Seems like the venerable V4 mesh/figure has been a mixed blessing for this corner of the 3d art medium... I'm curious if anyone knows the backstory of the figure. For instance who created this model? Imagine being that person and think of all the income the model has generated, it's almost certain the modeler was doing work for hire at Daz.

Along those lines, over the years I've seen a lot of modelers dismiss or negatively critique the topology of the figure but I've yet to see from any of them work that surpasses the versatility of the mesh. It's not simply "well there's more content available for V4" to account for its longevity. Although a huge factor. Comments about the legacy rigging and magnets and such are probably moot at this point, although thoughts are still of interest.

Any insights, opinions, or especially lore is of interest.

Eldritch, while I don't know the specifics of the V4 backstory, you could always go over to Hivewire and ask either Lisa B or Chris Creek for the story. What I DO know is that V4 was basically an improvement upon the Victoria model line. After all, there where 3 other Victorias before V4. For instance, Did you know that Victoria's original name was going to be Millie? When she first came out, she was called the Millenium woman, so people started calling her Millie. DAZ didn't like that name for some reason, and renamed her Victoria.

Hi EClarke

Yes, I have and use the Gen 3 figures. Along those lines I think that Dawn looks a lot like V3. I was always under the impression that Chris Creek was one of, if not THE, modelers of V3.

I think I'll take a pass on asking any CEOs about their perhaps(?) tumultuous interactions with companies they were formerly involved with though...

Millie sounds like something you'd name a tired old mare. Hmmmm.

La Femme needs a catchy nickname...

A3 is my favorite Poser figure although her poly count is waaaaay too high. I like medium res figures for morphing, I won't go into the whys of something that seems like a counterintuitive preference, V4 sort of straddles that line. I like toon figures for pin up type stuff and A3 has the best knees lol. It's one of the reasons I want to start using Genesis and DS. All those pin up toon morphs.

Anyway

EldritchCellar posted at 1:58PM Sun, 12 April 2020 - #4386004

La Femme needs a catchy nickname...

Marianne

FVerbaas posted at 8:07AM Sun, 12 April 2020 - #4386006

EldritchCellar posted at 1:58PM Sun, 12 April 2020 - #4386004

La Femme needs a catchy nickname...

Marianne

Not bad... kind of hits me in the feels though, the name of my first girlfriend.

There'll never be another Posette...

One of the things I like about the whole Poserverse is the attribution of Galatea like affections to virtual simulacra.

EldritchCellar posted at 8:52AM Sun, 12 April 2020 - #4386009

There'll never be another Posette...

Posette, if I'm not misremembering my Poser history was actually a Zygote figure. Zygote, as you know, was the parent company of DAZ.

I have read that the Vicky 4 base mesh was originally modeled in Lightwave3D.

I became a big user of V4 only after the "morph++" addons became free.

The first ten minutes of my feature length animated film "Galactus Rising" was created only with Poser6 & C4D with a special plugin that reads poser formats like the now defunct Poser fusion plugin.

Vicky4 was major Character in the film until she( and Mike4) were replaced with a Genesis doppleganger, who was able to assume their custom dial shapes via the Amazing GENX 2 Plugin ,for Daz studio, by the late Ralph Sessler (aka Dimension 3D).

(See attached comparison pics)

From todays relative perspective,the many criticism of the V4 Figure are mostly justified,particularly her joint deformations also her proprtions are not "normal" again relatively speaking.?

The reason the for figures versatility is due to the many talented figure content developers who were able to remake her base mesh into so many shapes and improve upon Daz original mesh including weight mapping at some point.

Athough to be honest NONE of her so called "male morphs" were ever truly passable IMHO unlike her succsessor the amazing Daz genesis 1.0.

V4's longevity is not a function of any technical superiority ( to Genesis at least) from and end user perspective nor a content creation perspective.?

I know many people would like to beleive that she is till "better" than the genesis figures but as content creator of clothing& morphs myself, I can assure you that no person who says this is a professional clothing and morph developer who can make an objective non emotional technical argument for that viewpoint.?

