All the Genesiseses
JasmineSkunk
Posts: 1,902
Ok...
So? I last Dazzed when Genesis 2 launched. I've been trying to figure out what I need, what I will still find useful, etc... But, I'm a little confused about the different versions of Genesis.
I've noticed most clothing transfers between them automatically... But what are the significant differences between them? What's the best strategy for dealing with getting morphs? I was able to use Gen X to move some of V4 shapes and morphs to Genesis but I'm a little confused about what can be shared between the other versions of Genesis. Can they share morphs? Someone told me there is a way to transfer Morphs using the Transfer Utility. It that right? Is there a tutorial somewhere? I couldn't find one that I understood...lol
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Was there a Genesis 4, 5 or 6?
I admit that I've lost track of what, exactly comes with the Genesis X essentials and what I bought separately, and I know I've lost track of most of who the vendors are (sorry vendors)
Genesis 1 can, by default use V4 skins.
Genesis 2 can, by default, use V5 skins. You have to buy the UV's for Genesis 2 to use V4 skins.
Genesis 3 requires add ons by Cayman Studios to use V4 or V5 or V6 skins. The V4 one I think is at Rendo (I never bought any of these)
Genesis 8 can use Genesis 3 skins by default.
Clothing and Hair:
You can go up (V4 to Genesis 1 to Genesis 2 to Genesis 3 to Genesis 8) by default using Autofit, but you'll need to purchase or make your own clones to go the other way. (Genesis 3 to Genesis 8 is easier, but I still get a little lost in the tutorial SickleYield has over at Deviant Art). There are additional templates in the store that improve the results.
Morphs:
GenX2 will transfer morphs to Genesis 2, and the Genesis 3 plug in extends this to Genesis 3. Getting morphs from Genesis 3 to Genesis 8 ... That I think is the transfer utility thing, but I'm not sure.
There is no Genesis 4, 5, 6. They skipped those to reduce confusion and align version numbers. (Gensis 8 is lined up with Victoria 8)
And if I'm wrong about any of this, I'm sure someone else will correct me.
There are two stages in the series of figures:
- Generation 1 - 4.
- Genesis 1,2,3,8.
The "generation" figures were intended to be used directly in Poser. The figures of Genesis are an evolution, with a new improved model to be used in DAZ 3D products, especially in DAZ Studio.
Over time, the meshes have been lightened in the number of vertexs. DAZ has achieved that these meshes give a great result in DS. Everything has its pros and cons. But in general, each new mesh has been improving the final results.
All this makes the transfer of mophs complex and you need extra tools to do it easily.
All the figures have utility, perhaps it takes little more experience to get results directly from the meshes of previous generations but the result can be as spectacular as with the last generation.
You have to keep in mind that the bones system of the figures do not coincide between generations, this makes the automatic transfer system lose the rigging system and add the one of the final figure. This together with the fact that the transfer system has not been improved makes the shoes have to be adapted manually. Like those elements that contain extra bones.
Sickleyield is going to be your best friend with her free tips and tutorials, as well as being able to buy her tools that will help you like https://www.daz3d.com/sy-ultra-templates-for-genesis-3-female-s, for the most complex things.
All meshes can use Iray materials. All props can be used by all the figures.
Generation 1-4 are legacy rigging, without weightmapping.
Genesis and Genesis 2 are weightmapped Triax rigging. The DSON convertor makes them usable in Poser, but I gather that it's hit-or-miss.
Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 are weightmapped dual quaternion rigging. I don't know if there is a method of being able to use them in Poser yet.
The Studio program, can use all of them. It doesn't use Poser's weightmapping system.
...Misty has a script to use G3 in Carrara.
Hey Thanks for the Feedback, guys.
So??
If I were going to invest any cash at all, I would be best off going with Genesis 3 and 8 stuff? Or wait? Genesis 3 stuff works on Genesis 7 & 8? Or just 8?I'm probabally not going to invest much more in Genesis 1 unless it's toony or fantasy creatures cuz I already have a bunch of toony stuff for Genesis 1 (ex: Jasmine from 3dU)
But I'm trying to decide just how to build my library from this point forward. I've already decided to say good-bye (for the most part) to Gen 4 stuff, but what's the best strategy from here? It seems there's is a lot of content for Genesis 3. This all works in the generations following 3? Or am I misunderstanding?
btw... I'm building this library exclusively for Daz Studio 4.10. Not using Cararra or Poser at this time.
