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Sory, I thought this was fitting on female figues and the quotes don't mention which product was being looked at. However, a snug fit on the pecs is not that uncommon in male sets for older figures, and I have passed on items for that reason, so my comment is not wholly inapplicable.
It only appears that way, but in practice I have spent less than $20 for every G9 Core Figure (didn't buy Pixie), and I got a couple (Nikolai & Josie) for less than $11. I never got a new G8.1 Core Figure for less than $22+, and since I would also buy the HD Add-On (with only a few exceptions), it added $19+ more. So, $42 for G8.1 plus HD versus >$19 for G9 HD included. Having said that, I've only spent a day trying to turn Genesis 9 into a distinctive character that I liked, and I failed.
Yeah. G9 figures are cheaper if you run the numbers. On the other hand by now I have so much G8 stuff to go with G8 ones, customisation is far easier for me.
I got on the G9 bandwagon early on.. I do pin-ups... The close up renders are nice. Her facal feature are very good. Her bending out of the box is better than G8 females was at the same point but still needs work.. Her Breast are the real sticking point.. No pun intended.. Because G9 is a binary model both male and female her chest area is a real problem for pin-up work .. I do not see an easy work around for this problem for the female G9.. I will be sticking with G8 most of the time from now on ..
You didn't ask me, but I'll answer. The breasts sit too low for a young woman. An older woman's breasts may hang down to where a man's pectorals are, but youthful breasts tend to be positioned high. Also, the breast shapes are not as natural-looking. Mind you, I had a problem with many G8F characters with low-hanging fruit. And there were several body morphs that I would've preferred to use but didn't due to this factor.
I've been buying a bit of both. Mostly G9.
I'm rather surprised that more people haven't indicated that they are moving on to G9. I'm still on the fence with G9. It hasn't been a conscious decision, but more just being practical?? Thinking about it, I'm sure that a big part of it is that many PA's aren't discounting their back catalog G9 items yet. For example, there were a couple nice sets of heels for G9 that I missed the introductory sales (yes, I do have a life where I can't focus on DAZ sales every day/week), and they haven't gone on sale since then. Sorry, but the increased cost of living, coupled with unexpected big ticket expenses means that I can't justify the new increased prices for a hobby. So if vendors want to "encourage" me to impulse buy during the intro sales by not putting their older G9 back catalog items on sale, it isn't going to work (for me).
Since you mentioned it .... uummm .... I'd have to agree. But it is possible to more or less "fix" that issue fairly well with morphs included in the Genesis 9 Body Shapes dialed in.
(Warning - another nipple rant ... sort of) However, even worse to me the nipples seem slightly misplaced compared to the norm (too far to the outside). True, the placement isn't totally unrepresentative of what can be found in reality, but it's not the "ideal" placement (just do a Google search for female nipple placement - there are a lot of links to what plastic surgeons consider is the "proper" location). Yes, this can be fixed with morphs (I have one character where the PA fixed both the position and general breast shape), however this causes some other issues with breast geometry which can make clothes look a little off (as well as some other odd shape issues when using additional morphs). Of course both of these issues with the Base G9F shape can be "fixed" by getting breast geo-grafts from other stores, but then you have even more issues with fitting cloths to the geo-grafts on your character.
Maybe this isn't an issue with all G9F figures/characters?? I only have 5 so far (all DO's), but it is quite obvious on 4 of the 5 figures. Maybe it's just my OCD kicking in, but it just bothers me even if I plan on the figure being fully clothed. It definitely affects my desire to use G9F (yeah, I know - just get over it!). I'm pretty confident that I'm one of only a handful that see nipple placement as an issue since I haven't seen any other posts about it. But it still bothers me. Now I'll shut up and go back into the shadows. (Rant off)
I actually want to highlight this, and I'm glad you posted it; this is what I meant earlier in the thread about a tradeoff of annoyances. If someone is really, really bothered by part of a figure--something that isn't easily fixable, that they're constantly having to adjust for--in my experience that's incredibly hard to just get over. Because it's always there, and it always looks wrong unless you find a permanent fix for it that isn't just a bandaid.
