZ know.

- Greg

 

Sorry, That would be V9 and not the base.  The info I gave was for the base.

 

It is correct for V9 as well. I can see that the graphic might be confusing because its showing all the layers... it was initially 8k for all maps, but there was very little visible difference between using 4k standard maps with 8k normal details, vs 8k for everything. The detail maps pull most of the weight, the albedo doesn't matter as much.

barbult

@Mada V6? That must be a typo???

Mada

barbult said:

@Mada V6? That must be a typo???

yes, I'm still a bit jet lagged - I fixed it :D

mding

@3DRT could you recommend some eyes? Thankyou!

algovincian

Mada said:

barbult said:

@Mada V6? That must be a typo???

yes, I'm still a bit jet lagged - I fixed it :D

You must be a crab, too - like me ;)

 

- Greg

Mada

I'm just happy I don't have to triple check any more that I'm typing G8 and not G9 lol

Paintbox

3DRT said:

ragamuffin57 said:

Flameburst said:

Paintbox said:

Flameburst said:

3DRT said:

Curious to know what everyone thinks of Genesis 9 vs Metahuman in terms of realism. Personally I prefer the skin and hair of Metahuman but the geometry of G9 looks better (at a cursory glance at least). I really hope we get some improvements to the base skin shader in DAZ. 8K textures is nice but all the pores in the world won't fix plastic-looking skin. 

I personally prefer daz in terms of shader work etc. You can't really compare a real time render engine with a off line render engine like Iray. Iray is slower and can calculate better results. The thing with some of daz model is that they try to make the faces too perfect sometimes and steer away from symmetry which causes a drop in believeability and realism but lately their stuff is looking better and better

As someone who has spent a lot of time in the realism thread, Victoria 9 still falls in the either the waxy/plastic look typical of Daz Renders. The SSS is not as advanced as other human solutions out there (check out the realism thread for more references and in-depth talk)

So while the geometry and skin itself is really good what Jay showed, the render still lags behind on the hidden elephant in the room which is uncanny skin rendering where something is "off"

Yes true.

If you zoom into V9's skin in the promo renders, the sss looks off because it looks like the bump maps are too strong  or the SSS is not strong enough. It does look scratchy and plasticy. What I meant was that Iray would be a better render engine than Unreal 5 because it's not realtime. So being an offline render engine it gets better results, anti aliasing and smoothing whereas the SSS does need more work. Be nice to get results closer to Arnold render engine where its uses a "random walk" method to calculate realistic distribiution of light through the skin

Agreed yes I was also disappointed and have been for a while a company whose main sales are humanoid figures I would have thought they would be ahead of the game in trying to get the best in the realms of realism. not everyone wants realism I know. But if you are up there with realistic rendering capabilities then other non-realistic renders would be a doddle to achieve but unfortunately, Daz lag sorely behind other applications. Perhaps Daz 5 if it ever arrives might bring a few more bells and whistles to achieve better realism.

G9, while definitely a step-up from its predecessor, is still firmly in the lifelike mannequin territory. There's only really so far you can do so much by adding more texture detail before hitting diminishing returns when it comes to realism. I think there's more to be gained by concentrating on more realistic eyes and skin shaders, which are typically the first dead giveway. All that said, hyper-realism is not for for everyone and the only way to truly achieve it is probably with some sort of AI post-processor that takes a 3D face and replaces it with a "real" face. 

Absolutely, actually I think when it comes to realism, there is more to gain in the shader territory then the taking the mapping detail to 11, which we could already do in 8.1

Honestly questioning why they didn't go that route honestly.

Sorel

Yeah I don't know of it's just the settings daz chooses or if it really is an iray limitation but the skin always looks like hard plastic. The details appear too rough rather than soft

Sven Dullah

Sorel said:

Yeah I don't know of it's just the settings daz chooses or if it really is an iray limitation but the skin always looks like hard plastic. The details appear too rough rather than soft

Maybe because there's no real depth, only normals, in IRay? Eh, I'll see myself out through the backdoor... 

Sven Dullah

 

Mattymanx said:

Texture maps being your regular set of diffuse, spec and normal maps.  The detail maps are normal maps that are loaded in the PBR skin shader under the detail section, normal map channel.

 

Ah, thought detailmaps were RGB greyscale. What happened to microskin detail or whatever it was called? Weren't those greyscale? 

Pendraia

ragamuffin57 said:

Umm G9 figure still looks plastic out of the box with a tango skin texture the expression was very toonish but a lot better than 8.1 out of the box. 

I find statements like this amusing...the base figure isn't meant to look like anything other than a base. It allows more characters to be created.

One of the big criticisms against Hivewire's Dawn figure was that it was to hard to make her look like anything else. This same criticism has been aimed at earlier figures in the daz range also.

