Hello,

I'm diving into Poser for my figure work, moving away from DAZ Studio.

I know Victoria 4 is an older figure, but it has a ton of content available, and I think a lot of it still looks really good, so I'd like to keep a library of content for it.

I own Victoria for through DAZ Studio, but I'd really rather have a "clean break" from that software/ecosystem and keep myself fully in Poser. The option to download purchases directly from here inside Poser is awfully convenient, and I know it'll be installed correctly. Not so much if I do it myself heh.

Can I buy the base Victoria 4 figure on the marketplace? I've done a search, but there's something over 6700 items for V4, and I wasn't able to track it down. So, I don't know if it's not available, or if I just didn't find it, so I figured I'd come here and ask.

So, to the point, can I purchase the base Victoria 4 or 4.2 here on Renderosity?

If need be, I'll grab it through DAZ, but I'd really rather not.

Thanks!

Victoria 4 is exclusive to DAZ3D, she can only be purchased from them. If you already own Victoria 4 for DS, you should be able to download the companion Poser files through your account. I would strongly recommend manual installation especially if you are unfamiliar with DAZ Install Manager (DIM).

Yes, you should download V4 via your DAZ account. There are generally different files for Poser and DAZ Studio,. (Even though they're all labeled DAZ Studio. Some kind of bug.) Make sure you get the right one.

You'll get to recognize Poser files from DS files. You don't want the files with "pwrloader" or "cfstudio" in them. Poser files are usually have the plainer names. They may have "ps" in them somewhere. Really old files will be executables, ending in .exe. Those are Poser files.

Ahhh okay.

For some reason I thought Victoria 4 was a Poser thing.

Okay! I guess I'll work through installing them manually, then.

Thanks for the info!

V4 is a Poser thing. ?

DAZ originally made content for Poser. Their figures were widely used by Poser users - much more than the figures that come with Poser.

Eventually, DAZ created DAZ Studio, so they wouldn't be dependent on Poser. (TBH, there was some doubt about Poser's survival at times.) They were fairly compatible at first, but now the programs have diverged so much they're not that compatible any more.

A lot of Poser users still use V4, because it's not easy to get DAZ's newer figures into Poser. Poser has its own newer figures, like La Femme, but after all these years, there's a TON of content for V4, it's relatively cheap compared to newer stuff, and so a lot of people still use V4.

There's also mods like Sasha-16, which adds weight maps to V4 and improves her posing.

randym77 posted at 6:26AM Thu, 03 June 2021 - #4420388

V4 is a Poser thing. ?

DAZ originally made content for Poser. Their figures were widely used by Poser users - much more than the figures that come with Poser.

Eventually, DAZ created DAZ Studio, so they wouldn't be dependent on Poser. (TBH, there was some doubt about Poser's survival at times.) They were fairly compatible at first, but now the programs have diverged so much they're not that compatible any more.

A lot of Poser users still use V4, because it's not easy to get DAZ's newer figures into Poser. Poser has its own newer figures, like La Femme, but after all these years, there's a TON of content for V4, it's relatively cheap compared to newer stuff, and so a lot of people still use V4.

There's also mods like Sasha-16, which adds weight maps to V4 and improves her posing.

Ahhh okay. I thought V4 was made by the folks who originally made Poser and Genesis is where DAZ came in. Okay! Timeline fixed :p.

Yeah, there's a ton of great stuff for V4, which is why I've decided to focus on that. LaFemme looks good, but not as much support. And I know the more recent Genesis figures aren't compatible. Maybe there's something that can make them work, I don't know Poser's compatibility with different figures, yet.

I've seen Dawn and Dusk, too. I think those are somewhat newer? Or am I wrong?

In any case, that gives me a strong starting point.

Thanks!

Yes, Dawn and Dusk are newer. They are made by Hivewire3D. Many of the people there were originally working for DAZ, but struck out on their own. Hivewire makes stuff that are compatible with both Poser and DAZ Studio. (They make two different versions of each.)

Dawn, Dusk, Baby Luna, and some Hivewire animals are included for free with Poser 11 and 12. Hivewire's busy working on Dawn 2 and Dusk 2, which means there's something of a pause in new products for them. A lot of people are reluctant to make or buy stuff for the original figures, when new and improved ones will be released soon-ish.

Nice! I'll be sure to follow Hivewire's products, too, then. I was going through all of the content included with Poser12 and saw theirs included.

So, Victoria/Michael 4, LaFemme and LaHomme and Dawn and Dusk seems to give lots of options to work with. And it's easier to keep track of, for me anyway. Keeping track of DAZ's figures and compatibility got really confusing for me. I'm still very much learning, but Poser's layout is clicking with me better than DS as well. At least so far. Both big reasons I'm switching to Poser.

TwoCatsYelling, you have the main figures correct there. You may also want to add DAZ's Loretta LoRez and Lorenzo LoRez. They're terrific lo-res figures (around 8K polygons) for background people. Lots of versatility in them. I wish Rendo sold something like that. Poser comes with "casual" versions of different Poser figures, but they don't come with the different built-in clothes and multitude of morphs that Loretta and Lorenzo have.

