Where to start

klee-2266414

Hi all,

Looking for recommendations for which characters to start with -- Michael and Victoria 6? Or start with earlier characters? Are they downwardly compatible? A morph for 6 would work for 4? Probably dumb questions, but just getting started with DAZ Studio 4.6

Chohole

Generation 4 is a different set of figures and are stand alone.

Genesis supports the generation 5 and genesis 2 is the generation 6 characters.

Backwards from Genesis to Gen4 is not possible, but it is possible to use gen 4 stuff with genesis and genesis 2 by using additional plug-ins.

There are a couple of threads in this forum which explain the different generations of DAZ 3D figures.

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/24257/

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/35118/

McKinnan

I'm gonna step in here as a newbie - If you want to work with what CAME WITH DS (verses purchasing new model bases) I pretty much just work with the Genesis and G2 characters that come free with DS. I've not dabbled with any of the HD stuff because I think they are going to take more computer resources to render.

Herald of Fire

Thanks to the backwards compatibility, both Genesis and Genesis 2 are ideal figures to invest in. The Generation 4 figures are Victoria 4, Michael 4 and The Kids 4, often shortened to V4, M4 and K4. They are still great figures, but they have almost no compatibility between figures. That means that if you buy a dress for V4, it will ONLY fit V4 and cannot be fit onto K4 for example. Also any reshaping you do to V4 may affect the fit of the clothing, which will require manual adjustments to fix.

With Genesis, the clothing will change shape depending on the figure allowing you to use every morph at your disposal. Genesis comes with youth morphs out of the box, allowing you to turn adults to tots and teens very easily, while Genesis 2 will require the additional purchase of the 'Growing Up' morph packs. There is also a version of these morphs for Genesis which will give you greater control over the default aging.

There's a host of free Genesis and Genesis 2 items available from Wilmap's ShareCG.

klee-2266414

Thanks for the advice! I'm still not sure about this: There seem to be quite a few items available for older versions of Michael 4, for example. If I get the Michael 4 base, will that work with DS 4.6? And once I get that base, I'm assuming that all the add-ons, morphs, etc. for Michael 4 should also work?

JimmyC_2009

Yes M4 will work perfectly in DS4.6, as will all other Generation 4 content.

Items made for M5 or M6 CANNOT be used on M4, as already pointed out, M5 is a Genesis Morph, and M6 is a Genesis 2 Male Morph, and both of these figures *Genesis and G2) use the new triax wight mapped rigging system, M4 uses the older Legacy system.

Clothing made for M4 will work on Genesis, via the Autofit plugin, but clothing is not backwardly compatible.

Do you have Genesis and Genesis 2 downloaded and installed? I think you should try them first to see what you really need.

Steven-V

As an additional note, there are morph packs for Genesis and Genesis 2 that will give you the V4, M4, etc, body shapes on a Genesis figure (it's not an exact copy, but it's fairly close). So you can buy the V4/M4 Genesis morph pack, and then not only will auto-fit let you fit V4 clothes to Genesis, but you can also make it look a lot like V4 if you want to. Same for M4, etc.

klee-2266414

ok, thanks! Yes, I Genesis and Genesis2 came with the DAZ Studio 4.6 download. I'll check out the autofit and morph packs, so I won't need to download the earlier models. I appreciate the help!