And it's completely down to the individual artist! I don't notice the nipple placement thing, but that doesn't mean it's not a genuine problem for you. I can see what @Timbales means about the chest area with G9, but it doesn't bother me that much--which is bizarre, honestly, because the thing that I could never get past when trying to make transmasculine characters on a G8F base was...an issue with the chest not looking right, in a very similar way. G9 has elements that I think could be better, but it's nothing that's making me stew in frustration, thinking, "Ugh, if only this worked in a slightly different way" or "If only this workaround was possible." And that really does make an enormous difference in how much I enjoy using the figure, to the point that this will probably be the last Daz generation I invest in (I don't expect them to continue with the unified base mesh since that's the source of pretty much all the complaints, and I'm not going back to two figures).
At the end of the day these are tools to help us create what we want to, and if there's some aspect of it that's incompatible with what we want to do, it's totally reasonable for relatively minor things to be dealbreakers.
I have bought NOTHING of G9s, but have sculpt/created 12 to 13 beautiful characters thus far, for the first time in my life - I enjoyed gaining new skill set and fully understanding DAZ STUDIO!
Like everyone else, I'm waiting for decent clothes for my G9 males characters and more decent black M/B/Fskin textures. Plus, I also feel that G9 should have its own computer to store your morphs creations etc.
B
I guess keep an eye out for G9 morph packs from Thorne / Handspan Studios. Since they tend to specialize in delicate pixie-type characters, their morph products could help with adjusting characters in the way Xyer0 mentioned.
Personally, I am not impressed in the slightest with g9 and hope to utilize g8 for a looooong time. Something is very off about g9..It looks worse than g8 in many regards...
As SOON as Ultimate Natural Bend morphs come out for G9 I'll finally be able to get the G9 products that I squirrelled away in my wishlist, until then, it's strictly G8.1 as G9's joint bends are too unrealistic and impractical for my needs at this point.
However, G9's face/eyes are second to none with its realism!
I tried G9, had issues with Male pecs and the nipples on the Female G9, until they fix the torso topology, not for me, the Male pecs are awful.
Frankly I have been buying environments and props lately, and exploring some older V4 stuff.
If you look at the mesh close enough, you can imagine what a challenge the creation of Ultimate Natural Bend morphs will be.
I have no doubt, it will take some serious sculpting mastery to accomplish as the mesh has been in question by some, I honestly haven't cared as much to even research it, not until the joints, and other parts of the anatomy such as the arms and the like have been taken care of, otherwise, it's collecting virtual dust...
(But if desperation calls I'll look into making my own JCMs!)
But whatever the case, I'm guessing they would have to know what an excellent opportunity this is for their product to eventually hit the store!
I think it's going to be a while before there's anything like UNB for G9.
On one hand mesh structure like this makes sculpting far easier, on the other hand older generations have specific geometry loop placement for areas like limb joints and midriff. So G9 is much easier to work with for PAs, but G8 works better out of the box with less modifications for the end user.
I can see one problem with G9 that may or may not affect interactive license sales and that is how it decimates for things like animation or games. Because G9 doesn't really have specific limb joint loops and relies more on the mesh density in this regard, decimating it might end with having to rebuild joint topology because now it has too few loops and the arm bends like a plastic straw.
This! ^ And not just because it's consistent with what I think. It's consistent with what various other users and PAs have been saying all along.
This is what I was thinking of, but never had the right terminology; but yes, it will be somewhat difficult with making my loops for the joints and the like before I even think of morphing in any anatomical elements such as the knees/elbows and loins, that is why I have so much respect for modellers and sculptors, I was hoping to import UNBM morphs over and re-ERC them myself, but it looks like I'll not only have to re-build the specific G8.1 geometry loops but match them exactly to G8.1 I'll wager...
So, it will be better to build my own, despite being a novice with geometry loop placement. :P But I will remain patient as we're looking at a year or so before the UNBMs arrive!
