Okay; so I couldn't resist and bought the V4 pro kit (yeah, I'm stupid like that) and the basic clothing set, and I thought I would give anyone who wants to know my initial impressions of V4 after playing around with her for a few minutes:

1. This figure is VERY different from all the other unimesh figures; her part grouping and morph grouping is much more like the e-f figures; I liked the fact that the morphs are grouped by body part, this makes finding individual morphs much easier. She actually seems to be a little taller then V3.

2. V4 is NOT compatible with V3 clothing, textures or morphs. The V4 to V3 figure (note: this does not seem to be a part of the "base" package, it only comes with the morphs) cannot take V3 morphs at all from what I can tell...not much use.

3. Joint bending seems to be better....her elbows could still use some work, but the hip and shoulder bends are better when compared to V3...she doesn't have (as bad) a creasing problem, but it still could be better.

4. This is a just personal opinion, but I think her head looks a  little too large for her body....her overall body shape seems "younger" than V3....she looks more like a teenager to me. I'm not really wild about her hip shape either...again, too much like a teenage model's than a real woman's, but nothing the right morph combination probably can't fix.

5. V4's breasts are more realistic looking than  V3's, with some better shape and movement morphs (I never did like the "breast 1, 2, 3" stuff  for V3). Oddly, the nipples are not "on" by default.

6. Her expressions seem to be MUCH better, much more realistic. She has some expression dials that will move her whole face for much more natural looking expressions.

7. Clothing fits are...interesting. Daz includes some "magnet' poses to fit clothing (but these are not actual magnets) by using crosstalk to morph clothing in sync with the figure. These don't seem to work with predefined character injections.

Overall; V4 is an intriguing figure, but not a must have right now. The almost complete lack of compatibility with V3 severely limits the appeal to me, as she is going to require all new content and textures, at least until there is a WW plug-in for her (and even then). I guess time will tell what kind of support she'll get from the community...right now, there is no matching the overall flexibility and support of V3, and I don't see V4 getting to that level anytime soon.

Thoughts? Other impressions? Questions? Feel free to respond. 

Mho,,, V4 is the best thing out there as of today. There is nothing (available) even close for under a hundred dollars(ex V3..). The market will probably develop much faster than it did with V3. Especially sinse it's been dead for nearly a year.

The big mesh issues seem to have been fixed. Mesh flow is better. Resolution has increased... Polys have been reduced. Realism is upped a notch. 

Looks like a must have to me.

12/8/06

PhilC says he is downloading V4 and will work on WW for her. He will aslo update WW for Poser including Somon and Sydney figures. WW for P7 will require a quick recompile and it will be a free upgrade. Probably Clothing Designer too, but I didn't see an actual mention on his forums.

http://www.philc.net/forum/

Okay, I already paid for Poser 7 and WW, but Clothing Designer Modules, V4 Bundle, PhilC's Poser Toolbox, all to much for Santa's wallet. Sigh...

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

The figure doesn't really become a good buy until it is wardrobe wizard supported. These days, for a general use figure, that is a must.

Good to know that is pending.

But, she also needs a basic 'streetwear clothing' set. Everything right now is either fetish or genre. Regular clothing is also a must for a general use figure - even if most renders are fetish, nude, genre, or some combination...

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
Renderosity Gallery

As one of the resident huge boob guys.  I give my two cents.

V4 has an amazing rack right out of the box.  4 dials later = huge fake looking boobs

V3 always lacked this.

Generally, I really like her so far.  I intend to use her more when more clothes and what not are released.

-G

Not impressed.  No eyebrow transparency zone, no nostril material zone, and the EYES do not move in synch, like everyone else's high-end figures. (AND most freebie figures out today!)

Her HANDS DO NOT GRASP! Or finger spread, either!  WTF?

The ONLY two things that I found that are an improvement: Improved eye geometry.  The addition of the tear forms on the lids REALLY jack up the realism factor big-time.

The enhanced expression morphs are pretty good.  Gives a much wider range of realistic expressions. In general, she does seem to be more slightly more realistic in movement and joint hinging.

Overall in comparison to other poser models I have I'd rank her 8.5 to 9 out of ten.  A lot of room for improvement.  She has a hideous top thigh flattening problem when you bring her thigh up over 90 degrees toward her chest.  There may be more, but I lost interest in it.

I cannot save the world. Only my little piece of it. If we all act together, we can save the world.--Nelson Mandela
An  inconsistent hobgoblin is the fool of little minds
Taking "Just do it" to a whole new level!   

There is a hand grasp and hand spread morph in the morph pack.  They also have individual finger grasp morphs.  However I have not used them myself.

/agree at **whoopy2k

**I did not know what JOELGLAINE was talking about at first, as I got the morph pack. 

With the morph pack the eyes do move in synch, along with the appropriate eyelid morphs.  Very neat.  That was always a pain in the A when posing.

hey bluecity,
nice review... but just a quick comment  on a point you raised:

"4. This is a just personal opinion, but I think her head looks a  little too large for her body....her overall body shape seems "younger" than V3....she looks more like a teenager to me. I'm not really wild about her hip shape either...again, too much like a teenage model's than a real woman's, but nothing the right morph combination probably can't fix."*

thank god... this is a problem ive been ranting about since V1: all of the previous vickies had a far too small head.
you may just think she has a big head because youve been staring at vicky 2-3 for the last 5 years. trust me youll come to see the light :)

@  **Blackhearted

**Here is to hoping you do a GND style character with her!

/drink

-G

Larger head makes scaling out a shorter figure easier as well. Looks like the previews the PC was getting were deceptive - she's still a viking giant of inhuman height, and will take work to shorten down to something at least as short as Yao Ming... :P

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
Renderosity Gallery

*" you may just think she has a big head because youve been staring at vicky 2-3 for the last 5 years. trust me youll come to see the light :)"

*Like I said, personal opinion...I've never really liked the super skinny, huge bobble head look. (COUGH Nicole Ritchie COUGH)  ;-)

I downloaded the basic figure.  I'm not going to spend 2 cents on the figure until I evaluate it from top to bottom.  If they have all the useful things in the $49 USD pack or what ever, they should have said so.

I cannot save the world. Only my little piece of it. If we all act together, we can save the world.--Nelson Mandela
An  inconsistent hobgoblin is the fool of little minds
Taking "Just do it" to a whole new level!   

nicole ritchie is not human, she doesnt count.

the previous vickies all had disproportionately small heads... ive been sneaking slightly larger heads into my character morphs for years, now i finally dont have to :)

now if daz would finally give up their fixation with those funnel-thighs, all would be right with the world. but then, there wouldnt be any work for me to do....

I also think her head is too big.
I also want a transmap for eyebrows because I won't be fiddling with eyebrow coloring every single time when I change my mind 10 times about which haircolor to use!
Expressions are better and I like the eyes.
Her armpit joint is - as usual - WAY too high. Welcome to postwork. It just looks completely unnatural.
Give her a bit of bulk and then try and get the arms not to distort at the arm socket joint. Good luck.
What's with all the Partial morph (hidden) stuff?
The CR2 seems smaller (considering all the morphs) at 36mb, since V3 could bulk up to over 100mb easy. That's a good thing.
Don't like the fact that I'm going to have to edit nostril glow all the time because of no nostril zone.
Still not anatomically correct genitalia wise. V4 is still a Eunuch of sorts.
I did not find any hand morphs btw. I have the entire pro pack, and I don't have any injections or anything whatsoever. Mind pointing me where they are supposed to be?

The hi res textures... umm err. Not inspiring. At all.

The hair... what's with that sausage rubbish? If it hadn't been included in the pro pack, I wouldn't have bought either of those hairs. Ever. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I tend to stay away from Daz Hair like the plague, brokered or otherwise. There are only a handful of people who create decent hair out there and - sorry - that clunky fat unrealistic crappily transmapped stuff... no thanks. If I want wires, sure. If I want hair... I'm better off painting it or using Bliss Vision etc.
As it is... uninstalled and tossed into the "Don't bother" pile.
The same goes for hair from RDNA these days btw. I don't bother with it anymore.

Helena texture looks ok, not really tried Grace yet.

The eyebrow thing really bothers me.

She'll take some getting used to, that's for sure, but as of this minute... I'm not terribly impressed overall and I'm seriously thinking about returning the entire pack.

Silke

A little bird told me that Girl Next Door for V4 is in the works.

My Freebies

Quote - I also think her head is too big.

 

Not me, she's even taller than previous Victoria (oops) so imo actually her head needs to be significantly bigger, but on the other hand it looks like DAZ spent a lot of effort on getting scaling of body parts to look better so it should be easy to do.

My Freebies

I like her very much. The morph grouping is an improvement IMO and she is smoother to work with. Her expressions are more realistic looking with better options than before.

I agree the lack of backward compatibility is a big minus since I have a ton of V3 addons, but that is progress. Looking forward to Phils WW update, that will help.

