Getting on the 9 train, or not

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  • plasma_ringplasma_ring Posts: 1,025

    Oso3D said:

    There's already a LOT you can do and spend $0 money. The following image was based purely on G2-G8 assets and only the free Genesis 9 content.

    Out of the box, free, there's a LOT Genesis 9 offers.

    Oh that looks fantastic. I really dig the proportional sliders.

  • PendraiaPendraia Posts: 3,598

    Oso3D said:

    There's already a LOT you can do and spend $0 money. The following image was based purely on G2-G8 assets and only the free Genesis 9 content.

    Out of the box, free, there's a LOT Genesis 9 offers.

    Very cool image!

     

  • I'm not much of a pioneer. I'll wait until the town is settled before I move in.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,054
    edited October 2022

    ...while I like the return to the unified mesh (makes creating more petite female characters easier as so many, even "teen" and supposedly delicate fae figures, tend to have overly large busts which are difficult to dial down without distortion, even when using dedicated breast morphing utilities).. For some content (particularly merchant/developer) we no longer need to purchase separate male and female versions like Zev0's new Growing Up Morphs (and maybe finally, there will be a Skin Builder that will work on the male characters as well). .So for some things such as merchant resource, morph, and shaping content, it will be a less costly. 

    Adding the "naughty bits" to the Character Essentials, while  welcome by some, no longer requires spning big zlotys on a character pro bundle and possibly make them a bit less attractive as well.  In a way for those who do  custom character design, it actually is better to have mesh based "add-ons" like brows and eyelashes in their own set. rather than having to buy individual characters. However,the bottom line is how will this affect sales if part of the customer base doesn't need to purchase as much content as was required with the last four generations.

    That said, I'm pretty much going to let this train leave the station without me. Several have mentioned about 8K textures which is a big "nope" for my old hardware.  Then there's what I sense will be a serious lack of compatibility with much of my existing library. I still primarily work with G3 and have developed a sizeable number of characters off the figure,   I've also been slowly been increasing my G8 library (though still rather selectively) thanks to much of the content going on sale these days (even appearing in Fastgrab, Flash Sales, and Daz+ For A Day offers). 

    Besides myself I know there is a reasonable portion of folks in the community here who are also on very limited incomes and simply can't justify throwing more money at a new generation again, particularly as this one may not be as  compatible with a fair portion of we already have, and require greater expense to be so. 

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • Ghosty12Ghosty12 Posts: 2,058

    If my new base character buying habits are any indication, it will probably be 2024 or 2025 before I buy into Genesis 9.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 41,054
    edited October 2022

    ...about when G10 is about to be released.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • tsroemitsroemi Posts: 2,744

    I think I'll stay put for the most part. Like so many others, I have a gazillion G8 characters that I never even rendered yet, morph packages I never tried, and I've been spending way WAY too much here in the past couple years. G9 sure looks nice, and does seem to have improvements, but none of them are of much value to me personally. Surely not enough to start a whole new train of spending when I've got so much stuff already lying around.

    It's nice that we can play with the base model for free again, and I'll absolutely do that, and will probably get the morph packages once they're out. That'll be about it for the foreseeable future I reckon. Unless they come out with something spectacular that only works with G9. But I don't really see that coming.

  • kervalakervala Posts: 186

    I plan to switch to Genesis 9 and convert my G8.1 characters once official morphs packs will be released. Since my characters are based on G8 characters (Gia 8, Rynne 8, Lucas 8, etc...), I'm pretty sure their G9 versions will be completely different, so I won't have choice that create morphs in Blender based on their previous apperance.

    There are so many improvements in Genesis 9 (especially for expressions and poses) that'll be a pitty to not use them :)

     

     

  • I don't think Genesis 9 is for me. I've moved on from static images and invested a lot in learning animation. I've bought into iClone/CC4 now and using Genesis 8 characters just fine all the way through into Unreal Engine to produce great animation cinematics. I can't justify all the money I have already spent on G8 to jump into a new generation. I'm actually using so much more of the clothing, scenes and props I own now in UE5 and quite happy with it all. With the advent of Metahumans now, I appreciate the realism factor much more with that commodity than the new Genesis. This is not to say that Genesis 9 doesn't look absolutely outstanding so far, it just doesn't seem to be a game-changer enough for me. With the release of mesh-to-metahuman I can also use the moprhed mesh from G8 heads and create high quality animatable characters.

