What happend to the creators of the DAZ Elite Texture series?
linvanchene
Posts: 1,382
edited and removed by user
Post edited by linvanchene on
Comments
Well, there are many more than you mentioned:
V4:
http://www.daz3d.com/v4-elite-texture-marie
http://www.daz3d.com/v4-elite-texture-ariana
http://www.daz3d.com/v4-elite-texture-katie
M4:
http://www.daz3d.com/m4-elite-texture-rob
http://www.daz3d.com/m4-elite-texture-stratton
http://www.daz3d.com/m4-elite-bundle
Generation 5:
http://www.daz3d.com/michael-5 (M5 Elite Texture Phillip)
http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-5 (V5 Elite Texture Bree)
http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-5-elite-texture-nichole
http://www.daz3d.com/stephanie-5-elite-texture-joanie
I agree those are some of the best skins out there. Although if I had to select just one DAZ PA, I'd vote for Raiya.
My main complaint about the elite series was there has way too much spec and worked only on certain lighting conditions. Frankily I think some of them were terrible. The HD textures are MUCH better in how they are textured.
"Elite" is--I think--essentially just a marketing term, and I'm not aware of any specific criteria that distinguish "Elite" skins from other high-quality DAZ original skin textures like David 5 or the 6th Generation textures. Throw in PA products, and there are plenty of top quality textures that aren't called "Elite." And there is a great deal of variety in "Elite" textures, both in terms of quality and just features/appearance in general. So maybe they decided to drop the term because it had become somewhat meaningless.
I do agree with you on that point. My suspicion is that the new textures are intentionally more evenly colored and have fewer marks or "blemishes" because that's what most customers prefer. Personally I like my textures to be a little more imperfect-looking.
Also, I think the difference in shaders between the Elite textures and the 6th-generation ones might be a factor (for DAZ Studio users, that is).
Well, I think Morris did at least a couple of them, if I remember correctly. she is still around and releasing stuff.
Skin should not be sugar-like or Barbie-like, so the imperfections make the skin... well, no pun intended - perfect. Freckles...! The term "elite" may stem from a boom of those sets when Elite Morphs first came out. I may be wrong. It is quite deceiving now given Genesis, Gen2F and Gen2M don't have elite morphs (at least I don't know about that).
To sum it up in short, the production of Elite textures was given up because it was too cost intensive. I was one of the very few artists who created an Elite texture so I should know.
And to make it clear to all those who don't know or can't read the store pages, "Elite" stands for a lot of qualities you can't find anymore, not in the DAZ store or elsewhere. I am thankful that those textures are still available, even at that silly price, you really have no idea what a huge amount of work and effort and money went into making those.
Thank you for clarifying, Jepe! :)
I am a big fan of the Elite textures. I think I have most of them.
Some time ago I made test of shoulder bends in V4, G1 and G2. I used the V4 Elite Texture: Katie to do this. She has freckled skin with a lot of skin features in the shoulder region that bring out any stretching of the skin. This is a version of the skin texture changed to use the AoA Subsurface shader.
In the image below I have V4 in the red bikini, G1 using the V4 shape in the green bikini and G2F using the V4 shape in the black bikini. The top row of images shows the arm out horizontal in the T-pose. The lower row of images has the shoulder bent down -75 deg. The V4 shoulder will bend down to -85 deg before hitting the limit, but I left it at -75 which is the limit on G1 and G2F.
There is obvious skin stretching on V4 shoulder. There are morph products available at other stores for V4 that may fix this stretching. It is clear that G1 is much better. To my eye the skin on G2 looks less stretched and more natural around the shoulder.
So the interesting thing is the realistic Elite skin textures bring out some of the short comings of V4 bending. Now that we have base models that are much better at bending, DAZ has stopped making Elite textures.
Fortunately, we can still use the old Elite textures on G2F/M.