Genesis 8

elliotdylan

What are your guys impressions?

Does it really add anything new to the field or is just the backwards compatability thing the only selling point?

nonesuch00

1) 100% better facial expressions for emotions (which includes free morphs that used to not be part of any Genesis / Genesis 2 / Genesis 3 model, bought or free)

2) Much more realistic looking skin

3) Better bending that includes muscle flexion

Those three things alone would have had me buying even without the backwards capatibility.

Bad things:

1) I find it hard to create natural looking contrast when rendering indoor scenes. The image is invariable too dark and dim

2) Caucasians or really any non-dark complected ethnicity still renders too dark and too brown when using the default settings supplied by DAZ 3D or the PAs, even naturally deep brown ethnicities render too brown but not necessarily too dark. It is a hard thing to describe but it's like a muddying of the color of the skin render for all characters. 

mork

To be honest, I'm not sure yet. I see pros and cons. TL;DR: I don't think G8 was necessary at this time.

Backwards compatibility:
That one is the most important for me, because I hate to lose my beloved characters. They never migrate 1:1 and I lost quite some because I just could not figure out how to convert flawlessly.
That said:

• Skins with a "Base" UV Map do transfer pretty much perfect - any other UV map, even Victoria, does not.
• Clones do exist for G2/G3 M/F, but they seem to be lacking in terms of options and quality.
• Poses can be edited manualy to work for G8, there is no auto-conversion. Also, while I'm not 100% sure on this, not every converted Pose works out of the box. Shoulders twist and bend may need to be adjusted.
• Expressions don't seem to convert well, if at all.
• Animation: don't know, I expect it to be broken as it has been for G3. Never manage to import a BVH into DAZ and get it to work, whereas they import without problems in any other tool I have (Blender, Unreal Editor, Unity, my own Engine).
• Morphs: I converted some, using various techniques, but there are problems with most of them, especially when you go "extreme" (anything over like 50-60%) or mix them. And be it that clothing does not fit anymore, when I applied a converted FBM morph to bring back one of my G3 characters.

But, all in all, I'm happy that there is way more compatibility for G3->G8 than there has been for G2->G3 (which isn't hard to be honest, because G3 pretty much broke everything) - otherwise I'd be out of this game until G9, for sure.

Muscle flexing:
Looks good most of the time and then it is impressive indeed, but I had some poses where the flexing of the breasts looked pretty awkward. Like one arm behind the head. But then, I don't have boobs, it's hard to verify. :D

Better bending:
I'm not certain yet, but I think there is a problem with the back part of the shoulder->upper arm transition. From the front it looks nice (most of the time), from the back I can often see some very strange bends. which don't look good at all. Not 100% yet if its because of using G3 poses (though I'm sure I saw that at least once on a G8 pose). Time will tell. But I think that is the weak spot of G8 - while the A-Pose seemed to have improved some things, it broke others. That's my personal impression so far. I can provide a screenshot, for those curious, if that helps.

A-Pose:
Causes nothing but troubles for me. Not sure what this was needed for. I actually never saw a tool working with an A-Pose, but what do I know.

Better skin:
That did not require a new generation at all, did it?

Facial expression:
The expression morphs for G8 (non-PA) are all HD now, which is a major step backwards, if you want to export them. Might be that the face rig is now better, but it took me very long to find two good versatile expression packs for G3, very sad that they don't work anymore. The default expressions look very bad on younger characters, like Blaire, but then you can dial in what suits, like in the past. Gotta play around with this in detail.

Render times:
Not sure if it's just me, but render times increased a lot?

Eyes:
Did not have a close look at them yet, but I read the geometry has been simplified. While on hand it is good - setting up the materials and render order for the various eye parts never has been easy (outside DAZ) - I fear it will make the eyes more dead. All geometry that existed for G3 has been there for a reason - it replicated the layers of a real human eye. Combining parts inevitably means that it is not a replica of a real eye anymore, so it is very possible that the eyes look more dead now in detail. But I did not get to create a close-up render yet.
I find it difficult too, that the EyeMoisture is now part of the Eyelashes.

Eyelashes:
Cause me problems for Characters I applied G3 morphs on, which "shrink" the character - the Eyebrows are out of place then and there seems no way to correct their offset in an easy way, like "move 30cm down". But in general they're a good idea.

After all, I don't think G8 was really necessary. The improvements are mostly subtle in my eyes, and, if my observations are correct, sometimes even worse in comparison to G3.
It will cost dozends of hours (it already did and that's just the beginning), probably hundreds of bucks, to convert the old stuff, whereas most of these tools could and should have been integrated into DAZ. Like auto convert a pose from T to A pose - was it really that difficult?

Gotta see some more variation in characters and make some more tests ( was too busy trying to convert stuff ) to make my final judgement.