Jasmine if you get the "Wear them All " you can still use your V4 M4 clothing on the newer figures, hair can be used on the newer figures . Yes stuff for Genesis 3 works with Genesis 8,
Oh and Genesis 3 and Generation 7 are the same thing ,which is why DAZ in it's wisdom jumped from Genesis3 to Genesis8 ,meaning Genesis4-7 don't exsist, now Genesis and Generations are lining up ,So Genesis8 and Generation8 are the same thing ......oh and with GENX you can move morphs from Generation 4 up to Generation 7, and there is a free script to move morphs from Genesis3 to Genesis 8...... I'll see if I can find the link .https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2707576/#Comment_2707576 ; go to page 23 ,scroll about half way down the page ,
The only Genesis after Genesis 3 is Genesis 8. It goes like this:
Genesis - has Victoria 5
Genesis 2 - has Victoria 6
Genesis 3 - has Victoria 7
Genesis 8 - has Victoria 8
The reason for the change was to align the Genesis base number with the Victoria/Michael generation number. As far as what generation you should use, that is up to you. Genesis 8 is the latest with new advances, but some people don't like the base figures appearance. Genesis 3 has lots of options and the textures and clothes transfer well to Genesis 8. I would suggest looking at figures from both G3 and G8 to see which you prefer. Also, if you do fantasy renders, Genesis 3 has centaur figures.
Genesis 3 characters include Victoria 7, Michael 7, etc. (because there had been 4-ish generations of Victoria/;Michael before there was a Genesis). What should have been Genesis 4 was instead named Genesis 8, to avoid such confusions or create new ones, take your pick. Genesis8/Victoria 8/Michael 8 are the latest iteration.
For me personally, Genesis 3 hits a sweet spot in terms of reasonably realistic, wide variety of content and fairly good backward compability, thanks to Valzheimer's Wear Them All and Sickleyield's Ultratemplates. But we're at that transitional phase where a lot of content supports both Genesis 3 and 8, and we can tell which one is going to get the support going forward, so it's hard for me to recommend 3 at this point.
Genesis 2 has somewhat more imaginative clothes and base characters, including a lizard man, minotaur, and multiple toons, and I am told that it and Genesis 8 work better for animation.
I haven't bought Genesis 8 stuff (except for some things that were for both 3 and 8); my impression from the forums is that it's more difficult to get the skins to look good, and the female base characters have VERY samey faces (males are pretty good, though, and the PA created characters for both are on par with their output for Genesis 3). To my mind it's too early to tell how the clothing and backward-compatibility addons will stack up compared to Genesis 1-3.
Basically it comes down to what you want out of your characters. For toons, children and "classical" creatures, I feel like Genesis 1 and 2 are better. For effectively using V4/M4 clothes, Genesis 3 with the tools mentioned above is better, although not infallible. For "realistic" (or realistically disgusting) zombies, werewolves and alien monsters, Genesis 3 is better. For "almost photoreal", the very best of Genesis 8 seems slightly better than the best of Genesis 3, but the rest of Genesis 8 falls off into uncanny valley more sharply than Genesis 3, IMO.
If I was just getting back into it, I would focus on genesis 8 products. genesis 3 is great and many here are heavily invested in her which is why many here prefer her, but DAZ is only supporting the latest figure with new content and most vendors are doing the same, so if you are interested in getting new content, go with the latest figure. There will be workarounds and products to allow the use of other generations files with different generations, but I would get my base set up first before worrying about what addons I need to make other things compatable.
Thanks guys!! :) That does clear it up for me a bit. And thanks for the heads up on Wear Them All, carrie!
OK! Now...
any tips on actually finding the things I need in the store? LOL I'm struggling to even find staple Head and Body morphs for Genesis 8. Is there a bundle for both male and female by chance? I couldn't find one
By the way... Great to see all of you again! FSMC, Agent, Odaa, Zylox, Jodel, DaWaterRat!! Nice to see familiar avatars!
Thanks again.
As to the head and body morphs, since Genesis 1 the base set of head and body morphs are for each generations's base figure, *not* for Michael and Victoria. Michael and Victoria are no longer the base figures. They are just base character morphs.
Also, if you're just getting back in the pool, we're only just now beginning to move past a veritable bog of proprietary UV Maps. This has the potential to be a definite issue to have to take into consideration for moving forward.
Genesis 1 used V4's UVs by default, but came with support for M4 and K4 as well. All you needed to do was effectively flip a switch in the surfaces tab.
However. Victoria 5 (who was a major character base morph for Genesis 1) had her own UVs. So did Michael. So did just about all the named base character morphs. This set the pattern for pretty much all of the named DAZ character base morphs for the Genesis series up to the end of G3. *Every one* of them had their own unique UV. And that adds up to *dozens* of them over Genesis 1, 2, and 3. Which means that skins built for a specific base morph can't necessarily be used on any of the others, unless you also own *that* character base because the only way to get support for that UV is to get at least the base figure which introduced it.
PAs played into this for most of the development period of G1 and G2. However, by the end of G2's development cycle, the plethora of unique UVs floating around was already getting ridiculous. And then with G3 DAZ changed the whole UV layout, so *nothing* for *any* older figure would work with G3 out of the box. Cayman Studios came up with a viable work-around by using geografts. You are probably going to want to look into those if you want to reuse any of your older skins on G3 or G8 (or later) figures. However, there are a few UVs that weren't spported so widely that he's considered them enough of a return for the investment of the work it would take to create a set to make those portable to G3. K4 is still MiA, and possibly a few of the Genesis series bases.
However, once G3 was released, and it was plain that DAZ was going to continue to introduce unique UVs for every different character base morph (and the number of those base morphes had ramped up to something like 2 in an average month), a lot of the PAs decided that they were not going to play that game any more. As G3's development cycle progressed, more and more G3 characters came out which were built on the base G3F and G3M base UVs, only. And nobody had to pay extra to get those, since those bases came with the program.
DAZ got the message. G8 uses the G3 base UVs by default. With G8 they have separated out the eye, eyelash and eyebrow geometry into a different system -- which may pay dividends down the road, but it's still at the point of causing confusion.
However, the UV issue is a really good reason to consider concentrating on G3 and later if you are getting back into Studio. All your older stuff should still work in the program, but the skins are not going to be transferable outside their own generation without add-ons, and may not even be all that usable on other figures within their own generation if the skin was built for a different character base. And at the start of G3's development cycle, there were still PAs who supported the unique UVs so you need to watch for which one a given skin was built for -- unless you are picking up a characcter base which wll bring its UV with it.
G3 also abandoned Triax rigging in favor for dual quaternion. So the bones will be different. But that is the standard going forward, so there's no point in avoiding it. Pose sets for G2 don't always work that well with G3 and vice-versa. There are utilities for converting poses, bt those are more add-ons. G8 went from the T-pose to an A-pose for its zero position, which throws some pose sets off, but the fix for that doesn't require a purchased add-on, for most thigs.
If I were starting new/comming back, I'd definately go with Genesis 8. Anything that Gen 8 doesn't have yet, I'd check Genesis 3 first, and then move further back.
The head and body morphs are here:
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-male-body-morphs
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-male-head-morphs
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-head-morphs
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-body-morphs
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-male-expressions
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-expressions
Don't have Daz critter morphs for them yet, though someone else may have done some fantasy morphs.
And it's good to see you back too. :)
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-body-morphs
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-head-morphs
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-male-body-morphs
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-male-head-morphs
Expressions if you want them (they're just dials tied to existing morphs, odds are you will pick up a LOT of expression just getting pose packs):
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-female-expressions
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-male-expressions
No bundle. :(
These morphs and other things for G8 are super, super likely to go on sale soon judging by recent months. Most of the stuff I get now is at least 51% off.
What I do when I browse the store is go to a category I'm interested in, morphs, clothes, whatever, then go to the figure dropdown and select the figures I'm interested in.
Doesn't require a purchase at all, I have pose-control-driven insta-converters in my sig.
This has already paid dividends to character makers :D The eyes are now one mesh between the iris, sclera and pupil. Previously on G3, they were all separate. This made morphing eyes very difficult/tedious. The tear and eyelashes are a separate geometry in G8 (though together) which again, helps with character/morph making because they autofollow morphs now instead of having to be hand adjusted. This means it's easier to reshape eyes, and you will be able to get some more unique eye shapes that were previously difficult to make. The eyebrow isn't a separate geometry per say. A separate fibermesh eyebrow set is being offered in addition to the painted/texture based eyebrows with some characters and figures. The base G8 does not have separate eyebrows (though Victoria, Michael and the other Daz shapes I believe do).
I don't see it mentioned elsewhere (though I could have missed it), but there was a huge improvement in rigging from G2 to G3 (and now G8) other than the system used. Previously, all expressions on characters were morphs. This meant that, depending on the character, the look could vary vastly. Expressions were not universal to characters. From G3 on, expressions are rigging based. There is a facial rig on G3 and G8 and expressions (at least the ones at Daz) are all based on bones and not mesh. If a character is rerigged facially properly (which is tested for at Daz at least), any expression for that generation will work for it. You don't have to morph smiles or winks anymore. It's awesome :D
Something else that came along the time of G3 was the Iray renderer. Most of the promos you see in the store now will be done in Iray. It's a PBR renderer and utilizes the GPU for much faster renders (if you have a GPU with cuda cores). It can also use the cpu, but it will be much slower if it uses the cpu only. You can read a little more about it here.
