Are G2 items still selling?
Drogo Nazhur
Posts: 1,117
Is there anyone besides me that is still buying G2 accessories?
Post edited by Drogo Nazhur on
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I still use G2 and buy for G2 if there's a really good sale. I'm kinda in the process of learning to fit stuff from different generations onto other generations.
I do, too (especially with a good sale). Clones are the easy answer for fitting items from generation to generation. I've done harder fitting methods and the clones work like magic!
G2 had some excellent historical stuff which works nicely with autofit clones at least up to G8
I've bought a few G2 outfits recently. Historical stuff, some of which is fabulous. Great for background shots. Sometimes need a complete reskin for foreground shots but some are just about acceptable for that too. I picked them up on extremely steep discounts. Use them on G9 without any real problems tbh. Less problematic than getting many G8 items to fit.
I use G2 clothes and props, and will even buy them for the right price. Not characters, poses, and hair though.
Heavily discounted G2 items probably still sell a bit, there were some pretty good outfits and hair for G2 which can still be useful. I do buy some on occasion (I already have quite a bit of it).
I would likely not buy new G2 content at "new item" price though. It would need to be really exceptionnal.
I do buy G2 clothing because it looks more period correct and 'normal' than what's available for newer generations
it works in Carrara so yes I still buy it
I buy G2 stuff (and earlier) when discounted. Not only does it work in Carrara as Wendy points out, it works in Daz Studio as well - and can be exported to even more programs to the extent most anything can.
Some caveats on using older content in ways not designed for. I recently bought a G2 item in the sale (a Santa Claus outfit) for use in Carrara, only to find that the highly dense mesh necessary for the fur trim of the Santa Claus outfit took forever to load or use. Would have been much better for me to kitbash existing conent I own and use Carrara's native dynamic hair to add fur trim, or make it myself.
Some positives. For background elements which are going to be obscured by depth of field anyway, some older content is much better for scene management than the highly detailed more recent releases.
So I echo the earlier comment in the thread about paying attention to categories of items.
I feel that G2 is the base that works the best for likeness morphs in Facegen.
I'll still buy G2 wardrobe if it's something that I can't get in later generations ... or if it's something that I feel wasn't done as well in later generations. It has to be something where "there is no substitute," though, because I will almost certainly NOT be using it on a G2 figure and thus it has to be worth the pain of upfitting.
I don't own MUCH G2, but I note two examples which were some of the earliest things I bought when I started using Studio.
https://www.daz3d.com/casual-wear-overall-for-genesis-2-females I have never found another overalls set I like as much as this one
https://www.daz3d.com/lyre-lyre-for-genesis-2-female-s There is literally nothing else quite like this in the store
The overalls, by the way, are a dream upfit. I have fitted them onto G3 and G8 female and male figures with no issues whatsoever. I've even successfully used the overalls (no shirt) on a G8 fellow with Fred's physique. Lyre Lyre, alas, is not; the bikini itself is not much of a problem, and the headpiece is an easy adjustment, but the arm and leg feathers do not do well, not even when you put your figure into G3 base pose first.
(I'll even buy G1 clothes if there's absolutely no substitute. I use Just Jokin' constantly, even though the headpiece goes a little crazy when you upfit it. If Mada or anyone ever updated that for a later generation I would buy it so fast your head would spin. Someone finally DID do a latter-day American football uniform, but since by then I had long since owned the G1 one and it was still doing the job perfectly, I have never bothered to buy the G8 one.)
They seem to be setup as "one piece with both left and right arm feathers", which would indeed be a pain to refit as is.
Have you tried "separating" them, ie loading 2 copies of the arm feathers (without fitting them to the figure) and hiding one side on each? You can then position each "side" independantly on the figure in default pose, then parent it to the corresponding forearm.
I have tried that, but it's been a while. I don't recall whether it was even more difficult to "turn off" one half of the item. Have to go back and look one of these days. I'm not using showgirls a lot lately :P
I also pay attention to G2 products, particularly for clothes. There many good reasons cited here and JOdel's stands out. These days I'm experimenting with non photorealism (NPR), so render-heavy high fidelity isn't a priority.
Cheers!