I agree with blackhearted on the head issue, we are used to V3's smaller head so it looks off, but I think it's more realistic. I like her posing also, no more upper thigh issues when the legs are bent for squatting

I am kind of wondering about the high res textures also. Supposedly she has double the res of before, but I have yet to see anything over 4000 (not that I am complaining) I got the pro bundle, great deal at $43 for PC members and the Helena texture is nice looking, but I am definately waiting for some ultra real ones. (I'm gonna miss danae's Milla texture set)

I hope she gets lots of support as she seems like a winner so far.

Regards, Michael

My DeviantArt page

Ummm.... I'm looking at V3 and V4 standing next to each other. V4 looks slightly shorter.

Quote - ... but on the other hand it looks like DAZ spent a lot of effort on getting scaling of body parts to look better so it should be easy to do.

 

Is that why she has HUGE feet?

Silke

Speaking of V4 and V3, I gather some would like to see them side-by-side.  V4 is on your left.

Quote - Ummm.... I'm looking at V3 and V4 standing next to each other. V4 looks slightly shorter.

 

I loaded both earlier today and V4 appeared a bit taller to me.  Screenshot from Shadow_Fyre seems to show the same.
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2675754&page=1

I did notice that V4 appears to have a slightly different zero pose, certainly the hands and forearms are in a bit different position, and if I remember right V4 was flat footed with heels touching the ground.  That may have something to do with the differing perception of height, now that I think about it when I loaded V4 she had her heels slightly off the ground with the toes pointed but after I did Joint Editor -> Zero Figure her feet were flat on the ground.

Edit:  Ooh I like the penguin feet!  Thanks for the screenshot Jim!

My Freebies

I sure wish the textures, above all, were backward compatible.... Damn shame.... I would love to use some old V3 characters is some new poses..... Poop

:)

Someone said she looked like a tall version of Jessi with a character-morphed head, which is fine because V3's torso was a bit too, umm, middle-aged for my tastes, and her head looked a few cc's shy of a full brain case. The thighs on V4 are an improvement, but I would agree that they still could use some work. Overall, she is much more interestingly -- if not altogether realistically -- proportioned (aside from the Wonder Woman height) than V3. She's a buy -- that is, after PhilC finishes his WW add-on to save the day.

I think I'll just put her head on Aiko 3's body like I did with Miki's. It's the best part of both models.

Well, that's very odd...why isn't V4 backwards compatible? It seems a shame and a waste of our money (though I suppose the point is to get our money...)

I'm a bit upset at this, actually XD;; All the other Victorias have been backwards compatible. She looks nice, but...I just started my V3 collection XD;;

I know, it sucks if you have alot of $ invested in V3 textures and clothes....  

she is backwards compatible like earlier versions.  she has a v3 morph that has v3 grouping in order to take v3 clothes.  not morphs, not textures.  and that was true of v3tov2.

I only downloaded the free version(must hold out until payday next week for the rest!). 

For me, she is going to take some getting used to, just because I'm so used to V3. But I like her arms and the outer thigh shape(near the hip), and I think the default breasts are really well done. She is lower waisted than V3. And I like a lower waist, I think it looks more natural.

All in all, I think she's going to be a very nice addition to my Runtime.

I tried her out with some of my already owned V3, M3, and David poses. She takes them pretty well. Very little fiddling with was needed. 

The only thing I didn't care for was that she isn't even compatabile with V3 merchant resource kits. Unless you WANT a nightmare :)

I don´t like her much in the moment. I wasn´t very happy with my first render today. I have problemes with the morphes, as I wasn´t abel to change her face or give her an expression.
But I hope she will become better when time goes on; but I had more hope into this new figure after this time of promotion :-//

Quote - I know, it sucks if you have alot of $ invested in V3 textures and clothes....  

Wardrobe Wizard????

PhilC has already stated officially that V4 support will be available.  What else is needed?  You can then convert every one of those five zillion V3 clothing items to V4.  Textures - Hopefully UTC will have a V4 module (which I think it might have in the future).  I mean, you either spend another $3000 on new textures and clothes or invest $200 in a tailor and painter. ;D

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

actually, ww has it's limits.   i've had a lot of trouble converting some items, but none with others.  it's a tremendously great tool, but not a magic bullet.

I don't have the figure but looking at what i have read here it seems that daz decided to take a lot of tech made by other folks and incorporate it in their own product....no disrespect to daz...but what i see here is a v3 figure + all the other gadgets made from people who sell on this website or other sites  rolled into V4. I am not accusing daz of stealing and it is normal that they put all those tricks into their new figure otherwise it would not sell but i don't see any revolutionnary gimmick added to v4 ....not enuff to justify the jump from v3 to v4 at least for now!

I do welcome the new asset tough and can't wait to be able to get it but is it a little too late?

Plus the fact that now again you have to restart from scratch to do your "poser" stuff and rebuild your library...I am not sure that that everyone will be that eager to move to vic 4 a.s.a.p since v3 if you sit down and think about it has all of the stuff of v4 but with some more tweaking and hassle but still you can do it wheter by tricks or post editing...

my opinion may be completely off base here since i have yet to see and use v4 but i can see that yes a new product is nice.

Also i would say that v4 was rolled out to compete against the content that is gonna be released in poser 7...

I am optimistic for v4 but i am not impressed since she is gonna be another money pit to deal with if you like poser stuff...

sorry daz v4 is just a too little too late....i hope i am gonna chnage opinion when i see v4 but i doubt it.... 

My biggest bitch about the daz stuff was always the breasts situation and Posermatic  with his products solved almost all of them for me and  the wyrrmaster magnets solved a lot fo my clothing fitting problems on my v3 so i can see that daz "borrowed" from these 2 inventors to put it in v4 but i wonder if it works properly...

i have to wait and see...

Click on her hand to get the spread fingers and grasp morphs. That's also where the nail grow morph is. She'll take some getting used to but I like her.
Marque

I think she rocks.  She bends well, her expressions are great, her morphs are organized.  This is only the 1st day and she is already great.

I got V4 and the morph ++ package from Daz (only paid about $14 for everything). I already removed V4 for a few reasons:

1. It was too new and I wanted to find out a bit more (I can always RE-install it later), so the fact that I am out that money is trivial.

2. I noticed that some Renderosity vendors had V4 skin textures. I noticed later that they are no longer there.

3. I tried adding a V3 texture to the V4-V3 character and it didn't work.  I REALLY don't want to loose all my textures and clothes.  I really, really, really (did I mention I really dont?) want to have to buy all new everything.

Am I disappointed? No, not really, I just need to do a bit more research to understand how the morphs work.  I like V3 here, I can see all the morphs at the body level, without having to select each portion of the body.

Hope this helps

Seems like buyer's remorse is setting in on some of the early V4 buyers.

I thought it was just me that saw those packs come and go.....thanks, thought I was losing my mind.   |8^P
Marque

I don't really see that much difference from the standard to hi res textures. May have to get a refund for those.
Marque

v3 textures don't work on the v4 to v3 character any more than v2 textures worked on the v3 to v2 character. the "hybrid" character is purely for fitting v3 clothes to a default v3 body.

personally, i would have much preferred a unimesh mapped v4 alternative than a morphed and regrouped figure that didn't actually have any versatility.  but that wasn't what was promised, ever.

sorry, i should say, i'm very sympathetic, but official daz people and fellow members did post several times about this over the past couple of months.

Playing around with her a bit more my initial impression still stands; this is a nice figure with some nice  features, but I'm honestly a little disappointed; I really haven't seen anything in her that I can't do with V3 at this point. I guess a lot of it has to do with expectations; since she was named "Victoria" I expected a lot more compatibility with the old figure. If she had a different name,  it wouldn't be such a big deal; but with no real backward compatibility with V3 (sorry, but that lame V4-V3 figure doesn't count) V4 is kind of a disappointment to me.
V3 is for me, and I'm sure with a lot of other people, my universal female base figure. I actually like the fact that she's pretty "bland" out of the box (I never leave her in "factory spec" anyway); she can be anything from a buxom super babe (rumor has it, she likes to hang out naked in temples wielding swords), to a fat grandmother to even a guy! Since she is a base figure, I don't want her to be too highly stylized one way or another. There are hundreds, if not thousands of morphs, characters, textures, and clothing items for her, and she can be pretty much anything you want. Given that V4 is only a day old and V3 has been out for years, I know that this is not a fair comparison, but I really question Daz's decision to take the clean slate approach to V4. From what I can tell, the improvements in the mesh don't really seem to justify changing her body form so much.
If she was compatible with V3 content, it V4 a no-brainer purchase for everyone, but as she is,  she's more  like Jessie, Miki, TY2, or S3...while all nice on their own, they all require a substantial investment in supporting materials, and they still don't have the flexibility of V3. I know WW can help, but it is not perfect - it's great for what it does, but nothing beats "native" clothing. I guess the market will decide how well she's going to do, but with so much invested in V3, I don't think I'll be loading up on any more V4 content anytime soon.

Sorry to ramble, but in sum,  I think my major disappointment is more about expectations (fairly or not) because she carries the "Victoria" name...I just don't see V4 taking over V3's slot in my runtime anytime soon. For now, I guess she'll just be another naked, sword-wielding temple dweller with a bobble head who needs to eat a hamburger. ;-)

Quote - actually, ww has it's limits.   i've had a lot of trouble converting some items, but none with others.  it's a tremendously great tool, but not a magic bullet.

