Karmen 9 HD / Pro Bundle
Rod Wise Driggo
Posts: 2,212
in The Commons
Well, seems we don't have particular Threads for new base figures any more. Thought I make an exception for this one. Really like the figure and will definitively get her.
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Comments
I like her too, I think, she's an interesting character with a figure that's a bit different from the usual model zero sizes and a really sympathetic (to me at least) face. The bundle, not so much (who would have thought the world needed such an immense amount of 3d plague suits like we have now? ;-)), though some of it is very nice and useful for me.
If someone's already got her, would love to see some user renders before I buy, these are usually much more telling tham the DAZ promos.
I really don't appreciate this 'hiding extra shapes away in Pro Bundles' policy that they're keeping up still, I gotta say.
A quick thought, maybe you want to turn this thread into a kind of generic 'talk about the new DO figure here' thread? I'd definitely bookmark it, I always read about any new figure if I can before I buy it.
She looks good, and the bundle has a decent amount of things I can use. My big question is whether we're going to get an extra 15/20% off by waiting a day, like the past 3-4 new characters. I'll wait to see if anything pops up in the afternoon DAZ time.
Yep, makes definitively sense. Happend a lot of times in the past. - Also DAZ tends to add some additional offers bases on cart volume later the day. So I have the Pro Bundle in cart but will wait a little longer if any additional offer will pop up.
Karmen 9 doesn't look bad overall and is presented much more sympathetically than her predecessors. Her body is fortunately different from the rest of the G9 core females, the skin tone as well. But... I'm sorry, the face reminds me a bit of them. The droopy eyes... Is there only one template for this generation?
The bundle is put together a bit strangely. I'm interested in Mihrelle's and Prae's great looking hair and fefecoolyellow's cool desert outfit, so I bought them separately. Karmen 9 will follow them later.
EDIT: 'Later' = now ;-) For $12.60 (Daz+ price + 2 tokens + today's discount) Karmen 9 looks much too good to stay in the shop.
If you are getting the Karmen 9 Pro Bundle don't forget to tick the boxes for Interactive and Print license. They are included free of charge but I don't know if those will be automatically added to your account. You can tick those options in the cart and they will appear as "for free" then. Don't know if I will ever have a use for them. But hey, once they are free...
They were not added when I forgot to add them when I bought the Mira 9 Pro Bundle. But it's possible to get them for free on their owns, as long as the offer is still valid: you just need to go back to the Pro Bundle page, while making sure no addon is configured to hide the licences option
I like Karmen 9 a lot, but will probably get the figure on her own without the pro/starter bundles. I would love the alternate shapes, but they're not worth it when the only other thing I want in the pro bundle is the hair.
Not a fan. Like the skin though, but the face isn't that distinctive enough to add to the gene pool and I don't like the bigger body proportions, not that I use any of the body shapes in any release anyway. As for the bundles, I have zero interest in most of the addons that accompany this figure. I like a couple of the hair releases lately, but I am very picky with hair these day since some PAs are going overboard on file size, detail and mesh resolution making the hair take up too many resources and for anything below the shoulder, I am ONLY buying dforce hair..
I see there is a new Plague Doctor outfit, although I had no use for the G8 version that was released. Makes me wonder if PAs actually go thru the store to see what is available before deciding on a project, lor maybe I am the only one that doesn't need a Plague Doctor outfit, LOL
Amusingly, I'm thinking the exact opposite.
Karmen's base skin does not do anything for me; it suffers from "PBRSkin Syndrome" (too matte, too even, worst case makes the figures look like they've been dipped in a vat of chalk or skin-toned paint). It's not as bad as some of the first G8 figures to use PBRSkin, whose surfaces are absolutely unusable, but it's a little bit of a throwback for name-and-number G9s, some of which have managed to have PBRSkin surfaces that actually look good. Anyway, nothing is going to look as good on Karmen as the skin used in the hero image on her store page, where she's doing Dorothy Dandridge (Karmen Jones, anyone?). I will figure out which surface that is and use that.
