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

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...

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.

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

*" 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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!

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

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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).

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

1. 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.