Getting on the 9 train, or not
The new stuff for 9 beginning. You getting on the 9 train or sticking with older stuff?
G9 is a very different character than prior, but the way things are being released, as far as morphs, etc, it seems too lacking at the moment to be useful. My opinion, although I have ecked out a couple of characters using avaialble morphs.
I'm very undeciuded if I'm getting aboard this time, at least so soon. I think G9 has some possibilities and nice new features, but, as a hobyist, the cost to value isn't friendly to me, especially with inflation as it is. I don;t like the combines figure mesh deal either. I guess it possible to create female, for instance, and save that so you odn;t have to conintuously recreate this, which will ease the need for sliding over and over.
The train is leaving the station, and there are sure to be many new cars attached. Are you riding along?
Comments
I'll play. What the heck...I got nothing else to do :P
I was blatantly curious about Genesis 9 and Victoria 9 since its been so long since we have had a new generation. I can't afford to purchase a whole lot for Genesis 9, but I have enough to dabble. I still have so many Genesis 8 and 8.1 characters I haven't rendered yet that I can do that in the meantime and be patient about Genesis 9 releases.
There is very little G9 content available. Quite some of it is only half-baked. You cannot use PowerPose, as there is no template (yet) for G9. You only can auto-fit colthing. Auto-fitting of hair is not supported. So, if you really want to do "stuff" without doing work-arounds and using external tools (e.g. Blender, ZBrush), you may consider waiting until holiday season sale.
The good news is that you can do a bunch with Genesis 9 without spending any money at all.
There's a nice range of skins and shaping stuff included for free, and with a number of changes autofit works much better. I was able to make a credible dwarf figure with G8M rigid armor, and it looks pretty darn good.
There's plenty of room to experiment and see for yourself how you like it before having to spend anything at all.
I've been uninstalling lots of Genesis 8 characters to reduce load time. I recently decided to just stop buying new characters until the load issues are resolved. I know the load time issue is probably due to a design decision made when most of the developers were in middle school, but I just don't want to wait 5, 6, 8 minutes to load a scene with characters in it.
So, I'm not even tempted by a Genesis 9 glamour gal...
Simple summary: I will wait awhile ... and then splurge.
On the plus side: I have really wanted a more detailed mesh! And if it is done well, I like the idea of a single figure that morphs rather than separate figures - and I have looked at the G9 mesh and it is well done with a smooth topology - it will be nice to work with. The 8K textures do look impressive for my first trials.
On the negative side: I really do not like the reduction in texture zones - I recognize this probably works better with 8K maps, but I retexutre a lot of things (including toon versions) and this will be either prohibitive or require extra time. Also since not many products, morphs, textures, animations, etc. are out so far it has limited use - that should change over time. Also, I have a maxwell based quadro nvidia card - until I purchase a new card, I am limited in what I can do with Daz 4.21 and G9.
Wait and See: I do some animation - I have not tried it yet, nor have I read what to expect with G9 in this regard ... but an increased mesh comes with either a better animation or more problems.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Autofitting of hair is not supported". It does work, it's just that DAZ didn't include templates for the hair like they did for clothing. I may adopt G9 once more morphs are available, though it looks like I'm going to have to do custom morphs for a lot of the characters I use in G8 at this point.
I paid for Victoria. Thus far i regret it.
There are a few nice things when it comes to morphs and potential morphs. The 8K detail normal is nice, though quality figures and textures for 8.1 are nearly as good.
But G9/V9 is very slow to work with compared to 8.1 (even with lots of morphs loading). Also since they changed the number and combination of surfaces on G9/V9, stuff that used to take me a couple seconds now takes signifiantly longer.
It does seem this figure was designed to make things easier for PAs (which is perfectly fine) but it comes at the expense of ease of use for the artists.
I need those head and body morphs first. G9 looks like a character base where it's best to build your own characters completely from the scratch, but I need them building tools first.
I am waiting for more content to come. Mostly morph packs or characters with materials, that look irresistible.
I've been playing with what's free for G9 a little bit, but at this point I'm just waiting to let things build up a bit more. And to see what fixes and workarounds people come up with in regards to backwards compatibility and new features that need some adjusting to (like what do we do with lips now). As with every generation, I'll eventually get myself fully on board. It'll just take a bit.
Turbo Loader is the thing for you. You don't have to uninstall anything again to load faster. Just run it one time and select the stuff you want keep. It hides the morphs you don't want by simply marking them in Windows so that Daz will not read them. If you decide you want to use some of these, just run the script again and enable the exact morphs you want back on. The script is pretty fast, too, you can't install/uninstall as fast as this script.
