The new Daz Horsey's arrived... and it's Llama cousin!

At last some new quadrupeds are showing up ;-)

But, anyone know yet if it'll take MilHorse textures?

I don't care for the llamas.  They just don't look right.

The horse looks better than the old Mil Horse.  At least, from what I can see of it.  A lot of the promo pics are cropped so you only see part of the critter.  As is common with the new store, a lot of the promo pics don't display when you click them.  And one of them just crashed Firefox.  Gawd, I hate DAZ's new store.

Well, I hope this is a trend and they make other animals. I was highly upset when they stopped making animals. They used to make quite a bit...., especially now that Noggin seems to have virtually disappeared.

Laurie

I hadn't realized Noggin wasn't around.  I love his animals.

The new horse textures look very nice.  I was never a big fan of DAZ's animal textures.  Lyne's Milcat textures are better than the ones in the DAZ store, and several merchants had better textures for the Milhorse than DAZ did.  The Horse 2 textures look very realistic, though.

Still haven't decided if I'm going to buy it yet.  Waiting to see some renders.  And get some reports.  Can I render a herd of them without Poser choking?  Do they look as nice in Poser as in DS?

It's a nice horse, but it's not enough to make me use that Dson thing.

Yikes.  I hadn't realized it required DSON.  Well, that makes my decision easy. 

Funny...I haven't really had any problems with DSON so far.

Laurie

Well, from the discussion over at DAZ...

The old Milhorse stuff doesn't work with the new horse.  It could have.  They could have made switchable UVs and autofit work for the horse as they did for Genny.  But they didn't. 

The horse is only for DS 4.5 and Poser 9/2012 with DSON.  People who use older versions of DS or Poser are out of luck. 

The llamas are apparently a morph (or whatever they call it in DS/Genesis) of the horse, so you need the horse if you want the llamas. 

Interesting.  The first step toward a Genesis quadruped? 

Still don't care for the llamas.  They look too horse-like.  They're more closely related to camels than horses.  If I were going to make a llama, I'd start from a camel base, not a horse.

I'm not so sure about a herd with the DSON loader in its current state? I'm hoping to see continuing improvement next few builds though. It has improved build 1.0.0.13 to 1.0.0.27, so I'm hopeful at least... at present.

I'm now managing about 5 Genesis figures in a scene, with any amount of other surrounding content, before I start to... or indeed as I start to... have real issues, with stability, performance... and ultimately rendering.

Okay, maybe I try to cram above average amounts of content into a scene?

In my example scene, with 5 Genesis, et al, this quickly swells to 7 GB of memory usage for the Poser process, leaving less than is ideal for Firefly to work with remaining out of my 16 GB total, when I go to render... a portion of which is already being consumed by Lion.

Plus if I try to close the scene in Poser, once Firefly has started rendering background, Poser crashes.... and I don't think Queue Manager is working rendering DSON content yet... or is it? Maybe I should try again there...

It sounds like a lot of the Horse 2 stuff is actually MilHorse stuff re-done for the new horse. 

If I understand it correctly, DAZ bought some of the Milhorse textures and gear from PAs, and re-did it for the new horse (or had them re-do it?)

Still, I'm glad to see new quadrupeds emerging.

I hope new dogs, cats and the rest are forthcoming too.

I expect, since this is Genesis tech, these will maybe be morphs from the same base as the horse? Or will it not be the same deal as with the bipedal Genesis?

Correction...the horse comes with "legacy files" that will allow it to be used in DS4.  Probably not of burning interest here in the Poser forum, but for accuracy's sake...you can use the new horse in DS4.  Not DS3, and not in Poser without DSON, but yes to DS4.

Attached Link: my blog post

The geometry does not have any fetlock hair built in or as a conforming figure, the conforming mane figures geometry only comes partway up the neck giving a part shaved mane appearance, no good for wild or wooly natural horse renders and the mane figure although having loads of morphs for the forelock is severly lacking in mane morphs.

The other thing as previously mentioned is the lack of backwards compatible uvs, this just smacks of trying to force people to buy all new textures. I like the new uvs just wish they had included MilHorse compatible ones too as they did for V5 with V4 uvs.

I'm in the middle of a blog post about it with some renders and screen shots at the moment, so far I've only installed the horse and textures, none of the tack and other addons but from what I can see from the store images the saddles and bridles look like the exact same models just reworked for the new horse which conviniently had a slightly longer body so older stuff won't fit out of the box :(

Many thanks for the further info Ladyfyre and Randym ;-)

I also note still no Spanish Tack making a return... as far as I can see?

