Keep in mind I say their aren't very many 'wrong' answers but what in your good opinion is the most realistic and beautiful characters for Genesis 8 and what hair?

my favourites for hair are just about every Linday dforce capable (Side Layered Messy, Classic long, Bang Bob, Classic long curly). Using the G8 to G3 hair converter being able to use these with dforce on V7 s now is great

for textures Blue Jaunte has several Morph/Texture packages Sahel HD is probably the one Id really recommend. For pale skins the other texture makers who impress are Second Circle and Brahann.

I dont know the reason why creators do this but some skins you find out if you look at the value,red green and blue channels that the curves have basically been compressed into a thin band. Maybe iray is meant to work best with this part of the curve but they can look flat - the other possible reason might be that altering tone, curves or contrast quickly turns into a useless mess so people are less likely to modify the textures.

For darker skins Uchenna is good, or V7 Makeda by Samsil. There is also a renderosity product - a dark skin merchant resource for V7 that I often use that had subdermal, SSS, Epidermal, normal and bump channel textures but other than each texture beginning with DB I cant remember the name

apologies for misleading about the DB texture set - it is the Dark Beauty Merchant Resource for Genesis 3 Female off Daz

Anything by bluejaunte or Saiyaness....of the DO's probably Christian, Sydney and Kali. Raiya makes nice characters, tho whether or not you find them realistic is up to interpretation :).

I like figures from Maddelirium, Vyktorhia, Sabby, and Mousso (to name a few). Realism varies. Realistic, not conventionally beautiful: Circe for G8.

I don't think the G8 characters are actually better than the G3s w/respect to beauty and realism. Realism has to come from the sculpt (with morphs), texture mapping, lighting and rendering. The best figure can be made to look awful with bad handling, and sort-of-ok figures can be made to look great if handled well. Most Daz figures lack nasolabial folds and many look like dolls. This is a cross-generational problem.

Any figure can be adjusted using morphs, and I think it's a good idea to do that. It makes your version of that character look unique.

I have fallen in love with the male character "Archie"..... very well made and cute as hell

Realistic and Beautiful are two different things you know :) George for example is pretty realistic. Beautiful he's not.

yep and I think Archie is both

Archie looks like a male pinup. Very pretty! George, near as I can tell, is not a figure. He is photo reference for a figure. Mortem Vetus makes a lot of fleshy, hairy, believable male figures, but they're M4. Not pinups, no. I still owe myself a shopping spree through their store. Excellent work there!