  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 7,019

    I'll buy the head&body base morphs, when they come out, to see how G9 fits into my workflow. The base figure comes with decent enough content/features, but it's reacting really sluggish on my PC in the 4.21 Beta version of Studio I'm using. So, I'll probably wait some time longer until I start investing some money into G9.

  • rono64rono64 Posts: 58

    I got on the train, but damn, no materials on Anatomy I had to buy seperate?

    I have real real problems with the torso topology, but will wait and see for Morphs.

    I see joint bends that are going to be problematic, but will wait and see.

    The biggest problem is the "Death by a thousand cuts" style of buying every little thing, the rollout has left such a bad taste, no normal skin for Victoria (oh yes, the patteneted, "but there are other skins" answer), and ONE color of eyes. Before we get all "Daz Protective" remember WE PAYED MONEY FOR THIS. I feel it's just not worth the cost and frankly the whole thing is an insult to paying customers.

    I call BS on all of this, it's a marketing scam to get you to pay more and more in smaller increments.

    I think I will skip the rest of 9 and just use older figures.

    Awaiting the, "but it's Daz, we can't complain about this stuff" replies.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 38,213

    it's not a train, its a handcar

  • beregarberegar Posts: 269
    edited October 2022

    Yes, most likely, but I will be more picky. I realized with Genesis 8 that I mostly ended up using a combination of same few character shapes dialed to various levels and tweaking them with the head and body morphs or with stuff like HFS fantasy shapes. I also have favorite skins to throw in (i.e. Carlos Miguel - props to Cherubit for my fav skin by the way). There are plenty I don't really use at all or that look pretty much identical when you apply them to the same shape. Should help with content bloat, too.

    I also quickly realized that as far as male clothing go, you don't need 10 tube t-shirts, shorts and pants which all end up looking the same, so I mostly buy stuff that looks different, exotic and/or is good for kitbashing.

    The real benefit I see in Gen9 over Gen8 is that a lot of the fantasy stuff can be gender agnostic and the female clothing is often better made and more varied. Now I don't necessarily give my guys "combat high heels" or "a chainmail bikini" (well tops at least) but I can use the capes/cloaks, loincloths, headgear and the like.

    I'd say the minimum character collection for my needs follows my current setup which is something along the lines of Brute, Ollie, Sagatto, Swole, and Budai (which all hopefully get upgradeds) and a few of the Emrys' characters that also hopefully get upgraded (the male teens, Karl, Walker, Seb), some of the nice skins and shapes from Kooki99 (i.e. Vince), and pretty much any male stuff from Yannek, Morris and Cherubit. I'd also like to have extras that have something different going with them such as Colossus, Folco, Maxx, Niko (Alex definitely should do more characters) and Underbelly. Oh and various body hair items, short hairs and beards as those are the easiest ways to give variety to characters. Naturally basic body and head morphs and HFS shapes go here too. I don't tend to buy characters with very little body variety from the base, unless they are dirt cheap or have excellent skin, because you can easily adjust those with basic head and body morphs.

    I also collect all kinds of monster shapes (especially stuff from JoLab and Josh Crockett, not so much Raw) but as far as mostly human characters go, those are probably the ones I use most. Some for skin, some for shapes, some for both... eh, this turned into Gen9 wishlist.

    Edit: that being said, the type of hair items I use convert very well from Gen8 to Gen9 so eh... I'm going to be more picky with those as well.

    Post edited by beregar on
  • PaintboxPaintbox Posts: 1,633
    edited October 2022

    Cautiously optimistic. I bought the essentials and growing up just to dip into the water a bit. I am waiting for a few works from favourite PAs whose style I like. I mean you can still use ALL of G3,G8 (or before as some do!) and mix and match slowly.

    The work done to expressions is impressive, and makes the uncanny valley a lot less pronounced I noticed.

    But I am not rushing through the gate.

    Post edited by Paintbox on
  • takezo_3001takezo_3001 Posts: 1,979

    Two morph packs will have to come out before I can use G9 proper, the head/body morphs, and K.H.Image studio's Ultimate morphs, otherwise I'll keep using G8.1!

