What do you think of Daz Genesis 8.1?

[HoneyMan]

As recreation said, I think it was mostly to adress torso pixel density. It was overdue but not something really critical imo (you could still use higher torso maps).

For me the best thing of this update is the new PBRSkin shader, seems promising. But the loss of Fresnel/Top Coat Bump is huge. Tried to overcome but so far it's subpar . Tried also to add it by kinda copy/pasting Uber shader top coat bricks in the PBRSkin one, but I just broke everything I guess .

On other things, if you have to rebake maps from g3/8 to g8.1 UV for whatever reasons, there is a

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. At first look it seems way less tedious than do it in Blender (wish I read that sooner ). Not sure it will work on geograft too, but I don't see why it woulnd't. DonRP

Can you tell me where I can find that skin? There is no Daz Iray PBRSkin in the content libary under Shader Presets- Iray...

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Can you tell me where I can find that skin? There is no Daz Iray PBRSkin in the content libary under Shader Presets- Iray...

It's not a skin, it's a shader. You will need a Daz up-to-date (be sure you've installed 'Default ressource for Daz Studio 4.15' also). On your content library it's located under Shader presets>Iray>Daz PBRSkin. Victoria 8.1 & HD Add-On (G8.1F) use that new skin shader.

 

[Black Ram oss]

As recreation said, I think it was mostly to adress torso pixel density. It was overdue but not something really critical imo (you could still use higher torso maps).

For me the best thing of this update is the new PBRSkin shader, seems promising. But the loss of Fresnel/Top Coat Bump is huge. Tried to overcome but so far it's subpar . Tried also to add it by kinda copy/pasting Uber shader top coat bricks in the PBRSkin one, but I just broke everything I guess .

On other things, if you have to rebake maps from g3/8 to g8.1 UV for whatever reasons, there is a

You must be registered to see the links

. At first look it seems way less tedious than do it in Blender (wish I read that sooner ). Not sure it will work on geograft too, but I don't see why it woulnd't. DonRP

Thank you. It seems like a long process, especially if you do it character by character.
I will wait for some time hoping that a tool to convert them will come out. (and facial poses done very well for 8.1, from what I've seen that part has been improved a lot)

I have not yet had enough but if someone has had time to convert them, could tell me if with a little bit of setting in surfaces.
and putting the characters g8.1 next to the old characters or other g8, if you notice much difference. because if you do not notice I modify the characters that interest me more, and the others I will do in the future.

 

[HoneyMan]

It's not a skin, it's a shader. You will need a Daz up-to-date (be sure you've installed 'Default ressource for Daz Studio 4.15' also). On your content library it's located under Shader presets>Iray>Daz PBRSkin. Victoria 8.1 & HD Add-On (G8.1F) use that new skin shader.

Thank you. That was very strange so for everyone who has the same problem: I uninstalled the "Default ressource for Daz Studio 4.15" (which was already installed) and installed it again and tadaaaaa! It appeared! Thank you.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Thank you. It seems like a long process, especially if you do it character by character.
I will wait for some time hoping that a tool to convert them will come out. (and facial poses done very well for 8.1, from what I've seen that part has been improved a lot)

I have not yet had enough but if someone has had time to convert them, could tell me if with a little bit of setting in surfaces.
and putting the characters g8.1 next to the old characters or other g8, if you notice much difference. because if you do not notice I modify the characters that interest me more, and the others I will do in the future.

Not sure if I understand you well, but rebaking maps for a new UV ain't gonna change anything about the textures quality, you won't notice any differences. You only need this, for making a G8F figure fully Base 8.1 female UV compatible, or a G8.1F figure fully Base Female UV compatible. You may want this for geograft comptability or that kind of thing but it ain't do anything about quality.

Now you may talk about the new PBRSkin shader that Victoria 8.1 use. You can already use it for any figure, regardless of what UV map that figure use (g3/g8/g8.1 or whatever). Select your skin surfaces, apply PBRSkin shader, done. Now lot of skins gonna broke somewhere (good chunk may work too with few tweaks), because if they have add some cool features, they gutted a lot of older and sometimes obsolete ones.