The end users who will likely come into this thread and boast about ""70 gigs" of V4 content are not content creators but mostly compulsive content hoarders or casual hobbyists who had no particular logistical reason to leave the Smith micro/poser comfort bubble.?

Vicky 4 has endured because of the turmoil in the years after Daz's Migration to new advanced non poser compatible figure tech with uniform standard rigging tools for vendors that initially were costly (and later wisely made free).

The many poser vendors, who stuck with V4, had themselves established a defacto set of "best practices" for content creation and of course still had official tech support from her original creators (DAZ) who were in the enviable postion of being able to abandon the market side of their figure while still reaping the benefit of having a large user base who did not abandon their older product with them.

Certainly not in the way consumers abandon their Older versions of Iphone/IOS every few years.

Meanwhile the poser users who tried to "move on" had to endure the vicissitudes of a series of female&male poser figures made by various disparate and often combative, "factions".?

Each with their own exotic rigging philosphies and shrill forum advocates replete with Nerdy Mcnerd techno babble meant to impress the lingering vendors & laypeople that their figure was better than the "old" Cr2 based V4 and the New Genesis based V5 etc etc. .

And one after another each aspirant/group was disppassionately dispatched to the ash bin of Poser history by a user base who were either unwilling to abandon the Poser interface comfort bubble for Daz studio... nor their "70 plus gig" V4 content hoards and start with some new figure only supported by their small partisan factions or even one single creator who offered them NOTHING over V4 or the Daz Genesis figures.

Thus V4 has endured.

V4 has survived because there are so many excellent morphs for her.

If you use DazStudio then you have a great selection of Genesis morphs - but, looking at their Genesis 8 girls, i do not see many that attract attention; previous Genesis, yes - but version 8? Maybe it's just me, but i find many of the Genesis 8 girls downright ugly.

A_Sunbeam posted at 3:16PM Sun, 12 April 2020 - #4386052

V4 has survived because there are so many excellent morphs for her.

If you use DazStudio then you have a great selection of Genesis morphs - but, looking at their Genesis 8 girls, i do not see many that attract attention; previous Genesis, yes - but version 8? Maybe it's just me, but i find many of the Genesis 8 girls downright ugly.

While I have the basic Genesis 8 starter essentials that every Daz account holder gets, and cna easily develop my own clothing& morphs for them,

I have not bothered using the G8 figures due to pointless changes in the rigging that adversely affects animation particulary when exported to other programs for motion retargeting.

I have no opinon on the attractiveness of the G3/8 female figures because that is down to personal preference and I do mostly male oriented sci-fi animations where some sexy chicky poo is never narratively relevant.?

I had alot of skins &morphs for V4& V3 that I used when I was still using poser as my primary figure tool. ...and I still use many of them on Genesis 1/2 via the GENX2 Utility.( as that attached pic shows)

And I still use the "Vanilla sky" and "Horizon" textures by Syyd Raven (RDNA) on my genesis 1/2 figure via the native UV switching.

Here is the Daz genesis 2 female wearing "vanilla sky" textures rendered in near realtime in Blender 2.82 EEVEE ..a straight FBX export from Daz studio...no third party plugins used.

https://youtu.be/7hSW7H8RVjY

V4 remains popular with poser users, because she will alway have more content than any other third party figure like Antonia ,PE,Lafemme etc due to a 10 plus year run of major vendor support?

All of the V4 clothing and skins can be used natively on G1/2 ,in Daz studio, the moment one installs it and links to any poser runtimes.

And her multitude of morphs/shapes can be transfered via the optional paid GENX2 plugin.

As a clothing content creator, I dont actually need her old clothing on my genesis figures however I Personally am glad V4 was so successful/supported as I still use some of her great legacy content for my Current work in 2020. ?

A_Sunbeam posted at 4:23PM Sun, 12 April 2020 - #4386052

V4 has survived because there are so many excellent morphs for her.

If you use DazStudio then you have a great selection of Genesis morphs - but, looking at their Genesis 8 girls, i do not see many that attract attention; previous Genesis, yes - but version 8? Maybe it's just me, but i find many of the Genesis 8 girls downright ugly.

I concur. I recently went through all the G3 and G8 female characters, and it is a mediocre crowd. I blame the nose, which few creators do much to change. There are a couple of exceptions: Krashwerk at Rendo and Mousso at DAZ.

A_Sunbeam posted at 4:24PM Sun, 12 April 2020 - #4386052

V4 has survived because there are so many excellent morphs for her.

If you use DazStudio then you have a great selection of Genesis morphs - but, looking at their Genesis 8 girls, i do not see many that attract attention; previous Genesis, yes - but version 8? Maybe it's just me, but i find many of the Genesis 8 girls downright ugly.

It's not just you. To be honest, and I know in today's PC climate I'm not supposed to be saying this, but frankly, the G8's I've seen tend to look like a man with long hair and wearing a dress. Not all of them, but enough that I just don't care.

If memory serves correctly, DAZ had their own in house character modeling team back in those days.

According to Wikipedia, she was modeled in Modo ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_(3D_figure)

Kerya posted at 4:49AM Mon, 13 April 2020 - #4386114

According to Wikipedia, she was modeled in Modo ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_(3D_figure)

I wouldn't be surprised. I THINK (but don't know) that Modo is Chris' software of choice to model in.

How many polygons does V4 have?

66,830

I'm not home to check though. That's a google query result. Sounds about right, my memory says 60 k

Thanks. How many polygons does Dawn have?

39326, according to UVMapper and Wings3D.

La Femme? 23988

The advent of weight mapping and subdivision surfaces in Poser probably accounts for the need for less polys in more recent figures I'd wager.

Aiko 3 has 74510

I don't have Vicky 3 installed ATM, buried on a disc somewhere, so I couldn't say about her poly count. I'd imagine the same as A3?

Thanks again.

EldritchCellar posted at 2:56AM Tue, 14 April 2020 - #4386193

I don't have Vicky 3 installed ATM, buried on a disc somewhere, so I couldn't say about her poly count. I'd imagine the same as A3?

It's the same mesh, as is Steph Petite, and, AFAIK all the other gen 3 figures.

A_Sunbeam posted at 8:50PM Mon, 13 April 2020 - #4386052

V4 has survived because there are so many excellent morphs for her.

If you use DazStudio then you have a great selection of Genesis morphs - but, looking at their Genesis 8 girls, i do not see many that attract attention; previous Genesis, yes - but version 8? Maybe it's just me, but i find many of the Genesis 8 girls downright ugly.

V4 survived because:

1. There was an entire cottage industry built around fixing her shortcomings.
2. Chris decided that working on a horse was more important than getting the equivalent of the V4 Morph product out.

I like the Gen8 figures myself, because they have broken out of the Logan's Run, generic white girls only cul-de-sac that the Poser figures haven't managed. And just think, if you spend a couple hundred dollars, (more than a copy of Poser), you can get most of that earlier genesis character content over to genesis 8.

Logan's Run? Hey, remember that skimpy getup that Jenny Agutter was wearing in that?

Yes, yes I do.

I have a copy of Logan's Run on Blu-ray for ($5).

It is amazing to see how far SFX went from 1975 to 1977.

I can confirm the following clock in at 74510:

Aiko 3

David

Freak

Michael 3

Victoria 3

Stephanie Petite

Young Teen Boy

Young Teen Girl

She Freak

Young Girl PT

Pretty conclusive they're all the same.

I like having more polys in the head. I think it's easier to get a likeness with more polys. You don't need as many polys in the body any more, but I still prefer more polys in the head. I still use the gen 3 figures sometimes, especially SP3 and David.

randym77 posted at 9:56PM Tue, 14 April 2020 - #4386251

I like having more polys in the head. I think it's easier to get a likeness with more polys. You don't need as many polys in the body any more, but I still prefer more polys in the head. I still use the gen 3 figures sometimes, especially SP3 and David.

I've met several people IRL with not enough polys in the head.

EldritchCellar posted at 2:13AM Wed, 15 April 2020 - #4386217

Logan's Run? Hey, remember that skimpy getup that Jenny Agutter was wearing in that?

There is a free G8F version ...