Dunno if they updated since, but when installing V4 in Poser there was an issue with the installer wanting to see a file named 'poser.exe' in the folder where the runtime is where you install your V4. This represents old practice where the content runtime was in the program files folder. Current Windows versions do not allow or throw up access right problems. Easiest trick is to make any file, can be zero length, named 'poser.exe' in the folder where the Runtime is where you want to install V4. This fools the installer sufficiently to let it create V4 in that folder.

As for 'lo-res' any figure in the scene can be polygon reduced.

In the legacy stuff that comes with Poser there's also a few figures that had lo-res versions.

Which is not to say Loretta/zo would be a bad buy...

FVerbaas posted at 2:37PM Sat, 05 June 2021 - #4420607

Dunno if they updated since, but when installing V4 in Poser there was an issue with the installer wanting to see a file named 'poser.exe' in the folder where the runtime is where you install your V4. This represents old practice where the content runtime was in the program files folder. Current Windows versions do not allow or throw up access right problems. Easiest trick is to make any file, can be zero length, named 'poser.exe' in the folder where the Runtime is where you want to install V4. This fools the installer sufficiently to let it create V4 in that folder.

From my own experience, I've never had that problem - and I bought V4 early on - but I do remember the whole thing about running scripts to initialize it.

Probably common knowledge, but speaking of low poly... both V4 and M4 come with LOD meshes in a seperate folder in geometries. The meshes are grouped, uv mapped, and have the same materials as the default figures. It's easy to transfer a blank rig to any of these, just have the LOD mesh loaded and selected and enter the set up room. Once in the set up room open the library and load a blank donor cr2. Follow the prompts. The process to transfer the rigs is best if you use a completely stripped out V4/M4 cr2. The dev rigs are fine but aren't actually ideal nor blank. Here's links to such blanks... these were provided ages ago on the Daz forum, those links are long gone but I have them.

V4 Blank https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z6sutq8Zc0L2z7NH-A_AFWfUdFm1LQJC/view?usp=drivesdk

M4 Blank https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByIxWY9EMK8jNjVEWHRfTjJOV1U/view?usp=drivesdk

Here's 1K LOD V4 with her donor rig attached...

SamTherapy posted at 6:49PM Sat, 05 June 2021 - #4420628

FVerbaas posted at 2:37PM Sat, 05 June 2021 - #4420607

Dunno if they updated since, but when installing V4 in Poser there was an issue with the installer wanting to see a file named 'poser.exe' in the folder where the runtime is where you install your V4. This represents old practice where the content runtime was in the program files folder. Current Windows versions do not allow or throw up access right problems. Easiest trick is to make any file, can be zero length, named 'poser.exe' in the folder where the Runtime is where you want to install V4. This fools the installer sufficiently to let it create V4 in that folder.

From my own experience, I've never had that problem - and I bought V4 early on - but I do remember the whole thing about running scripts to initialize it.

I remember that, but it's no longer an issue. I don't know if DAZ changed something or Smith-Micro did, but it hasn't been a problem for years.

Wait, correction...you no longer have to make a fake Poser.exe file, but I think you do have to initialize M4 and V4. At least, we still get people coming here who can't get morphs to load, but running the .bat file fixes it.

Those LODs are pretty nice, and as the Poser 11 Morphbrush can handle subdivision, can be just as detailed as "regular" meshes.

They also respond to weightmapping exceptionally well.

Weightmapped M4LOD

The latest installer for V4 is now bundled into a zip file that can be extracted anyway. IIRC, if you use DIM, initialization is done for you.

I seem to recall I just made a copy of V4's cr2, opened the file, and changed the obj path to the lopoly V4. But her clothes aren't lopoly. And when I use Poser to lower the polygons (which works fine up to a limit), any texture mappings are messed up, so I have to forgo them.

version
    {
    number 6
    }
figureResFile :Runtime:Geometries:DAZPeople:blMilWom_v4b_LOD:V4_LOD_4K.obj
actor BODY:1

That's another way of doing it. There's 2 references of the obj in a cr2. Doing it that way is probably about 2 clicks more than using the set up room ;)

...off topic perhap's but you mentioned Loretta LoRez. I don't have the figure but I love Predatron's other stuff... Especially his War Dog figure. He only makes stuff for DS now, looks like. Kinda heartbreaking, similar to when 3d Universe cloned all his stand alones to Genesis and stopped making Poser figures...

What a face on the remastered War Dog! Love it. But I'm not into war stuff. I find the lores cops are useful. They can be reworked for any generically uniformed character.

Whoops. That's "WarHound"... been a while since I looked at it. War is only interesting in fiction but yeah, drifting alot here.

https://youtu.be/XRoMjoxK5v4

EldritchCellar posted at 12:26PM Mon, 07 June 2021 - #4420680

That's another way of doing it. There's 2 references of the obj in a cr2. Doing it that way is probably about 2 clicks more than using the set up room ;)

That's how I did it, too. I've never ventured into the Setup Room, not even for rigging my own stuff. I'm confident with editing cr2s, though. :)