I tried that but it never seemed to work right for me :(
I buy poses of any generation if they offer something interesting that I don't already have; they're easy to use/convert. At the right price, I do occasionally buy pre G3/Iray clothes, for unique/unusual/historical attire for which there is little or no modern subsitute (and as a Daz newcomer, comparatively speaking, I found that there was a lot more historical attire in the older generations, so I'm still considering that kind of thing on a case-by-case basis). Although there have been a few exceptional circumstances, generally, I wouldn't buy pre-G3 hair or characters.
I don't bother with the converters for clothes, If I can't make something fit in Daz, then I export the outfit as an obj and import into Blender (use to be Hexagon) to make it fit the required avatar I want it to fit, then delete the model and export the clothing item and import to Daz as a morph preset, then you can keep the rigging and morphs it comes with. Of course it's a problem if there are major differences between models, but there are ways around that as well.
The only thing I can't do this with is footwear, since each model has something different that messes with the mesh if you try to fit to a different model. In this case I simply do the export thing and when I bring it back to Daz, I redo the whole rigging and such and save as a new item(have a folder for these things so as not to forget who actually made them).
One reason I also like the older products is because their texture sizes don't run in the thousands, the majority are 1024 x 1024 and smaller, not 4000 and up, which makes them lighter on the computer and easier to render and animate.
LOL was just about to go on a rant about texture sizes, but you are safe, I stopped myself in time lol
It's actually a lot easier then you think. Morph Loader Pro allows you to export the item to a chosen program to fit the model you want and import it back to Daz as a morph preset. I recently bought the Mesh Grabber bundle and going to give that a try, thereby reducing the number of steps to make things fit. It's remembering to export and import and save as a new morph present I keep forgetting and get stuck having to refit the item...lol
It's funny, I had a few addons for G2 when it was released and then G3 came out and I stopped buying and using G2. Then a couple of years ago I discovered a VR sandbox game that used the G2 figures and also allowed users to import G2 items they owned, so I went on a G2 spending spree to add more to my version of the game. As for Daz Studio, I rarely even load G2 since I mostly use G9 now
I do still buy some G2, mostly hairs, since hairs are the easiest to use on other generations* and I have at least 1 set of Sloshwerks' Iray hair shaders. I also picked up a few items with poses since I have the appropriate Bone Minions to use them with G3 & G8. And if I see something really unusual like https://www.daz3d.com/anemone-for-genesis-2-female-s.
*Don't autofit, just position on the figure & Parent in Place, which preserves all the bones and morphs
Oh I have that miladyderyni, I never even thought of try to use it on newer models, I'll have to try it, thanks.
I buy G2 occasionally. There were G2 items I've wanted when they were current, and I'll still buy if the price is right. G2 base male and female models were better than 3, 8, 8.1, or 9 in my estimation, although the generation didn't last long enough for a wide enough selection of characters.
I used to scoop up older character items much more often, but Daz has differentially raised prices on older works to the point where they're unattractive except during a couple of deep discount sales per year.
I'm slowly moving all my rendering to Blender, and at present, it looks as if I'll evenually be likely making my own new items for G2M and G2F, though it's possible I'll settle on Dawn2 and Dusk2 instead if they're published before I get to that part of my project. I'm not absolutely ruling out future Genesis generations, but Daz would have to reverse direction on some of the changes they made to Genesis 9, and that I have no reason to expect. In any event, I'll be making some clothing closer to historicity, or closer to practicality at least for my own projects, and I'll probably fit G2.
I'll still occasionally use G2 figures, mostly the toons as they don't show their age.
Clothing, yes, if I can't find a more recent equivalent. With the right shaders, they can look great.
Hair - yes, especially if it's not a closeup and I don't need all the detailed geometry (for the textures, there are newer iray shaders).
Poses - yes, as I've got great converters for G1 through to G9
My main characters figures are G2, so I still buy stuff for them when it's at acceptable prices. It's the model I prefere for the level detail, about it I prioritize mesh over texture.
I still buy stuff for G2M. I use him probably more than any other generation, especially for the Reptilian (but the Minotaur and Creature Creator are also fun).
G2 has some tremendous hair models.