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"As always DAZ strives to create the highest quality AND most versatile figures available."
Striving for quality and versatility is all well and good, but the tradeoffs of one for the other should be balanced. A slight increase in quality in exchange for a huge drop in versatility doesn't come off as a fair trade off. Thus far, I have yet to see a big improvement in how G2F works by comparison to G1. The renders so far in the previews and by the community have not been convincing that the enhancements couldn't have been done on G1 or a G2 that is unisex, or that the boost in quality is in proportion to what was lost. :down:
I think it's perfectly fair to compare what we have against what we have. Something which is coming s**n is worthless until it actually arrives.
I think it's perfectly fair to compare what we have against what we have. Something which is coming s**n is worthless until it actually arrives.
It is also perfectly fair to compare G2F to the female half of Genesis and V5 to V6. I am sincerely waiting to be wowed by Genesis 2 enough to pay money for a Genesis 2 product beyond the morphs & V4 UV.
It is also perfectly fair to compare G2F to the female half of Genesis and V5 to V6.
Genesis itself is a whole product, it doesn't have halves, male, female or others. To artificially half its capabilities in order to compare it to G2F is anything but fair.
Currently half of my time at DAZ is spent in the the forums. I may not be extremely vocal all of the time, but I do read through them and I do take what I read seriously. It is my job to pass on what I gather from the forums. The point is, that if something gains enough traction in the forums, it is brought to my attention, and therefore brought to the attention of DAZ.
Currently half of my time at DAZ is spent in the the forums. I may not be extremely vocal all of the time, but I do read through them and I do take what I read seriously. It is my job to pass on what I gather from the forums. The point is, that if something gains enough traction in the forums, it is brought to my attention, and therefore brought to the attention of DAZ.
Unfortunately, what gains traction in the forum is already a set course. DAZ does not make decisions to alter design and production lightly or quickly. Nor once they decide on a course of action, do they change it with any haste. Things brought up in the forums may be brought to the attention of DAZ but that hardly means DAZ will alter the course they have set.
The decision to go back to a gender split and even a possible age split was kept a deep dark secret. Despite the claims that there was user feedback, I don't seem to remember any polls or questions regarding whether or not users would prefer gender/age splits. If there were any an I missed them, I'd like to see a link to them.
I won't say anything more. This post will probably end up deleted but what the heck...
I've been playing around with G2F/V6/Gia and it is undeniable that they are the best out-the-box female shapes that need little custom alteration to look great. Genesis can come very close so long as you know what you're doing with custom morphs and good skin textures with quality displacement maps. The problem isn't actually G2F base as a figure, the problem is poor communication with the customer - any information vacuum fills with negativity way more than anything positive.
That said, it is quite erroneous to posit that Genesis 2 is a straight-up replacement to Genesis 1, and that's where all the aggro is coming from - it looks from a customer perspective that versatility is being sacrificed in the search for higher profit margins. This is because we've been told nothing about what to look forward to. We have a female and there will be a male counterpart at some stage on an unspecified timeframe some time in the future.
We are trully spoiled by what Genesis has given us and we don't want to see any of that taken away e.g. it's easy if you want to make a tomboy or an older sister for a character,, just dial in a tiny amount of a male shape in less than 10 seconds... but how do we do this in Genesis 2?
What will we need to do to make matching male and female monsters on the Genesis 2 system?
Will we be able to cross-dress male & female characters? e.g. practical armour, or uniforms that aren't skimpwear (I don't mean auto-fitting Genesis 1 stuff, I mean what about new unreleased products that blow us away and we want to use on all our characters)
Isn't Genesis 2 really just the Generation 4 business model with Genesis tech?
Why not do a mesh with extra polys in all the right places for both male and female instead of just extra for female and presumably different extra polys on the male mesh?
Rigging I understand is ideally different between male & female, so why don't we innovate a dual-rigged system with which we could select male/female movement?