  • silver_nutbarsilver_nutbar Posts: 3
    edited October 2022

    I'm on the hype train, but there is only so much to do with it until the morphs are out. I do plan to get natty's fantasy morphs today or tomorrow, but I really wanted the daz head and body morphs first. If this actually shows up, I made this with a little fiddling.

     

    This is more or less with the base morphs that came with character essentials. I don't think I shoved any vicky9 into it.

     

     

    and here's a little of both, though she seems a bit... really bendy. You know, like a wacky waving inflatable arm man.

     

    Post edited by silver_nutbar on
  • ColinFrenchColinFrench Posts: 647
    edited October 2022

    I'll keep an eye on the train but won't climb on board for the foreseeable future.

    Why? QC. I've spent almost nothing on Daz products over the past year due in part to the slipping quality control. The screw ups in G9 don't give me any hope -- botched roll-out, missing materials, missing morphs, million-poly boots, jewelry with 8K textures, etc, etc. You would think for the first of a new generation Daz would try to get things as perfect as possible.

    Ah well, there are other trains chugging along elsewhere.

    Post edited by ColinFrench on
  • WendyLuvsCatz said:

    it's not a train, its a handcar

    THank you for the laugh XD

    I'm enjoying people just desperately cranking that cart as much as they can to get forward, one freebie at a time XD

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,009

    one of the things that bothers me, among many, is that overall you can do what you need with G, G2, G3, G8, and G8.1, or G9 ... I did some renders of G9 using the skin textures and they are nice. So are textures for the other generations. I guess its about how you use any particular model in a scene. Do you really need what G9 has to offer? I think I would more like to be able to just buy skin textures and not an actually character, and churn out my own face features using morphs. 

    Give me clothing converters for each generation ...but then I wonder why bother when I'm already overloaded with stuff, and have most converters, specialty morphs and all that for G8 and G3. At some point its saturation and overkill, even though it is really nice to play around with a new generation of characters. 

    It will be a pretty slow slog for me, but I did buy the V9 expressions and the makeup product, which I think should have come with V9 to begin with. At least the makeup, which is limited as well. I don;t like what I'm seeing as far as limited options withing any product and having to buy more to get what we used to get all the time with a product. 
     

     

  • MelissaGTMelissaGT Posts: 2,611
    edited October 2022

    kervala said:

    I plan to switch to Genesis 9 and convert my G8.1 characters once official morphs packs will be released. Since my characters are based on G8 characters (Gia 8, Rynne 8, Lucas 8, etc...), I'm pretty sure their G9 versions will be completely different, so I won't have choice that create morphs in Blender based on their previous apperance.

    There are so many improvements in Genesis 9 (especially for expressions and poses) that'll be a pitty to not use them :)

    Even with character conversion, the UV's and materials are different, so how would you get around that? You'd likely have to find a different skin altogether for them. Using the UV transfer tool to go from V7 to the base G8 UV is one thing...they aren't all that different...but the difference between G8 to 8.1 to 9 are B.I.G.  

    Post edited by MelissaGT on
  • KeikuKeiku Posts: 143

    RadioactiveLily said:

    I've been playing with what's free for G9 a little bit, but at this point I'm just waiting to let things build up a bit more.  And to see what fixes and workarounds people come up with in regards to backwards compatibility and new features that need some adjusting to (like what do we do with lips now).  As with every generation, I'll eventually get myself fully on board.  It'll just take a bit.

    I too am wondering about changes to adjustments such as the lips. I've asked in a few places around the forum. No answer as of yet.

  • KeikuKeiku Posts: 143

    outrider42 said:

    Olo_Ordinaire said:

    I've been uninstalling lots of Genesis 8 characters to reduce load time.  I recently decided to just stop buying new characters until the load issues are resolved. I know the load time issue is probably due to a design decision made when most of the developers were in middle school, but I just don't want to wait 5, 6, 8 minutes to load a scene with characters in it.

    So, I'm not even tempted by a Genesis 9 glamour gal...

    Turbo Loader is the thing for you. You don't have to uninstall anything again to load faster. Just run it one time and select the stuff you want keep. It hides the morphs you don't want by simply marking them in Windows so that Daz will not read them. If you decide you want to use some of these, just run the script again and enable the exact morphs you want back on. The script is pretty fast, too, you can't install/uninstall as fast as this script.

