Do you think Daz has plateaud with genesis 2?
bernierb_cb0dc1880b
Posts: 19
There is a ton of product for Genesis 2 both for male and female and personally i feel that aside a few things daz has pretty much everything covered as far as a figure could go , morphs and everything else.
The only thing i can see as a revolution for daz would be clothing and hair. Those need a lot of work, especially in the physics department where they need to obey the laws of physics more properly, like gravity, speed, wind.... etc... more easily at least or automagically.
I think only daz studio could give us that down the road but what would be the price?
I have come to love daz studio over poser because of its ease of compatibility with their other products and the fact that they seem to want to make it evolve more than poser.
on the flip side....
I am sure that genesis 3 is on the way somehow because that is their bread and butter but will people will be willing to let all of genesis 2 go and their investment in it for the sake of a new product that may or may not work? When all the bases for people's need will be covered by a multitude of products then there would be no need to get a new product. Genesis 3 will have to have a serious magic trick up its sleeve to dethrone genesis 2 i would say...
my 2 cents...
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I'm actually almost thoroughly satisfied with Genesis 2. It will take a lot to get me to move on from it, but here's a trick a Genesis 3 figure set could pull out of its hat to earn my undivided attention on release day: more refined facial morphs.
The ability of DAZ figures to smile, yawn, yell in in pain and outrage, etc. has come miles and miles through the generations. And it's been helped by some very gifted PA's adding value with morph packs.
But the musculature wrapping the lower cheeks and mouth is incredibly nuanced and the full articulation is fiendishly difficult to replicate with a 3D model. That's why, sometimes you just can't qui-ii-te get the expression you're after, especially (in my case) for open mouths, despite all the progress that's been made.
A Gen3 character that offered some serious detail work there would probably wind up in my cart, even if there wasn't a single additional improvement over the Genesis 2 line.
-- Dan
PS I don't resent having to reinvest in wardrobe and hair nearly as much as I did in pre-Autofit days.
PS #2: To be clear, I think a substantial advance would require a higher LOD in the face, not just a new set of morph tweaks. DAZ would have to judge carefully what segment of their marketplace ran equipment that could reasonably manage scenes with such figures before ever undertaking to model them.
(Moved to Commons as it was not a product suggestion.)
My guess is Genesis 3 figures will come out with DAZ Studio 5 but that could be a year or 2 away. What would be cool sooner would be a new 4 legged animal base mesh from which dogs, cats, horses, elephants, and yes cows could be created.
I'm still hoping for a morphing set which will let me alter both the height and width of the G2F head, in general. The latter can be done in a round-about fashion by altering the jaw, but it's a compromise and little more.
Would solve lots of problems!
There are already some threads on what people would want, or not want, in a new generation of figures (or DS).
I was happy with Michael2, then I was happy with Michael3, then I was happy with Michael4, then I was happy with Genesis and thought nothing could be better. Now I'm happy with Genesis2 and think that nothing could be better. But regardless of whether that is true (I doubt that it is, there is always room for improvement), DAZ MUST continue to introduce new models and features. It's the marketing strategy. As soon as the perception of improvement stops, the house of cards will fall. So, count the days until Studio5, 6, & 7 and Genesis 3, 4 & 5 and entirely new wardrobes of precisely the same styles that will be even more expensive than what has come before.
There is nothing new under the sun, just new generations of buyers with increased expectations.
I feel Gen 2 males have been a disappointment overall to me so no, I don't think they've plateaued. Strange chests, weird heads, and wooden expression. Things that never really improved. Gen 2 female- is better, but she is the figure that is focused on.
I think in many ways, genesis male was a better and more flexible figure.
Three things that could be revamped (without going to next gen bone->muscle->fat->skin modelling)
I don't believe the current tri-ax rigging system is really compatible with making the shoulders look decent when raised past 45 degrees, and trying to address this with corrective morphs is just plain silly. Something has to be done about volume alteration by sliding, not stretching.
Unisex Genesis 1 figures really do have more realistic shaping potential than the separated Genesis 2. Taking what was learned from the Genesis 2 debacle and returning to the unisex mesh is the obvious next step.
Radically limit the number of base UV sets. There are too many Gen 2 figures who look just fine with another UV set. Either use a mesh distortion criteria for deciding which figures need a remap, or pick an arbitrary number of body types for UVs (fashion, heroic, teen/fairy, etc). I doubt the number needs to go past 5.
I said three things. Here's a bonus 4th.
Autofit/autofollow currently is an n^2 mess, only working well when there's a direct figure-figure conversion. Map figure -> base -> figure, and knock things down to n (or maybe n log(n)). And fix projection mapping for feet.
One thing that could help with unisex mesh is some procedural or other uv intelligence to surfaces. So that, say, when a character has large breasts or calves or whatever, the skin and clothing can be adjusted to be more evenly 'spread out'.
Another advantage would be an ability to flag textures or parts of an object with varying 'stretch.' So, for example, the buttons on a blouse could be set as rigid objects moved on the underlying texture.
In short, I think improvements to how the models function would be significantly more important than improving the model itself.
Imagine varying 'skin looseness' maps, so that wrinkles can form realistically at the knuckles, and you can express the difference between springy youthful skin and more loose rigid aged skin (or leathery hide, scales, whatever)
I think considering Genesis 2 items far outsold genesis 1 items and is has more presences in other stores other than DAZ than genesis 1 ever did, I wouldn't think you'll see a unisex figure again with all the unisex clothing. The paying customers like their sexy Vickies so they can run through the temples, not a flat chested androgynous figure. ;)
Yeah, weird to quote myself, but I just this moment got done reading the latest edition (June) of Scientific American. There's an article on page 29 entitled "The Upgrade Game: Why Feature Clogged Tech Updates Keep Selling and Why We Keep Buying"
Yep, it's the wave of the future. Planned obsolescence on steroids. :-S The perfect solution for techno masochists.
Yeah, weird to quote myself, but I just this moment got done reading the latest edition (June) of Scientific American. There's an article on page 29 entitled "The Upgrade Game: Why Feature Clogged Tech Updates Keep Selling and Why We Keep Buying"
Yep, it's the wave of the future. Planned obsolescence on steroids. :-S The perfect solution for techno masochists.
Its done in every industry. Why sell your best now when you can make more money selling it gradually over time.
But then there is actual growth too where new technologies are introduced and it changes the game once again.
I was pretty darn happy with Genesis. But I like G2 a lot better. It'll be hard for me to switch, though, since I am doing a webcomic and once you set a given figure as a particular character, it's hard to change... it'd be like bringing in a new actor to play an established role.
There's a lot more that could be done with 3D figures, but at this point the limitations of the rendering software make it a question of whether the resources required for something even more realistic would be worth it to the average person. Keep in mind that HD capability has existed for DS for over a year now, but how much actual market penetration has there been for that feature? At this point I'm far more interested in getting better hair, cloth draping and multiple collisions, because without those, even the most 100% realistic figure is never going to look as good as it possibly could.
I actually just swapped some characters in my webcomic from G1 to G2... took a lot of work, and it isn't perfect, but I'm also switching to IRay so it's less obvious.