The base is not meant to be used on it's own. You are supposed to either apply a character or dial spin a character using morphs.  The uv's tend to be fairly basic because they want you to buy characters. That's how they make money. Not from the base which is free but from the sale of products that make it more usable easily.

If Daz had more of a finished shape to her and was less basic you would hear complaints about it that it was too hard to morph into a character that didn't look like the base.

 

 

 

Pendraia

Sorel said:

Yeah I don't know of it's just the settings daz chooses or if it really is an iray limitation but the skin always looks like hard plastic. The details appear too rough rather than soft

This can be altered by playing with the settings in the surface tab, things like the normal maps or displacement strength can change that. I often think it looks like concrete rather than skin when they are set too high.

 

Jason Galterio said:

Tossing my two cents in. Just my opinion...

I pre-purchased the Pro Bundle for V8. The price, after discount, was in line with the other Pro Bundles recently. Maybe even a little lower than the historical "entry" models.

I've been using Poser since the V3 days. Switched over to DS at inception.

I'm willing to give the first entry a shot and see what happens.

In comparison, the Base V3 model cost $60 in 2003. With inflation, that would be $95 today. That's with no hair, no clothes, the basic morphs, and one skin.

Would love to compare it to the V4 release, but can't really remember when that came out or when I bought it. So it isn't easy to find in my orders.

Happy to see that its going back to one body, rather than a male / female break.

Will be happy to see fewer stretched skins and skin seamlines. This seems to be the case, at the moment, but of course is dependent on the skins themselves.

 

This doesn't surprise me as I was thinking it was on par with what I remembered paying for various characters. V3 was what I started with and I was lucky to get her free as it was just before V4 was introduced from memory. The morphs however were very expensive and I had to save up to get them. For a long time I existed on freebies like Aery Souls Myshirt2 and lulu's baby doll for Aiko.

marble said:

Firstly it is a misconception to claim that DAZ Studio is free in the same way that Blender is free. DAZ Studio is an application platform for DAZ content so part of the profit from selling content goes into that platform so that they can sell more content. Blender is not pushing commercial products. So the DAZ Studio platform should be updated to provide the users (we, the content buying user-base) with a fit-for-purpose experience.

Not all of us use the animation tools beyond for dforce. I've never really used it for animation in 17 years of playing with DS. It doesn't interest me.

Daz like any company only invests in what it thinks will make them a profit. They also recognise that their target audience is the new user. People like me don't belong in this category as these days with a runtime of over 6000(and I wouldn't have the largest there are people with more in their runtimes) I can normally find what I need in my runtime and hack it to work with whatever character or scene I need it for. The reality is I don't need to buy anything I could exist on my current runtime and my own creations. I buy when something takes my interest. I certainly don't invest in new bases like I used to.

For the new user they're often not looking to be as up to date as other programs they're looking at making pretty pictures or quick animations. They don't have the skill level to know what you do. 

 

 

Gator

Jason Galterio said:

Will be happy to see fewer stretched skins and skin seamlines. This seems to be the case, at the moment, but of course is dependent on the skins themselves.

This is a concern I have and I hope I'm wrong.  With the UV based off of one generic mesh, I'm concerned about compression where females are thinner and stretching in other areas - especially breasts since it starts with a flat-chested androgenous shape.

DAZ_ann0314

Pendraia said:

Sorel said:

Yeah I don't know of it's just the settings daz chooses or if it really is an iray limitation but the skin always looks like hard plastic. The details appear too rough rather than soft

This can be altered by playing with the settings in the surface tab, things like the normal maps or displacement strength can change that. I often think it looks like concrete rather than skin when they are set too high.

 

Jason Galterio said:

Tossing my two cents in. Just my opinion...

I pre-purchased the Pro Bundle for V8. The price, after discount, was in line with the other Pro Bundles recently. Maybe even a little lower than the historical "entry" models.

I've been using Poser since the V3 days. Switched over to DS at inception.

I'm willing to give the first entry a shot and see what happens.

In comparison, the Base V3 model cost $60 in 2003. With inflation, that would be $95 today. That's with no hair, no clothes, the basic morphs, and one skin.

Would love to compare it to the V4 release, but can't really remember when that came out or when I bought it. So it isn't easy to find in my orders.

Happy to see that its going back to one body, rather than a male / female break.

Will be happy to see fewer stretched skins and skin seamlines. This seems to be the case, at the moment, but of course is dependent on the skins themselves.

 

This doesn't surprise me as I was thinking it was on par with what I remembered paying for various characters. V3 was what I started with and I was lucky to get her free as it was just before V4 was introduced from memory. The morphs however were very expensive and I had to save up to get them. For a long time I existed on freebies like Aery Souls Myshirt2 and lulu's baby doll for Aiko.