If we're being so precise with musculature that male & female morphs need to be separate, why not go the whole hog and make a proper nether regions add-on pack? Make it uber premium price to make it available to only the most serious of artists (possibly actually pricing myself out of it with that idea, but argument of precision falters without at least offering a complete package at top level)
OK, ok, I'm not saying all this expecting detailed answers (sadly, not really expecting any answers), but I'm sharing what I'm thinking and suggesting what I'd like to see based upon how I work.
The split gender thing is less about creating gender realism than it is about creating fantasy supermodel characters which I guess is what sells but sucks if you're an artist wanting to make truly realistic figures.
As an anthropologist and an artist I can tell you that in many ways there is less sexual dimorphism in humans than there is in other primate species. If you were to sample a room full of 20 random people you would find that the majority of them have body features typically associated with genders opposite their own. What the people saying "I need a more realistic female mesh" really mean is "I need a mesh that is more the western idealized fantasy of what a perfect female should be". Genesis 1 was capable of a far more realistic female form than the Genesis 2 mesh is currently displaying. It's just that the reality of female bodies is most women are not built like fantasy supermodels.
As for the lack of genital capabilities built right into the mesh. I've heard the explanations and I have to roll my eyes at them. It's nothing but corporate hand wringing at its finest.
This is my opinion and only mine. We are all allowed to have them.
This is my opinion and only mine. We are all allowed to have them.
As much as all of that makes perfect respectable sense, and I do respect your opinion, what you are saying is that in order to achieve true human realism, DAZ has to limit progress to two distinct technologies for things such as muscle mesh and hip bones. This is just like the notion that we shouldn't fix autofit breast-hugging clothing because autofit will always break the deformation. I find notions like that to be an underestimation of technological progress. The idea of Genesis was probably laughable back a couple of decades ago, but DAZ managed to materialize it in five generations of it's figure development progress. If they can create a high quality unisex mesh than can become a wide variety of things, then figuring out how to increase it's realism and produce a dual-rigging for more appropriate gender detail, all on that idea of an ultra versatile unimesh, should the next step.
Really well said Jabba!
One point though...it was my understanding that with genesis they could actually have multiple rigging to allow for rigging to suit the more extreme shapes. So don't we already have the system available?
Thanks Matty, I did feel my post was missed as Jared started posting around the same time.
@jared, is it possible to get an official statement about DAZ 3D's plans for the male figure? Will it be able to share clothes with its female counterpart? Please provide us with this information and stop the speculation once and for all and allow us all to make informed decisions about how we wish to spend our money.
Thanks
Pen
As much as all of that makes perfect respectable sense, and I do respect your opinion, what you are saying is that in order to achieve true human realism, DAZ has to limit progress to two distinct technologies for things such as muscle mesh and hip bones. This is just like the notion that we shouldn't fix autofit breast-hugging clothing because autofit will always break the deformation. I find notions like that to be an underestimation of technological progress. The idea of Genesis was probably laughable back a couple of decades ago, but DAZ managed to materialize it in five generations of it's figure development progress. If they can create a high quality unisex mesh than can become a wide variety of things, then figuring out how to increase it's realism and produce a dual-rigging for more appropriate gender detail, all on that idea of an ultra versatile unimesh, should the next step.
I do so agree with Jaderail on this opinion.
I have had several jobs in my life, and oen of them was driving a Forklift truck, an electric one. Electric trucks have a failsafe button built in so that they cannot be operated without someone in the driving seat. The firm whose trucks we used brought out a new model, which was supposed to improve on this feature as people had found a way of circumventing it. However I could not drive the new truck, but all the men could. We did some experiments, as I am petite adn found that it could be operated by any male, including a child of one of the Managers, who was visiting, but could not be operated by any female, regardless of size and weight, simply because of the difference in the underlying shape of the female body.
Really well said Jabba!