But her shape ... I like it when the base shape for a character isn't super-skinny, and Karmen actually has hips. Also, she has permanent bags under her eyes, which is a plus for me because it makes her look exhausted and "seen all your ****, don't try it on me, dude"--both of which are things women need to radiate a LOT in my stories. And, for the first time in any of these G9 limited-edition aging morphs, Old Karmen has enough differences in the face to make the morph worth having. (I've bought I think two pro bundles so far that came with the variant morphs, and they've been pretty useless, particularly for Van Helsing, whom I regret having purchased for a number of reasons and will probably never get my money's worth from.)
With the (fairly useless) doorbuster, the Daz+ savings, and my six-dollar coupon for the month, I was able to get Karmen Pro down to $43, which is low enough to be reasonable. I would not have bought it at $65, but--with apologies to the artists, whose work I don't want to devalue--I'm on a real "Daz resources are too damned expensive" kick lately and wouldn't have bought ANYTHING at $65. (We will not discuss its $186 list, which is pure fantasy.)
I'm buying just the character on her own. I would love to have those alternate shapes, especially for the older version, but it looks like those will only be available with the pro bundle and then they're being vaulted. That's not fair. I think those should be offered as a separate add-on. They'll make more money selling that separately as an add-on. But; oh well. I can live without the alternate shapes.
Here's a five-minute quickie of Space Karmen responding to yet another red alert. Why does she have to do everything around here?
For those who'd like a parts list: Karmen is not wearing her own surfaces here; she's using Hallie's, by Emrys, including Hallie's eyebrows. She's also wearing a skin dirt layer. The hair is Chaerine Frizz by BeautyworksHair Studio, recently seen prominently in the Amelia promos. The outfit is the Recon Outfit by Mada, with a lot of grime applied. The set is Stonemason's Hexagon. The lighting is one very high-temp (8000 K) spot ABOVE the ceiling grid so there are some shadows from that, and a red kicker for the alert lights.
EDIT: Chaerine Frizz is listed as being by Hair Studio on the store pages, sorry about that. It's marked as being by Beautyworks in the internals.
Some experiments/test renders.
^ Default HD load, swapped out eyebrows (HM Bellah's) and eyelashes (JS Tricia's). I like the twist bun hair a lot, but the scalp is too course for close ups, even with the fine settings selected. The Genesis 9 eyebrows always seem (to me) that they load too low down in the eye socket and I don't know if there is a way to easily tweak that? I'd say her materials are pretty standard quality for a Gen 9 Daz original.
^ How much diversity was I getting with the Karmen HD materials compared to Kala 9 HD and Olivia 9 JD? (Left and right of her here, default loads). Depends on the lighting. I think you could get pretty close with Kala if you have morph kits.
^ Because I had tokens, Daz+ voucher and the door-buster, the Pro Bundle came down to about $33 (still many in AUD!), so I can render her beside thin, old and young versions, but I think the promo images give a pretty good idea of what you’ll get. I stopped this render at 11% because something got stuck on my computer broken, so looks a bit soft.
There is a bug in the current files where thin and young versions are only loading the original Karmen. I've used the dials to produce the versions here, but I notice some of the previous alt versions adjust proportions so these might not be how the creators intended them to load. Still no individual rib definition in the thin version, waaah.
I'd say at this point you're not getting a huge amount of difference in the alt shapes between Pro Bundles. The YA versions seem pretty interchangable to me, and older Karmen has almost the same lower face wrinkles as older Olivia, whose alt shapes you can still buy on their own. (Van Helsing's older version was nice and different compared to the others)
^ Young Karmen's skin materials over a male figure (E3D Aroon and Michael's normals and Julian's eyes). Damn. Son.
Off to the beach for two and half weeks, but if my test romance cover finishes rendering I'll post that before I go.
