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That is again the same fallacy - because I suggest these are not objective faults on which all viewers/users can agree I must be saying the figure is perfect and nobody will find it unsatisfactory and want it enhanced in some way. It does no have to be perfect for all or defective for all, nor does a split between those for whom it is good enough and those for whom it isn't require that one group has to be wrong or is diminishing validity the other group's judgement.
Also I can find similar products going back to V4. So no matter what generation someone considers 'perfect', someone else felt the need to correct a percieved fault. And I highly doubt that'll ever change no matter how advanced the figure.
https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-natural-bend-morphs-for-genesis-8-female
https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-natural-bend-morphs-for-olympia-7
https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-natural-for-olympia-6-body
Yes, exactly.
We shall agree to disagree. Saying the same things to each other over and over is pointless.
I wouldn't, and didn't, use the word 'flaw'. I would use the term limitation.
I respect the skill and talent you have, and your ability to bring your vision to fruition. I believe you when you say you have shaped the characters to present the way you intend them to.
You said there shouldn't be a defining characteristic, but I see it across the board, from all vendors, in male presenting figures in that W shaped area around the breasts where the mesh is more concentrated, including yours.
It's not for me to say it's right or wrong, or a flaw. But I can say it's not something I want to see in my work all the time, and it limits what I can do with the figure.
And it is not enough, to have a potentially super apealing character in default pose, but it also needs to work with poses. All to often the posed limbs look terrible, which happens a lot with G9.
To do list:
(1) turn on Base Joint Correctives or whatever it's called so that no one can fault you
(2) Pose without showing the limbs to avoid any possible mishaps
(3) Don't open the mouth/jaw wide unless you are trying to scare people
Must admit that recent promo images have gone a long way to convince me about G9, showing features I never saw in G8. Here's an example of an X-Art promo image in store:
Elbows. The last time I saw elbows that shape was when I last used V3. So yesterday, but that's the last generation I saw it.
I know the response is that bend smoothing or whatever hasn't been activated. The user shouldn't need to activate it, it should be done by default with all characters. If it isn't, what is wrong with the base figure that this has been omitted? This sort of thing seems to happen with custom characters in G9.
I commissioned a custom character for G8F, and have checked the files the modeller sent to me and there were no specific weight mapping files for my character - and based on the price of the work done of only 4 hours - I expected no correctives to have been done. So, I wonder why the elbow below looks right:
As there are no files specifically for this character to define the bend shape, using the arguments I see in earlier posts, the elbow shape should be at least as awful as in the X-Art promo which is the first image in this post. And extending the arguments in earlier posts about the superiority of the G9 mesh, my G8 character should look worse than a G9 without correctives. But, self evidently, she's better. Why? There are no character specific correctives and there doesn't seem to be a need for them.
This is what convinces me that for some things G9 is a negative step forward from G8.
In other areas, G9 seems to offer no advance on G8. G8 is not great at opposable thumbs - posing the hand to grip things realistically can be a trial. Things like pens, knives and pizza cutters. It's slow going. Unfortunately, G9 limits and hand shaping under bends makes posing for these opposable thumbs poses just as difficult (though for slightly different reasons) and runs the risk of looking wrong just as easily as G8. No advance there, which is a shame.
Facially, G9 is an improvement on G8 despite having fewer bones - the rigging is better and is quite good. Great for the type of portrait I rarely do.
To summarise: I have shown, with evidence, why I believe there is a basic problem with G9 compared to G8, and shown an area where there is no improvement. The face rigging is better, however I rarely do portraits, so this advantage is not something I am likely to take advantage of. So, G9 offers me no significant upgrade on G8 for human characters. Certainly insufficient to convert to G9 as my preferred character. I do have a number of G9 characters, however they get no more use than my lesser used G3 characters, and that use is mainly to illustrate wearable presets created to allow G9 to use my freebies, same as G3 is used for creating similar presets.
Regards,
Richard
Whenever I read G9 train I have to think of German railways ("Deutsche Bahn").
Wait, Genesis 9 is going on strike?