'Ole noodle knees 9 should have spent more time in the oven so to speak, imagine the guesswork involved with having to build geo-loops with the resulting decimated character with only a smattering of polygons to work with, so the alternative for the interactive license carrier will be forced to buy a 3rd-party solution on top of the Daz original license I'll wager.
There also has to be parity between Daz's first-party characters as simply creating UNBMs for a single character such as Victoria is easy enough, but to have those morphs uniformly transfer between G9 and V9 is going to be another challenge *unless the Daz originals provide parity between themselves, otherwise, they would have to sculpt for two different character types as they did for G 8.1 and V 8.1 as the last UNBMs had parity between the two!
*I don't have V9 so I don't know.
The good thing is that most 3rd-party characters are usually based on either G9 or V9 so that is covered along with having the male included, I imagine only slight adjustments between the two genders as the geo-loops themselves will remain consistent between the two, at least that's my theory!
I think the usual interactive license users will simply stay with G8+ because it's "good enough" and none of the advantages of G9 apply outside of the Daz studio. Aside of having mesh that is far easier to simplify, G8 also isn't so reliant on HD morphs (whoever will be making any game or animation and are serious about it won't be animating it inside Daz so HD morphs won't matter), facial rig on G8.1 also is "good enough" even if G9 one is better.
If you want something to rival MetaHuman and for whatever reason you don't want MetaHuman then G9 is the better option of the two, but it's not the best general purpose mesh. I don't think it's going to be a huge hit in terms of interactive licences.
Oh interesting topic, PixelSploiting!
Actually, if you are trying to simplify a mesh, HD is irrelevant and G9 will work MUCH better than G8: it's been designed for more compatibility outside Daz, and also the more evenly laid out mesh will be much easier to modify and work with.
Good point!
Problem with this assumed more compatibility is, G8 is more like a bog standard mesh you can see anywhere else, except with more mesh density. But you take out every second loop and what you are left with is a very standard human mesh that probably could be stuffed into any game engine. G9 has much denser, but also much simpler geometry in limb joints. There's knee and elbow cap, but otherwise there's simply more loops there. You might end having to manually redo joints after it's simplified.
G9 looks like something you want to sculpt, G8 looks more like an end result of retopology.
I was recently sculpting a human body with armor plating instead of skin, I've given it a try on both G8 and G9. G9 I could simply sculpt even in Blender, G8 was a nightmare to sculpt something as simple as armor seam running diagonally across the pectoral. Same loops that make torso look better whilst bending were always messing with the brush. In the end I made G8 version by subdivide modeling and G9 version by sculpting.
If I had to sculpt details for baking normals for G8 character again I'd use G9 mesh shrinkwrapped to G8 shape but never again I'd attempt sculpting on G8 topology whilst having any other alternative.
Edit:
For me benefit of G9 existing is that now I can work from the scratch on G9 shaped to be G8 clone and then rebake end results down to G8 instead of having to fight with G8 like before. Lazy, but effective.
Yes indeed, this is why G9 works so good with Blender or Maya or Mixamo or UE or whatever you can think of .. LOL.
G9 has absolutely no weight outside of daz studio. And if you ask me it has very little weight inside daz studio too. G9 is a design flop due to deficiencies to understand how a rigged figure works. You can enhance details with HD but you can't replace topology with HD, because topology aka mesh flow is necessary for the mesh mechanics aka deformations to work fine.
PA efforts to produce "conventionally attractive" G9F characters seem to miss the mark, retaining G9's mannish shoulders or fat arms, or having weird shaping in the neck, chest, hips, etc.
I don't sculpt or know much about those aspects of the shape - I just eyeball (or quickly skim, at this point) the new releases, and I was starting to think G9's general aesthetic might be less "artistic choice" and more "forced by technical aspects of the unisex figure".
Mid-reply addition: While typing this post, I was inspired to run a quick search and found this guide:
Converting the shapes seems possible, although I suppose the conversions would have the bending issues mentioned in this and other threads (and the eye deformation mentioned in the video). I'll continue the "wait and see" approach with G9, but with a little more hope for more appealing characters in the future.