    It breaks everything down in one place, so you don't have to worry about whether you forgot something. Just run the script and it will tell you which morphs you have active or disabled.

    I'm sure he is working on an update for Genesis 9.

    That Turbo Loader looks like a really great tool. I wonder how much it would help Genesis 9 if they do update for it, since G9 is already much slower (for me at least on a 3090) than 8.1 is, even with no extra morphs loaded.

  • MelissaGT said:

    kervala said:

    I plan to switch to Genesis 9 and convert my G8.1 characters once official morphs packs will be released. Since my characters are based on G8 characters (Gia 8, Rynne 8, Lucas 8, etc...), I'm pretty sure their G9 versions will be completely different, so I won't have choice that create morphs in Blender based on their previous apperance.

    There are so many improvements in Genesis 9 (especially for expressions and poses) that'll be a pitty to not use them :)

    Even with character conversion, the UV's and materials are different, so how would you get around that? You'd likely have to find a different skin altogether for them. Using the UV transfer tool to go from V7 to the base G8 UV is one thing...they aren't all that different...but the difference between G8 to 8.1 to 9 are B.I.G.  

    As long as you have the UVs for both, DAZ has a map transfer function that is pretty good. It transferred Joe Quick's custom UVs to G8.1 ones with pretty good accuracy.
     

    Most of this stuff can be done, it just takes trial and error and experimenting.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,169

    Eboshijaana said:

    WendyLuvsCatz said:

    it's not a train, its a handcar

    THank you for the laugh XD

    I'm enjoying people just desperately cranking that cart as much as they can to get forward, one freebie at a time XD

    Another thank you for the laugh

     

  • I purchased Victoria 9 because, with discounts, it came out to only $20.00, and the figure might be useful for some projects later. That said, I have figures and characters from Michael and Victoria 3 all the way to 8.1, and assets for them. I won't be depending on V9 any time soon.

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,009

    colongraphics said:

    I purchased Victoria 9 because, with discounts, it came out to only $20.00, and the figure might be useful for some projects later. That said, I have figures and characters from Michael and Victoria 3 all the way to 8.1, and assets for them. I won't be depending on V9 any time soon.

    that is one thing..I have Vi,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, 8.1 .. at some point I guess I almost have to have V9.  

  • davesodaveso Posts: 7,009

    colongraphics said:

    I purchased Victoria 9 because, with discounts, it came out to only $20.00, and the figure might be useful for some projects later. That said, I have figures and characters from Michael and Victoria 3 all the way to 8.1, and assets for them. I won't be depending on V9 any time soon.

    that is one thing..I have Vi,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, 8.1 .. at some point I guess I almost have to have V9.  

  • RL_MediaRL_Media Posts: 339
    edited October 2022

    If past releases are any indication, will probably be about a year. Once there is a shitton of worthy morphs to use. More if the clothes and hair from g8 don't play nice.

    Post edited by RL_Media on
  • Keiku said:

    RadioactiveLily said:

    I've been playing with what's free for G9 a little bit, but at this point I'm just waiting to let things build up a bit more.  And to see what fixes and workarounds people come up with in regards to backwards compatibility and new features that need some adjusting to (like what do we do with lips now).  As with every generation, I'll eventually get myself fully on board.  It'll just take a bit.

    I too am wondering about changes to adjustments such as the lips. I've asked in a few places around the forum. No answer as of yet.

    If not directly to you the answer has been given - use Layered Image Editor (or dfiuuse Overlay, or a Geoemtry Shell) with masks.

  • PerttiAPerttiA Posts: 10,024

    Richard Haseltine said:

    Keiku said:

    RadioactiveLily said:

    I've been playing with what's free for G9 a little bit, but at this point I'm just waiting to let things build up a bit more.  And to see what fixes and workarounds people come up with in regards to backwards compatibility and new features that need some adjusting to (like what do we do with lips now).  As with every generation, I'll eventually get myself fully on board.  It'll just take a bit.

    I too am wondering about changes to adjustments such as the lips. I've asked in a few places around the forum. No answer as of yet.

    If not directly to you the answer has been given - use Layered Image Editor (or dfiuuse Overlay, or a Geoemtry Shell) with masks.

    Does that make them glossy? 

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