GENESIS 9 - A Technological Upgrade
Daedalus-7
Posts: 198
GENESIS 9 - A Technological Upgrade [Updated]
I know many of you don't want to hear it, and wish it will never happen, but eventually it will, so I will like to make a few suggestions that, if enacted, will make Genesis 9 an amazing product that you'll actually "must have", and that will save both artists and content creators a lot of time.
1) Muscles/Skin Simulation (like Ziva VFX and others)
Instead of posing your characters (or even worse animating them!) and then ensure that contracted muscles are contracted properly, it would be best to use a Muscle Simulation system (which does so auto-magically).
It can be applied to Humans, Animals, and anything that moves really. Also, it can be transfered between characters.
Here are example videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M9NwvysauI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YncZtLaZ6kQ
2) Soft Body Dynamics.
Ever had to fiddle with parameters because your character sits and his soft body must deform, it moves, and its breast must move, has tight clothes, and we need to see that tightness?
Entering soft body dynamics to save the day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk1FunK7Ozg
3) Ragdoll, Rigid Body Dynamics, and Collisions
Sometimes you just want a body to fall down without having to place everything manually. A body, a glass, any number of objects falls...it would be a huge time saver.
[EDIT: This has been around for a loooong time]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CTDlttrFjE [RAGDOLL]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P219BwxJG7E [COLLISIONS]
4) Faster Dynamic Hair/Clothing
The problem with current dForce Hair is that it's heavy, it's cumbersome and it's very slow to calculate:
Other applications support real-time hair (and clothing) movement in the Viewport:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBQmr5qBV5s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBfxnayIlOY [This is real time-cloth simulation with a DAZ character!]
5) Backwards compatibility.
This goes without saying. [EDIT: Well, as much as possible]
6) Ability to use in other software
Personally, I'd love to more integration with other applications like Cinema4d, Blender, etc. so that we can use the tools that DAZ doesn't have with our favorite DAZ models.
CONCLUSION: In other words, we want this:
Note: this was taken from "Love, Death & Robots" episode 7, and yes, these are 3d models.
Well, these were my 2c, and since i couldn't find a thread like this (it didn't turn out in my research results) I thought I'd make one.
Take care everyone.
EDIT: Added more videos and section 4 and 6.
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Comments
Somehow I have the feeling that if items 1, 2 and 3 on that list are to be accomplished then item 4 is probably out of the question. There does come a point where, in order to achieve the desired improvement, compatibility with older models must be sacrificed. Hopefully, not all of it, but I do not expect any Genesis figure that comes after 9 -- whenever it arrives -- to be completely backwards compatible with Genesis 1 or 2, for instance. Otherwise, what would be the point?
The first three are really application changes, which a putative Genesis 9 (or whatever we were up to then) would presumably support. The last is not possible, beyond the kind of conversion tools we already get, as change inevitably requires change.
A new generation of Genesis is unnecessary and frivolous. What we need is more imagination in G8 -- props, costumes, hair... I'm not seeing a lot of original design or historical exploration. (And dForce has undermined quality costume design.) I'm seeing a lot of artists doing their versions of old DAZ content like a self-referential navel-gazing loop.
I disagree with that. Not moving forward is almost the equivalent of moving backwards, until you are no longer relevant. Kind of what happened to the Spartans.
Not to mention that I wouldn't consider better accessibility, ease of use and saving a lot of time for both artists and content creators "frivolus" by any means, I would consider it an ever pressing necessity.
I would love to see Muscle (and skin, as shown in the video between the lions back leg and stomach) simulation, Soft Body Dynamics, and Ragdoll dynamics/physics.... but realistically, I don't think we will see those in DAZ Studio for a very very long time.
Still, thanks for the video which shows what the state of the art actually is at the moment. I guess I will have to wait until I retire to have the time to learn Maya, and maybe by then I might have saved enough money to buy it :) I love the jellyfish latching on to the sphere, that is cool.
"I know many of you don't want to hear it, and wish it will never happen,[...]"
I want to hear it and I can't wait for it to be happening. It will need a morph transfer from G8 to G9though, in order to bring your own custom characters to the next level.
