why multiple figures?

olivercrosbiehiggs

One thing I don't understand is why do we have so many figures (up to 16 now).

I get iteractions on a figure (genesis 1, 2 and 3) but surely it makes more sense to invest in developing a single figure line rather than splitting the community over a large number of them, creating combatability problems.

Sorry if this isn't directly connected with Daz but I haven't seen it explained anywhere.

Johanna

I am asking myself the same.

Especially most figures look very similar.

I think if you have 1 female and 1 male character and a bunch of morph sliders its fine.

Pack58

Hmmm 'cos folks like me would be spitin' tacks if all support/sales of older models was stopped when a new line was introduced.

Or are you suggesting development should have stopped with M/V3 or Genesis or at some other point?

Admittedly things can be confusing, especially early on but that's pretty standard in life (I find)

Richard Haseltine

What do you mean by "figures"? The Victoria/Bethany/Karen/etcs are not figures but characters for the base figure.

olivercrosbiehiggs

LIVA said:

What do you mean by "figures"? The Victoria/Bethany/Karen/etcs are not figures but characters for the base figure.

I meant the base figures, Genesis, Victoria, The Freak, Michael, Stephanie, Aiko, Hiro, The Girl. If these aren't figures but characters then perhaps you could explain what characters are

Leana

A character is basically a set of morphs and a texture, with sometimes a few adjustements to the rigging.

Historically we used to have different figures for different shapes for technical reasons: when the shape of the mesh is changed significantly you need to change the rigging so that it still bends correctly (for example Freak is taller and more muscular than Michael, so the bending points for his shoulders are not at the same place), and that required having a different figure at the time. 

So we had Victoria and Michael, the original figures, Aiko and Hiro the anime characters, Freak for the big muscular guy, Girl for the toon pinup, Stephanie the more petite woman, the teens, the preschoolers.... All of them were different figures that you would use as the base for different types of characters.

Generation 4 started to "integrate" them, turning Aiko, Stéphanie and Girl into morphs of V4, and Hiro and Freak into morphs of Michael. Butt there were still technical limitations (for example the "huge" version of Freak didn't work properly in Poser at the time)

Technology has evolved since then, and now you can easily adjust the rigging dynamically when you apply a morph to a mesh. So now it's possible to have all those shapes as morphs of the same base figure and still have it bend correctly. DAZ still provides new versions of its old base figures as "base characters" so that users can use them as starting point for their own characters.

olivercrosbiehiggs

Leana said:

A character is basically a set of morphs and a texture, with sometimes a few adjustements to the rigging.

Historically we used to have different figures for different shapes for technical reasons: when the shape of the mesh is changed significantly you need to change the rigging so that it still bends correctly (for example Freak is taller and more muscular than Michael, so the bending points for his shoulders are not at the same place), and that required having a different figure at the time. 

So we had Victoria and Michael, the original figures, Aiko and Hiro the anime characters, Freak for the big muscular guy, Girl for the toon pinup, Stephanie the more petite woman, the teens, the preschoolers.... All of them were different figures that you would use as the base for different types of characters.

Generation 4 started to "integrate" them, turning Aiko, Stéphanie and Girl into morphs of V4, and Hiro and Freak into morphs of Michael. Butt there were still technical limitations (for example the "huge" version of Freak didn't work properly in Poser at the time)

Technology has evolved since then, and now you can easily adjust the rigging dynamically when you apply a morph to a mesh. So now it's possible to have all those shapes as morphs of the same base figure and still have it bend correctly. DAZ still provides new versions of its old base figures as "base characters" so that users can use them as starting point for their own characters.

Thanks thats what I was looking for