V4 vs V4 Elite?
WsCG
Posts: 391
Hello there,
So, going to ask y'all to reach way back into your ancient memories... :p
Put simply, what's the difference between V4 and V4 Elite? I'm guessing it was more common knowledge a thousand years ago when V4 was the latest/most popular figure. But I can't find any info about what the differences are.
Thanks!
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Comments
I don't remember exactly, something about "Unimesh"? I do think you have to buy "Elite Fits" for V4 clothing if you use that version.
V4 Elite is just V4. "Elite" products were a line of morphs and high resolution textures for V4.
Items for "V4 elite" simply used or supported the Elite morphs.
Ahh I see.
That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation!
So, if I see something for V4 Elite, I could just apply it to V4 (or 4.2, I guess, technically), and it should work fine, correct? Including Carrara?
Well, if it's a character for V4 elite you'll need the elite morphs, but otherwise it should work fine with V4.2
Ah I see, so it is different enough that it needs its own "mod base" (so to speak), etc.
Good to know.
Thanks again!
What I mean is that just like a character labelled "for A4" would usually use the A4 morph, there's a good chance that the character labelled "for V4 Elite" uses at least one of the morphs from the V4 elite morphs pack. Texture would still work without if, but character wouldn't look the same if you don't have the required product.
Yeah. That's pretty much how I understood it. Probably didn't do a good job describing it in my reply.
Thanks for the clarification!
I just bought the V4 Elite characters because of the textures, they was mostly more realistic than most other V4 textures and that i think was the main difference, maybe higher resolution but most textures have the same res, earlier textures for V4 might have lower resolutions.
They also came with Elite morphs but there really is no big difference.
In making Rosie 5 (Genesis 1), I use the V4 Elite, Reby Sky for her textures, especially the SSS maps that she comes with. I've also used GenX2 to add some of the V4 Elite morphs to Genesis for her (Rosie 5) creation - some for main shaping, others for animation shape changes.
V4 may be considered a 'waaaay back generation' today, but she's still an amazing 3D figure for use with Carrara.
Introducing Rosie 5
Making Rosie 5
Rosie 5 just came this year. Before that I just kept using V4 because she works so well and I have so many support products for her. It's amazing how much content exists for her!
M4 was a bit tougher for most situations because of his darned shoulders. They looked fine on my Dartanbeck character because he's always running around without a shirt on. But adding a shirt highlights how difficult it can be to get those darned shoulders in check! Wearing armor and such isn't an issue.
So when I recently decided to upgrade my characters, I was originally going to use Genesis 8 or 3, using Misty's presets that allow them to work in Carrara. Using my extensive V4/M4 (and family) content library would have been useless, and I don't have much for either of those newer generations since they aren't officially supported in Carrara. It's kind of my own little protest against them not releasing and update for Carrara.
Anyway, since I don't have any stuff for Genesis 3 and 8, I decided to try Genesis 2. The hard part there is that the Auto-fit in Carrara doesn't recognize one Genesis generation from the next, because Genesis 1 was the latest officially fully supported figure. This isn't really a big issue. It basically means that we can't auto-fit clothing from Genesis is Genesis 2 (or the other way around) within Carrara, but we can do it in Daz Studio and save a new asset.
Still, I am an artist of limited means ($) and I also like to take the path of least resistance. So check this out:
Genesis 1 figure - default UV mapping for each character preset
So this, along with the fact that Auto-fit works so well on Genesis 1 in Carrara made using Genesis 1 my preferred choice!
The problem that remained was that I really like the shapes of Genesis 2 over Genesis 1. Well, Wendy and I talk all the time via e-mail. She told me about GenX2 back when it first came out and said many times how powerful it is. Yeah... I owe her a Lot for All of the amazing advice and fix-its she's offered me over the many years we've been friends! Getting GenX2 was a real game changer! Out of the box it already let me use V4, M4, V4 Elite, etc., etc., to inject those morphs into Genesis. I already have the plugins for Genesis for all of the previous generation clones, so I can fit V3, A3, M3, H3, Freak, etc., V4, M4, A4, H4, Freak 4, etc., clothing to Genesis with great success. I didn't really feel the need to use generation 3 (V3, etc.,) shapes, but there's an addon for GenX2 for them as well. I got the Genesis 2 and 3 addons for GenX2 so that I can inject Genesis 2 and 3 shapes into Genesis 1!!! It's awesome!
This whole thing has been a real blast for me because I've been loving a lot of those older Generation 3 clothing packs forever. Aiko and Hiro, Vicky and Michael, Girl and Freak, Steph and David... so lately I've been grabbing fun older gen attire from the store and trying them out on Rosie 5 and Dart 5. That killer metal bikini Rosie 5 is wearing is Awful Soul's incredible Platina Amor, and both Rosie and Dart are wearing M3's Wild Hunt Wildenlander boots.
I was already using Genesis extensively due to it's amazing unisex feature. V4 is also unisex, so she's another option in that regard to get more realistic shoulders. Genesis was the main push behind Carrara 8.5 upgrade. So during the public beta phase I decided to give it a test drive even though I was still firm at keeping Rosie and Dart V4 and M4 respectively. I was amazed! The auto-fit/auto-follow was simply incredible! The shapes! Man, they made a gorilla, a troll - the Daz troll!!!, a bunch of people and a whole slew of creatures. I just kept grabbing as many as I could.
You see, with Genesis we can load in any preset character and then change the shape to anything we want. For example, Rosie 5 used the Basic Female so that I could use my V4 texture packs even though I've removed the Basic Female shapes and dialed in my own. I have such a blast creating orcs and other nasties by starting with either the Troll or Greater and Lesser Goblins (RawArt) to have those UV allocations (so I can use those textures) and then make any shapes I want! Adding the Creature Creator pack was also a boon to this! Now that I have GenX2, I could concievably also add the V4 and/or M4 Creature Creator morphs as well, but haven't felt the need. But we could also do that with (for example) generation 4 RawArt monsters as well!
I haven't gotten to him yet in my animation process, but I also really love Midnight Stories' Lycan for Genesis! He's a really cool Genesis shape!
Hmmm... babble much Dart?