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| Genesis 8 in NVIDIA Iray |
Am spending a week or two back in DAZ Studio, before I start to commit to another writing project, and this really is time to make all the experiments that'll let me catch up quickly. I bowed out back when the Genesis figures were just making their debut, for various reasons, all of them good. The first was, my hardware wouldn't handle Studio 4 The second was, I hated the new interface. But now I have the hardware and the time ... okay. So. First experiment: I'm working with Genesis 8, which is the new generation, but so much of the content was designed for earlier forms. Now, there's a converter running, when you load the hair and costume, so -- can Genesis 8 wear something designed for Genesis 1? The answer is, yes. This is a Genesis 8 figure (mostly designed my me), but the hair on his head, and what he's wearing, were deigned for the original figure. Okay. And yes, Genesis 8 is a vast improvement over Michael 4 ...
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| Michael 4 in NVIDIA Iray |
This is Michael 4, as rendered by NVIDIA Iray. First, yes, you can render the old figures in Iray. They're quite nice; and they're low-poly enough to render fast. But they're also low-poly enough to not quite give you the photographic realism we want today. This is the Jagger skinmap, an almost random face morph -- and the other experiment I'm running here is, "Can I install my old Renderosity content into studio 4.15, AND find it, AND have it be fully functional?" Answer, yes. The hair on M4's head is Akaste Hair, from Renderosity. You just have to know where to look for the old stuff in the content menus! Studio likes to hide things away. Renderosity content is most often Poser content, so, by and large, you find it in Poser Formats > My DAZ 3D Library ... and here's the kicker: Michael 4 himself, the base figure, is hidden away there. Took me a week to find it, at the outset! You really have to get the hang of this. So, if this is Michael 4, what about the old Victoria 4?
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| Victoria 4.2 in NVIDIA Iray |
Yes, I know, I haven't done
nearly as much with Victoria 4 has with Michael 4 ... one of the reasons was that 90% of everything features the female models (still true today; have a look at 3D art, and it's rare to see a male, and far more rare that the male will not be old, ugly, or a cartoon. It's almost as if artists are worried about being categorized as gay if they should render beautiful men! Meh). This, above, was done in Iray about eighteen months ago, before computer problems caused me to put art away for almost a whole year, till I could get a new system. Compare Victoria 4.2 with...
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| Genesis 1 in NVIDIA Iray |
That's the original Genesis figure, Genesis 1. There's
not a wealth of visible difference between this and Victoria; in fact, many times, Victoria looked
better. There, I've said it. There was a ton of room for improvement with the original Genesis, and it didn't take them long to come out with Genesis 2 --
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| Genesis 2 in NVIDIA Iray |
That's Genesis 2, rendered in Iray; and we're starting to get into the ballpark now. I've been installing and cataloging content for the past week, and have stumbled over tons of Genesis 1,2,3 content that was packaged along with DAZ Studio. The quality isn't startling, but it's enough to give you a feel for the model and props. Before Genesis 3, I was more impressed with the render engine than with the figures! And of course I entered the field again when Genesis 8 was new ... 8.1 is out now, with improved mesh; but I doubt you could
see any difference unless you were animating, which I'm not! But since we started with a Genesis 8 male, let's end this look at the figures with the Genesis 8 female:
Now we're' cooking! I can work with this ... in fact, I promptly went to DAZ and tried to buy the body morphs for Genesis 8 female, and a character (skinmap and morphs), but there's some kind of error going on, server-side. It won't let me pay. Hunh?? So that'll have to wait for another day. More soon.
