Well, I know this might get me into trouble here, LOL --

But I have tried to do work with Daz's Vicki 4.2 Complete that I have.  I don't know what it is -- I think there are far more attractive looking models out there than she is, and I just don't see the big thing about her.

I am partial to Angela 1.0 from BVH Studios, which she is a great looking figure.  I just wish they had more casual type clothing for her like Vicki has. 

Well, that's my little piece here tonight, feel free to comment as to why you all find her so popular to work with?  I don't know, maybe I'm just missing something, but I'll go with Angela or even Jessie more than Vicki.

Have a good night all =)

Victoria 4 has both history and market support behind her. I  personally, for some reason, have found myself liking Alyson more and more, but I'm also cognizant of the fact that there is virtually NO market support for her. I do have V4 and use her quite frequently, but she is hardly the only figure I use.

When I do a character, I use V4 because with all the morphs/textures avalable, V4 can look like any race and any age/shape.  Until there is another model with that support, V4 will remain popular.

Sometimes attractive is not what you want.

Bill

Extensibility, support.

For all her downsides, most other figures have more. She is too tall, and heavy on the polys. The latter is hard to deal with, but most figures are also too poly-heavy. Height can be faked, or you can scale her down and then scale up her head. Or just use the Stephanie 4 body morph.

At any rate, it's not about default prettiness. I don't really see the point in rendering a default figure that zillions of other people have. I can make her prettier or uglier or just different, to my heart's content, and say what you will about her, it's not really that hard to morph her face into something different, even if most Poser users are doing renders that instantly identify her as V4.

That said, I'm also throwing some weight behind Antonia. As soon as her weight mapping is finalized (very soon) and some important stuff gets out there (a comprehensive morph pack is also very soon), she's going to be a whole lot more usable, and I expect clothing creators are going to start stepping to the place more (most of her present stuff is freebies).

I wouldn't use V4 for months. As stated above, once you figure how to alter her, she isn't too bad, and there is a lot of support outfits, equipment, etc. She is getting outdated.Time for something fresh.

Quote - I wouldn't use V4 for months. As stated above, once you figure how to alter her, she isn't too bad, and there is a lot of support outfits, equipment, etc. She is getting outdated. Time for something fresh.

It's coming.

"Don't Understand the Big Attraction to Vicki 4.2"

Nor me but there you go. 

The Vick(y)(i)(ie) Ecosystem. A level of choice, convenience and familiarity that many people find outweighs any negatives involved. i.e. why desktop Windows hasn't been toppled by alternatives even when they're  'better,' free, new, cool or whatever. Idealists and iconoclasts aside, the status qup don't move too easily :-)

when poser was young ie poser 4, the DAZ models looked much nicer than the poser models (possette and dork) and there weren't any other models around so people bonded with V2 and then V3 and hence the tradition started.  Not to mention the michaels etc.

Love esther

Technically, though, Posette WAS a DAZ model. Traditionally, except for the content supplied, Poser has left content, ie. Figures, props, etc. to third party developers such as DAZ.

What is with that default face?  Yikes.  She looks like the woman in the low-cut peasant top at Renaissance Festival every single year that thinks she's attractive.

The face-shaping morphs better be numerous and good to fix that.

Why does it seem that every 3rd-party figure maker is determined to make their product repulsive out of the box?  This alone accounts for a big chunk of non-support. 

I'd like to take her out for a test spin and see if I can't change my mind, but I'm not going to slap down money for yet another under-supported, stock-ugly female character whose "Revolutionary" claim to fame is less polygons.

 Edit to add:  On closer inspection, she looks like Black Sabbath Drummer Bill Ward:

i warmed to V4 after deleting all those deformer magnets and buying the corvas arm fixes.

after V4, TY2 is my favorite; but totally different styles.

i did use Jessi at first, but every time i posted a render of her or something i did to make a character out of her, no one posted a single comment.  it was too discouraging to continue with Jessi.

i super, hardily, heartily, hours and hours, tried warming to warm to Ryan and Alysin, but when i try to change the jaw area, their inner mouth pokes through.  shrinking inner mouth makes a gap inside their lips.  Givez up

Ahh, don't feel bad. I actually like Alyson, though. IMHO, she's the most versatile figure Poser has had out in years. I never like the G2 models, except for Kelvin and Olivia, because you couldn't morph them. I did buy some morphs from somewhere, but darned if I can find them in my runtime. Never used them anyway.

I don't know why people think that just because something is popular and/or dominant in the market, that it's bad, ugly, or whatever. V4 isn't perfect. Windows isn't perfect. Neither are the alternatives to either, free or otherwise. Both dominate their markets because they were, and continue to be, the best all around product in their field. If people want to use alternatives, cool, but that doesn't make you hipper or smarter than anyone else, nor make your chosen product any better. I also don't understand the assertion that all V4 models look the same when she's the only model out there who has hundreds, if not thousands, of morph and texture options for her. The fact that people don't make the effort to change her much is NOT the model's fault, and the same problem would be true of any other model, IF they had the same number of options available, which they don't. I'd love to see other models get popular as well, but the V4 bashing is just petty, unfair, and unnecessary.

