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I remember a grad school conversation discussing biology (I have had close to 40 years in the biological sciences) with some friends (a physicist, a chemist, a socialogist, and a mathematician); the chemist said "Physics, Math, and Chemistry are hard sciences, Sociology is a soft science, and Biology is a squishy science". I don't mind this since it points to the practicality of biology. We use a term like species such as lions and tigers are two different species since they don't interbreed and then, bam, you got your liger which everyones's favorite example of hybred vigor. I don't think people should get too confused about defining what a race is in biological terms since it is really a sociolgical term like Southerners or Mormons.
Anyway, I have been here since the start when things were really dire. The original Posette indicated ethnicity/race with a simple color change and a laughably offensive dial. I remember long arguements about such simple things like palm color (humans all have the same range of palm colors though palms can tan like any other skin so sometimes you see much darker palms on people who live in very sunny places). Various artists have worked very hard to create to edge us closer to more realistic erhnic characters. it matters. There is an awesome essay by Virginia Woolf which begins talking about a fictional sister to Shakespeare who could never have Shakespeare's career since women weren't tauight to read and write, were pretty much not published if they could etc... The upshot is that if one wants an accurate version of yourself, you have to create it. As the Daz community has grown, it has gotten better. Nonetheless, change is slow so we are stuck with those gawdawful Voodoo, African, and vaguely Asian clothes right out of bad 30's movies. From the various creators of product, there are enormous limitations on the photo references of POC, the customers tend to have very narrow tastes, people are pretty ignorant about the rest of the world abd can't differeniate between various Africans and Papua New Guinea or Japan and China, and most sub equator and the bulk of the world's population doesn't exit in their imagination.
Indeed it does as most of this market is not geared towards human parity for people of colour, if they were, we wouldn't have to rely on the low numbers and the scant variety of skin resources, as there are far too few in comparison!
But like all things, times are changing, slowly, but still changing, **hopefully, we can finally have human parity in the 3D industry as a whole!
**(May take a decade or two though as there are too many that prefer the default and don't want change!)
That's why more people of colour in this hobby as hobbyists, resource providers, and PAs, would do nothing but help representation and include POC representation in the market, and for more human parity coming from current providers in order for us to have a 50:50 ratio, our main obstacle is the market, and hardcore traditionalists though!
From a quick observation of the history of Daz, they have done pretty well for providing parity, not a 50:50 ratio, but currently more like 15:85, when they started it was more like 1:99, though I do miss the 20:80 ratio for the 6th generation, the jury's still out for the 9th, hopefully, we get more parity!
(Note: My ratios are an unscientific observation, I simply didn't have time to catalogue the entirety of daz's characters as it's too time-consuming for this thread)
...after over 15 years at this (beginning with trying to create a viable young teen out of 5' 10 " tall Vicky 4), I feel I finally have one of my central characters looking like I imagined her. G8 helped a lot as there are a few more "petite" base characters that aren't stylised like 3DU's younger ones and after struggling for a couple weeks, I finally was able to apply a nice G8.1 skin to a G8 character.
The character herself is a blend of several different ones. The skin is from Moryen 8.1 and is perfect for a ginger haired individual. Took a bit of adjusting first having to create a separate head surface with the Geometry Editor and then compensate for lack of the SSS channels 8.1 has that G8 doesn't, but finally got it to work.
Would post a pic but doesn't fit the main topic.
Seriously? I don't see a correlation with the race and ethnicity of a PA and the race and ethnicity of a character for DAZ. There are PAs here that create many different types of races and ethnicities of characters. if anything it is down to personal preference and the market to decide what a PA creates. I honestly don't see any kind of percieved lack of parity (other than the male to female ratio) as an issue or obstacle unless your personal ethnicity or preference is something that hasn't been represented yet in the DAZ market and that is what you want, but to speak for everyone and say it is lacking in general is disingenuous.
You assume too much and completely missed my point, and I won't debate this especially, in Daz's forums... it's simply the wrong place for heated debates, period.
If I wanted to be nitpicky I'd point it out that word "race" does not indicate different species. All breeds of dogs still belong to the same canis familiaris species.