It breaks everything down in one place, so you don't have to worry about whether you forgot something. Just run the script and it will tell you which morphs you have active or disabled.
I'm sure he is working on an update for Genesis 9.
Prolly not, but I'll keep an open mind.
I'll continue to use G8 for my renders. I have a lot of G8 assets which work exactly how I want them to.
But I will buy G9 assets I consider essential or like the look of.
I expect I'll be more picky about the characters I purchase....once the morphs are available I may go all original character faces and use G9 characters for the skin I'm looking for.
I already have a ton of Genesis 8/8.1 characters and items. So, while I bought Victoria 9 I'm really limiting my spending on Genesis 9 items.
You should try dForce hair. it will totally mess up the simulation. Most hair I tried is simulated as if there was negative gravity. Plus, it also affects dForce clothing sometimes.
As a PA all my upcoming sets will be G9 now
(but lets face it....I already made most every creature I could think of for G8)
I'm definitely going to be more selective with G9 items than I was with G8. I also don't think it will replace G8 as my main choice, but time and content will tell.
That being said, if I like something, history proves that I won't be able to resist it, so there's that. I'm alreay on the train, whether I want to or not.
As soon as we get K.H.Image's Ultimate series I'll get V9 as it's required morphs for me at this point, it's all about the specific morphs that can be secured first before I buy another Vicky, so it looks like the 8.1 generation is what I'll be using going forward.
I will likely get on the train eventually, but slowly, like I did with G8. It took me a good year or so before I really started using 8 more than 3.
I did get the Vicky pre-order and will pick up the head and body morphs when they come around, but will take my time on the rest. I have plenty (some might say a plethora) of G3, 8, and 8.1 assets that work perfectly for my needs as a hobbyist.
I'm not going to rule out buying content for G9 but I doubt if there will be a deep dive. I render mostly males so I have nothing to work with at this point. I am used to the idea of not getting any content for the males early on but in the past I had the basic morph pack so I could at least make changes to the head and body. We are several days in now and still no basic morphs. I know they are coming "soon" but I really dislike the base characters of all the Genesis iterations. I am also starting to think that there will be even less content aimed at the male side than there is now. I am afraid the prevailing attitude will be "there is plenty of content - put it on G9 and slide the masculine slider on - Voila, male content". That is basically the attitude they had with the poses in the Genesis 9 Essentials pack. That's really not going to work for me.
I agree. If I see that they are even worse for male content with G9 than they were for G8/8.1 I will totally back out. I bought V9, but I use mostly males, so I'll be watching for relevant content.
I agree. If I see that they are even worse for male content with G9 than they were for G8/8.1 I will totally back out. I bought V9, but I use mostly males, so I'll be watching for relevant content. I don't care for feminine looking men generally, do using female morphs, poses and clothes on males won't work for me either.
I really like V9. I got a decent render with simple lights and no postwork and she doesn't look like a plastic model. I was absolutely thrilled
From what I have experienced so far, I would wait until all bugs have been fixed.
In my humble opinion, I would rather have waited longer but get products that work.
I put 2 tickets in for Tech Support reg Error Messages when loading either G9 or V9 and also with that Makeup product.
I got Victoria 9 and am very happy with how she renders. I had some trouble with 8.1 characters coming out looking a bit plastic, versus I had a much easier time with 8.0. I'm sure it is due to user error/not being great at lights. In any even, I'll be fully on board once Michael 9 makes his appearance. Before then, I may dabble here and there. I'm definitely interested!
Not for a long while... I'm never an early adopter of anything... I like to wait for the hype to die down, bugs to get worked out, to see if the thing is worth it and for stuff to get cheaper...
Primarily the cheaper part.
I'm more selective these days. I ignored all the Genesis 8.1 stuff. I'll eventually get the Victoria 9 character, and the head & body morphs as well as any expression and pose packs that I like. I'll stick to real-world clothing. I am waiting till more content is available before I pass judgement on this whole unified male/female mesh thing.
I was going to wait, but Daz sent me a $10 off coupon for V9, and she's the most realistic female Daz has yet released, imo. I'll be much more discriminating in my purchases of G9 morphs & characters, after buying every morph package/utility I could for G8 (and experiencing the consequentially exorbitant load times---especially bloated for G9 due to male and female characters using the same figure).
Plus, G8 had Emma&Jordi's and Rarestone's morph packages---which I couldn't imagine not having---and they've gone bye-bye, although G9 may lend itself more easily to user sculpting.