Category Archives: 3D Content

Further Examination of Victoria 8

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DAZ 3D's Victoria 8 posed overlooking an industrial facility

Creating Content for Victoria 8

This is an image (1920×1080 unmarked wallpaper version here) I was working on for the V8/Genesis 8 review. I wanted something to show that was basically entirely my own, but there were some setbacks and it was taking way too long, so I put it on hold.

Everything here (aside from V8) was modeled in LightWave and UV mapped with UVLayout. The dress is draped using DAZ Studio’s Alembic exporter plugin (figure pose animation), and LightWave’s cloth Physics FX, which is often painful. I’ve been considering Syflex, which has plugins for many 3D suits (LW, Modo, Maya etc) or VWD Cloth and Hair (Poser) and it’s DAZ Studio plugin. If anyone has any experience with either I’d love to hear. If I pick up either I’ll be sure to do a review.

I’ve used shaders from Mec4d’s amazing PBS Shaders vol 2. for Iray (platform and dress) and vol .1 (rails). I am not a skilled texture and shader artist, so I love shader packs, and these are some of the best available at DAZ 3D’s store.

Victoria 8 floating dress fix

Anyway, while rigging the dress (which I constructed specifically for the Victoria 8 morph), I ran into an annoying issue where the dress would “float” up off the figures shoulders. I don’t know how to fix this, but I do have a work around that does the trick.

Loading in the original mesh as a morph and then dialing it to max effectively dials out the weird shape the Transfer Utility thinks Victoria 8 is, returning the dress to the correct shape and location.

As far as I can tell this fixes the problem, or at least works around it. The item will morph correctly.

Victoria 8 Eyebrows

The fiber eyebrows that come with the base Victoria 8 product completely slipped my mind when I was doing the review. They come in just shy of 50k polygons, which is over three Genesis 8 figures, so not exactly a light prop. For closeups, they can make a world of difference.

I used them here, and while the benefit is debatable, it is still better than the bump maps, which is a step up from having drawn on eyebrows (though sometimes that’s exactly what you want – I’m not judging).

And that’s all for today. A bit of a mixed post, but hopefully something useful there for you all.

DAZ 3D’s Victoria 8 Released

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Full Victoria 8/ Genesis 8 review
I was a bit skeptical about the speculation that a new Victoria was about to drop, and well, I guess history really does repeat. Here we are with Victoria and Genesis 8, almost like clockwork, and with all the new enhancements, I’m a little buzzed. I have my copy of the Victoria 8 Pro Bundle, and I’ll be having a good play with her soon so I can put up a full review.

Key notes on Victoria 8

She is built off a new Genesis 8 figure, which is interesting. Apparently we have gone from Genesis 3 to 8 as DAZ decides to ditch the Genesis versions in favour of sticking with the Victoria/Michael generation. This seems a sensible move as Genesis 4 and Generation 4 (effectively Gen 4 and Gen 4) would have been a little confusing, especially given Victoria 4’s continued popularity.

DAZ boast that Victoria 8 is the most backwards compatible to date, with clones for Genesis 1/2/3 coming included. Given that backwards compatibility has always been in high demand, this is a sensible and benevolent move on DAZ 3D’s part.

Further more, on the topic of backwards compatibility, DAZ have this to say on the figure’s auto-fit capabilities, “With new Autofit technology, Daz 3D’s vast content library for all the Genesis figures is instantly available for use making Victoria unmatched in her versatility as a 3D figure.”.

Enhancements include:

  • Muscle contraction and improved joint bending
  • Some sort of eye updates
  • Eyelashes are now a conforming something or other, which sounds kinda cool. I imagine it is a separate mesh
  • Default pose has been changed – “Improved default pose to allow for the creation of new types of content.”
  • Better skin. DAZ claim their updated uber shader is a vast improvement.
  • Finger and toe nails are now welded into mesh

Power Pose has also been updated (perhaps this should have been a clue as to what was going on over there), and Genesis 8 comes with Power Pose templates, so I’m going to guess our new figure works well with it.

As usual, the head and body morph bundles are separate buys, which is always a bit of a bummer, but I’m feeling more intrigued by this release than the last generation. Anyway, that’s enough out of me, I’m going to go play with the new girl. I’ll be back soon with a full review.

DAZ Studio Iray Shaders Sale

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I’m putting the finishing touches on a new tutorial, so just dropping in quick to let y’all know that there is currently a huge Iray Shader sale. There’s a bunch of other stuff on sale too, but Shaders, lots and lots of shaders!

Oh, and there’s a fresh stable DAZ Studio release out, also exciting! We are now up to version 4.9.4115. Check out the thread over at their forum for all the latest updates. Nothing too surprising in there if you have been keeping up with the betas.

Freebie – Stephanie 6

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5423A quick post letting y’all know there is some good content currently up in the freebie section at DAZ 3D. For those, that are still using the Genesis 2 character base a lot (like me), the Stephanie 6 starter bundle is up for grabs. It contains, a hair prop, a couple of outfits, a couple of additional character morphs (with textures), and a pose pack. I only had the base figure, so I’m picking this one up for the extra content.

The Super Suit Sci-Fi content bundle is also up. It has some cool stuff I’ve used in a few renders. Most of that content is fairly old now, but with 4312some material tweaks it all still looks pretty good.

Additionally there’s some cool stuff in the Fast Grabs too. There are some HRD/IBL sets from DimensionTheory, who does a lot of great work with shaders and lights. My other product of choice from the Fast Grabs is Major Cache for M4. It might be for an old model, but it is still one of the coolest pieces of sci-fi armour on the DAZ store.

Anyways, that’s it for now. i have a few tutorials and reviews brewing, so I’ll be back soon.