It's just using the word "race" in relation to humans is so XIX/first half XX century. Starts being outdated and reads really weird.
Sir! Are you classified as human? Ahh "Negative, I am a Meat Popsicle"
Fifth Element fan 
While I agree with OP we're talking about a program that mainly sells you unrealistic super models to begin with. While I'd just love to have more realistic people.
And something realistic* for them to to wear
*something that provides protection from the elements, decent cover and which doesn't have to be taped or glued on.
...love that film.
Aren't all of the base characters, from V3/M3 thru Genesis 9, white? So creators have only been able to morph and texture new characters from them. They became African or Asian or Elfian, but for the most part, you could still see strong genetic similarities to their parents.
So it's a single gene-pool. The interbreeding should be embarrassing. I once came across some actually authentic African characters on a site I can no longer locate. I wish I had of bought them when I had a chance. Wouldn't it be more fun to have a real-world variety of characters to tell stories with?
I have several Asian female characters that are even more self-similar than the white base characters from which they evolved. Actually, they may be anime; I don't know because I'm not into that genre. It's just nice having those little angels in my 'family'... Or maybe I need a life.
But a larger gene pool would be much more fun to be creative with! So maybe the base characters themselves is where the variety should begin. Not gonna happen. But I vented, that's all I needed. Cheers!
The earliest bases were definitely rather European looking, but by Genesis, they were pretty ethnically neutral. The issue isn't just the gene pool unfortunately though that is an issue. I was reminded of a character I bought in the early Genesis days called Wynn for M5 from Male-3DIA. What made Wynn unique was that he was a "redbone"; someone who has mixed African and European ancestry. For those who don't know, character textures come from a limited set of sources: 1) completely hand painted such as your various aliens, 2) a photo resource (80 to 90%) and probably from the Czech Republic so the ethnic variety is very low, or 3) you hire your own. The artists wanted to make specifically an African American man and the photo sources stock almost exclusively models from Africa. For background, almost all African Americans have part European ancestry since slavery and rape go hand in hand and look fairly different to Black people from the continent of Africa or people from the Carribean. People from Asia and Europe share this characteristic so that one probably wouldn't confuse an Israeli with a Korean person even though they are both Asian or a Swede and a Sicilian even though they are both European. The artists opted to rather expensively photograph a model for the character. The product was a financial failure but it does point out why it is important that the creators have a clue, good observational skills, and caring.
The other half is the resources. Imagine you are trying to create a 1920's scene in Chinatown. There are 1920's props and sets, there are Asian characters, but there are no 1920's Asian clothes, hair etc... as if almost every other culture is frozen in time and space. It is even more dire for other cultures. The African resources are like something from a vintage Hollywood film both fanciful and indistinct. Last year, I went to a spectacular museum exhibit which had one of Ruth Carter's costumes for Black Panther. It was amazing in its details where every ring or bead was an actual reference to real African peoples. There is a site, SdeBstore, which has very accurate African American characters, clothes and hairstyles; I am very curious about a site that has accurate Africans since I have occasionally had to make scientific illustrations of African populations.
nemesis10, I want to thank you for your very informative post!
Wynn for M5 (never seen before!) is basically what I was talking about - the need for characters that have little similarity to each other. With your imagination, you can see a personality in Wynn that doesn't appear when you look at hundreds of other characters. For me, at least, that's what generates ideas for images and stories.
I checked SdeBstore, and I believe it's probably the site I was referring to - it's been a long time. Thanks for referencing it! Great clothing, hair, etc, which I'm adding now to my shopping list. Couldn't get the characters section to load yet, though.
I'm just an old white guy, but I think whoever we are, most of us want real communities in our images where ethnic variety and camaraderie are as common as height, weight, or any other human characteristic. That frees up story ideas.