Elbow to elbow across the picket line (quite a few gaps then).
Unless the union are aware of the joint corrective... kind of ironic if they arn't.
richardandtracy the corrective morphs are on by default - but the slider that controls them is visible, so if someone uses the Zero comand it will be affected and the morphs will be turned off. This has certainly been the issue withe some cases of "bad bends" in the past.
Joints are bad with correctives on. It gets worse on characters. If G9 was a real life doll, I'd thrown her/him in the corner out of frustration.
It *is* on by default, so it looks like Xtrart has managed to zero it (and, indeed, disabling it does give a very similar result on any G9 figure).
There are definitely times when (particularly for development purposes) it's necessary or useful to disable correctives, although it can perhaps be argued that it would be a wise thing to lock out the slider so that one has to deliberately disable the lock to do that.
Something similar happened in the UK winter of 1962-1963; although British Railways were into the "Modernisation Plan" that involved trying to phase out steam in the UK railways, the weather was so bad that many of the new diesel locomotives simply couldn't be got to start. So a lot of steam locomotives that were supposed to being withdrawn got brought back into service, because they would actually work in the cold.
While steam locomotives are less powerful and definitely less convenient than their modern counterparts, it shouldn't be forgotten that by the end of their development, they were still more than hauling hundreds of tonnes about at speed. The BR Standard Class 9Fs (possible the closest UK equivalent to the DRB Class 50s*) are even on record as starting trains of over 2000 tonnes. (Which might not be much by the standards of some railways, but with the restrictions on how large UK locos can be (because of pre-existing infrastructure), that's a lot.
* Well, in terms of size and tractive effort, the 9Fs and 50s are fairly close, but the 9Fs are about a decade and a half later, and probably more refined (although built as freight locomotives, they were found to be able to subsitute for express locomotives, as they could hit 90 mph). In terms of role and era, then the LMS 8Fs and the Riddles War Department Austerity locomotives are probably truer matches, being from the 30s and 40s, and being used as the main wartime freight locos.
It's a bit strange to say that while, in the same message, praising Genesis 3, when many (all I think, but I only have a couple of them, the ones the Lightning Deals God put on my spending path) G3 core figures use their own UV maps and not Genesis 3 UV maps.
If PAs enjoy a better toolset to create content, in the end, end users should benefit from these better toolset even if it's in a indirect way.
You checked your Genesis 8 figure thoroughly to be sure no corrective thingies were active but you took a render you know nothing about as word of gospel on how Genesis 9 bends, when we don't even know who's the character used on this PA recent renders (and for all we know, the render artist wanted this vintage elbow look).
It doesn't take that long to load the base figures, use the same poses on them and do a render. Genesis 9 even has a Genesis 8 hidden clone to get a similar look on both figures: they are differences in how their elbows look, but it's not night and day and certainly not a round elbows galore with Genesis 9:
The main difference between both is that, as far as I can tell, there is not a Base Joint Correctives slider easily accessible to disable them all on Genesis 8 like there is on Genesis 9. But showing hidden parameters and looking at the currently used list, it's not that hard to get that sweet sweet sought-after vintage elbow look™ on Genesis 8 too (render with the JCM active as they should in the second attached picture):
I know for certain that a small number of the Generation 7 core figures do not have unique UVs and instead use the Base ones, but I don't recall off the top of my head which those are. They are a minority though, like two or three, I think.
Presumably whichever characters are not on these lists:
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-character-uvs-for-genesis-8-male
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-character-uvs-for-genesis-8-female
But the Daz store no longer easily allows you to get a page of just the core figures of a generation, so checking what's not on those lists is a bit of a hassle.
It's worth noting for anyone that wishes to use this that these clones are not rigged by default (and shouldn't be - if you want to rig them, attach the rigging adjustments to a separate slider).
Well that's the PAs' tool set. Whether end users will benefit depends on whether the end users use and find such PA products beneficial to them.
If an end user is making their own characters/textures/morphs/clothing/etc... then they likely can make any figure work.