Well, crapping all over Angela 1.0 without trying her didn't sit right with me, so I went ahead and bought her.  Six dollars isn't a whole lot of money, and satisfying my curiosity is, of course...priceless.

Buying from BVH3D was easy and my download link appeared immediately, like a real site.  Sometimes when you buy from merchants with their own sites, you have to wait until they get around to processing your order, which is often more than a day.

Loading her is fast, as promised, but then again I've never had a huge problem counting to 3 Mississippi while V4 loads.  Going in on the face cam, I can see she's profoundly lo-res.  You can see the shape of her head is made up of straight lines.  The face is worse than I even imagined. 

First morphs on the dial are expressions, and I am impressed at how they work.  It's as if they are attached to real muscles, and they come off as very natural looking.  Great, Bill Ward can smile.  How badly will they break when I morph the face into something useable?  We'll check that later.

Bad times.  The face-shaping morphs are seriously lacking on the base figure.  I've got about 10 for the nose, 2 for the eyes, and almost none for the gigantic mouth.  Further, most of the nose morphs pull too much of the surrounding areas, creating a lot of pinching. 

I'm having spotty results with Magnets.  Low-Poly models are tough to morph.  Nevertheless, I'm happy with this as something quick that de-dogifies her a bit

* Edit to add:  On closer inspection, she looks like Black Sabbath Drummer Bill Ward:*

lol. The Angela 1.0 default is just trailer park cute, I think.

Back to the main camera.  The Breasts are large, and appear to be benefitting from an invisible bra.  This is a big pet-peeve with me these days.  A nude breast of any significant size is going to have an under-fold...making the bottom of the breast overlapping the seam, so to speak.  I think it's very hard to morph that in if it's not there in the first place.  I, at least, haven't had any luck with it.  On a low-poly model, it can't be any easier.

Stock breast morphs affect the nipples, so if you have a large breast you have a huge nipple.  (I believe breast morphs should keep the nipples proportionate.)  Playing with all the Breast Morphs, I'm not satisified.  These feel like magnet morphs to me, and not anything detail oriented.  Thankfully, the overall size and shape of the breasts (embrazziered they may be) are decent as they are.  (Trying to make small breasts with the morph of the same name yields pancake-like result with too much diameter, with diameter morph will not fix.) 

As for the rest of the body, you're pretty much stuck.  Sure, you can widen the waist a bit.  You can inflate her forearms (but inexplicably not her upper arms.)  Thigh morphs are putty-like and only affect the outer thighs.  There are no overall body shape morphs like you typically get in a daz figure, no musculature or tone morphs.

This figure has no knees.  Not high enough res to sculpt any.

Bending is improved (from what one might expect) in some areas, but sacrifices in others to make those improvements.  Typically, the best solution to joints has been to make nobody happy, rather than make these kinds of compromises to get one thing looking good at the expense of the other. 

Finally, the private parts.  This is a key selling point of any third-party figure maker.  Including a built-in vajayjay sets you apart from the Big Dogs.  It needs more polys, in my opinion.  You can open it, you can close it, you can descend the labia.  This included vagina isn't much better than what you can morph V4's hip to do.  For detail work, it's right out the window.  For body shots, it's probably good enough.

Applying a random v4 pose worked just fine and the figure looks good enough when rendered.  (Seen here)

Quote - Finally, the private parts.  This is a key selling point of any third-party figure maker.  Including a built-in vajayjay sets you apart from the Big Dogs.  It needs more polys, in my opinion.  You can open it, you can close it, you can descend the labia.  This included vagina isn't much better than what you can morph V4's hip to do.  For detail work, it's right out the window.  For body shots, it's probably good enough.

Applying a random v4 pose worked just fine and the figure looks good enough when rendered.  (Seen here)

 I'll have to give that one to the Poser models, at least since Jesse I believe, they've all had better modeled female genitalia than V4.

In conclusion, Angela is not ready to compete with V4.  At best, another novelty also-ran model with not enough going for it to merit support.  If you're in the market for that, the price is right at just under six dollars. 

I fear we may never have a Daz competitor with the time, resources, talent and vision to provide the community with what it wants and needs. 

I'm not really looking for a competitor as much as an alternative. I mean, let's face it, V4 gets the most hype, the most press, and the most support from DAZ. Even the other DAZ models take a back seat to her.

I'd have to agree, William, especially for the money. The best human models I've seen over on TurboSquid are very expensive... you could buy a high end video card or a whole new cutting edge computer for what they are charging.

EClark, she gets all the attention because her sales of add-ons are huge. The PAs are always lamenting that they make stuff for M4 and hardly anyone buys it. And we are talking quality PAs with the goods.

That's why you need a competitor.  As long as there's no competition, why wouldn't she get all the attention? 