Regarding resources, too true!! I was supposed to create a scene with the 1920 City Street product for a writer's prompt book. I couldn't find vehicles or sufficient variety of clothing in my props list that would be accurate. My resulting scene was sparse, so I changed it to night and had a couple of drunks with bottles in order to at least add some 'drama' to it. Anyway, I'm just a hobbyist, so I didn't promise much in the first place;-)
Oh! One quick request for the providers out there! Consistant with the topic of this thread, there is a huge community of Filipinos here in California. I have friends in Alaska, too, and of course in the Philippines. Over the years they've helped me learn (sort of) their language, Tagalog. They have a distictive look that's different from any 3D Asian characters you see here or elsewhere. They are a beautiful people and an amazing culture, and I'm just thinking, possibly a good idea for new male and female characters? Please consider. Cheers:-)
Thank you for participating! I had a very special interest in the topic. I recently received information about another close relative in 23&me. My family is unusual in 23&me's community as we are an odd mixture of West African and British ancestory since all my great grandfathers were British (Welsh and English) and all my grandmothers were slaves. I happen to have multple family members who are 23&me members including my niece, uncle, half sister, and cousin. Also I was reading the authoritative and Pulitzer Prize winning biography of Jefferson and Sally Hemings (the Heminges of Monticello, An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed) which reminded me how we are rarely given a complete picture of the world.
When I started in 2016, Genesis 7 seemed like whites who had different colored skins for other ethnicities. Then in 2017 Genesis 8 came along and during the five years it and 8.1 were going, I saw more and more characters offered that looked like the people I worked with from around the world. And morph packs! I also bought older generations of packs.
Then we have Genesis 9 released four months ago. We don't have a lot of choice as yet. I have been chalking it up to the PAs getting use to the new generation and the bad joints (FBMs?). But I think we need to give them a chance. But I really hope we don't fall back to a majority of young, caucasian women as our main offerings. I am not buying those much. I want variety. Even in a morph pack.
I may look European, but I had three grandparents with Native American ancestry and I want my 3D world to reflect diversity as I see it around the world. In a realistic way, not Hollywood's plastic view of history.
Mary
Me thinks the same
There is alot of controversy around Native American imagery and "cultural appropraition" with alot of lawsuits being filed...you likely wont find much Native American stuff at daz anymore because of that.
A lot of people want to hide those issues in order to "protect" youth from feeling shame - (mindbogglingly phoney excuse) - so I appreciate your comments! And I'm guessing you have a much more exciting cast of characters amongst your relatives than I do in my Italian/Scottish/Irish ancestry.
Our props come from a variety of sources, so we can portray images of the world in any way we want to show it. I'm very old and my brain is becoming flaky in the process, so I mainly stick to comedy as best as I can. But as you suggest, there's a lot of truth cloaked from us by censorious interest groups. So I'd love to throw the truth back into their faces with images. It takes a real talent, though, to do that without causing problems for oneself.
I don't have that talent, so I'm going to be safe and just stick to my corny jokes. But I want my characters to be varied in looks, sizes, styles, and so on, to show how cool it is to have our differences. This is why this thread caught my attention.
Take care! I send my deepest respect to all of your grandmothers! Wonderful, strong people. We could have learned so much from them!
When you live in big cities like NYC or LA there is such a melting pot of mixed races that no one really can differentiate or even care what ethnicity you are. I'm glad that all ethnicities are now mixing. "Pure races" are gone with the days of Hitler.
One of my favorite lines!
This reminded me of the most recent episode of 'Last Week Tonight with John Oliver'. He was talking about the subject of AI (in general)(yes, he did also talk about AI artwork)...and one of the things he mentioned is that lack of skin tone representation in source data is contributing to overall issues with certain skin tones sometimes not being recognized by AI as part of its dataset. One example he cited was a self-driving car not recognizing someone with dark skin as a human.
https://youtu.be/Sqa8Zo2XWc4
(not sure how to embed the youtube video...)
Facegen is cool, but when it makes a body texture, all it does is tint the default body textures (of whichever Genesis base you use) to somewhat match the face. This is not ideal. The default texture is a white person, and just tinting this texture isn't going to work well for darker people. It is common for darker people to have pale palms and feet, for example, but Facegen will not replicate that. You can set Facegen to use different textures to work from. You can place Darius textures in there if you want to. But the program is not optimized to tint textures that start from his tone. This can result in some very strange and unnatural colors in results. So Facegen is not so good at this.