...LNER's A4 Mallard (see below) holds the world record speed for a steam locomotive of 202.58 km/h or 125.88 mph in achieved 1938. However the record run was made on a slight downgrade and the locomotive needed to be repaired afterwards after overheating.
LNER A4 4468 Mallard
Unofficially a Milwaukee Road Hiawatha F-7 Pacific reached 125 mph and sustained speed of 120 mph for nearly five miles between Milwaukee and Chicago on level track however tas teh feat occurred on a regular passenger run, not an actual speed trial, it was never officially authenticated (such an attempt required a dynamometer car behind the locomotive and tender). Hiawatha trains pulled by both the F7 Pacifics and their predecessors the A4 Atlantics routinely travelled at 100 mph or better in regular service. The Class A Atlantic for a while held the all time authenticated speed record of 181.1 km/h (112.5 mph) over a 23 KM (14 mile) flat stretch in 1935.
MILW F7 Pacific
MILW. Class A Atlantic
[apologies for the...ahem..."derail" ].
To be fair:
Here are two things, that are better with G9:
Finally head to toe realistic prpoprtions.
Expressions on basic femal and male characters are actually quite good.
I personally don't want 'realistic proportions, ' though. I definitely prefer the proportions of Genesis 8.
Genesis 9 lacks detail in important places, such as the masculine chest, wrists, and ears. The arms also seem kind of rubbery to me.
It's all about realism for me. Stylized or even toon style is an art form for those, who long managed realism and now are tired of it.
Funny, that you mention the lack of a male chest, as I am thinking it's a lack of a female chest.
The default G9 looks clearly male to me, instead of intermediate.
That's why I keep saying, the male characters don't look that bad at all.
Realistic humans... the idea is kind of weird when one considers how much post processing goes into the average magazine photo. Actual humans tend to be kind of lumpy, fuzzy, blemished and a little gross, but we accept all that irl. Plus our brains process what we see in interesting ways. The question is, how much of that do we want to capture and what's the reward for doing that?
Naw. There are no rules for art. If someone prefers stylized figures over realistic ones that's their privilge. It doesn't mean one is better, simply a preference.
This is the longest wait at a train station I've ever seen. When is this train coming?
One of my reasons for preferring G9 is that I find variation between bodies and faces across all possibilities for humans interesting. I think G8 has a kind of "star" quality unless an artist is deliberately working against that with custom sculpts, and for a lot of people that seems to be the appeal of the figure. I say this without judgment, but just as an observation: several of the people I've seen comment on how G9 is objectively bad for their purposes have talked about how they live in areas where everyone is Hollywood pretty because they're in American cultural centers where that's common, or they just say that they vastly prefer idealized human figures.
For my purposes, that was actually one of the defining flaws of G8. It was very hard to move a figure like Michael 8 away from looking like John Travolta as Your Next-Door Neighbor with morphs alone. Both the F and M base looked best with some level of idealized proportions, mainly when using expressions; I found that it was a constant balancing act between trying to give a character some features I found visually interesting without completely breaking the effect of expressions. It was pretty common to get a character shape I really liked, only to find that they looked goofy with any expression more animated than a smoldering supermodel gaze with slightly parted lips. Looking back at a lot of my G8 attempts, they seem weirdly squished, and I think that was the result of trying to give them more pronounced features in a way that wouldn't pull expressions out of alignment. I ended up spending a lot of time dialing and sculpting custom expressions for characters, simply because I couldn't have much variation at all before they started looking bizarre.
In most cases, I wasn't even trying to make a character unattractive—I was just shooting for "catches your eye at the grocery store" and not an almost comically obvious visual separation between the main character and the extras. G9 strikes me as more of a character actor from that perspective, because I found it much easier to make shapes that are well within person-on-the-street realism, but retained the...I guess I'd call it stage presence? of a lead actor.
Actually, thinking about it, one of the reasons that's important for me is that it makes it stand out more when a character is unrealistically beautiful. It's kind of funny to have a character who is supposed to be unusually striking and you just kind of have to take that on faith because every character who comments on it looks like Margot Robbie as a baseline.