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Here in the Nordics even 5'8" is tall for a female, the average is 5'5". Globally, it's 5'2". Men are also on the whole significantly shorter than Daz portrays. Even Vikings, who people believe to have been giants among people, were a shade taller than the average height - the average height of all known, excavated Vikings was 5'8", which believe it or not was significantly tall at the time. If you want people who average at Daz height, you're looking at the Dutch. (though I can relate to RichardandTracy - at 6'1" I am the second-shortest man in four generations of my family, even my sisters are like human watchtowers. That said, real-life perception means I have a muscle memory for mixing heights in poses as I have yet to see eye-to-eye with a woman outside my family)
As for scaling props, yes, real-world is how to go. That 8ft Measuring Stick freebie found elsewhere in this forum is a prop I have set to auto-load with every new scene because it's insignificant in terms of surface and memory, a perfect way to instantly scale anything I load, and a visible anchor for the center point of the scene as I move the environment around; I use it religiously. If you make your characters and props true-to-life size, the only thing that could possibly make them look awkward is between the computer and the chair.
This is another important factor to consider: the artist's perception and personal experiences, which will find a way or another into their art.
I honestly do not understand the problems anyone would have with base G9's heighth. As with every Genesis generation you can dial in pretty much every size your heart desires and if you look back on different G8 characters this brings convincing results.
However G9 so far is still in it's infancy, mostly in regards to tools and assets but this doesn't take away anything from it's capabilies. I only do own two G9 characters (Victoria and Minerva) and while I found a couple of features I do not especially like there is nothing which can not be or will not be solved once the necessary tools have been released.
Oh and when you convert an older G8 character to G9 you'll see that G9 doesn't degrade the quality of the character model. Quite the contrry, to be exact.
If stuff was modelled to accomodate tall characters, isn't that pretty much proof that they were too tall? If a table with real life scale looks too small next to G8 then apparently the perception of the artist was that this table doesn't look right at the original size. So is the solution then to keep the wrong scale or to fix the actual problem?
G9 being a "unifigure" is understanably with less form than a "finished" character. That's why we have morphs to use so we can create the form we want. The problem is that "unimesh" can come with some flaws that are hard to "dial out". As with the case of Genesis 1, it's the shoulders and chest with G9. They just don't look right to my eye, but that doesn't mean it's not appealing for others. Art after all is very personal.
As for props. IMO they MUST be scaled to real world dimensions. I can't tell you how many hundreds of hours I've spent over the years fixing scaling issues in Cinema 4D just to get a scene that looks proportional. In fact it's a major reason why I model the majority of the architectural props I need myself.
Stuff was not modelled to accomodate tall characters, it was modelled to accomodate existing characters. I personally don't find G8 too tall, I find G9 too short. So from where I'm standing, nothing was fixed. The opposite actually.
But even if you're on the other side of the fence, is the trade-off worth it? For what? To match some numbers? That's the equivalent of "Oh, let's break all poses to rename bones according to some standards that don't really matter at all to 99% of the customers."
When was the last time you looked at a render, and actually noticed something wrong with the height of the characters?
I certainly would. But that's just me and no reflection on the talent of others many of whom are WAY better than I could hope to be.
In the end, it really does depend on the kind of art one engages in. For instance...I don't render. Instead I generate reference images for drawing my graphic novels that are reality based. So for my art real dimensions DO matter. It's something every teacher chastized me for since the first formal art class I took in middle school. To them, my realism is not "art". But my mind just doesn't think "abstractly" when it comes to drawing or painting.
You don't notice it probably because people fix it before they render. I have to scale female characters down all the time.
I honestly don't ever think about scale since it's an easy fix with scaling in DS. I can't even imagine being bothered by it either. As long as there is some standard for PAs to get close to, say a core figures size, then I am good and can adjust as needed.
Another mechanical engineer thinks the same
Wow!!
Thank you for the insights, there are a lot of good insights here and way more than I thought I'd get, especially over the holidays!
I do think that there is a tendancy to create 'new' products to drive comsumption over need. It is how ongoing business models are structured. I'm not sure that G9 'fixed' anything, though time will tell. I like idea of the gender fluid mesh; it's more adaptable and offers options for a wider spectrum of users. I also remember how it was kinda meh with Genesis and wonder how androgeny will fair this go round.
A lot of people use the upgraded meshes for G7/G8 and that may account for some of the differences. We just haven't seen that level of post release refinement yet. I have hopes that those Devs will tag in. They make some amazing adds.
Daz always reminds me of Bethesda in this reguard.... :D
I'll check out the links provided and play with it.
Thanks, happy holidays!
I am curious why there is a resistance to the proportion dials - not only do they work better than scaling (which also scales head and hands and shrink them to tiny sizes) but it also works better with clothing. Stats are relative - I'm 5 foot, my daughter is 4'11", my sister is 5'1 and my mother 5'2. I sit on the same sized chair as everyone else - even if my feet sometimes don't touch the ground lol
Environments should be created to real world scale. That means it will fit every figure out there too across different programs, not just Genesis. It doesn't matter if you're short or tall, items like kitchen benches and tables do have a standard height. I have taken numerous environments into VR, where the scale is important - and a lot of them are unusable without a lot of scaling and modification. If environments have to be scaled for a shorter figure, it really means they were never accurate in the first place.