If you struggle a bit already with uber-shader or a bit confused with it, there is no incentive to jump on PBRSkin at all. It's few features that skins makers may milk in the future or not. In fact right now I prefer the good ol' uber shader quality-wise .

 

[brynhildr]

To be completely honest with all of you... I really don't see that much of an improvement on this new genesis model.
Sure, the expressions got overall better than the previous model, but as of now there's literally no reason as to why someone would even want to switch on that if not, like someone else already said, for a bit more of photorealism and such - which honestly, It's not even that much unless rendered in high subD as always, and for example I can't benefit of that since with my current rig rendering as high res is not an option. So it's just another model, for me at least.

I've done some tests myself with both g8.1 base and vic as well. And also the g8 with the pbr shader. While it indeed looks good to the eye, on the other hand at least for me there are quite a few problems and the most important of all is the fact that I can't use the face control because of the morphs I have. Mind you, I don't have 285619 morphs installed because recently I even purged most of them, freeing also space, but most likely if I had a clean installation of daz with only the base genesis and the newest, the program certainly wouldn't crash on me everytime I try to use it. Because that checks all of the possible morphs installed and.. well.. kaboom. So the only thing I can use, are the dials that come with it and that's it.
Another thing for me that doesn't work are, even tho I mentioned before the pros, the expressions: both with g8.1 and vic as well they feel.. all the same. They dials all the same and there's literally no variety. And as always, smile at 100% it's "freaky" as hell.

Then there's the obvious, for now, problem about most of the meipe and similar assets which doesn't work as of now (at least not properly and only with manual configurations), but luckily GP as well as other three assets received already some "fix" to be accepted from the new genesis model.
But still... I don't see any reason, again, as to why I should switch to the newest genesis. Or even someone else. And I don't understand why most of the daz users are screaming like is some sort of "miracle" that they released this g8.1. Just for the enhanced expressions?

 

[31971207]

Expression alone is worth the upgrade for me, albeit it depends on what kind of expression products will be coming. Expressions are hard and I don't have the time to learn how to do them from scratch. So far even the best expression product I've tried has just maybe one that looks good to me among a pack of 20 or so.

Maybe it's just the noob in me but I do find PBRSkin renders less waxy skin under diverse lighting conditions on same G8 textures whereas the old one needs customized tinkering to get rid of the waxy look, which I often couldn't and is extremely time consuming. The downside is that the skin now looks too dry.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

I do find PBRSkin renders less waxy skin under diverse lighting conditions on same G8 textures whereas the old one needs customized tinkering to get rid of the waxy look, which I often couldn't and is extremely time consuming. The downside is that the skin now looks too dry.

It's because they get rid of various "glossy" & "shiny" layer that people used before dual lobe was introduced and why it's a bit dry now.

Tried to make a chart about Uber & PBRSkin differences. Hope I didn't miss anything.



Quite torn honestly. I get it make sense for Daz to consolidate a shader for skins instead of the polyvalent but quite fat Uber (if they could cook something similar focused in fiber textile it could be noice, one can dream). But I scratch my head with some changes... Sure there must technical things a noob like me don't know/undrstand, but still.

For exemple they want dual lobe to be the go-to layer for 'specularity' (make sense tbh), so they get rid of everything else. But how they still kept 'metallic flakes' layer and completely chainsaw-ed Top coat ? It almost never been used for skins nor was ever popular, you could experiment with it but that's about it (it's mostly used for car paint and the like).


(tbh dual lobe setup are very different as I was experimentating but ain't gonna change much details result)

There is other things, like cutout opacity removed, I don't think it ever affected anything? Removal of base color effect (edit:in fact all color effect seems to be locked to scatter only hence the removal)/reflectance tint make SSS less 'flexilble', but Iray SSS always been kinda weird so maybe it's for the better, dunno.

While micro details are a nice addtion but 8.1 UV seams are now in plain sight (there were a bit hidden with 8 UV), may be a pain in the ass using tiles for head/face/body and find correct density/tiling for each parts (weightmap could help to hide but I don't know, or just bake the whole map with 1/1 value but it defeat a bit the feature?).