One point though...it was my understanding that with genesis they could actually have multiple rigging to allow for rigging to suit the more extreme shapes. So don't we already have the system available?
Yes and no. TriAx figures, and figures in Poser 9+, support having the joint centres moved by a morph but there isn't any way to change the weight-maps that determine which areas of the mesh deform with a bend, so moving a centre a lot may still buckle the mesh unhelpfully. I don't know how relevant that is to Genesis/Genesis 2 however.
This is my opinion and only mine. We are all allowed to have them.
Figures don’t have skeletons, or organs (or in this case, even genitals!), they are just a bunch of polygons and those polygons could be morphed into realistic male and female characters within Genesis just fine.
Genesis can go from little, fragile mavka to the huge, detailed Mr. Hyde or the monstrous Troll, and it certainly can go from realistic, detailed male or female. As female as G2F characters (which are actually no more female than Genesis characters where).
So far I’m yet to see what is improved in Genesis 2 Female in that regard; I’m seeing nothing new in terms of shaping, posing or clothing.
Yes and no. TriAx figures, and figures in Poser 9+, support having the joint centres moved by a morph but there isn't any way to change the weight-maps that determine which areas of the mesh deform with a bend, so moving a centre a lot may still buckle the mesh unhelpfully. I don't know how relevant that is to Genesis/Genesis 2 however.
Yet. Fixing that is the obvious next step in the evolution of mesh-based figures. Once that's done, there will truly be no valid reason not to have a unified figure.
Yes and no. TriAx figures, and figures in Poser 9+, support having the joint centres moved by a morph but there isn't any way to change the weight-maps that determine which areas of the mesh deform with a bend, so moving a centre a lot may still buckle the mesh unhelpfully. I don't know how relevant that is to Genesis/Genesis 2 however.
Aha, t hank you Richard. I didn't realise that it was so limited. In that case I'm fully in agreement with Jabbas post
Yes and no. TriAx figures, and figures in Poser 9+, support having the joint centres moved by a morph but there isn't any way to change the weight-maps that determine which areas of the mesh deform with a bend, so moving a centre a lot may still buckle the mesh unhelpfully. I don't know how relevant that is to Genesis/Genesis 2 however.
Aha, t hank you Richard. I didn't realise that it was so limited. In that case I'm fully in agreement with Jabbas post
As do I.
I honestly thought that the whole "morph optimization" concept with Gen 5 characters already involved rigging variation.
Aha, t hank you Richard. I didn't realise that it was so limited. In that case I'm fully in agreement with Jabbas post
As do I.
I honestly thought that the whole "morph optimization" concept with Gen 5 characters already involved rigging variation.
The issue isn't adjusting rigging, it's how the mesh flows between characters that is specific to a gender.
Because that's what we were always told.
And I'm still not seeing any improvement.
I just want to check my understanding... so TriAx (and Poser 9+) figures can handle morphing a mesh into quite different shapes, and the bones can be aligned and adjusted to work with the new shapes, but the strength of each bone (joint) per polygon doesn't change, right? So the effect of this is that if you want (for example) to move some polygons from the shoulder to the upper arm, because you want a narrow-shouldered, long armed person, you couldn't do that, because the shoulder joint would still try to move the same polygons. The result is that you have to expect the same polygons to be influenced by each joint as in the unmorphed version.
I'm still not quite sure I get why this is a problem with using the same mesh for male and female characters. Is it because the mesh density goes too low on the shoulders for guys or the hips for gals? You can use a different UV map (at least in DS) to avoid texture stretching, so I don't think that's it. Granted there are certainly differences between male and female human bodies, but at the resolution level we're talking about, I don't see why one mesh and rig couldn't morph to be used for both, equally well.
To be honest, I thought the motivation behind Genesis 2 was mostly that every female morph had to be supported individually, instead of most of the support being for the Basic Female shape and only minor tweaks required for each female morph built on that (and same for the guys). If all the female morphs had been based on Basic Female and all the male morphs on Basic Male, wouldn't that have worked as well as this figure split?