Jessica Wrap for G8F

The problem I find with A3 is that her lips are ridiculously high poly but not quite high poly enough for sculpting high frequency detail. So you can't simply select a loop or line of edges and create a crease or indent with standard falloff move tools in a box modeler and you can't convincingly crease with a sculpting brush. With medium res detail the polys retain some firmness so you can grab and manipulate more easily in a traditional way, A3 is too " mushy" but not mushy enough if that makes any sense. I've never had much luck with morphing her lips so it's hard to move away from her default appearance in that region of her face. Then again I haven't tried making a custom face for A3 in years, I think the last character I made for her is this...

Anybody remember joequick? That guy could really do some crazy stuff with the gen 4 models. Ditto with Joe Public. I think they both became solely DS users though, the lure of Genesis and whatnot...

V4 is, first of all, not a scan or recreation of one person. It is a mixture of at least 3-4 people's full-body scans, partial scans of a couple more folks, plus a bit of imagination. Some of it came from scans of live people (the aforementioned human beings), some of it came from the minds of the mesh-mongers @ DAZ (oh, and Chris Creek was only one of many who made v4 what it became.) If I remember right, the funny part was that for awhile I could meet at least one of the people that some of the body parts came from. For example, the foot shape came from a scan of the receptionist's feet at the time - hell if I can remember her name, but from all recollection she was a real sweetheart of a person. Most of the scans (full or partial) came from scans of professional local models though if memory serves - release forms and all.

Anyway, the scans were all brought together, cleaned up, stitched together, and then the topology (and a lot of the shaping) was re-worked, top-to-bottom, as a whole. It actually got overhauled multiple times as joints were worked-over and built to remove (or at least minimize) all the garbage and headaches that the V3/A3/S3/you-name-it 'Unimesh' mesh had (a big example was the leg bending nightmares). It was also the first mesh where genitalia was actually part of the equation until it was ready (then it was removed and set aside as an add-on, not really because Utah, but mostly so that a kid-friendly version of it could remain on-the-table for schools and such).

That's about the extent of my (faulty, crusty, old, etc) knowledge of V4, but I hope you find it useful.

It survived for one hell of a long time, I agree. I think Poser would have died without it, truth be told, and given that people STILL make stuff for it, it is likely one of the largest reasons Poser still has a spark of life in it. Maybe Femme/Homme will change that, but we'll know for sure with time.

It took me awhile to come over to the Genesis Dark Side, but mostly because I waited for, then got, a means to transfer a lot of my fave characters over from v4 to Genesis 2 (IIRC? I think it was 2), and I've been able to transfer the shapes faithfully ever since, all the way up to G8.

EClark1894 posted at 2:53PM Wed, 15 April 2020 - #4386013

Posette, if I'm not misremembering my Poser history was actually a Zygote figure. Zygote, as you know, was the parent company of DAZ.

Correctamundo. Posette and Dork were also IIRC Chris-built items. DAZ did inherit the legal ownership of those figures, though Poser still had a perpetual license for it for use within Poser. This was why DAZ asked, and got, Renderosity to kill the 'Renda' project (because Renda, err, 'borrowed' Posette's hand and foot meshes.)

I do wonder if this means that, now with Bondware owning Poser, that they could resurrect the Renda project? Not like it would be worth doing at this point, but...

EldritchCellar posted at 3:00PM Wed, 15 April 2020 - #4386002

I think I'll take a pass on asking any CEOs about their perhaps(?) tumultuous interactions with companies they were formerly involved with though...

They actually got on quite well, with no real detectable animosity, at least not between DAZ and Renderosity. After all, why make enemies when everyone makes money?

Wow. Thanks for that inside information Penguinisto, that's exactly the kind of thing I was curious about :)

Renda ? Wait, let's talk about that. Was she a replacement for posette ? And who is Posette? is she like the first poser female figure and if they "modeled" the whole figure why couldn't they just model the feet and hands instead of killing the whole project.

CHK2033 posted at 6:06AM Thu, 16 April 2020 - #4386369

Renda ? Wait, let's talk about that. Was she a replacement for posette ? And who is Posette? is she like the first poser female figure and if they "modeled" the whole figure why couldn't they just model the feet and hands instead of killing the whole project.