And if Michael/Victoria 8.1 showcased anything is that they get rid of a good ol' detailed 4k/8k bump map for one random generic 1k noise tile (how it is improvement even from the old one ).

Balance not really positive, guess I'm gonna just wait for the cool skin makers to use it and see how it's done .

 

[J.T.F.]

Thank you. That was very strange so for everyone who has the same problem: I uninstalled the "Default ressource for Daz Studio 4.15" (which was already installed) and installed it again and tadaaaaa! It appeared! Thank you.

Thank you sir, that helped a lot.

 

[mickydoo]

I have been plying around with the skin shader in the Victoria 8.1 texture. I applied her texture then put my skin over the top like I did with gen 8, but no matter what I did in the shaders it was still to red, I think I have found the culprit, this is my progress (ignore the body, I have only dome the head).

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Having trouble getting "New Gens" to work on 8.1 so may hold off on using it much for now

 

[31971207]

What does the "tear" prop in G8.1 do? I cannot see it in render. Can it morph into actual tears?

 

[Dilly_]

Here's my two cents on 8.1:

-The new facial rig is nice. Expressions look less demon-like and more natural, especially when using the sliders close to maxed out.
-The iris depth is great. Eye reflections look amazing now. Some textures might require a bit of tweaking to brighten them up, but overall very happy with it.
-The new PBR skin shader seems to work well in some situations, but I feel it's not a significant enough difference from the Uber shader to justify using exclusively.
-Overall I will be using 8.1 instead of G8 as much as possible

For comparison, here are 2 renders with Genesis 8.1. The first is using the Uber shader, and the 2nd is the new PBR. In my opinion the PBR skin reflects the light more naturally, if you look at the shoulder in the two images you can see a bit of a nicer reflection on the 2nd. But overall I feel the Uber skin still looks superior. If the PBR made a large difference I would consider using it exclusively, but because it's still incompatible with so many assets and only makes a minor difference, I think I'll stick with Uber for now.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

What does the "tear" prop in G8.1 do? I cannot see it in render. Can it morph into actual tears?

I doubt. Let's say it's humidity around eyes (here in green).

The new PBR skin shader seems to work well in some situations, but I feel it's not a significant enough difference from the Uber shader to justify using exclusively.

It's the same shader minus flexibilty. For skin, if you plan to use micro tiles (and occlusion in a less extent) go for PBRSkin, Uber shader if not, both are valid option imho (even I think Uber is better just because top coat and other options tho)

 

[khumak]

I've been avoiding 8.1 so far until I figure out whether I'm going to have compatibility issues between some of my plugins.

 

[xxx3me]

One thing that is pissing me off on G8.1 is about expressions. Most of expressions packs I get have no effect on G8 chars and vice versa, even if some people say it works. So, I'm still trying to don't use G8.1 chars by now (most of my packages are for G8). An automatic converter would be perfect.

 

[Fatalmasterpiece]

I get that expressions are supposedly better but the change in the way the skin shaders work is enough to put me off from wanting to use 8.1 for many characters. Means that no skin shaders or presets will work between the two. I dread the day I have to have a G8 and G8.1 with a wet skin effect shader stand next to each other.

 

[linkinn]

One thing that is pissing me off on G8.1 is about expressions. Most of expressions packs I get have no effect on G8 chars and vice versa, even if some people say it works. So, I'm still trying to don't use G8.1 chars by now (most of my packages are for G8). An automatic converter would be perfect.

You can use g8 expressions on g8.1


Go to your library folder > \data\DAZ 3D\Genesis 8\Female 8_1\Morphs\DAZ 3D

And delete the Base Pose Head and Expressions folder, they are only placeholders that intentionally block the expressions. Done, you can use 8 expressions on 8.1 now.

 

[xxx3me]

Thanks, I'll try this.

Anyway, now I'm more inclined to convert my G8F characters to G8.1F. I did a quick test, 50 iterations in IRay and rendering was around 20% faster using G8.1F. And her eyebrows are better and mouth seems slightly better defined.

Using G8F



Same character converted to G8.1F (over Victoria)