Other apps like Facegen work in a similar way, so the results will not be much better or worse. And beside that, you would end up with a bunch of people who all have the same body texture, just tinted different. That would be real freakin weird if your Facegen cast is at a pool or something.
Daz has actually gotten better at this over the years. The G8 and 8.1 eras got more diverse over time. Daz even released several ethnic base textures for Genesis 8.1 and 9 for free with the Starter Essentials. There are tons of morphs to create pretty much anyone, especially for G8. You can find a character that has skin you like and go wild with it. Iray has so many settings you can very easily tune a skin as well. While this may be similar to tinting skin like Facegen, if you find a skin that is close, you can get there easier. You can take a skin and give it the glow that only certain kinds of skin have. There is no one trick solution, though. You can play around with the different color settings in the surfaces. The Diffuse Color is the most obvious, but many other settings attribute to the final color. I liked to use Top Coat Weight with the color texture in weighted mode to give a skin that pop and glow.
Obviously there are too few non-white PAs here. I have a theory that members of all ethnicities - European, African, Asian, whatever - if their ethnicity forms the majority population in their environment, are usually best at representing this ethnicity. Whites are usually best at drawing or modelling whites, Africans at drawing Africans, Native Americans at drawing their people, etc. Simply because our daily visual experience forms the engrams in our brain that we recall when we pick up a drawing pencil. Which is not to say that Daz's white PAs don't offer great Black, Asian or Indian characters.
However, when I look at what strange characters are sold here from time to time as Africans, Asians or Native Americans, I see my theory confirmed, and I'm almost glad that not more of them are offered... Native Americans seem to be particularly difficult; here I've only come across one or two characters who were a little close to reality.
sorry...I gotta chime in here
an artist is not limited by their skin colour for their ability to create.
There really is no difference in how we make any texture, wether black or whilte or any shades in betwee, or even green skinned alien. It is all about the resources we work with, the process is the same for every texture.
Thanks for the link!
Agreed, and the good thing about this situation is that it's public knowledge now and that we know what the issue is, so we can best find a course of action to deal with it...
However, this topic would easily head into "heated" territory, so this is the last I'll say about it here in public.
And then there are PA's like Saiyaness...
But we as a people are not limited to mastering our own specific variables within our shared species.
All "races" can master drawing/sculpting of any "race" that they want, to suggest otherwise is inaccurate; as anyone from within our shared species can accomplish anything that we put our minds to.
It's only a question of will, and as artists, we are compelled to create, so for us, it's the natural path to take!
EDIT: Sorry, I get passionate about humanism and how pointless things like tribalism is IE: "race," and how it's obstructing human progress...
So I get what you're saying and it's true as it's like naturally being able to draw your own face, but the problem with that is, that you can't draw other people without having your own features imbedded in your drawings, so the first thing that most artists have to accomplish is to break out of that habit, the same goes with drawing your own "race" as it is not really that much different.
To the OP's question: There are many characters in this store that look Southeast Asian / Malaysian. Malays have interbred with so many different nations that their different types/appearances rival or surpass the varieties found among Black Americans. This week I was doing a fresh install of my Daz library, and I needed to save space (also cut G8F load time). Having seen this thread, I jotted down characters that could easily pass for Melayu or Indonesian (by and large the same people group, along with Filipinos), and I left out the conventionally Indian and Chinese types---since there are a ton of Northeast Asians available---although both groups together comprise a large portion of Malaysia's population.
MSO Dola
JS Jenny
Sari
Pepper
AQ Jasmin
Janet
Vilandra
Macey and Chani
Inaru
Carmen
Tsuguko
Bryson
Ganaatar
Elara
Daya
Kaia
Marcos
Kennen
Valentino 8
Ashan 8
Dasan 8
Alawa 8
Khemsit 8
Twosret 8
Millawa 8
Tasha 8
Edie 8
Benita
Xochil
Noska 8.1
Ophelia 7
FWSA Meifen
FWSA Shiloh
FWSA Uma
Isamu
HID Kayla
HID Dannie
HID Ebony
Biyu
MW Joanna
VYK Valyn
P3D Aluna
P3D Caro
RY Ricardo
Anna
Elene
Amon
Zak