What *exactly* differentiates G9 and G8(.1) textures?

Laurita

I really like the high res textures of G9 but for several reasons I cannot make a change right now. Mostly because I work with prebuilt characters and even with ManFriday's converter I still cannot do what I want to do with them.

So I took a look into the different textures and while obviously G9 comes out far better in renders I cannot see much difference when opening the files in Photoshop. I couldn't even find any of the much talked about 8k files. The normal maps have the same size and resolution and as far as I could see aren't more detailed than the G8 ones.The base texture files however are more detailed than the G8 ones I use. But this is not because of resolution but because of a much better work of the creator. So thus far I do not see a partucular reason why G8 textures couldn't be as detailed as G9 textures. 

What am I missing?

crosswind

That's right...what mainly differentiates G9 from G8 in terms of texture quality are those five 8K Detail Normal maps (rather than Normal Maps). You could only find the 8K DN maps on Victoria 9 and Michael 9 (Character Presets). Since they're not merchant resources, PAs could not use them on their characters, but you can use them on yours.

Well for other texture maps, that just depends as they're still 4K even lower. The only difference may be that some PAs provide the maps with higher quality...

felipe.a.v.lopes

The body textures (on Victoria 9 at least) are 4k. The 8K textures are the macro detail maps (similar to skin detail maps Vicky 8.1 had but I believe hers were 4k?)

IMO 8k is more a resource hog than a feature. Even 4k textures are absolutely ginourmous and more than enough for good detail. G9 would be a lot more revolutionay if it had like built-in soft bodt physics simulation or something of the sort instead of having humangous textures that mostly eat memory