I really believe that people will use the Model that is the best.  They will buy the model that's the best.  Anton never got around to making a woman; he was and is the only true competition I've ever seen. 

I wish I had the skills to take on the task.  I don't. 

He did have a woman in some of the images on the Apollo site for a time, but he must not have been happy with her.

Eva over on the TurboSquid site is one of the best I've seen but they want $729 for the Lite 3ds Max version (but it is quite a pack!). The advances for V5/Genesis make her look like a real bargain.

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/536626

Eva v3.2.3 Lite looks great; I suppose it would kill that guy/team to port her to Poser.  This is the problem.  The talent gets seduced by the high-end side of the force.

Wish I would've seen some of those Anton Woman previews! 

Farmington Hills, eh?  Redford here.  Howdy neightbor (apologies if this has been discussed before.)

Here's the Extended Eva pack for $1,888!

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/536285

And, howdy, neighbor! You're not far at all. I think Jen mentioned she's around here, too, maybe Redford as well. I know a few people from there.

IIRC, Anton's female in the pics was not delicate as she was based on Apollo again if memory serves.

I don't think ANYONE has asked that question! Why is V4.2 so popular! :-)

I remember similar threads regarding The Millenium Woman (Vicky) getting all the fuss and poor Posette being neglected. That was 11 years ago!

 Princess V4 has had a longer reign than the other Vickies.

There were other figures that came and went- I recall one called Dina (?). I may still have her on a Poser4 back up CD.

I like making face morphs- and low poly figures are not for me! If I subdivide them to add detail-they are no longer recognized by Poser.

 Genesis really DOES appear more realistic in many ways- I look forward to re-rigged V4 and Antonia. THERE is a promising gal. She may eventually make my V4 jealous!

RagtopJohnny: I also don't understand the big attraction. But yet, every so often I buy another item for her, another skin, some clothes, simply because they are available. She is a triumph of marketing. That said, I would be very frustrated if she were the only figure I had to work with. But all in all, I use V4 a good 25% of the time because of her versatility. It is easy to get a "good enough" result with her.

If you are extremely selective, there are some good characters and textures for her that are really nice and if you didn't know it was V4, you'd never know it. Like all the previous Vs and Ms, she's more like a blank canvas out of the box and it's up to the artist to make magic.

I also sometimes try to switch a little but like others I use V4 alot but I am now playing around with Most digtial creations Simply Beautiful Amelia.

I started using Poser with Poser 5. I never got into using the figures that came with Poser because when I was looking though Daz store, most of what I saw was for "V3", so I got V3 thinking that was all I needed. Then I found out that I couldn't change her shape without the morphs, so I got that.  Then my world of Poser opened up.

I used V3 faithfully, and then A3, but always preferred V3.  When V4 came out I resisted getting her because I had so much invested in V3. Eventually more content was being made for V4 so I invested in her too.

It took me awhile to warm up to V4 and for the most part I kept using V3.  But eventually at some point I switched and now pretty much use V4 exclusively.

I have Puppetmaster and when I load both V3 and V4 into the scene, I can't believe the difference in out of the box shape.  Yes, both have their joint flaws, but considering the price they are sold for, I don't expect a model without flaws of some kind. Now on the other hand if I were paying hundreds of dollars for the model, I would expect a higher quality product.  As a hobbiest, V3 and V4 more than suit my needs.  What can't be achieved in Poser, I can easily smooth over in post work.

I'd like to affirm what Acadia has written.  I've been using Poser since version 3, and I resisted using V2 / V3 because I didn't want to spend a lot of money on extra content.  For years, I persisted with James and Jessica (despite her bulging forehead, UGLY hands and his awfully-shaped shoulders and neck!), but found that the DAZ figures had far better support.  Every new version of Poser brought new figures that I found even less attractive than James and Jessica.  (Simon looks like a psychopath, as far as I'm concerned!)

My characters have a unique appearance because the DAZ figures are very versatile.  They're not perfect, by any means, but they don't have to be perfect.  It's more important that there's a plethora of available props made specifically for them that I can use in my renders.  Most of these have been very reasonable to purchase.

Over the years since I've moved to the V4 / M4 figures, my runtime has burgeoned with inexpensive or free items that make the creation of my images a relatively simple matter.  I agree that better figures exist.  However, for what I've paid for V4 and M4, I can get a LOT of work done!  An expensive Aston Martin is arguably a better car than a Chevy, but both can get me to my destination.  I'd rather drive the Chevy and have money left over for more important things . . .

Besides, V4 is beautiful!  I know that some people complain that real human beings don't look that good and aren't so nicely proportioned, but why do I have to have "ordinary-looking"--or downright homely--figures in my renders?  What most of us do is about fantasy.  If I want realism, I have a camera and I can take photographs.

No one forces anyone else to use V4.  Once she and M4 have been weight-mapped, a lot of the joint problems that make her less-than-perfect should cease to be big issues.  That will likely make her more popular than ever.