The mane looks weird.  Thanks for the image.  The promo pics at DAZ seem carefully posed so that part of the horse doesn't show.

I wonder why they did it that way.  I realize it's a little tricky, but the old MilHorse didn't have that large a bald spot. 

CRWR said her "pro textures for the MilHorse" were bought by DAZ and converted to the new horse.  Looks like only half of them are in the new horse bundle.  I bet the rest are coming later.

They are very nice textures.  I might buy them for the MilHorse.

I still use the P4 horse sometimes.  I love Moonrose's textures for it.  Plus, it's much lighter than the Milhorse.  Back when it first came out, the Milhorse and a rider or two would about kill my computer. 

Nice to see an improved horse. Maybe they will redo the Big Cat. I ALMOST bought it this weekend- but noticed there are better looking big cats made by a different vendor-I bought his Smilodon awhile back-can't think of his name.....

Alessandro_AM maybe? :) Laurie

I bought Starter pack

I like the horse ,better modelled than Milhorse

Except for the tail and some part of mane (not enough morphs) and the tail is very bad

Some prop for older horse seems works (ex winged horse prop)

Back when the MilHorse came out, there was a suggestion that the next time, the mane should be made a conformer - like conforming hair rather than built into the mesh.  Did that turn out not to be workable?  Seemed like a great idea to me.  Maybe have a short, cropped mane built into the mesh, to help the conforming mane blend in in extreme poses, but most of it be like conforming hair.

This horse has seperate conforming hair which is a much better option, but the mane is sorely lacking in morphs and the mane mesh is incomplete. Also there isn't an option for feathers, I thought this would be another conforming figure?

I suppose you could make a short trans map for the mane and have a second one conformed to the horse figure instead?

I'm really loving how this horse bends, it can even graze properly which no horse model has been able to do apart from the Heavy Horse but have just noticed that there are no scaling dials for the legs like there were in the MilHorse which is essential for different breeds.

I always wondered why no-one made conforming hair for the MilHorse... as far as I know?

Sounds like there is an opening here though, if the supplied mane is limited in terms of the style?

Maybe Daz are planning to release more manes too in due course, as extras?

Yeah, the weight mapped bending seems to be the most appealing reason to get this upgraded beast... I think.

I wonder if the scaling dials can be revealed in Poser (e.g. with Snarly's SceneFixer) if loaded via DSON Importer?

I've been thinking about making new conforming manes, tails and fetlocks as well as Carrara dynamic hair, but having the time and energy is always the kicker for me :(

I might attempt a fibremesh set with multiple hair morphs when my current projects are complete. Looks like a fun project to do.

That would be cool ;-)

agreed, very cool!

 That's it!

Quote - Alessandro_AM maybe? :) Laurie

Quote - Still don't care for the llamas.  They look too horse-like.  They're more closely related to camels than horses.  If I were going to make a llama, I'd start from a camel base, not a horse.

Someone once said that a camel is what you get when a committee tries to design a horse

:-)

Quote - I'm now managing about 5 Genesis figures in a scene, with any amount of other surrounding content, before I start to... or indeed as I start to... have real issues, with stability, performance... and ultimately rendering.

As a workaround in static scenes, couldn't you replace some of the genesis figures with obj props?Save a material preset for the complete figure, then export the figure as obj, delete the figure, import the obj and apply the material preset.

I haven't had a need to try it, just wondered if it might help in some situations.

Thanks obm890... Yes the "geometry baking" technique does work for Genesis...

...means committing to the pose though. In that sense it is better for background crowds I think.

But...for final render, I could geometry bake all the resource hungry figures I guess.

My trouble is just that I'll quite often make a final draft render... a couple of these even...at near full quality and resolution and only then see an aspect of a pose that needs tweaked to improve the composition.

Don't know if there are any "geometry baking" python scripts out there? Or if this is possible to write? Not got that far yet with looking into this technique.

I guess the main problem as I see it, is my issue with Poser crashing when I try and close a scene with several Genesis in it. Otherwise I would just kick off the background render, then close the scene...

I do accept that if I want to make more content heavy scenes then I need to expect issues, whatever figures I'm using, that will need some workaround.

But at the same time I feel there is still substantial room for improvement with how well the DSON Importer managed figures perform, in terms of memory consumption, so I am keen to see this realised.