I don't need a new generation. But as mentioned. 1), 2) and 3) are the way to go, and then I'll have to decide to jump in or not. Which I think I will.
I would prefere some inprovements in dforce and animation first.
I only do stills. For the forseeable future, anyway. What I care about are continued improved facial expressions and improved limb rotation. Muscles and skin reacting realistically to bends would very nice, too. All these currently require third-party kludges like Bend Control and AFE, and it would be nice if they were built into the figures. It would also be nice if a future Genesis figure played better with other applications, thus expanding their market. If the changes are big enough to be worthwhile, backward compatibility will probably be limited, though.
There are some other things that would be nice, but they relate to Daz, rather than the Genesis characters.
From what I understand, once the inner parts of the models are done (skeleton, muscles, fascia, etc) they should be transferable to other characters. So I don't think it will be unreasonable to have such tools.
Couldn't agree more. I personally do transfer my characters to Cinema 4D to render with Redshift (plus all the other goodies of Cinema4D). Having so many more Render Engine choices and tools is great.
So daedalus7, which do you think is the best software for animating DAZ figures? Cinema4D, Maya, another?
For Daz Studio characters I would say...Daz Studio. That's simply because you have all poses, facial expressions and everything ready in-there and you can use it immediately.
After that I export in Alembic to the software of my choice (Cinema 4d for me because it's simple, Maya is complex, Houdini is well, you need a coder's mindset) and add liquid/gases/fire/ FX if/when needed. Finally I render everything in Redshift (I went from 2 hours renders in Iray to 5 minutes in Redshift; granted it takes time to learn and apply textures, but for animations render speed is important). Final touches in After Effects.
In order for it to become more popular among people than the current version, it has to be compatible with the most important game engines out of the box like UE4 or Unity3d without any tradeoffs.
The bodies always need to look realistic and be able to deform well during real-time animations while the characters have multilayered clothing on.
And all important morph sliders for creating a broad range of realistic people should come for free otherwise people won't see the full potential. And last but not least daz characters need a more natural look (like contemporary or historical everyday people and not like some stylized "anime" dolls).
Games will always need trade-offs when dealing with high poly models, simply because they deal with real-time, not the long render times of more realisitc renders.
And last but not least daz characters need a more natural look (like contemporary or historical everyday people and not like some stylized "anime" dolls).
Well, some people want that "anime" stylized look. And I'm fine with that. The problem arises when 3d models representing real people start looking like anime dolls (low detail body and/or faces). I added a picture in the main post to show the state of the art for 3d "real people" so that anyone can compare that with the best Genesis 8 and see the difference.
Take care.
Daedalus7, as for # 1 and #2, I would think they would be a high priority for future developments, given the improvements we have seen from Generation 4 to Genesis 8 figures. And they would certainly be welcome improvements.
Improved clothing and hair dynamics are not, for the most part, directly related to the underlying figure--They're worn, not part of the figures. I assume the next generation of figures will be as naked and bald as the previous ones. But yes, the problem with the current dynamics is how slow they are to use, considering the limited benefits in comparison to quality conforming clothes and hair adjusted with the old-fashioned sliders or poses.
Backwards compatibility has some technical issues and some business issues. A Genesis 9 would need to be usable within whatever version of Daz Studio is current at the time (DS 4.15?, 4.2?, 4.5?, 5.0?). Does the backward compatibility discourage me to get new stuff? Would the new figure require wearables and other associated items to be more complex, making their development slower and more expensive? How much hard drive space will this require, how much RAM, and how fast will processors need to be for this to be usable? What percentage of computers meet those technical specs?
Most of us have some myopia when it comes to how Daz Studio and Daz figures will be used, and assume that most users are basically like us. I make mostly stills and a few animations. I don't need figures to be exportable into game engines or applications which are true animation tools. I don't know what the market breakdown of Daz consumers is, in terms of stills creation, animators, game developers, and 3D printers. It would be interesting to know who actually is buying what. My point being that we may be at a point where the segments of the market may want very different things, and it might not be possible to serve all of those market segments with one figure, or serve all of those consumers in a commercially viable way.