If I recall correctly, Posette was the Poser 4 woman. I could be wrong about that though.

Okay, I just checked and Posette was indeed the P4 woman. Here's a wiki link on her and there's even a crap ton of links attached. Fair warning though, I haven't explored those links so I don't know what you'll find.

https://poserdazfreebies.miraheze.org/wiki/P4_Woman

"Posette" was the nickname for the default nude female figure in Poser 4 / PoserPro (1998-2002 or so). Her male counterpart was usually referred to as "Dork".

"Renda" (the no-kidding real name of it) was Renderosity's project to try and out-DAZ DAZ... 2003-2004 or so, I think? Could be wrong on the date, probably am. They contracted someone to put together a female mesh as a standalone third-party figure they could center their marketplace around instead of having to rely on DAZ' Victoria series meshes for their income. Just as Renda launched, folks discovered that the hands and feet were grafted off of the Poser 4 default female model. The mesh-monger who built Renda mistakenly assumed that this was okay since both Renda and Posette required Poser to run (DAZ Studio wasn't known to anyone outside of DAZ at the time.)

The reason it was scrapped is pretty simple to anyone who makes humanoid meshes - it's the same problem illustrators have when they learn to draw people, really: Hands and feet are hard to get right. It's tough to grok in two-dimensional drawing; it's harder by a factor of 5000+ to make and properly rig a somewhat photorealistic set of them in CG. If they had to properly make and rig their own from scratch, it would have likely taken 2x as long as it did to make the body and face, so (assumption time) Renderosity decided to cut their losses and not throw good money after bad.

Fun trivia bit - Posette's hands and feet have found their way into a lot of third-party meshes... the earliest example I can remember is Alexa, from the old (and long fossilized) 3D Commune site (amazingly enough, I still have that mesh on a hard drive somewhere. Loved the hair bit.) That artist re-made everything after being notified of his mistake... pretty herculean task, but he did it. There's been others as well, though I can't recall offhand.

Penguinisto posted at 9:54AM Thu, 16 April 2020 - #4386410

The reason it was scrapped is pretty simple to anyone who makes humanoid meshes - it's the same problem illustrators have when they learn to draw people, really: Hands and feet are hard to get right. It's tough to grok in two-dimensional drawing; it's harder by a factor of 5000+ to make and properly rig a somewhat photorealistic set of them in CG. If they had to properly make and rig their own from scratch, it would have likely taken 2x as long as it did to make the body and face, so (assumption time) Renderosity decided to cut their losses and not throw good money after bad. ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Not saying this wasnt the case, because one of my portfolio had to contain a hand in at least 8 different positions (Actually they had me draw that out as part of the entrance exam @ Art&Design) But , well, I guess if the figure was out in the wild already no other choice but to pull and kill it.

Still a weird name though for a female figure. and Dork?...smh I thought I was bad @ naming my figures.

There used to be a guy named Pitklad who had a custom Posette, Nea, that he had been reiterating in consecutive versions for quite a while. It required RTEncoder to decrypt. Doesn't seem like he appears on the forum here anymore. Anyway, nice guy. I've always admired artists and tinkerers who would extrapolate on a particular project seemingly to obsession. If anyone is curious I think the most recent version can be had here...

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/nea-3-1-aeonia/78552&ca

Wish he had stuck with the project and introduced some of Poser's newer bells-and-whistles to it. But then again maybe Pitklad is simply percolating a newer version in solitude, also an admirable pursuit....

Come to think of it... I just checked, and the forum here is still (astoundingly) quite alive: http://www.posetteforever.com/

...and they have a frig-ton of freebies, still...

Oh, and Pitklad's creation is still in there as well , and has updates in the freebie section as well.

I don't remember Pitklad, but I think it was, DPHoadley, that was posting about Posette seems like every other Day. I just checked out your link to the Posette forum, and is that Sam Therapy?? It's your birthday today? Happy Birthday, sir!

Would be cool if they did some kind of Posette themed render challenge here... maybe it's already been done though.

Happy Birthday Sam Therapy, damn I'm almost as old as you are lol.