Edit:
I do like Freja 9 but her arms have always been all kinds of messed up. (The head piece dose not come with gold shaders, borrowed from elsewhere)
Well I dove in and got the Pro Bundle. Don't know why, but when I loaded up the the various interations of the character Karmen 9, Karmen 9 Young Adult, Karmen 9 Thin, & Karment 9 Elder HD, Karmen 9 and Karmen 9 Young Adjut are the exact ame shape and dimensions. Normally a young adult verison is smaller in stature and development. Wierd,but I did get the bundle at a good price (after using my tokens).
I believe it's a bug! I lodged a ticket.
The other versions do have sliders under the shaping tab, you just can't access via the smart content pane.
I love sid's renders. Pretty cool!
My two cents. I didn't buy the bundle. so I used younger Amelia in the second pic instead of Karmen's shape.
I got one of the hairs and would maybe have purchased the young or thin version of her but not interested in the whole bundle or the main character morph. I've been going back to using G3 a lot lately because I think the shape is much more aesthetically pleasing. With G9 I have to constantly make the legs longer and the body thinner and better proportioned and then it makes tweaking poses harder. It's too bad the character requires the bundle to get the thin and young versions but I really don't need any more G9 characters anyway. I can do my own morphs and am forced to anyway to get something I like on G9. Maybe DAZ could consider selling just skins for those of us who are not into their DAZ O character morphs.
I think the other young shapes do much the muchness, she looks great here with Amelia's youth!
Karmen having some fun at the beach. Thanks for the tip re the Alternate Shapes not workijng from Smart COntent. I will lodge a ticket and use them via the slider in the interim - David
In the promos for Karmen, they even avoided showing the usual mix pictures (60% Karmen 9 + 70% Julia 9 etc.). This way it is not so noticeable that they all look very similar... ;-) Nevertheless, I like Karmen.
They didn't entirely avoid it. On her page, one image has Karmen with Angela's textures, one with Freja's textures, one has her with 30% Kiri 9 shape and Kiri's texture. All of it listed with teeny faint type. But, yeah, that is it for any sort of mixes.
That's right. The writing is really very 'discreet'. Although Daz wouldn't have to hide it so much with Karmen - I actually like her best of the female characters since Angela 9.
For those who didn't take the bate before, the Pro bundle can be bought at $23.44 if one meets the conditions.
I am going to be honest , while Karmen is slightly different in body , the face for me is so much like most of the other shapes. I think accurate ethinicity is an issue and needs to be worked on. G9 has a specific face and most of the bases vary only slightly from the base face. I would love to see actual real individual looking shapes for new bases. It would certainly be more of a motivation to buy them. I passed on Karmen as I just don't see enough difference.
Yeah, from my experiments you can get a very simalar character dialed up if you start with Kala 9
I assume most of the core characters are made my the same artist or team, so like all our favourite PAs whoever the artist is has a recognisable/distinct style even when going for realism. With the ladies in the lineup they only really change with the thorne-like characters. Even characters that should be outliers - Freja, Angela, Xiu Lin for example, still seem related to the rest.
I really enjoyed Julius and Genghis Khan. I wonder if contiuning to use historical inspiration would lead to more variety? (Historical because there's less problems using a likeness as an inspiration)
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/642596/list-of-g9-core-figure
Wishlist at the moment: maori, indigenous australia, pacific islander, a young queen victoria and a young prince albert, tall sudenese, indian, more asian, caucasian with sun-damaged skin. All ages, all genders! I'd like the Daz Orignal instagram hotgirl and boy equivalent, and also the mousey-don't-have-time-to-look-after-myself types. Is it possible to do softer body types without noodle arms?
I definitely share some of this sentiment, the body is different and I really like it but I'm let down on the face. The face is nice but the best way I can describe it is a white girls face with ethnic skin. It may be worth it just for the body shape tbh.
And it pays to wait for another sale...