Last note-- G3 is over 2 years old now. It came out in the summer of 2015. G8 just came out this past summer. Clothing transfers very nicely from G3 to G8, but heeled shoes are a little more tricky. Keep in mind that more and more will be coming out for G8 and, most likely, less and less for G3.
Awesome! Thanks Agent.
OK... One more question, then back to work for me...LOL
I tried to see if this tutorial would work for transfering my existing Genesis Morphs to V8:
https://direct.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/177246/basic-tutorial-for-transferring-genesis3-female-morphs-to-genesis8-female
It didn't work.
But I don't know how to check to see if the transfer utility stuck them in there anyway. What I mean is, when I moved V4's morphs to Genesis, I used Gen X and when something didn't work, I could go into Gen X and remove what I did. I tried using the Transfer Utility to move my Genesis morphs to V8, but don't know how to check to see if I need to "undo" what I attempted to do. Am I making sense?
That is a G3-G8 tutorial. If you already have your morphs in G3, you can use this script from Singular Blues to transfer the morphs to G8, much more easily. https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2707576/#Comment_2707576
You might need GenX2 to go from V4 to G3, though.
Going from V4 or Genesis to G8 is much, much more complicated.
EDIT: You may be able to use that method with a Genesis clone shape, but I haven't tried it myself.
And your Transfer Utility morphs or other morphs you make in DS will never be stuck in a character if you do not save them as a morph asset. You can always just start a new scene and reload the character to start from scratch.
Awesome!! OKAY!!! Thanks, Agent! :)
Umm...??
Anyone still here by chance?
Btw...Thanks everyone for putting up with me. LOL
But... I have encountered something... ODD about Genesis 8.
Now, I haven't had a chance to really explore IRAY yet, but I do think it's really exciting. It renders all of my toony stuff I love so much just perfectly, even with a spot render on whatever the defaults are. I'm really excited to play with it.
But whenever I try to render anything with Genesis 8, Genesis 8 looks to be "unlit" in the scene. It reminds me of how the old Daz 3 would render something if you didn't include a light in the scene. I don't know what I'm looking at (or for) in the surfaces tab on Genesis 8 to know if it's a surfaces issue or an IRAY issue... I'm a little perplexed about what is causing the problem. But, they just look like light isn't acting right on them. Btw... This is Gen 8 Male and Female as they come "out of the box".
Can you attach a render? My guess is you are rendering with Dome and Scene on which is using mostly the default HDRI to light your figure, and you want to render with Scene only to only use your lights that you've added yourself.
Umm...??
Anyone still here by chance?
Btw...Thanks everyone for putting up with me. LOL
But... I have encountered something... ODD about Genesis 8.
Now, I haven't had a chance to really explore IRAY yet, but I do think it's really exciting. It renders all of my toony stuff I love so much just perfectly, even with a spot render on whatever the defaults are. I'm really excited to play with it.
But whenever I try to render anything with Genesis 8, Genesis 8 looks to be "unlit" in the scene. It reminds me of how the old Daz 3 would render something if you didn't include a light in the scene. I don't know what I'm looking at (or for) in the surfaces tab on Genesis 8 to know if it's a surfaces issue or an IRAY issue... I'm a little perplexed about what is causing the problem. But, they just look like light isn't acting right on them. Btw... This is Gen 8 Male and Female as they come "out of the box".
OK... How do I attatch a render? I don't know how to do stuff in this forum...LOL
If you'd keep the same topic for discussion in one thread it would be easier to keep people on track, just saying.
Can you attach a render? My guess is you are rendering with Dome and Scene on which is using mostly the default HDRI to light your figure, and you want to render with Scene only to only use your lights that you've added yourself.
At the bottom of the post there is a link that says Attach File, if you click it it should say Browse... and you can add a picture.
btw posted in your other thread, would be easier to talk about the rendering problem there.
Um... I already ... Nevermind... OK.. I'll put it back like it was...and meet you in there with a spot render... About 5 minutes maybe. I haven't been saving them.
OK... Give me a few minutes. BRB... and Thank you.
Use the attach a file button under the typing panel, and then attach a file from your computer. If you have a gallery you can right click on the gallery image and add that by using the richtext icons on the top of the panel Add image is the icon that looks a bit like a picture, next to the flag.
If you want to turn an attachment into a full size image then make the post with the attachment, then click on the attacment thumbnail to bring it to full size, right click to select the image location, then click the gear icon over in the top right of your post and select edit. THen add the image using the text tools.
We do ask that you restrict the width of the image to 800px. because nowadays people browse the forums on various different devices and some do not like images that are too wide.
As long as the padlock is showing on the add image screen you only need to enter the width
Edit. Forgot to say that it is nice to see you again. Welcome back.