 

And also Subsurface Scatter (SSS) which often can effect the softness or plushness of the skin a fair bit.  

Jason Galterio

Gator said:

Jason Galterio said:

Will be happy to see fewer stretched skins and skin seamlines. This seems to be the case, at the moment, but of course is dependent on the skins themselves.

This is a concern I have and I hope I'm wrong.  With the UV based off of one generic mesh, I'm concerned about compression where females are thinner and stretching in other areas - especially breasts since it starts with a flat-chested androgenous shape.

If memory serves, I believe this was one of the reasons for G2F and G2M. I believe the other issue was with making clothes that could handle to the morphs.

With dForce, the clothes issue should be lessened.

I am cautiously optomistic that the UV issue has been addressed, leading to the single UV again.

Pendraia said:

This doesn't surprise me as I was thinking it was on par with what I remembered paying for various characters. V3 was what I started with and I was lucky to get her free as it was just before V4 was introduced from memory. The morphs however were very expensive and I had to save up to get them. For a long time I existed on freebies like Aery Souls Myshirt2 and lulu's baby doll for Aiko.

I should add that the $60 I quoted was $20 for the base model, $20 for the head morphs, and $20 for the body morphs. 

Without the Body and Head morphs, none of the other characters would work.

MeneerWolfman

I don't know if anyone has answered this earlier, but one of the things I see mentioned is that "HD morphs are built-in! No need to buy a separate add-on"

Is the base morph now set at something other than base resolution, or is it like before an we have and standard resolution morph and then a separate HD morph for details? I ask becasuse if we're not able to use an HD morph loader, trying to make jcm's and other morphs for a character that is only a subdivided morph is going to be an issue since you're importing a morph that doesn't have all the detail of the higher resolution morph (for reverse deformations).

Pendraia

Gator said:

Jason Galterio said:

Will be happy to see fewer stretched skins and skin seamlines. This seems to be the case, at the moment, but of course is dependent on the skins themselves.

This is a concern I have and I hope I'm wrong.  With the UV based off of one generic mesh, I'm concerned about compression where females are thinner and stretching in other areas - especially breasts since it starts with a flat-chested androgenous shape.

DS does alternate uv's...this shouldn't be an issue though considering it isn't really flat chested like the original genesis. That was the whole reason they added this feature to avoid stretching issues. At least that's my understanding of how it's supposed to work. Most PA's wouldn't need to create an alternate uv but creatures probably would.

Pendraia

Jason Galterio said:

Gator said:

Jason Galterio said:

Will be happy to see fewer stretched skins and skin seamlines. This seems to be the case, at the moment, but of course is dependent on the skins themselves.

This is a concern I have and I hope I'm wrong.  With the UV based off of one generic mesh, I'm concerned about compression where females are thinner and stretching in other areas - especially breasts since it starts with a flat-chested androgenous shape.

If memory serves, I believe this was one of the reasons for G2F and G2M. I believe the other issue was with making clothes that could handle to the morphs.

With dForce, the clothes issue should be lessened.

I am cautiously optomistic that the UV issue has been addressed, leading to the single UV again.

Pendraia said:

This doesn't surprise me as I was thinking it was on par with what I remembered paying for various characters. V3 was what I started with and I was lucky to get her free as it was just before V4 was introduced from memory. The morphs however were very expensive and I had to save up to get them. For a long time I existed on freebies like Aery Souls Myshirt2 and lulu's baby doll for Aiko.

I should add that the $60 I quoted was $20 for the base model, $20 for the head morphs, and $20 for the body morphs. 

Without the Body and Head morphs, none of the other characters would work.

I'm aware but in recent years I've seen bases around the $30 mark. Depending on what's included depends on whether it's worth paying full price but if you're willing to wait the prices come down in sales eventually.

Pendraia

DAZ_ann0314 said:

Pendraia said:

Sorel said:

Yeah I don't know of it's just the settings daz chooses or if it really is an iray limitation but the skin always looks like hard plastic. The details appear too rough rather than soft

This can be altered by playing with the settings in the surface tab, things like the normal maps or displacement strength can change that. I often think it looks like concrete rather than skin when they are set too high.

 

 

And also Subsurface Scatter (SSS) which often can effect the softness or plushness of the skin a fair bit.  

Very true Ann!

Jason Galterio

No problem. And sorry, didn't mean to sound like I was arguing.

Just wanted to clairfy for other users who might not have been around in those days.

Even I find it hard to remember the days of having to buy Cross Dresser just to get a Stephanie shirt to fit Vicki. Or having no exterior landscapes. Or mucking with Cyclorama to get a decent background...