Agreed, but can you mention something better?  I've heard horror stories about Tailor and that's about all I know is in real competition with WW.  It can do quite a lot, and it is specifically mentioned that ymmv and you may need to tweak - this goes without saying.  Matching clothes from disparate figure to disparate figure is not a science - it is guesswork and some 'magic'.  Not knowing the limitations of the Python SDK for Poser, it may be that doing all of the work is 'not possible' (I've heard those two words enough for SDK programming!).

I don't want to deal with Poser dynamic cloth - it's slower than molasses buried in Antarctic glaciers (and I'm on a dual Xeon!).  For the cost of Poser, it is a great asset.  For practical use, it is mostly impractical.  In the time that you do a 'dynamic calculation' of cloth, I've done several hundred in C4D with Clothilde (for instance).

My point is, people keep moaning "but wherefore art my V3 clothes to goeth, kind gentle sir".  What?  You can't do anything with WW when the V4 support is added - at all?  Most certainly doubtful.  So, several of your three thousand V3 wardrobes will fail - consider the cost of all over those few equated to the cost of WW (!!!).  If you can convert ten or twenty, that pays for WW and pays you back.  Where is the downside of this?

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

this has been the way of the "victoria" figure starting with the v3 you love so much.  she couldn't take any of my hundreds of v2 textures, morphs,etc. 

what would you have be compatible?  if it's morphs, you can't change the mesh.  if it's clothes and morphs, you can't change the mesh, grouping or joint parameters.  if it's textures, you can't change the uv's.  if it's all of that, well, the most you can do is add morphs.  and we have lots of v3 morphs, and they're not considered a new version.

think about what a new "victoria" means.  a new figure, almost by definition, means new mesh.  which means new grouping and joint parameters.  you might was well map it better than you did last time.  and you're going to need new morphs because it's a new mesh.

basically, there isn't a way to make a substantially new version of a figure and have it be compatible.  it's the same thing when people talk about "fixing" miki rather than replacing her.  they want the forearm issue fixed, but everything else compatible.  but the technology simply doesn't work that way.  to improve a joint, you really need at least new jps and new groups.  that means your morphs are shot.  so you need new morphs.  you could use the same mesh, but you've already  broken morph and clothing compatibility.  it makes more sense to optimize the mesh to improve the jps you're working on.  so now you have a new mesh, new groups and new jps.  well, you could go through the trouble of mapping the new mesh exactly the same as the old one as if you haven't learned anything about mistakes made with the first one.  or, as i would like, you could just provide the old mapping as an option.  but since you've broken all other compatibilities just to fix the issue people were complaning about, there's no real benefit to letting yourself be hobbled by the old uv mapping.

i'm sorry you're disappointed.  it sucks to spend money and anticipate something for ages and then get let down.  i personally really wish someone would remap v4 to take v3 textures.  but what did you expect to be compattible?  to address the bending problems everyone wanted fixed meant nothing but texture maps could be compatible.   please don't get me wrong, i know she's missing a lot of things she should have.  people are raving about the initial price, but i'm also hearing that ethnicity and muscularity will come out in separate morph packs.  so we don't know her full cost yet, and i've witnessed again and again that it's easier to pull $100 from the community for 5 small sets than $40 for a single complete one. i'm hearing different different problems from different people.   but v3 "compatibility" is just not possible without leaving everything about victoria the same. 

oh, and the new figure is actually much, much closer to a standard or generalized female in proportion than v3.  much more neutral.

kuroyume0161 - i don't know that they're's anything better than ww.  i do find dynamic clothing very useful.  but i've not had, for instance, one aery soul set convert properly, no matter what i tried.  nor my uzilite base.  i think ww is wonderful, but it will distort anything with fine details like buttons on it.  and i haven't had it like collars, flaps or folds.  as far as i can tell, the more detailed an item is, the less likely it is to convert well. 

i wouldn't want to go back to the days before ww, but it's far from creating compatibility.  hence the dearth of a3 in black lotus pics, and the source of requests for aery soul to support a3 or sydney or any other of the ww supported figures, despite ww's popularity.

but personally, it's not the clothes so much as the textures.  i can use magnets to some extent, but i can't use uv mapper at all.

Wardrobe Wizard is a starting point, not an end point. I usually do a lot of expand and retract and smoothing after an initial run through, then some joint editing, and maybe a little bit of magnet work that I might spawn into morphs if I start feeling cluttered.

With all of that, I've always been able to get good results. Perfect everytime? Maybe not. But functional.

The shape of base V3 and V4 is pretty similar, so there shouldn't be too many breaks. It'll be when you start bringing V4 items and putting them on the Freak or Furrette that it might get hairy.

To me, the new V4 seems to be a mixed bag:

Pros:

1. more bendable
2. more expressionable
3. default body shape slightly more feminine.
4. maybe more morphable. Need to see the proof though.
5. bigger head means it might be easier to make her shorter, I'm guessing.
6. If not for bigger head, scalable body parts will also help with shorter issue - so she can reach a normal 5'4-5'6".

Cons:

1. painted on pubes and brows means hair color is chosen and locked by skin texture choice. This is a major concern unless texture makers finally stop painting on the pubes and brows so we can apply them with shader node masks instead - but they kept refusing to not paint them for V3, so I expect they keep doing it...
2. still no external genitals, but enough polys down there that a solution -might- be possible
3. breasts and chest fused as one piece is a return to 1999 until I see proof that it works.
4. still taller than Yao Ming.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
Renderosity Gallery

I pretty much concur with Cobaltdream, right down the line.  I understand the desire to have new figures be texture, clothing and morph compatible, but progress usually just doesn't work that way.

I the default like V4 shaping much more than V3.  She finally looks reasonably human.  I'm still playing with her but so far, the only negatives I see are:

1. lack of trans-mapped eyebrows - someone at Daz must be asleep at the wheel on this one.  They seem to try to get innovative with the lashes, but left out the brow-mesh (??).

2. In the default shape at least (and I think even with the crease morph), the genital mound has some mesh non-smoothness.  Not really an issue with Smoothing enabled, just looks sloppy for a production item.

3. No phonemes?  I bought the Complete pack (base+morphs) and I hadn't found any phoneme morphs yet.  It could be that there's some alternate solution/methodology that I hadn't found yet.

4. Odd foot pose in base mesh.  I'm sure they'd quote me some plausably good reason for going that route, but this will complicate shoe creation to some extent (not a huge deal - it might even be helpful in some ways).

On the improvement end, I love that they added a 'tear' mesh (I've had one on my model for a couple years now).  So far, the posing looks pretty good too.  Someone mentioned the flat-top thighs issue, bu frankly, the implementation here looks much better than V3's.

For $35.00 (non-PC member), you get an extraordinary amount of value, compared to the rest of the 3D world, at least.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

And that's the downside of the enterprise, one supposes.  3D meshes fit to a particular figure are made to fit and be accentuated by a particular figure - but may go awry when fit differently.  As an example, my plugin for Poser->Cinema 4D has rather sophisticated master-slave dial support (FBM, PBM, ERC, JCM, etc. - the only outside of Poser and DAZ|Studio afaik), but it is nowhere near fully Poser-compliant to support constructs concocted by VM for complex mathematical control and manipulation of channels (dials).  This is both a limitation of my knowledge of how the developers of Poser implemented these controls and that of the system into which I construct the 'simulated' dials.  The ignorance, time, and effort demand a compromise - something that works in most situations but not in specific, specially-tailored ones.

WW works to do its best with what PhilC/Kamliche know about clothing and figures.  Sometimes even that is not enough to cover the complexity and variability of the situation (which is highly complex as we know).  Hopefully one day, conforming clothing will be completely replaced by dynamic cloth simulation - which is far superior when done correctly - but it is still a very expensive and complex solution which costs money, power, and time.

Textures are always a burden. One would think remapping a flat, planar, 2D image would be so much simpler than, say, matching 3D morphs or conforming clothing.  But actually, it is a very complex process.  It is more akin to morphing than mapping (which are related) because you are taking one space and mapping it onto another.  The problem arises in generality - which doesn't exist.  There must always be a 'mapping algorithm' from one mapping to another.  Think of Poser's FaceRoom.  You take a photo and map it to a head.  This requires that you specify particular points as relationships for the mapping procedure.  The same is true for UVmapping conversions.  UTC does this statically by only supporting 'known' mappings and providing the engine to make the conversion between them.  To do this generally would not be possible without intelligent agency directing the process (FaceRoom or RealViz ImageModeller point matching, for instance).

To get to the point about texture remappings, the problem really resides in the fact that textures are digital (whereas morphs and conforming clothing are mainly analog - floating point).  You are not remapping a procedural texture (which is easy comparatively) but a pixel x pixel digital representation.  Most of the work is in extrapolating and interpolating the digital information into a form that is maleable and then cementing that information back into digital form.  Think about the fact that a texture is 1024x1024 pixels and let's say that it is being mapped to some arbitrary 640x256 pixel mapping which is not a one-one relationship in pixel positions/orientations.  When remapped, these pixels must be stretched and aliased and transformed and so on in a way that preserves the original digital image but conforms to a new set of shapes.  As I have found, this is not very easy - there are textbooks and papers and APIs all geared just to explaining and implementing this seemingly simple task!  The reason is that, unlike 'analog' data, digital data doesn't stretch and expand as easily without showing signs of the process (sample error, aliasing, overcompression, etc.).    Take a 1024x1024 JPG and compress it to 64x64 and you see the inevitable loss of information - even without the remapping!  One day these things will be ubiquitous - for now, we must live with the limitations.

