Okay, I know only passport members have them as yet, but by tomorrow everyone will have them. Please post some renders and what you think of them. I am particularly concerned about being able to clothe them. Love esther

It's Monday and they haven't posted yet because they're not on GMT, the cads. If I get them I'll post maybe!!

See you tomorrow then, maybe. Love esther

I'm in Kansas City on my laptop with Poser 4 and the G2 males and Poser 6 are all alone at home so no renders here til I get back.

As a CP Passport member i got them about a month ago... Unfortunately I'm not impressed much by either James or Koji 2. Kelvin seems to be the keeper!!

Koji 2 is too bland compared to the original Koji. And I must protest that Koji 2 already has a face room module while Koji's still waiting for one.... :(

The additional morph packs for the eF Boys are all well thought out with room for more (which was mentioned in Colms interview (these are the first of many I guess for them).  See the image posted.  That's James.   I worked him to death for about 2 hours.  Could not get his body to look strange.  I mostly work in DAZ Studio.   So it was easy to load up Poser, load up the Body and Face morph packs and save him as a new JamesG2_FULL.cr2.  Opened up DAZ Studio, morphed him, posed him, added in my tweaked pwSurface Shaders (Poseworks) and rendered.  Finished the composition in Xara Xtreme and here he is.   He does need more clothes and clothes that contain the FBM's that Colm released or I will need to load up Poser and use Wardrobe Wizard or maybe even Morph Magic (stand alone, sold at DAZ).  He needs undies and posing trunks as well!  The Kozaburo hair that was included in Poser 6 fits him just fine and since it has morphs and is not strand based I'm quite happy that he's not bald now... was in this render though....

Anyway, that's my mini review...... 

Richard

Quite honestly, I am now totally confused with all my e-Frontier male figure upgrade versions, I feel like deleting the whole lot and going off to a corner and weeping for a while.

Bought all three new G2 men a few hours ago and so far I'm loving them, in many ways they leave the Millennium men behind and they are even better than Apollo in some ways.  Add to them the morph packs that RDNA are offering and e-Frontier might finally be able to survive even if Daz were to make their characters exclusive to D|S.

I will have to revise my previous statement as it was based on the initial release of the G2 men.  Downloaded  the Super bundle last night and played around a bit. Also got Colm's morph packs. I have to agree, things are looking much better than the previous release. Koji 2 is still a bit bland though. I hope face_off updates his real skin shader & P6 Realism Kit to include them too :)

the morph packs are  very interesting too!! :)

I don't think Daz would ever consider making the Mil figures exclusive to Daz|Studio - they were originally built for Poser anyway...

There's some nice looking clothing out for them. Hope i can get it to fit the morph packs. Love esther

'Bought all three new G2 men a few hours ago and so far I'm loving them, in many ways they leave the Millennium men behind and they are even better than Apollo in some ways.'

I'm curious. What are these 'some ways'?

i got my free james last night but so far i'm not very impressed, will have another play tonight and see, just so far doesn't seem to be better that G1 james!!

Not sure I like the hair files included though, I did try them out, but was not happy, so rendered him bald in the end.  This is the JamesG2 from CP render I did as a test.  Jan

Awsome!

Just a notation..... The Kozaburo hair props from Poser 6 for James 1 fit James 2, at least the "messy" one does.  Plus they have better movement morphs and nice texture options.   There are four styles:

All Back
Long Hair
Messy Hair
PonyTail Classic

Not sure how these would fit Kelvin or Koji though! 

Perhaps Koz will be kind to us once again and create updated fits for all the G2 males!!

Quote - Just a notation..... The Kozaburo hair props from Poser 6 for James 1 fit James 2, at least the "messy" one does.  Plus they have better movement morphs and nice texture options.   There are four styles:

All Back
Long Hair
Messy Hair
PonyTail Classic

Not sure how these would fit Kelvin or Koji though! 

Perhaps Koz will be kind to us once again and create updated fits for all the G2 males!!

I used a hairstyle from Maya Doll in my picture of James up above.  There are a couple
of male hairstyles at the Maya Doll website, even though there doesn't seem to be
any male characaters. Maybe to make Maya Doll look butch?

I did find out that the poses that came with the G2 figures sort of mess things up, must be saved with some data that should not be there.  However, when I had the hair fixed right, then applied the pose, things like the hair went haywire, so had to parent it again and fiddle.

This is Koji G2 with one of RDNA new products, the faces for the G2 men and the Ultimate Head Morphs by Colm.  Jan

Hmm, something looks a little odd with his sternal notch in that render, and where's his adam's apple? love esther

Just another question: Did they change anything on the UV Mapping? I have the Thomas for James textures and would like to know, if they work on G2.

Does the G2 replace the G1, or can both be used after installing?

What do I think of the new G2 males?

Well, I've only experimented with G2 James, and I'm afraid I can't say that I'm very impressed. But I don't want to sound overly negative because despite my unabashed love of a certain other male figure, I really would have liked to see something really good coming from EF's efforts.

Firstly, G2 James has a mesh density that although is heavy for some people using Poser as it is now, in the future will become more the comfortable norm (as PC's become more powerful as a standard and the software hopefully gets re-coded to use it ). This was also true of the original.  As a result I could see many forms coming out of this mesh. But in truth I think the default shape is once again too cut in muscular definition. I don't know if there are morphs among the 3rd party offerings to smooth some of that out, but it still looks pretty unnatural as it is to me - better than the original though. The endomorph FBM helps some. On a lesser note but still irksome is that his hands are far too big IMO. I’ve noticed this with all the EF figures in fact. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is something not quite right about his default proportions in a wider sense, but I haven’t done any measuring and I know such matters are somewhat subjective. Perhaps there are just one or two features throwing it.  I’m quite impressed with the genital figure though – the morphs there are scarily good.

The rigging - aggghh! There are some aspects that seem slightly improved, but the typically difficult shoulder area is starting to really annoy me (with Poser figures in general). Posing his arms down at his sides naturally does very strange things at the shoulders & armpits and with many movements there appears to be some mesh deformation difficulties. Posing arms up doesn't seem much better either. Generally he feels very stiff to work with and the default poses provided don't look at all comfortable to me and really don't help. Yet another exemplar that Poser needs it's rigging dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. I had been looking forward to the magnet deformers for muscle movement; a nice idea. But I think the final implementation could have been better – less successful on the legs than on the arms. The Advanced body controls are also quite a nice idea and do work pretty well. I recently bought an almost invisible product called ‘Apollo Lives’ for AM by PDXJims where this feature impressed me incredibly.

The scaling options are a big disappointment, as they are with most figures. Body parts separate/deform at the seams with the slightest of scaling in some instances. Not very helpful for flexible character creation. I don't know if scaling is really considered that viable in some quarters; it doesn't seem to have been implemented here.

The default FBM's really haven't improved much. I wasn't expecting too much here as EF seem to prefer to let the 3rd party developers do their stuff. All the same, the endo/ecto/meso morphs are perhaps worse than in the original version to my eyes. Perhaps the rigging again forces its restrictions here - the arms and neck arn't too affected by the endomorph for example, and probably wouldn't bend too well if they were. This could present problems for the 3rd party developers also, restricting what they can realistically do.

The FaceRoom module for G2 James seems to have been less carefully implemented as well. On my first couple of runs using really quite moderate settings, the resulting heads had a clear deformation where it joined the neck. Not good. This was something I didn’t experience much with the older James.

I think his new textures and shader setups are quite well done, except that I’m slightly perturbed by the weak colour of the eyebrows.

I do like the clothes (the casual clothing that is available with G2 James anyway). They actually have a good selection of morphs and look good on the figure. Nice to see that a hair figure was included as well, but TBO the long hair that comes with G2 James isn’t really my thing. I would have thought that a short hair would be more generally appropriate. Maybe just my preference.

All in all, I can’t help but think that this is quite a mediocre offering. I really can’t see myself using the new James much, and I won’t be buying Koji or Kelvin. I can’t help but wonder at the EF/CP strategy of developing three male ‘base’ figures (and presumably three new females. Six new figures which, if you aren’t a Passport member at CP or an existing owner of the earlier versions or of Poser, are going to set you back a pretty penny for the full compliment that supposedly offers a full range of ethnic and body variations.

Actually I’m afraid I have been almost entirely negative in my evaluation of G2 James. These are just my opinions though.

Quote - The rigging - aggghh! There are some aspects that seem slightly improved, but the typically difficult shoulder area is starting to really annoy me (with Poser figures in general). Posing his arms down at his sides naturally does very strange things at the shoulders & armpits and with many movements there appears to be some mesh deformation difficulties.

I agree with you here. I was working with the new figure last night and had these same difficulties.

true what carodan said about shoulder area... still a pain.

the RDNA body & head morph packs help somewhat.

I'm seeing with the RDNA Body morphs pack that one can get James (et all) looking not quite so cut up.  The morphs ued to create "Naturally Fit" were:

CJ_StomachIn: .50
CJ_Young: 1.00
CJ_Natural: .50
CJ_Barbarian: .50 &
Mesomorph: .50

Fiddled with the face morphs to take away that "James" look and soften the whole thing up. 

Richard ;-)~

Richard, the face is wonderful! Both face and body are very realistic. Great job!

I guess I have to get those morphs on payday LOL

Koji is a bit different.  Apply the same settings but using only Mesomorph at .25

Not sure how my values translate into Poser values though.....  Sorry, don't use that program very often these days! 

Richard ;-)~

Certainly looking better than I've been able to get with just the base figure Richard. I can't work out whether his hips are too wide (generally) or whether the torso is too short (?).

Those skin textures are a darn site better than the old James.

Looks like you're having a good deal more joy with the head too.

While I'm a hige fan of Cole's morphs, I'm a bit surprised that there wasn't even a discount offer available for purchasers of the original morphs for James G1. Yes, I know the morphs had to be totally recreated from scratch. I do understand that, but seriously, customer loyalty should rate SOME kind of discount in my opinion. Even if it's just 5%, that would show some acknowledgement that you're rewarding repeat buyers.

I'm not even going to guess what will have to be paid to repurchase skin textures made for the G1 figures because the new figures have different UV mapping and also have to be redone basically from scratch. Am I the only one who remembers the supposed promise of upgrades for people who purchased the 3rd party addons like morphs and textures. Not really much of an upgrade if they don't include upgrade pricing if you ask me.

The new Magnets for posing and morphing looks nifty and useable, but now we have totally new figures with even less clothing and skin options and because of the sloppy G2 preview release I'm not seeing anyone being quick to jump at supporting these new G2 figures. The Ultimate Morphs are fine if all I plan on using for clothing are Dynamic Items, but if I want conforming clothes to fit properly, Wardrobe Wizard will be a must to match all the morphing capabilities.

If you have the additional packs from RDNA then your in business.  If not then you are quite limited.  Look at it this way... Mil figures barely come with any morphs at all built in, Apollo came with it all and the eF figures give you something in between with plenty of room for the merchants to build off of.  I actually like the Meso-Endo-Ectomorphs, I think that EVERY figure should have some form of these included as they are the more common body types out there. 

Interestingly enough Kelvin took me a bit more to get looking "Naturally Fit"

Also, one small niggle I have about these morphs.  Males do not generally have bellies when they are fit.  When one uses the "StomachIn" dial it pulls in the mid stomach and not the belly. So from a profile he looks like .... well like that damned fat just won't go away regardless of how many crunches he does!  

Here's Kelvin.....

I love the face morphs, they need more shaping options but perhaps in the future.  Perhaps not.... hope so! 

Richard

Yea, I remember them telling us that a few of the merchants had promised free upgrades, others promised discounts and others said flat out that the work it would entail to recreate popular characters and what not is from scratch so they were not going to offer any discounts.  I can understand that attitude now seeing the finished product but it would be nice if those that promised the free or discounts popped in here and made it clear if they are were going to follow through or decided that it was just too much.  It would be a disapointment but I would love at least an honest opinion and maybe even a few promo shots of what's coming... if anything at all.  These ARE the G2 males after all.  Jessie and Miki are really the only eF figures that got allot of support in the first place so...... we shall see I suppose!!  :blink:

I think Jepe mentioned that he would NOT be able to offer a discount but I DO hope he does some textures for the boys as he is the king of fur and James needs a fur coat for the Winter coming up and I'd love to see his take on Kelvin and Koji as well!!

Karanta is working on an underwear pack and I think an additional clothing pack that has some of the RDNA morphs included so that will be a must for these boys!  I like her work!!

Keep in mind that there are other programs out there besides Wardrobe Wizard.  I like Morph Magic very much but I'm not seeing how to create the FBM's I want with the current clothing items.  It would be nice for the author to update this program as it's very useful and easy to use!!  Sold at DAZ!!

Richard

don't like that stomach problem! Love esther

Well I just can't get excited about these new guys. Even with their low support, I at least have more than 1 skin texture for G1 James and Koji! The Ronin texture is my favorite for Koji and it doesn't work on this new guy. I want my Koji G1 Faceroom Support!

Okay, let's see.... James G2 is a free upgrade for P6 owner. Koji G2 is a free upgrade for Koji owners. The Face room plugs are all free. You get free casual clothes too with your free upgrade. The free upgrades include new free textures. The free upgrades include new free hairstyles. G2 males have a boatload of new free poses. And G2 males have Wardrobe Wizard support which is also free. G2 males can share clothes and body morphs and textures. Improvements have been to their possibility. Clothes are nicer too. So, the recap is: 1) Users asked for improvements. 2) eF listened and made improvements. 3) eF gives it out improvements for free. Sweetness. And if that's not enough to make you a happy camper, consider this: The G2 males came out before the females!!! This never happens in Poserdom!!!! Male figures are usually treated like less than dirt compared to the money-making female figures. As a person who works with male figures 90% of the time, I feel "loved" for a change instead of neglected. This is a nice. ^^ Now I just have to bang my drum for cool j-rocker clothes and jewelry for Koji. ;) bB

They're a very exciting step up from previous versions. Kelvin is my favorite ... but I suspect we'll see some amazing textures and characters coming out for them in the months to come!

Umm... BB, You'd better go look at PhilC's website again! G2 WW support is NOT Free!

no it's $4.95 but that's not that expensive either for 3 male characters!!

You're right. I just looked it up and the G2  plugin for WW is $4.95 at PhilC's.

I mistook the free G2 Puppet Master update for the Wardrobe Wizard update. Oopsie.

Here's the link:
http://www.contentparadise.com/us/user/g2_male_puppet_master_update_product_21995

bB

PuppetMaster update IS free and WW support is $4.95. Almost free.

I'm totally in love with Kelvon. The other.. I haven't even used KojiG2 yet. I don't like his default face much. James is OK, I've used him in a few renders by now. But Kelvin is my absolute favourite.

BTW Clark came before Gloria and Apollo came before... whoever it is that was planned. So it DOES happen that the guys come first. But I agre it's not the norm.