Tynkere

kyoto kid said

Tynkere said:

Been revisiting aweSurface to start migrating away from nVidia GPU game.  I wonder if there's even a a topic for 3DL that isn't necro!  : 0 !
 

...been thinking the same myself but need to get a much higher core count CPU like a Broadwell 18 core Xeon (have only 6 cores currently) and a boatload of memory like 64 GB (only 24 GB presently) beforehand.

Thanks for reply. Aging  i-7 skylake here.  64GB RAM.   I'd run into heat issues w/3DL

So latest AMD vs Intel -- Hmmm... wonder which one would draw less power or about equal.  The benchmark stuff I read is more about gaming than rendering.

CPU bottle neck still a problem?  As you can probably guess, been out of tech too long.  ;)

----

To topic:  I've asked this at V9 topic itself.  Either no one knows, or maybe I didn't phrase question very well.  No answers yet, so one last try since two topics and Richard seems to be doing his best to close multi-topics!

Have cast of characters.  One of them is V8 based, now converted to G8.1 -- take advantage of facial expressions, etc.

Save custum G8.1F as "properties."  Would preset load onto V9?  (zero V9 body, head, etc.) take advantage of mesh, bones, etc., while keeping appearance and shape of reoccuring character.

Otherwise I'm stuck at G3, G8 and G8.1.   Verdict might still be out if I'm more into story telling with renders.  : )

 

AllenArt

Jason Galterio said:

No problem. And sorry, didn't mean to sound like I was arguing.

Just wanted to clairfy for other users who might not have been around in those days.

Even I find it hard to remember the days of having to buy Cross Dresser just to get a Stephanie shirt to fit Vicki. Or having no exterior landscapes. Or mucking with Cyclorama to get a decent background...

And I can tell you that Vicky 1 was even MORE expensive than Vicky 3 ;)

AllenArt

Tynkere said:

kyoto kid said

Tynkere said:

Been revisiting aweSurface to start migrating away from nVidia GPU game.  I wonder if there's even a a topic for 3DL that isn't necro!  : 0 !
 

...been thinking the same myself but need to get a much higher core count CPU like a Broadwell 18 core Xeon (have only 6 cores currently) and a boatload of memory like 64 GB (only 24 GB presently) beforehand.

Thanks for reply. Aging  i-7 skylake here.  64GB RAM.   I'd run into heat issues w/3DL

So latest AMD vs Intel -- Hmmm... wonder which one would draw less power or about equal.  The benchmark stuff I read is more about gaming than rendering.

CPU bottle neck still a problem?  As you can probably guess, been out of tech too long.  ;)

----

To topic:  I've asked this at V9 topic itself.  Either no one knows, or maybe I didn't phrase question very well.  No answers yet, so one last try since two topics and Richard seems to be doing his best to close multi-topics!

Have cast of characters.  One of them is V8 based, now converted to G8.1 -- take advantage of facial expressions, etc.

Save custum G8.1F as "properties."  Would preset load onto V9?  (zero V9 body, head, etc.) take advantage of mesh, bones, etc., while keeping appearance and shape of reoccuring character.

Otherwise I'm stuck at G3, G8 and G8.1.   Verdict might still be out if I'm more into story telling with renders.  : )

 

No, it would not work unless/until someone like Riversoft or Zevo made a character converter (if it's even possible, and at this point, I have no idea if it is).

 

Tynkere

AllenArt said:

Tynkere said

To topic:  I've asked this at V9 topic itself.  Either no one knows, or maybe I didn't phrase question very well.  No answers yet, so one last try since two topics and Richard seems to be doing his best to close multi-topics!

Have cast of characters.  One of them is V8 based, now converted to G8.1 -- take advantage of facial expressions, etc.

Save custum G8.1F as "properties."  Would preset load onto V9?  (zero V9 body, head, etc.) take advantage of mesh, bones, etc., while keeping appearance and shape of reoccuring character.

Otherwise I'm stuck at G3, G8 and G8.1.   Verdict might still be out if I'm more into story telling with renders.  : )

 

No, it would not work unless/until someone like Riversoft or Zevo made a character converter (if it's even possible, and at this point, I have no idea if it is).

OK.  Thanks.  Explains lack of replies.   Either no one knows or many peoples' questions get overlooked in the shuffle!

Back to normal programming.  "Does anyone know if store will have dForce dung pile for DAZ Horse version 9.  Also, can Victoria 9 be made to look like the Hivewire horse?"  

--Kind regards

Bruce

 

Sevrin

Sevrin said:

DAZ_ann0314 said:

Just so everyone knows, there should be a FAQ answering some more questions etc coming tomorrow 

@DAZ_ann0314 So yesterday came and went.  Is there a new ETA for this FAQ? 

 Summer has come to an end, the leaves will soon be turning colours, and another day has passed without the promised FAQ.