C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes it harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.

 -- Bjarne Stroustrup

Contact Me | Kuroyume's DevelopmentZone

just to check, you did notice that  all the morphs aren't there?  that is, from what i've read (i'm holding out till end of the sale at least), your $35 doesn't include the individual muscle morphs or ethnicity morphs v3 did.  they'll be separate and additional sets from (again, from what i've read).   i wouldn't be surprised if there's a talking/phoneme set as well.

arcady - ww mangled several meshes beyond repair.  i used magnets and ww tools extensively.  it was easier to just use magnets on the original.  and that was from default v3 to morphed v3/rayne (though i had a similar but worse problem on a v3 to d3).  as far as i can tell, some meshes it simply does not like. 

again, this isn't to say it isn't great and wonderful.  i love it.  some great stuff, it's worked on with a hitch.  but having it doesn't suddenly make it unnecessary for aiko to have her own wardrobe.

On the grouping...

• chest/breasts fused into one piece... no reason that can't work perfectly well.  The only reason to have it grouped the V3 way would be if moving the 'shoulder' (not the 'collar') needed to affect the chest/breast area and that can be done (and was being done) with JCM (or some variation thereof) anyway.

• lack of buttocks.  also no reason that this can't work perfectly well.  The reason it was added (Eve figure) in the first place was just to keep the 'thigh' from affecting the 'hip' polygons, but decent rigging can address that and having the buttocks inbetween can also cause other headaches.

• neck/chest... this division is a bit strange and limits how much head rotations can affect the neck polygons.  You can compensate for this by moving some of the rotations to the eck, but I think they goofed a bit on this one.

• shin and forearm groups... strange placement of group edge (at knee and elbow).  Doesn't really affect posing at all (as opposed to being in the center of the joint), so it's just 'wierd' that they'd do it that way.  Maybe it allows them to consolidate some morphs into say the shoulder instead of should and forearm both having some partial morph (I hadn't looked closely, but I'm betting that's the reason).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

Quote - Pros: 1. bigger head means it might be easier to make her shorter, I'm guessing.

2. If not for bigger head, scalable body parts will also help with shorter issue - so she can reach a normal 5'4-5'6".

Cons:

1. still taller than Yao Ming.

 

Seems to me these are a lot easier to fix on a case-by-case basis now that DAZ has added "morphforms" to the base morph kit - scaling hands up or down is on one slider, as are several other things.  I wish they had a similar slider for finger length and width, but it's a step.  At least you don't have to hit every - single - joint in Poser to do a general size tweak of extremities, something that was a lot easier in DAZ|Studio.

Kind of hoping Poser 7 allows selecting multiples for this kind of thing but it sounds like not.

My Freebies

Indeed. Check the list of morphs http://www.daz3d.com/store/item_file/4781/1.html and you'll see the eggs aren't there, only the nest.. Typical trick I'd say. Finally V4 will cost a normal price, but you'll have paid it in parts. And everyone who gets basicV4 will pay for the rest. All you need is cash.

kuroyume0161 - aprilysh managed to figure out how to remap a figure before she was a merchant.  the free maya doll has a v3 mapping.  and mayax was extremely ill for a time.  g.i.r.l. was released with a v3 mapping because they knew  everyone wouldn't just buy a bunch of new textures.  i don't see why the people at daz would be abnormally taxed by providing a v3 mapping, especially when they took a whole year to do this and were a team of people.   i would say it's not a cost efficient use of their time because they know people will just buy a bunch of new textures.  and most won't complain about it.  but there's no way you can convince me that the totally unassociated g.i.r.l. was easier to remap, or that mayax is way more capable than a team of salaried 3d artists. 

Quote - just to check, you did notice that  all the morphs aren't there?  that is, from what i've read (i'm holding out till end of the sale at least), your $35 doesn't include the individual muscle morphs or ethnicity morphs v3 did.  they'll be separate and additional sets from (again, from what i've read).   i wouldn't be surprised if there's a talking/phoneme set as well.

 

Actually, the full-body morphs seem to be there:

BodyBuilder
Definition
Fitness
Amazon (heh)
Emaciated
Thin
Young
Voluptous
Bulk
PearFigure
Heavy

...may not be an exact match to V3, but seems reasonable.  On the ethnic morphs, there are a few head character morphs that give some basic ethnicities, but I think Daz spoiled themselves with the Ethnic pack they did for V3 (more $$), so it doesn't really surprise me to not see a ton of those in the morph pack (I suspect that a V4 Ethnic pack is in development as we speak).

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

For the most part I find V4 a huge improvement on V3, and with time (and products) she will probably be amazing.  I picked up the Pro Pack and I'm loving some of the new features.

As of now, though, she is not a replacement for V3.  She does not have the same flexibility.  V3 has her eyes mapped separately, for example, if you want to make one eye blue and one orange, it is really not a big deal with V3.  V4 has her Left and Right eye maps in one material zone.  You literally have to go in a and paint the texture map to get the same effect!

No Alien Head morphs, no oddbal character morphs (ie: gargoyle, hag, etc..)  I never used those morphs out of the box, but I have plenty of V3 renders that you may never know it, but a .085 of some weird character is in there. 

No phenomes!?  WTF?  I'm sorry, but I have free characters from Daz that came with Phenomes.  This is a huge disappointment.  The only reason I got into using Poser characters is for animation.  This should not be in an add on pack, this should have been part of the Pro Pack and the very least, but moreso, it should have been part of the Base figure.  Just a huge disappointment.

Anyone who is having trouble finding some of the features, though (like the grasp hands and such) make certain you didn't download both the Base and one of the full packages.  There is a file name that is apparently the same, and the obj is the same, but the cr2 is different.  I understand this can cause some trouble.

The expressions are amazing, but too few and by this time next year it is going to be really easy to play, "guess the expression morph" in the galleries.  A shame.

Well, I'm off to play some more....

right.  but no triceps, hamstrings, etc.  all but a few of the the muscle (not muscularity) morphs are absent.  the morphs you mention are a bare base coat on the characters i dial.  the list is much more than not an exact match, it's not 1/2 the morphs i routinely use.

this actually explains my feeling that the morph previews were oddly lacking real diversity.

the ethnic pack for v3 was great for the textures.  the morphs were... less so.  

and capsces hasn't come out with her set, either.

as a customer, i see the ala carte method as a minus (because it always means less for more money), but i also feel like i've only seen a bare tip of what's possible with v4.

Just to clarify, I didn't list all the morphs.. the full list is here.

Cinema4D Plugins (Home of Riptide, Riptide Pro, Undertow, Morph Mill, KyamaSlide and I/Ogre plugins) Poser products Freelance Modelling, Poser Rigging, UV-mapping work for hire.

also to clarify, i know that.  that's where i was looking.  the link is posted above your post, but not as a link (so thanks!).

I am irritated at the name they gave the morph pack, that's mostly it.  The V3 "Full Morphs" are much, much more complete than the V4 "Full Morphs++".  It's not like I wouldn't have bought the morph kit, but they shouldn't have named to make it sound like it's an improvement over the V3 kit of the same name, when in fact it's a lot less functional.

edit:  well, except for the boobie morphs, those are spiff.

My Freebies

I'm with you Cobaltdream!

The lack of muscular morphs when I paid for a Morph pak is a complete oversight on Daz's part. Like what the heck were they thinking? Also, why can't we scale specific body-parts anymore?

Likewise, I don't think Daz has been paying much attention to the community as of late: they should have added another foot bone, (aka  EF characters), it makes for far better foot posing and animation weighting.

All in all, I'm not impressed with V4.  I incorporated many of these 'new V4 features' into my characters ages ago: nothing evolutionary here.

Sorry, V4 is just a big let-down IMHO.

As far as V3 to V4 clothes....

I've had mixed results with WW, but Phil C does have another product called OBJ2CR2 file converter. I'm sure he will have V4 supported soon enough which will allow content creator to quickly convert many of their pieces. (they will have to resize them of course, but this is usually a quick process).

Quote - @  **Blackhearted

**Here is to hoping you do a GND style character with her!

/drink

-G

Oh my god, yes.  GND 2 is my favorite all time v3 morph.

Now for my early impressions on V4.  Posing her with her arms in the air, she no longer looks 'broken'.  Thank GOD.  She's very different and will take some getting used to.  To those worried about clothes, remember when V3 was released?  She had .. a bikini.  From reading the threads at Daz, the vendors have been hard at work and I am betting many, many more things will be released over the days to come.

Where V3 was a marked improvement (in my opinion anyway) over V2, V4 is an improvement over V3.  The major drawback right now is the eyebrows.  Daz should have included a mask that could be applied and then changed in the material setting.  Any texture artists who are working on V4, please take that piece of advice to heart.  Please give us the option to change the eyebrows and don't just paint the eyebrows on.  Please, please, please.  It is one of my biggest pet peeves with V3 textures.