I'll be back after christmas :) I wish you all a great holiday and a peaceful 2023.
Great comparison and some great comments in the thread. Thank you for this! The insights into the gaming/rigging angle are good too. I've used those programs exclusive of Daz, but not with yet. It's on the list!
I wonder how the limb lengths compare with the standard generic meshes used for AAA game engines and Maya/3DS/Blender? If they changed the rigging and UV to ease transition, they may have changed the proportions too, so that the chars will fit in their worlds. It'll be a fun puzzle. There are worse things than having an excuse to learn and render. :D
I'm 5'8 and most of the women I know are close to my height and I even made G8 taller with longer legs but if you render a character by itself, you can't really tell how tall they are. G9 is also a bit chunkier than I'd like (as was default G8) so I've always had to adjust poses but I have a feeling converted G8 poses will work better for me than G9 poses.
But I really prefer G9 only for portraits but discovered a new issue for the face. The expressions I usually use cause a weird deformation on the lips. At first I thought it was my morph that did this but then I tried a completely different morph and the lips still come out weird when I use my commonly used expressions. The only thing the two characters had in common was some Josie dialed in, this one had I think 60% Josie, the other only 10%, but in both cases a weird thing happened with the lips I often use a bit of visemes for expressions like ER or SH and lips pucker which I think now is purse or funnel? Can't remember exactly, but the lips keep coming out like this even when used in smal increments. The lipsticks seem not to cover the whole lips with even subtle expressions.
I cranked up SubDivision to get rounded nipples instead of flesh pyramids on G9.
And I always render on quality 10 with max iterations set to 15,000 or more.
Doesn't work for Casey, for example. Got him in a bundle. He's a dwarf out of the box. When you scale him up to 6 foot, his chest is to square and gets in the way of his arms.
How are you making him taller? With the scale dial? or the proportion dials.
I don't have Casey, I'll see if I can get a copy to test. Could you post an image of the result you're getting?
I tested with Casey and I could get him pretty close to Genesis 8 in height and proportion. I did feel like it would be nice if there was a morph to lift the chest a bit higher and I also dialed the breasts gone up to get it closer to vanilla G8 male.
Picture shows the dials I used.
Don't really see the distinction when existing characters were too tall.
So you're saying scale doesn't matter anyway because we won't notice, but we shouldn't have changed the scale because... tables are now too tall? So we do notice? I'm sorry but I'm confused.
I already explained why this bothers me in my original reply. The part about mixing characters and getting them to look right being more difficult / items and poses requiring more adjustments and scaling. Bascially more work for no reason other than... uh, numbers. Which obviously matter to some people, and don't for others, so no point debating about it.
As for what I meant about noticing, I don't know how you got that from my post. I simply can't believe anyone's looking at a render of a characater thinking "Hmmm, this guy looks about 1.85. Too tall. We need to fix this and get him down to 1.7.".
As far as I'm concerned, all these things (changing base poses, heights, renaming bones) have one thing in common - breaking of compatability. They're the exact opposite of fixes.
Will provide a picture after the holidays.
It becomes an issue when you have scenes with multiple characters.
Imagine a city scene with eight persons. Because you have a large item library with cool characters and clothes you put a new shiny G9 in the spotlight and some G8, G3 and maybe G2 around, more in the back.
As G9 is not as tall, you'll have to adjust.
When you add a car it becomes apparent that you have to adjust G9 because the other characters fit to the car in terms of size.
It's not about being taller or not but about breaking size compatability to older products.
I will say that if you have to adjust G9 due to the car, then it is the car that is wrongly modelled.
We go through dicussions like this with every new generation, don't we?
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/212661/why-there-is-no-good-looking-genesis-8-female/p1
A 200cm person and a 150cm person can drive the same car IRL. I don't know what kind of shots you're doing, whethere's it's a narrative like a VN or you're doing strictly one-offs, but if you really pay attention to real photos and movies, everybody is different sizes. Differences are made up for with shoes, setting people at different levels, or better camera angles. Why should using Daz be any different?
Well with those extreme settings, that explains a lot. There are thrid party addons that provide great nipples without high subd settings.
Not only the Vikings were quite huge... at roman times, the average height of the average romans from sub-alps areas was (afaik) at around 5'4" (or so), while germanic tribe members were about 4" taller. Meaning having a 5'2" roman facing a 6' barbarian might have been not that unusual.
Fun fact: when I grew up in the 60s/70s I was quite a big boy. When aged 14 I was already bigger than my father (who was 5'8" while I reached 6' then) and when I turned 18 I finally had reached 6'3", which made me stand out in crowds at that time. Until about 10 years later I was usually the biggest person in a crowd, with at least 8 of 10 people around me being smaller. From the 90s on this changed and nowadays I see quite a few people around me of my height or even more. So those averages are still probably flawed a bit due to the previous generations being smaller than the younger population... kinda like Genesis in reverse