(This doesn't take into account the extra polygons of G2F, rigged toes, etc.-- just the gender split.)
Yes, although an polygon here or there might be handled by a JCM. But I'm pretty sure some of the monster-creators have hit walls created by the weight-maps.
I'm not sure that it was a factor, I was mainly adressing the question asked. It may be that having different weight maps (or bulge maps) is one of the advantages of the split, it may be that it's irrelevant - I really don't know.
No, Genesis does not have halfs but Generation 4 did and genreation 3 was divided even more though the underlining techonolgy was the same across all figures of the same genreation. What I meant as unfair is that Genesis2 is incomplete as the male half is not yet avaialble. So while we can do comparisons to a degree, we lack the male half of the Generation 6 base figures to do a complete comparison against all previous generations (or which ever ones we choose to compare it to).
Yep, agreeing with this bit. After calling the new version Genesis2, I'd say it was clearly unfair of DAZ to release only the female figure -- if the gender-split had to happen (which I'm not conceding), we still should've gotten both male and female figures simultaneously, so we could see what we were getting into (like how well the clothing-conversion works, and how much support actually gets provided to non-sexualized and unisex clothing). Granting that female-before-male was how the Millennium figures were released, this isn't a Millennium figure -- Genesis1 gave us both at once (and more) the day it was released, Genesis2 should've too.
No, if you doing mesh flows specific for a male and female figure, then releasing them separately made sense. Genesis 1 had the Same mesh flow so it could be released at the same time.
Even with genesis 1 being released at the same time, the female wasn't very feminine and the male wasn't very masculine. V5 still came out first correcting the female situation.
Ah yes, mesh flow... add the extra polys for female AND add extra polys for male to the same mesh and you got a mesh flow that can mix it up any way you want it.
No. It a bit more than that. And really unless you've actually taken a mesh into a modeler, gave it a particular shape then loaded it back in and tried to pose it you probably won't understand the concept; but it is a lot more than dropping a few polys here and there and expect it to move the way you want it.
No. It a bit more than that. And really unless you've actually taken a mesh into a modeler, gave it a particular shape then loaded it back in and tried to pose it you probably won't understand the concept; but it is a lot more than dropping a few polys here and there and expect it to move the way you want it.
I'm sure you're right-- you would know far better than I. But I would like to understand this better. If you have time, could you explain a bit more?
What exactly do you mean by "mesh flow"?
As I understand it, V4 and M4 were topologically equivalent (homeomorphic, if you want to be technical). Same number of vertices, in the same order, with the same edges between them. Did they therefore have the same "mesh flow", or is there something more to it?
We all tend to abbreviate for convenience, then somebody else will pick up on what was not 100% conveyed in a single soundbite. I won't go on at length as I pitched up earlier http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/25824/P60/#383690
Of course any male or female character can be made from the same base mesh, but it's simply too much hard work compared to doing some relatively minor tweaks to a gender-specific mesh. It's as simple as that.
But don't get me wrong, I can appreciate the flip side... how much work should be put into a character that sells for $15? If we're not prepared to pay $100 per character, something's got to give... and the thing that's been broken to maintain established pricing, in my personal opinion, is the universal flexibility. I'm not saying I like it, I'm saying I can understand it.
So what I would like to know is this: Now that an improved easier-to-work-with mesh has been released, should we expect the characters to be of higher quality and priced around the same as those for the 'problematic' Genesis mesh, or should we expect to see no real improvement to character quality but cheaper because the new mesh isn't as much hard work?
If you flash the flesh in your renders, G2F should be on your radar - but if you mostly use fully-clothed characters, we're still waiting on costume makers raising the bar for the new figure, albeit this should come as no surprise because an improved base for character makers does not miraculously make it any easier for the wardrobe PAs to make their outfits.