V4 is definitely different.  I remember how people complained and complained and resisted switching to V3.  Now you hardly see any V2 figures out there.  It will take time to adjust, just as it did with V3.

Quote - Also, why can't we scale specific body-parts anymore?

 

Can't you?  I thought I tried that yesterday morning and it worked, but I'm not completely sure.

My Freebies

Well. here's a quickie render. For me, the chief disappointment is that the Base is short of morphs compared to V3. Just expression morphs, not even a basic "spandex" morph. Posing seems a bit better, but I can see mmyself having to do a lot of digging to find out what the new features are. DAZ have not improved the usefulness of their read-me files. It would be an irritation, but no more, if they'd included links to a full user-manual on their website. Not even having that goes beyopnd irritating. The hair, incidentally, is by Kozaburo. V3 hair does need some tweaking, and the tweaks suggest the head is a bit bigger. Partly, it's a metter of taste, but I felt V3's head was a little small. You can't satisfy everyone. Amongst the things I've noticed, the tongue seems to be a lot more complicated--multiple body parts rather than morphs for movement. Could this be a problem for Mimic users? Right now, my reaction is a bit, "So what?" There seems to be something lurking underneath, but DAZ could do better at explaining things.

I am waiting till I see Sydney, I have a funny feeling that Sydney is going to be as good as V4, but because she does not have the name, it may fall.  But will wait till P7 is here.  Sharen

I've heard Sydney is just Jessi with a different head shape and Simon is just James with a different head shape.  Probably the G2 versions of said characters, but still, don't get your hopes up.

Mind you, we could all be pleasantly surprised...

I sure hope Poser 7 is not as big of a disappointment as V4 is so far.  (No Phenomes... I just can't believe it...)

Umm, everyone knows that it was the same way when there was the transition to V3 from V2 right?  This is nothing new.  If you want a more advanced figure, you have to let go!  That or stick with V3.  When V3 came out, I used V2 all the way until A3 came out, then finally let go.  Even then, I still use V2 for established characters.

(the above paragraph excludes the V3toV2, and V4toV3 figures, which I never really liked anyhow)

That being said, V4 grouped morphs are a dream along with the full face morphs.  I am very much so looking forward to some fantasy style clothes for her.

-G

PS I am not a shill for DAZ, it just seems that people do not remember the transition from V2 to V3.

V4 is the best version of Victoria ever.

Pros:

• The default figure without morphs is actually attractive looking.
• She is no longer a pinhead.
• She bends like a real person. Without extra buttock parts (this is very likely accomplished via morphs).
• Her ears and breasts no longer look like they were the result of a boolean operation.
• The texture sets include materials actually optimized for Poser's current rendering engine.
• The expression morphs look much more natural.

Cons:

• Most of the character morphs are downright awful IMHO.
• A couple of the expression morphs are unnatural looking.
• Additional content must be purchased to use a few of the new figure enhancements.

I have hated V3 ever since I downloaded her (I'm very glad I waited until she was free, since I've barely ever used her). Her head looks like it's made out of mud, she has those same horrible boolean breasts and ears as V1/2, and she's actually less enjoyable to work with than V1/2. The only thing I did like about her never did me any good: her UV layout.

Viva la V4!

Gazukull, I appreciate your point on this. DAZ do have a tutorial buried on their site. I suspect they've tried to be too clever with their site design, and used some browser-dependent Java when a simple HTML link would have done the same job. Poser and Poser models seem to be an area of computing where the manufacturers think a list of features is an explanation, and the poor sods like us who are paying have to work out the details for ourselves. And that's one reason why we're reluctant to let go of the past. We're waiting for somebody to explain the new. I've probably already wasted half a day looking in the wrong places on V4.

@ R_Hatch

Very good summary.  That was basically my findings so far on V4.

@ AntoniaTiger

There didn't seem to be a tutorial I found so far... but I am sure there will be on tutorial arcana.  But V4 seems to be simple enough... now I am just content crazy!

-G

12/9/06

It looks to me that V4 was rushed to market. Maybe they wanted to keep up with Poser 7 and steal a little of the thunder from EF's release, and maybe they wanted to beat the Christmas buying season.

Not having the specific muscle morphs, and scaling ability leaves V4 unable to express the same diveristy as V3. Would it have killed them to give us one set of decent cloths for her?

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

I´m looking forward to the updates, until then I will not use her in my renders! Some example of distortion, The pose is one of the included in the V4 Bundle...

Another one!

I am checking the bodypart scaling just now, and it is really odd - most bodyparts are scaleable, but some are not.  In almost all cases where there is a scale slider, it is only all three axes at once (one funny exception though!)  List of things that cannot be scaled appears to be:
Chest
Neck (there is a "thickness" morph though)
Head
Face parts (although 6 joints of the tongue can be z-scaled!  O_O !!  )
Collars
Hands and fingers cannot be separately scaled (I really don't like that, all V4s will have the exact same hands??)
Toes (rather irritated at that too)

Everything else has one x+y+z scale slider or another slider that does the same thing (e.g. feet).  I'm guessing the reason for this was the morphforms, but I don't know enough to understand why.

My Freebies

Although V4 can look good in a simple stand up pose!

@ lkendall,

On scaling body parts - The morphform dials do not meet that need?

@ rofocale,

What version of poser are you using?

You have to have poser 6.0.1 in order to use V4 effectively.

And with some clothes on(Included in the Bundle) and her standard rexture!

No buyer's remorse here, I like her. Only thing that bothers me are the hires maps compared to the standard ones. There is a tiny difference but not enough to warrant the price. I think once everyone starts working with her they will like her. Remember the hoopla when V3 came out? lol

**Gazukull
**I still play around in Poser PP!

@ all

For instance, using the morphforms to bend her torso is looks much better than using the bend / twist dials.  I am thinking much of the problems that people are having has much to do with not changing the way they think, even posing V4 is different..

@ rofocale,

Methinks that's why her butt is crinkling on you :)

V4 is the battlefield 2 of figures, she has high requirements.

So have I, that´s why I will keep on using my e-frontier/DAZ hybrids, even after buying P7:)

@ rofocale,

I think P7 should be okie.  I dunno, I guess we all find out monday!!!!

Finally put my dual core to use!  Well, bryce uses dual core...

Well to use in poser :DDDD

-G

Quote - I've heard Sydney is just Jessi with a different head shape and Simon is just James with a different head shape.  Probably the G2 versions of said characters, but still, don't get your hopes up.

Mind you, we could all be pleasantly surprised...

I sure hope Poser 7 is not as big of a disappointment as V4 is so far.  (No Phenomes... I just can't believe it...)

the poser 7 female is sydney.  the poser 7 male is simon.  both are g2 figures, female and male respectively.  g2 figures share the same body across the genders but have custom heads.  the g2 females seem to have as little to do with jessi as v4 does.  jessi might have a g2 form, but her body is entirely different.  check out the preview threads at content paradise.  some of the stuff daz recently announced for v4 (like magnets instead of jcms, and clothes that support them) g2 figures already do.

if the bending and shape previews are anywhere near on target, i'm already pleased with her.  and i think her facial previews look much preferable to v4's.  i expect to like them both in the very long run, with v4 being more generic looking.

oh, and these lacks aren't oversights. they're the ala carte marketing method that d|s and v3 established.  it's easier to get people to keep paying for add-ons than it is to get them to pay a large lump sum for twice as much content.  i think (from what i've read) ethnic morphs will be an add-on, and muscularity morphs, and speech and (more) expression morphs, etc.

12/9/06

Gazukull:

Metamorphs will not give individual control to the X, Y, or Z scaling morph of a particular body part. If I want a body part scaled larger in the Z-axis but not X or Y-axis, I can not do this unless there are dials to allow it, and they are enabled. Except for the breasts and face, a lot of the ability to express diversity is not there. There is everything one needs to pose V4 for standard cheesecake scenes.

One of the criticisms about the G2 figures is that they lack diversity. There are general, but not specific body morphs. E-Frontier expected people to use the Face Room to modify the face, but there is no corresponding Body Room. The Paintbrush morphs seems to be a response to this criticism.

It will be interesting to hear if DAZ intends to produce more morphs. I will wait for some confirmation from them before spending money on this bundle. Poser 7 will be enough to keep my interest for a long time.

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

Quote - @ lkendall,

On scaling body parts - The morphform dials do not meet that need?

No they do not - people's hands vary almost as much as people's faces do, they aren't 100% identical in shape and the scale of the parts.  This is a big minus and it needs to be fixed.

My Freebies

@ lkendall & pjz99,

Ahh, I see.  That being said... would imagine that hacking the cr2 would unlock those dials.  Scaling is a function of poser?  I imagine that daz was thinking "who uses that?" and cut it out.  This is all purely speculation.

I agree the cheesecake crew (that would include me) are very happy atm.

-G

Seems pretty obvious to me it's just about priorities - 26 boobie morphs (the adorable AreolaPerk among them) but nobody thinks about a girl with long fingers?  MEN WRITE THIS SOFTWARE DON'T THEY?  >:(

My Freebies

Well as a first impression, I'm happy, there seems plenty to play around with, and will be even better once Poser 7 is out.