Forgive the walls o' text.
So far I've mostly rendered still images, however I'd like to try some animations, but Maya is very expensive and difficult to learn. Cinema4D, I don't know. Maybe Blender would be a better option since DAZ figures can be exported to blender (with expression sets and posability); plus it is free. Do you have experience with Blender and its possibilities and ease of use? (those are always going to be conflicting features, I know). Would you recommend Blender as a starting point for learning how to make animations?
I used to use Vue with Poser imports quite a bit. But have been totally unable to import DAZ scenes into Vue with anything resembling usefulness. Would be great to have more app-specific export options.
What I would like to see in G9F is a clothing system that works a bit better. I mean every shirt and dress for G1F, G2F, G3F, and G8F dips curves in between the figures breast.Yes there are a few utilities out there that fix it a some clothing, but I would like to see some base morph in the clothing that corrects that automaticly for all clothing.
Could this be done (even in G8) with an invisible geoshell conformed to the chest, so that the clothing conforms to the shape of the geoshell mesh rather than directly to the figure mesh?
I agree, to a certain extent. I'm not sure how aware you are of the direction game engines like Unreal Engine and Unity are going, but they can now handle production-level work. I don't keep tabs on Unity, but I know that Unreal Engine is striving to erase the line that had long separated games and film (I'm including cg animation in this). So, I personally would like to see better compatibility between Daz and game engines like UE4.
Here are some of my favorite examples of digital humans within Unreal Engine:
Khaleesi (2015)
Jjahawa (2019)
Superman (2020)
Also, yes. Unreal Engine can also do stills, for anyone curious.
I would die happy if Daz could allow for more industry-standard features like the ones you've mentioned at the beginning of this thread, and better pipeline integration as well.
me too my dream is daz pay more attention like iclone did to "game engines", and maybe from g9 and above have more compatiblity and work, because the "game engines" specially unreal are evolving pretty fast when comes to tech and polygons you can have amazing exemples of characters made in real time with animation which are amazing:
https://youtu.be/9owTAISsvwk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OuCrbwEJW4
Remember how I said that Unreal Engine was looking to erase the line that separated games and film?
That demo is using a game console. Now imagine what you can achieve with a pc!
Enjoy!
Those are some impressive videos, thank you. Another proof that technology is moving very fast, forward.
These videos don't exactly deal with the technology for G9, but more with render engines (in this case, "Real-Time render engines"), but hey, I'll take it.
PS: UNREAL 5 will come in 2021.
OK, I've looked a bit more into the Unreal Engine, and here what we currently have:
Unreal Engine 4: Real-Time Photorealism!
For those interested in a slightly more in-depth description of the Unreal Engine 5:
Unreal Engine 5 Revealed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC5KtatMcUw#t=
Ziva Dynamics, the muscle system plugin for Autodesk, is looking to bring a plugin to Unreal Engine and Unity.
You can read the article Here.
Here's what Ziva can do, if you're not familiar with it:
This is a feature I wish would be available for Daz in the future. I know that it's a lot to ask for. Even if it's not gonna happen with Daz, I'm glad that it's going to be possible to get access to a proper muscle system through another accessible 3d software like Unreal. I've wanted Ziva for a long time, but because it was only available for Autodesk, I wasn't willing to throw down thousands of dollars just to play around with it.
It would be nice if Daz had a realtime rendering enigine like Eevee/Marmoset.
It would be great though if they would create more realistic humans. I personally feel like G8 is a big jump from previous iterations especially with anatomical form etc. The one thing that screams cg with daz models are the eyes though. They still have those super sharp reflections and hard ring around the irises. The iris softening part can be achieved with texturing, but improving on eye shapes, lacrimals, maniscus etc would be a big leap.
I see far too many doll eyes in the store, and idealistic symmeterical faces for too long.
Well, if not Genesis 9, I hope we will see a lot of new feature in an eventual DAZ 5.0, possibly that have to do with real-time rendering for animations (although I still love my Iray for still images).
If Reallusion was able to do it, then Daz shouldn't have a problem. Have a look at Character Creator's newest update:
