Hi,

I'm doing my first steps with poser 6, and as I was surfing on DAZ site I found, of course, a large number of characters for V3 base.
So in order to spare time and money, could you tell me which are the best of them in terms of photrealism and poses? I have also the same question with Hair.
Thank you for any help.

Qasar

Actually none of theim are.  V3 is butt ugly,no matter what you do with her.  Try out the P5 Judy, and her free hybrid Neja figure instead; these two characters have character, and there are oodles of FREE morphs and stuff that can be used with them.
If you MUST spend your money, then get the DAZ UTC (Universal Texture Converter) so that you can trade skin textures back and forth between V3 and V2, Judy, Neja, MIck's 1,2,3, Stephanie, Aiko, etc.  (There are several very CUTE characters already made for Judey, HERE in Freestuff, and all of P4 Posette's free headmorphs work with Neja
Just my own opinion, and worth about as much.  But in light of the old axiom, don't go marrying a woman who's a tramp, and don't go paying good money for what you may already have for free!
David P, Hoadley

I really like Minuette for V3 by Thorne and Sarsa in the marketplace here, you may want to check their stores as they have several characters for V3 and all of them are beautiful.  My favorite hair is Saphhyre Fox by Quarker over at Daz I also really like Wild Hair which is now available at RDNA if I'm not mistaken.  

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=280495

Generally speaking, check out the "Top Sellers" part of the Renderosity marketplace - there is a reason why these people are top sellers!

For good photorealism, check out face_off's line of shader systems - his packs really help bring any character to life.

My favs are Milla and Ioli by danae on the GND model by Blackhearted. very realistic.

I really love Admana

Also, Porthos has some very gorgeous characters

I also enjoy Neomea's morphs

And I have bought several of Rhiannon's moprhs

Another of my favourites is KymJ.  She makes great morphs and textures for the over 30 crowd

But as someone said above, it all depends on what you're looking for. I really love working with V3 and she is the primary female figure that I use.  I get tired of the twig thin morphs and blemish free textures, so it's nice to see more and more merchants paying attention to details and realizing that not all woman are flawless, perfect  barbie dolls, and thus seeing more and more realistic morphs and textures for females in the MP.

If by photorealistic you're talking about skin, then check the heaps of vendors here at R. If you're talking body shpae, none can be due to all millenium figs horrendous shoulder joints etc.

If you want to spend money on a "character", buy at one with custom morphs for body and head. The rest you can dial yourself.

And don't forget the UTC!  Buy THAT before you buy anything else.
DPH

And no, V3 is not 'butt ugly' lmao

There are many many gorgeous textures and such for V3. When I was new, I basically went by the examples shown in packages. If they could pull off a 'look', so could I !

if you are into making your own, you might want to take a look at V3 new gen by HMann at Daz. It's a V3 that not only comes with 250 head morphs but ver 2 will accept all of V3's injections.

Attached Link: Steve's Art Gallery

My two cents There are a few i love to use .For life like renders . ill name a few throw a few out there .

1 Miss April for V3  by  Morris. As a  matter  Morris & faceOff    make a HyperREAL©-Fusing Photo-Real and Mathmatics, creating chracter realism kit, an evolution in texturing!
By Morris and Face_off!  this add  a wonderful  chracter realism

Ps. if you do think about buying it  get the M3 version cus you can use any texture with that one as opposed to the V3 ver. Where you can't use ant texture on the fly .   :)

Personally, I can't stand how the renders of Judy and Don turn out. Makes me feel like I am watching SIMS video games screenshots. They just don't have what it takes to really make beautiful renders. But then again, it's just my opinion.

I always have said and say now- You get what you pay for.

I always have said and say now- You get what you pay for. True, so true.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1315034&member
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1312113&member
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1291372&member

These are three of my uploads to my gallery, they've all been done with Neja (Stahlratte's hybrid figur, which combines Judy's body with the Nea Posette head) -Do tell me if THEY look like Sims.  Neja,like Judy accepts V2 textures, and Like Posette, all the numerous P4 Nude Woman's head morphs can be used to sculpt her face to look like anything I like.
David P. Hoadley

Well, I don't really have any place giving that opinion for fear it will set you off even more. So i will stick to my opinions and you can retain yours.

You can find Claudia for V3 at :

http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=47643

The hair is called Alanis hair ( Can't remember where I got it ).

I think she is beautiful.

Well, thanks a lot for all these answers.

I agree with dphoadley as I discovered a lot of free stuff on the site, and I will try some of them. But when I look at the render on DAZ advertisement, I'm sure that it's easier to do when everything is pre-ready!

Caludia is gorgeous and may be I will fall on her.......

Qasar

hahaahah cute

Good Luck!

Ok I wasnt gonna do this but I must.

First of all her eyes are crossed ( think she needs glasses ). Secondly her skin tones look almost 'plastic' to me ( That is just an opinion ) and I cannot see a lot of details in the texture of her skin. All in all I wouldnt use the figure for a thing. Just doesnt seem 'pretty' to me. I had her in my Runtime folders and deleted all these figures as they just don't give you something to work with.

I guess all in all the point is, it depends what style you are going for when you are creating figures. It depends what 'look' you want. Everyone's tastes are different and everyone has different opinions.

Me personally, I vote for Aiko first because she is my favorite, then V3, after that, TheGirl ( even though TheGirl is more 'toonish in body shape than realistic ).

As far as Don is concerned, I probably would not find myself falling all over him and swooning either. More prefer M3 or David....even Hiro more than him. Just has more possibilites and more freedom of creativity with M3, David or Hiro.

I guess the other point is: There is more you can do with V3 then Judy. There is more available for V3 than Judy and all in all, there is more free stuff for V3 all over the web, and did anyone mention V3 is free over at daz ? So is Aiko.

I wont call Judy 'butt ugly'. But I can say I dont see the 'attractive quality' in her.

First of all, her eyes are not crossed, her heads bent forward while her eyes are looking upwards at the camera.
Second, comparing both of our photos, I frankly find mine has a more natural skin tone than yours.  However, you might be right on that after all, but the failure then is mine and not the figures.  I'm new to Poser 5, having worked for years with Pro Pack, and some to the nuances of the materials room still escape me (Specular colors and all that).  As for physical beauty, if you will glance trhrough my gallery, you'll see that I tend to gravitate towards women with a more natural 'Homey' look to them, rather than the usual run-of-the-mill PinUps that are generally posted here.
My lastest render is of a woman who is extremely  plain, not because I couldn't do better, but because I wanted her that way (see my 'Vintner's Daughter.01-02).  What I did was to take Neja, negetively morph her face with Duane Moody's Monalee MT, and then applied a Micheal 3 texture, in this case it was the Heike male texture by  XTrinityX that I had downloaded from here in Freestuff and then converted to Vicky 2 in UTC.  I then applied it to Neja (Both Judy and Neja take V2 textures, and with UTC the opportunities are unlimited), and the result were a woman with an extremely masculine face.  And while she's not a beauty, she is certainly stricking character in her own right, -and other than the cost of UTC, I did it all for FREE.
Ultimately, with your expensive Vickies, you may get figures that are superficially prettier, but I with the liberal application of imagination and ingenuity, will certainly achieve ones that are both cheaper and memorable.
David P. Hoadley

Take an "upgrade" to "New Generation 2005" and you Vick will have many more goog morphes.

Textures at DAZ  you can buy at Gwendolyn´s Shop.

Here in Renderosity you can get best (!) textures with photoreal result at:

Syltermermaid; TamelaJ, Danelise, Stormi, Morris, Vicktorias, Dale and Venerellas "Neera" , "Hocchi" and "Smart District".

You may have a look on my gallery here.

Best wishes, Sivana

Trying to be helpful here dphoadly; there does appear to be something wrong with your figures eyes. I often see this when someone uses "point at" to position the eyes, or when using point at with a square or ball target. If you look closely, you'll notice her right pupil position is upper center of the right eye while her left pupil is mid-left of center of the left eye. Both eyes should be in approximately the same location equi-distant apart. In other words, there should be a little symetry in the position of the eyes. They are not, which is why Propschick said the eyes looked crosseyed, and in fact they do. The point is, learn to postion each eye individually, you'll have better success at positioning the eyes realistically. Take a look at photo's of real eyes of people looking in different directions to use as a gude for positioning. Remember, eyes are the windows to the soul.

eyes of my characters always seemed crossed.  i have to rotate them slightly apart to get them to focus correctly. 

by the way big fan of v3 (except the joints....grrr....) and v2 whose lower poly understatedness really has some excellent joint work that v3 just didn't get at places.  (the shoulder especially)

and because of that Miette texture and morph i am gonna get aiko 3.  my eyes bugged out when i saw that promo.  but you ever notice how those guys (thorne) pose their models in the promos?  they look like they were just hit by a baseball bat, kinda dazed and staggering.  (no offense to you guys, really great textures and morphs)  or maybe like they are floating like superheroes. 

Propschick, now you got me tempted to go get Claudia!  lol

<<<< V3 is butt ugly,no matter what you do with her.  Try out the P5 Judy ...... >>>>>

.... are you kidding ? ... Judy is uglier than the south end of a north-bound wildebeest.

Lucie, she has many pretty makeup textures ;)

For photorealistic quality for V3, you can't beat anything by TamelaJ (RMP and www.runtimedna.com).   Apart from TamelaJ's work, I tend to go for character sets that combine good textures and distinctive morphs (pieces by e.g. Wishes3d, Rhiannon, Missgrin, Nouschka). 

Now now!  We all have our favourite figures. One isn't necessarily better than the others, it's just personal preference. No need to go beating each other up over 3D Models :)  It's all about having fun and being creative  using whatever figures we feel like using  :)

I especially like Vali & Shesa's characters available here in the RMP...  Vali's are always European exotic in my opinion and can't be beat for gorgeousness!!!  Also Shesa's characters are just so wistfully gorgeous!! 

That's my two cents on the best V3 characters!!!

Gerard

If I was starting out, I'd check the freebie section first. Lots of top quality character morphs there.  Mari_ E17 has a ton of freebie  full character sets for V3 and Aiko, morphs and textures. You can't go wrong with her stuff.

And Vali has 6 top notch ladies free at her site

http://kteam.saiyandesign.com/welcome.htm

And you can stretch your resources a bit, any texture for V3 will work on any morph for her, so you can mix and match.

Purchasing? I would consider characters by  Tivao, Noushka, Vali, and Valea to be the absolute must haves in my runtime. But, as you can see from the other entries, who and what you chose is a truely personal preference. What you could do is go to the V3 section of the store and just browse thru. Something is bound to catch your eye:)

Quote - Personally, I can't stand how the renders of Judy and Don turn out. Makes me feel like I am watching SIMS video games screenshots. They just don't have what it takes to really make beautiful renders. But then again, it's just my opinion.

I always have said and say now- You get what you pay for.

Agreed on all points!!

Get Rayne for v3 from Capses over at Daz3d.

That's not a premade character, so much as a morph pack that open wide your potential options for v3.

Below is just the face morphs:

Add in the body morphs, and it gives you a lot of potential.

I myself am fond of taking these and mixing and matching them - .3 of this, .2 of that, .5 from there, and I can get just about anything. Capses, the modeler, has a set like this for V3, M3, Aiko, and Hiro, along with freebies to let them work with David, Stephanie, Laura, and some other figures.

Quote - <<<< V3 is butt ugly,no matter what you do with her.  Try out the P5 Judy ...... >>>>>

.... are you kidding ? ... Judy is uglier than the south end of a north-bound wildebeest.

And who says that the south end of a north-bound wildebeest is UGLY?!  I find the play  of muscles under a health sleek hide to be aesthetically pleasing.  But yes, her face isn't the easiest to work with,  but I find her body to be absolutely dynamite (True, it's rather on the hefty side, but I like girls like that -good and healthy)!  Which is why I tend to use her Neja hybrid more, Neja combines the Best of Posette, her face, with the Best of Judy, her body -and if you don't believe me, just Google one of the Russian Naturist sites, and take a look at the build of all those sleek, healthy young ladies there -those are REAL women, and not some half-starved FTV fashion model )

As you might have guessed, my first love was Posette.  Neja for me is simply the G3 version of her.
David  P. Hoadley
PS: To me, V3 has  ALWAYS looked like the fanged end of a She-Ape.

FK Design makes STUNNING hair - including the lovely Alanis hair Propschick has employed in her example render here.

FK Design has a pretty extensive line of hair at 3Dcommune:

http://www.3dcommune.com/3d/store/display.mv?vs_fabi

Quarker makes some really popular hair as well, Grace Lion and Sapphire Fox come immediately to mind :)

Regarding photoreal  textures: Cake1 has a really wild set at Daz3D called XCU (extreme close up) this is a multi texture set of the light-skinned variety with unfreckled, medium and heavy freckled base skins with no painted eyebrows or pubic hair. In the expansion sets are eyebrow, eyelash and pubic hair shape options, and you can set colors to match any hair color you choose. Search for XCU at http://www.daz3d.com

Pose sets are freakin ABUNDANT, for free, cheap as free, slightly more expensive than free, and so on. Searches for poses in freestuffs are allways rewarding.

You didnt ask, but Id like to offer that face sets are a great aid to char creation. Here in freestuff there are some exquisite faces and chars from Valea, and at RDNA (www.runtimedna.com) you can find many many really excellent face packages for $5.

If you are developing an appreciation for Posette, which I think is awesome, then for texture realism, you owe it to yourself to checkout Snowsultan's Vickibuser texture for posette. Anywoman at posette forever is also very very good, and there are great face morphs for Posette there as well (www.posetteforever.com)

A Posette hybrid or remap wearing a photo-realistic V2 texture and a fine hair product can pretty  much stand toe-to-toe with Victoria 1 2 or 3 in any render.

Hope some of the mentioned products here appeal to your personal taste. Good Luck!

My favourite character for photorealism for v3 is Danaes Manhatten....I was amazed by the realism in this...... and my two favourite merchants are vali and samildamach. Their stuff/imagination never ceases to amaze me!

Google one of the Russian Naturist sites, and take a look at the build of all those sleek, healthy young ladies there -those are REAL women, and not some half-starved FTV fashion model

I've never appreciated the insinuation that slender or skinny women aren't REAL.  All the women in my family are slender and skinny and as far as I know they're all REAL women too.

I've had a little luck with selecting the eyes, using 'point at', then selecting the Main camera. Now if I can just get texturing, materials, lighting, morphs, magnets, animation, conforming clothing, dynamic clothing, hair, and the rest, I'll be happy..;)

My bad :ohmy:

How could I have responded before without mentioning the master of realistic skin--MaskEdit?

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=97935

Um... for loads of great free hair, go to kozaburo's web site: http://www.digitalbabes2.com your welcome

Regarding the crossed eyes: If you point the eyes at a ball, position the ball considerably behind the camera and parent it to the camera, you will get fairly realistic eye contact. The problem is, the Poser cameras are all too close physically to their subjects (excuse a non-technical explanation), so when the model "looks at the camera," the eyes inevitably cross.

Many models and photographers avoid the "look at the camera" thing entirely, even in the real world. The best eye contact requires looking through the camera.

M

my own opinion: 

my  favorite texture artists are

• ExprssnImg
• Morris (& face_off)
• Dalinise
• Shahara

you'll note that all of them do textures for different figures.  personally, i don't find v3 fits 90% of what i want to acheive at all, but she does have the best support.  if any other figure was as well supoorted, i'd use that one.  not because v3 is that awful- she's definitely not.  it's that her main advantage is her support.  i don't use v3 without the capsces rayne morphs and posermatic's nude breast system.  or most of her international morphs (sold at daz).  and that doesn't even touch on her clothes, the hair characters which don't convert easily, and all sorts of other stuff.

that all said, take a look at this picture: Princess Orlana by maxxxmodelz
is the great thing about it her facial shape?  it's pretty standard v3.  the texture?  that's not what's incredible about her skin.  the thing is that maxxxmodelz is highly knowledgeable in the area of 3d in general.  he can put poser through its paces.  it's much, much, much less important to have the best model with the best texture than it is to know exactly how to light a model, set up  materials, seamlessly incorporate any non-3d elements you want, etc. 

david here is very anti-v3 and pro-posette, it's true.  but regardless of whether v3 appeals to you or not, there's a wisdom in the advice to not spend your money before you've learned how far you can take your pictures without spending any.  i know i wish i had.  it's harder to convince yourself to stop once you've started, and if the basis of starting is, "what looks best" instead of "what goes into the picture i'm working on right now," you can end up with even more well made stuff that you never use. 

there's lots of free stuff and tons of free figures, including aiko, v3, and m3 (and hiro, i think).  i'd suggest exploring it before spending any money.

here's  my own unpostworked neaena, the free figure based on posette available at planit3d.  see the full sized version- it's not that big and the forum resizing completely killed the full body portrait.  she uses the brown sugar texture by dalinise, awful eye props by aery soul (no longer sold), and a serious adjustment of face_off's real skin shader.  even after messing with it a while, i'm still not satisfied with the skin shader adjustments (though i'm quite happy with the displacement shader tricks i did), but there you go.  i know it wouldn't be any better for being unimesh.

an image's power is more about light, composition, texture, color, etc. than any single figure or product.

Amen, cobaltdream, amen.  You have had the peculiar falicity of encapsulating what I was trying to here to say even better than I could myself. 
I remain, respecrtfully yours,
David P. Hoadley

She's been around a while, but I still keep going back to 3Dream's "Kimshara".  One nice bonus you get with her, is that she already comes with textures for both V3 and V2.  You don't need the UTC with this character.

To get her face and body morphs, you need the DAZ V3 head and body morph packages, but IMHO she looks great even WITHOUT them.

V3 does have her little niggles,but she is still a far better figure for rendering in my eyes than Judy,and frankly i have yet to make a render of judy that can look better than a photo of my bottom. my personal preferance is A3 she is far better out of the box and you can create some fantastic images with her.......ohhh and get the shaders by Face_off as these add amazing realism to any figure

quarker's farrah is arguably more beautiful than default v3.  and much less ubiquitous. 

Isn't 3Dream's EJ meant for Judy? That is a very lovely character.

I actually prefer working with SP3 or the V3 Male, but I know alot of people who don't like either of those. And I admit, Stephanie's jaw is a pain to work with. It's all a matter of personal preference.

Judy + P5 FaceRoom + 20 min of your time = Pretty !

stahlratte