12/9/06

Gazukull:

I am not proficient at hacking into cr2 files on my own, but with clear instructions.....

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

When V3 was released she actually had FEWER clothes (she had a bikini, woo hoo).  She also did not have the full compliment of morphs she has now, though I do seem to recall the full musculature morphs being available.  She also only had two texture sets at the time.  The vendor added stuff came fairly quickly but they released V3 with a lot less than V4 has been released with.  Honestly, most of the same complaints about V4 were being made about V3 when she was first released.  The poser community complained ad nauseum.  Now most of them can't get enough of V3.

Don't like what's included in V4?  Don't buy it yet.  Vote with your wallet.  Nobody can please everyone.  There are going to be people who are completely happy with V4 and others who won't be.  Such is life.  :)

Quote - 12/9/06

It looks to me that V4 was rushed to market. Maybe they wanted to keep up with Poser 7 and steal a little of the thunder from EF's release, and maybe they wanted to beat the Christmas buying season.

Not having the specific muscle morphs, and scaling ability leaves V4 unable to express the same diveristy as V3. Would it have killed them to give us one set of decent cloths for her?

LMK

Quote - @ AntoniaTiger

There didn't seem to be a tutorial I found so far... but I am sure there will be on tutorial arcana.  But V4 seems to be simple enough... now I am just content crazy!

On content, I've got usable results with V2 items, using the Shift function in Wardrobe Wizard. I'm beginning to think that the Base figure, currently free for the Platinum Club, is useless as a sample of what the model can do. Too many things are missing. As for the tutorial, it's awkward to get to from the default V4 promo page. Try this URL: http://www.daz3d.com/support/tutorial/tutorial.php?id=1942

12/9/065

MoxieGraphix:

I am voting with my wallet. That is why I have not bought $V4 yet. I would have bought her, and would have been disappointed, except for the posts on this forum.

The Internet has changed things since DAZ rolled out V3. People can fully analyze a product and post reviews within minutes of the product’s release. The product’s virtues and flaws can be discussed and the consumer can be better informed.

I hadn't discovered DAZ and 3D graphics when V3 was first intorduced. Yes, DAZ has done this before, and yes customers were disappointed, and yes you all survived it. Humans have an almost infinite capacity to learn, except when it comes to doing business.

PhilC expects to have WW and Clothing Designer Modules updated in a few days. That may take care of the clothing problem. Fortunately I already own WW. How about the missing morphs, who will supply those, and when?

V3 is much more versatile at the moment, and Poser 7 will give me enough to do for a while. V4 will have to wait until the product is more complete. I am sure I will know when that happens, because of the frank discussions available on this forum.

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

They'll be provided when DAZ decides to release them, of course(and it's been stated they will be released).  It's really not all that hard to wait.  It's like Christmas, it will get here eventually.  I guess, I do enough nekkid pictures that waiting around for clothing and what not isn't a huge issue.  Also, not releasing everything at once is actually easier on my budget, especially with Christmas and other purchases.  I suppose, I just think there are worse things that could happen then the lack of a few clothes and some morphs is all.  Plus, this is deja vu for many of us. :)

Nobody, least of all me, is arguing whether or not  V3 is more versatile.  OF COURSE she is.  Just look at the thousands and thousands of dollars worth of crap available for her.  It took years and years to get this kind of content built up for V3.  I do not expect V4 to replace V3 in my runtime anytime in the near future and maybe not ever.  There's too much I like about her.

By the by, I knew V3 would replace V2 for me in a heartbeat, it was just a matter of time.  As much as I like V4, I don't expect the same results.

Looking at the morph forms, I just played with her hands a little.  You can change the hands size bigger or smaller OR you can change just the palm, bigger or smaller.  You are right though, there seems no way to make the individual fingers bigger or smaller but, at least the hand size can be adjusted with morph forms.  I don't know how helpful it is for you in this case.

Quote - I am checking the bodypart scaling just now, and it is really odd - most bodyparts are scaleable, but some are not.  In almost all cases where there is a scale slider, it is only all three axes at once (one funny exception though!)  List of things that cannot be scaled appears to be:
Chest
Neck (there is a "thickness" morph though)
Head
Face parts (although 6 joints of the tongue can be z-scaled!  O_O !!  )
Collars
Hands and fingers cannot be separately scaled (I really don't like that, all V4s will have the exact same hands??)
Toes (rather irritated at that too)

Everything else has one x+y+z scale slider or another slider that does the same thing (e.g. feet).  I'm guessing the reason for this was the morphforms, but I don't know enough to understand why.

Daz always gives a full 30 days to get your money back. People were able to fully analyze V3 as well and they still bought her. I have never had a problem getting a refund from Daz if I didn't like or couldn't use an item. I got V4 and am glad I did. Just got the email from 3Dreams that he updated all of his hair products to fit her. I think there will be a ton of support for her. Sheeesh she just got here!

> Quote - v3 textures don't work on the v4 to v3 character any more than v2 textures worked on the v3 to v2 character.

Er...V2 textures do work on V3-to-V2.  V3-to-V2 is mapped like V1/2. 

My first thought on seeing V4 was that she looked like Jessi.  Longer legs, stomach definition, larger head, huge feet.  Over all, more of a fashion model look than V3. 

I like the larger head.  Like many, I've been scaling up V3's head for years.  I don't like the "lollipop" look of anorexic Hollywood actresses, either, but V3 is really a pinhead.  Compare to her to actual human women, and you'll see her head is way too small.

Expressions are also improved, IMO.  Not as good as the e-Frontier figures, but better than V3. 

My feeling is that this is a transitional figure.  The Jessi-ish grouping is in anticipation of weight-based rigging.  The lack of head morphs is because advanced morphing tools will let you make your own. 

Overall, I'm happy with her.  I paid less than $15 for the pro bundle, with the various discounts and vouchers I had.  It's worth it.

Hoping wyrmmaster will get hold of her.

V4's face has actually reminded me a lot more of Aiko 3 than Jesse in some instances.  I'm attaching a picture of the character morph I did last night just playing around.  In others, she hasn't struck me as any figure in particular though she did remind me of Christy Turlington at one point when I was fiddling with the dials.

does he make products anymore?  the last place i saw his work was rdna, and his last product was from march.  for some reason, i'd gotten the impression he'd left the field, which i know would disappoint many people (so i hope he's still around and doing well).  personally, i find his style too unreal.  i'm hoping for posermatic goodness.

i apologize, i remember v3 to v2 being shown with v3 textures and being told that it didn't take v2 textures.  just tested and that's completely wrong, and you're completely right.  there's some issues i'm encountering with different mat poses, but the mapping seems flawless.  which makes me want a remapped v4 even more.  not only have i not seen one texture i find on par with my present v3 textures, there are several i'd like to buy still.

If Sydney is a decent looking and working figure... V4 goes back.

I do wonder how many others are thinking the same way.
We'll find out on Monday and I bet so will Daz.

Silke

I know a lot of the scaling options were removed because they didn't work as well with them implemented (much to my vocal annoyance) so they had a reason. It just kind of sucks.

I think Sydney is Jessi with new joints basically. At least that is the pattern with the G2 male figures. They are all basically an adjusted form of James. They same general shape is there but not enough to make it totally the same (joints, grouping and some smoothing change that)

For those who are complaining about lack of clothing, I would strongly suggest to take your time and learn how to use the magnets.  Magnets, along with little help from external modelling program such as Hexagon or Wings, it really is not that hard to convert V3 clothes to fit V4, the tools are all right there for you to learn and use.   Although might be little time consuming at first, I've converted just about all my V3 clothes to fit GND this way, and it fits so much better than Clothes Converter, Tailor or WW.  Also, there's a way to use clothes room to fit simple clothes, do a search and you'll see.

Bottom line, if people are so dependent on others to provide the content for them, guess what?  You are just gonna have to wait on their schedule, or play around with the nekkid figure.  It's just the way it's always been with the new figures, V3, M3, GND, you name it.  Meanwhile, I'll just sit back and wait for all the dust to settle down, as usual with all other new figures, because there's already more than enough figures to play around with.

g.o.m.  - have you gone to look at the sydney previews that have been available for a while now?  they've completely redone the g2 female body.  she's more like miki meets jessi, and looks at least if not more realistic than the previews of v4 imho.  especially in the chest and hips.

Attached Link: First Try

I'm very happy with Victoria 4! I"ve already used her for a commission that paid for the Pro Bundle. That's more money than I've ever made with Miki.

chinnei - gnd is a v3 morph.  v4 is a whole other figure.  for an example of the difference in level of difficulty, aery soul provides morphs for their custom characters (kielo, yaara)  in contemporary products.  they say they will not convert their clothing to v4 or any other figure because it would take them too much time.  everything i've ever read of clothing creating is that the shape is the comparatively easy part.  the hard part is joint parameters, grouping and poke through.

clothing creators please correct me if i'm wrong.

I looked in the forums and that didn't really show me much other than her bending, which doesn't show what she looks like. Sorry if Ihad wrong info though.

Where is this free V4 base model that some people have mentioned?  I would like to try her out but I don't care to spend any money at this point and I really feel bad when I have to return something.

it's only for platinum club members.
v3 free base  i feel weird writing that, it sounds illegal or at least illicit.

Thanks, cobaltdream!  And that does sound not quite right ;-)

Quote - chinnei - gnd is a v3 morph.  v4 is a whole other figure.  for an example of the difference in level of difficulty, aery soul provides morphs for their custom characters (kielo, yaara)  in contemporary products.  they say they will not convert their clothing to v4 or any other figure because it would take them too much time.  everything i've ever read of clothing creating is that the shape is the comparatively easy part.  the hard part is joint parameters, grouping and poke through.

 
I should clarify, when I said "convert", it meant in terms of fitting the geometry of the clothing to fit other figures.  To me, this is the most time consuming part, probably because I'm very picky when it comes to geometry of the clothes.  
You might be right about grouping, since V4 has different chest and leg grouping, but I don't find it too difficult than changing grouping between other unimesh figures.  As far as making it conform, I let setup room handle that with few clicks of button using the already existing figure, or base clothing as a donor bone.  Even though I said GND, I've manage to fit several clothes to A3, V2, SP3, or even M3 and vice verse, using this way.  Like I said, it might take some time to getting used to at first, but once you get hang of it, this might be the best way to conserve all the V3 clothing that people have.

You shouldn't really compare Jessi to Sydney yet because G2 Jessi and G2 Miki have not yet been released. Nor has Olivia for that matter.

@ **lkendall

**  
DavidGB
Over at daz forums posted this.  Hacked cr2 with scaling revealed.

http://www.david.eaton.ukgateway.net/RevealScaleDials.zip

-G

12/8/06

Gazukull:

Thanks! How kind of you.

Now, some one who has V4, and wants to try it out, let us know if the scale dials are functional. Please.

LMK

Probably edited for spelling, grammer, punctuation, or typos.

Quote - You shouldn't really compare Jessi to Sydney yet because G2 Jessi and G2 Miki have not yet been released. Nor has Olivia for that matter.

Who is Olivia?

"You don't know what we can see
Why don't you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free." - Steppenwolf

Quote - @ **lkendall
**DavidGB
Over at daz forums posted this.  Hacked cr2 with scaling revealed.

http://www.david.eaton.ukgateway.net/RevealScaleDials.zip

-G

 

Gazkull:  That is really, really kind of you to post.  Thanks a ton, I know I appreciate it and I'm sure other people will too.

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@ pjz99 & lkendall,

My pleasure!  But really, DavidGB was the original poster :)

Hopefully it works for yall!

I sent David Eaton a thank you email, thanks for bringing the info over here just the same.  This fixes a big portion of my unhappiness with the new figure.

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olivia is the african american g2 female, equivalent to the g2 male kelvin. 

and lots of people talked about v4 based on her head preview, and how incredibly advanced she was.  i don't see how comparing v4 renders to the detailed previews they've posted of sydney's behavior is any different.

it's good to know that the scaling issue has been handled.  thanks much for the information.

Quote - The Internet has changed things since DAZ rolled out V3. People can fully analyze a product and post reviews within minutes of the product’s release. The product’s virtues and flaws can be discussed and the consumer can be better informed.

Yes, because the internet hadn't been invented in 2002.  We used semaphore back then.  You know how hard it was for Renderosity back then?  I mean, just having to use binoculars and read things out loud, letter by letter, took freaking forever.  No wonder people didn't review things right away.

And don't even get me started on how hard it was to post pictures.

Try these links. http://www.daz3d.com/program/characters/index.php http://www.daz3d.com/support/tutorial/tutorial.php?id=1942 Coldrake

keith  - no, actually this is very true.  in 2002, if you wanted your own site it was buy or build.  now it's blog in 60 seconds or less.  blog software, wikis, rss feeds, social networking sites, global image galleries like flickr and the like have vastly changed how many people publish, and how quickly news permeates the web.  i'm not a big blog fan, yet i can think of at least two poser product review blogs i've been to. 

it's true that rendo's technology isn't very different, nor daz's (did they have the forums back then? i can't remember).  but there are many, many more ways for news to get out than before.

I was upset about the eyebrow thing, but as suggested, having textures where the brows are on a separate layer would work.

I did a side by side comparison of V3 and V4, actually used a V3 pose on V4 so as not to show biased...yeah, right. Anyway, I found tweaking the pose for V4 didn't leave me pulling my hair out.
I also discovered that V3 isn't quite the queen of heap. V4 clearly is superior in form.

V3 has been around for what...4 years now. V4 was released a little over 24 hrs ago. Four years down the road, V5 is going to have a tough act to follow. 

I'm coming around.:)

Quote - I am waiting till I see Sydney, I have a funny feeling that Sydney is going to be as good as V4, but because she does not have the name, it may fall.  But will wait till P7 is here.  Sharen

The preview thumbnails for Sydney in funny poses work again:
www.contentparadise.com/forums/contentparadise/index.php

And she looks to have some great bendability.

However, no idea on her morphability nor expressionability. And I suspect she will have the same eyebrow/pubes problem as V4 - however, at least she is female. V4 on the other hand is androgynous.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
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My first quick render of V4 using the Grace head morph and texture.

Nudity tag employed for safety...LOL!

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Quote - 12/8/06

Gazukull:

Thanks! How kind of you.

Now, some one who has V4, and wants to try it out, let us know if the scale dials are functional. Please.

LMK

 

Oops, I missed that response, I got the pose file and it seems to work just fine.  All scale dials unlocked and appear to work.

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Here's one of mine. I just have the free base. I used Occlusion Master on her.

Quote - keith  - no, actually this is very true.  in 2002, if you wanted your own site it was buy or build.  now it's blog in 60 seconds or less.  blog software, wikis, rss feeds, social networking sites, global image galleries like flickr and the like have vastly changed how many people publish, and how quickly news permeates the web.  i'm not a big blog fan, yet i can think of at least two poser product review blogs i've been to. 

it's true that rendo's technology isn't very different, nor daz's (did they have the forums back then? i can't remember).  but there are many, many more ways for news to get out than before.

Actually...no.

Blogs started making a political impact in 2002 (that's when I started reading them).  The first wiki software came out that year as well.  But that's neither here notr there.

People were able to post instant reviews and pictures of product and such a long, long time ago (in net terms, anyway).  Look at a thread I started today showing exactly that sort of thing  for both V3 in 2002 and the original Victoria in 2000.

Sure, today there might be more options in different places, but people have been able to see "instant" reviews (which quite often, based as they are on first impressions, are pretty useless) for a ages now.

My particular point is that the comment I was responding to is, to quote the famous review of a scientific paper, "Not right, not even wrong."  People were posting reviews on Renderosity of products before there was a DAZ as a separate entity from Zygote.

Quote - Here's one of mine. I just have the free base. I used Occlusion Master on her.

OOOOh Occlusion master. I might just have to pick that up.

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Quote - People were able to post instant reviews and pictures of product and such a long, long time ago (in net terms, anyway).  Look at a thread I started today showing exactly that sort of thing  for both V3 in 2002 and the original Victoria in 2000.

I've been saying my piece online since 1988, I consider myself a later comer to the internet. Back in my day, we didn't have webpages to post stuff on... and we still managed to get it out there. ;)

People have been giving their opinions and posting images online long before I got there.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
Renderosity Gallery

**Well, I've finally done my first piece with V4, she is now beginning to grow on me.**

Lookin good, I see the expressiveness is paying off for you.  What renderer did you use Stormchaser?  Because she doesn't have the over-glossy eyes and lips of most of the other V4 renders, or did you tweak that down?  (if so you may wish to correct me in the Firefly thread).

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pjz99 - Thanks. I used the firefly renderer, with settings really high. I'll post my settings if anyone's interested. However, I had to postwork the eyes to get the desired effect, plus other touch ups.

Doh.  Not the answer I was hoping for, I'd be really surprised and disappointed if the gloss cannot be reduced from Materials room (I'm pretty sure it is just Reflection on the particular material zones).

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**pjz99 - OK, here's a picture of the original render of the eyes before postwork. There is very little gloss effect, I would guess it depends on your light settings.**

There are two different "gloss" versions in the highrez textures (and the std rez too, I bet) for the eyes. Looks like you used the not-so-shiny-one here. It's always a good idea (if it isn't there by defauly) to attact an anisotropic shader to the cornea part of eyes. Looks a lot better IMO.

I'm unfortunately at work right now so I can't check, but I bet there's a glossy node (or something similar) on the lips. unplug that if you think the lips are too shiny.

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You just can't put the words "Poserites" and "happy" in the same sentence - didn't you know that? LaurieA
  Using Poser since 2002. Currently at Version 11.1 - Win 10.

So it loks like you took that wierd glow out of the inside of the eyelid/eye socket?

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I just tried some renders with V4.Seems to me that the face is more interesting to morphs than v3 .V3 seems always look v3.

another one

The thing that gets me is that the eyes now have three "transparent" material zones, Cornea, Tear and Eye surface.

I could complain forever (as seems to be our want), but seriously V4 is a vast improvement.  My crits are small and they will be either dealt with in time or forgotten by most.

Still, to reiterate, her are my two biggest complaints:

Seven individual tongue parts, yet V4 cannot speak one word!!  No Phenomes!?  Just amateur!  For crying out loud, the Millenium Dog LE has phenomes and is Mimic compatable!!!

(Who gives a crap if the tongue has so many parts?  How many open mouthed pictures do you expect to see, was this made fro freaking dentists!?)

And both eyes being on the same material Zone is the biggest pain the @ss I have ever seen!  This is something I hated about the Poser stock figs.  If I want to change the left eye to some kind of blind metal laser thing, I literally have to open up the texture and make a new one in photoshop, and heaven forbid if I want it to have different mats etting from the other eye (ie, one glossy, one not.)  I see their reasoning (less zones to deal with) but I still think that it is exceptionally limiting and sad.  (not that I'm beyond making my own freaking eye, but what about those less technically inclined or with less software?)

Still, the improvements far outweight the detriments.

(BTW, TrekkieGrrl, you completely rock!  Lots of reasons, but I thought I'd mention it.)

I am betting the tongue is so jointed because that's the basis they will use for phonemes when they are released, rather than morphing a set of vertices they'll be translating and transforming the joints.

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On the eyes: Yes, I think it's a bit clumsy having them the same material zone, but it isn't a huge problem in Poser 5 and later. Step 1: Use the U_value and math|step nodes to get a black/white vertical split. You could use a texturemap, but why bother? Step 2: Use that to control a blender node. Step 3: feed the two different V4 eye textures into the blender node. Use the blender node output as you would a single texture. On the tongue: Yes, I reckon the joints will be doing a lot to create the phonemes. It seems that a lot of what are single expression morphs in V3 are composites of several morphs in V4, controlled from a single dial. Which is a well-established system. But I hope people making conforming clothing do a little editing of surplus body parts. It's bad enough finding a pair of shorts has arms and fingers. Why would I want a tongue in my... No, don't answer that.

I'm actually pretty pleased about that particular bodypart being articulated, because I'd otherwise have to make a prop with similar features for a certain purpose I have planned.

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From what I've seen so far, I'm not very impressed with V4.  I'm sure I'll buy her mainly because she'll never be as inexpensive as she is right now.  I know from living through all the other Vicki upgrades, that she'll improve with age...better textures, etc.  I very seldom use Vicki (Aiko is my main babe), but you never know when you'll have need of her.  Also the merchants will gradually phase out making stuff for V3 and then I'll be left with no place to spend my money. :laugh:

My idea of rebooting is kicking somebody in the butt twice!

I bought V4 mainly because she's much cheaper now than she would ever be -- true. A future investment, I'd say.

What i like about her is that eyelids move together with the eyes. The default texture leaves a lot to be desired.

After an hour of tweaking with her, I managed to produce a face I liked (which kind of reminds me of Emily Rossum). I had to modify the texture to produce a decent result, but still she's not bad.

The V4 to V3 figure is not as useless as some on this forum had voiced. I'm a bit disappointed she doesn't take V3 textures, but perhaps the revamp / remap is on the way.

The eye texture in the standard resolution package is riddiculously small.

Apart from that, fairly decent figure. Now I'm hoping for M4.

ThrommArcadia wrote; "How many open mouthed pictures do you expect to see, was this made fro freaking dentists!?" Actually I expect to see a lot more images with open mouths. :) With V3 it was like pulling teeth ;) to get her to look natural with her mouth open and her teeth showing. It's VERY easy to do with V4's expressions. Coldrake

One minor bit of neatness in V4: go look at the Material Names, and you'll see that they're numbered, with the same number for all the materials which use the same texturemap. For instance (by memory), "2_SkinHead" and "4_Gums". I'm not sure about putting the ears and the back of the head on a different texturemap to the face: it gives you more resolution over the face at the expense of a seam just along the front of the ears, and I reckon it might only pay off when you're doing extreme closeups rendered at close to the Poser maximum output size (somewhere about the same as 12 megapixels from a camera, which would need a tripod and a very good lens).

Because I've been busy playing with Vue I honestly haven't given V4 the attention I thought I would have. The two pluses over V3 that I like so far are definitely her expressions (really cool & easy) & her breasts. I think the aerola perk is a great addition,  I hope we get some Natural Gravity Morphs from Posermatic!

Quote - > Quote - 12/8/06

Gazukull:

Thanks! How kind of you.

Now, some one who has V4, and wants to try it out, let us know if the scale dials are functional. Please.

LMK

 

Oops, I missed that response, I got the pose file and it seems to work just fine.  All scale dials unlocked and appear to work.

 

Just for the record ...

V4's scale dials were never locked. They couldn't be, because they're how the MorphForm dials to resize head. legs etc work - the scale dials are ERCed to the MorphForm dials. The scale dials simply had the 'Hidden' flag set to 1, so Poser didn't display them, but they were there and working.

And somebody posted something that implied my file was a hacked cr2. It's not. I looked at the cr2 to check that the dials were just set to be hidden in Poser and then wrote the pose file that just set all those 'hidden's to 0 instead of 1 so Poser would then display them. Cr2s aren't encoded or anything - anyone can read them in any text editor. I don't feel that the word 'hacked' is applicable to what I did to create the Pose file to unhide the dials.

But I'm glad if the file makes some of you happier with V4, as I'm liking her a lot as a figure myself.

**Just thought I would upload this picture off the Daz website. I really like her face, gorgeous & realistic.  I know the texture & lightwork is good but you can still see the possibilities of V4. Just more inspiration for me I guess.**

that's v3.  wearing aery soul's vanilla outfit.  see the credits.  if you look at her face, it even looks like v3.
http://www.daz3d.com/galleries/index.php?id=22561

and i never said that there weren't opinions being posted.  certainly there were.  there weren't as many independent review sites, and not nearly as many non-art specific galleries.  i'm just saying it's a fair point.

i'll say this- i'm seeing more critical takes on v4 than i did v3.  not negative, just critical.

Yes indeed, should have realised. Guess I need some sleep!!

no, it makes sense to make that mistake.  she's in the promo animation under "figures," that spotlights v4.  i think it's actually a bit misleading to people who are new to daz or don't frequent their galleries.  they spotlight several v3 pics as a lead in for v4.   i can see what they're trying to do: the best: v3 pics, just got better: v4 pics.  makes sense if you're already familiar with the v3 content as v3.

Yeah, the pics threw me at first!  Admittedly, they area ll great pics, but some of them I knew right off were V3.  The one Stormchaser posted, though, I thought was V4 (which speaks well of the artist, I guess).  I went to the gallery and found they were V3s.  Which, makes me stand by my my initial statement, V4 does not replace V3, its just a new character.

As the days pass and I play with her more, I have to admit, I am really liking V4.  The nuances are going to taek some getting used to and it will be nice to see some more support for her, but still, she is pretty amazing.

AntoniaTiger, thanks for the quick tutorial!  That is a great work around for the eyes.

Quote - I bought V4 mainly because she's much cheaper now than she would ever be -- true. A future investment, I'd say.

Likewise. I picked up the pro version of V4 late yesterday precisely because I didn't want to have to spend 3x as much to get it all later on - and expect that at some point in the next year or so I will start wanting to make a lot of use of the figure. Sooner if Sydney doesn't work out, but the promos for Sydney so far are all looking pretty good.

Truth has no value without backing by unfounded belief.
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Stormchaser: according to the DAZ site, that's actually V3--maybe reports of V3's demise have been greatly exaggerated? ; ) --T

he!  she's cheaper than you thought she'd be?  she's missing the following morphs that were in the head and body morphs included in the $34 i paid for v3 and her morphs:

• muscle (as in individual muscles)
• fantasy
• ethinic
• speaking, phoneme
• male (possibly i'm mistaken, but isn't vittorio the only male morph so far?)

these are (or will be) separate add-on packs.  assuming the bundle and not the separate items, i'm still predicting on v4 costing me a lot more than the $34 i paid to get similar functionality.  i'll probably end up with more stuff, most of which i don't want, because it's actually cheaper to get the "complete" bundle than just the base, morphs and basic clothes. but i don't doubt it will be more money.  i'm sure they'll be improvements over what we had, but that's what v4 is supposed to be, right? 

it's a cool deal, don't get me wrong, but this is not exorbinant compared to v3.   i'm happy to have it, but not bowled over.  i'm just hoping their ethnic morphs are on par with the fantasy morphs they've previewed. 

tvining - already been pointed out.

Vittorio is more a new figure than a morph set for V4, although you can use his "To V4" morph in the negative on V4 to get a good male figure, then apply the other morphs included to get a VERY good male morph set for V4 (IMHO - grin). The other Vittorio morphs also work very well on V4. Use them for a pretty fair amazon. But, if you wait a week, I'll have a V4 Amazon morph package coming out too. That's for more of a "She-Freak" type of female, along the lines of She-Freak 2 for V3. It'll be pretty cheap, and probably at PoserPro's.

Vittorio also comes with "Arm stretch" and "neck stretch" that weren't included with V4. They'll work on V4 too.