Victoria 8 Launch this month!!!!!!!!!!

No.

I have to agree with Tucker Pope - planned obsolescence is something that really bothers me and I feel is a shady business model. If and when Genesis 4 comes out along with all the new figures that come along with it, I hope it is because of new improvements and improved utility rather than because a bean-counter says it is time to force people to spend more money on products they don't really need. Mind you, based on how Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 are designed to be backwards compatible (in fact, a lot of the props and clothes designed for G2 actually work even better on G3), I don't foresee this really being a huge issue as long as the backwards compatibility is retained for at least 2 prior generations.

I'm not sure where the OP got his information regarding the release of V8 being this month since it seems to me that G4 would need to be released first and there is no indication from any official site that this is planned anytime soon. I admit that I am very new to the 3D rendering community, but I sincerely doubt that any company would release a new generation of their flagship product without some sort of hype and teasers in the weeks if not months prior to the release. I'm going to mark this release date on my Mayan calendar.

I highly doubt there is going to be a Victoria 8, or let alone Genesis 4 anytime soon, given they are still releasing stuff like Centaur 7 and Ophelia 7 recently, which would mean a Victoria 8 is still a long way off, and so is Genesis 4.

but, I guess, if and when a Victoria 8 comes, I think it will be for Genesis 3, watching the Wikipedia, I see this:

Victoria 2, 3, and 4 were for the first genesis generation.
Victoria 5 and 6 were for Genesis 2
Victoria 7 and and 8 will probably be for Genesis 3.

Anyway, i'm not waiting for it, as it seems very unlikely they will release a Victoria 8 anytime soon, the next thing i'm expecting is perhaps another character in the '7' series.

Mello

If Wikipedia says that, Wikipedia is wrong.

Victoria, Victoria 2, Victoria 3 and Victoria 4 are separate figures. Victoria 4 got an upgrade in the form of Victoria 4.2. These figs were built on Poser tech, and pretty much made Daz. At about the time of Vicky3, Daz built studio as a means of selling more figs. Poser is costly, and the idea was to make a lower cost alternative. This also worked out well. So well, the stopped selling studio and just gave it away.

Since Poser is proprietary, Daz had reason to develop their own tech, and Studio diverged. At some point they decided that they should just make their own figure technology, as well, rather than just making poser figures. Genesis was that figure. I don't doubt that was a tough call for them. Vicky4(.2) was (and still is, last I heard) the most popular figure, ever. Building something completely new was risky. And it didn't pay off.

Genesis worked well enough, and people seemed to like the universal nature of it. But it is hard to work with from a development POV, and it didn't displace V4. Also, other people hated the universal nature. So they made Genesis 2.

Both Genesis and Genesis 2 were built using Daz's "triax" weight mapping tech, which no one but Daz uses. This was another issue.

Exported figures don't behave the same way in other applications as they do in studio because of this. So, Genesis 3 happened. G3 was developed, from the base, as means to connect to the larger ecosystem of 3d shit. That is, games. Everything from the low poly nature (compared to V4), basic weight mapping, to the use of bones for secondary flexing and facial movement was down to the fact that these things are standards now in Games and film animation. In a sense, G3 was conceding that they would never knock Vicky4 down. They just had to wait her out. She'll die some day. G3 is a play for the wider industry.

After Vicky4, each Genesis figure has had its own Victoria. Victoria (and Micheal) are "flagship" products for Daz. If V8 happens (it will soon enough. Just depends on when Daz feels ready) it will, almost certainly, be on a new Genesis figure. The only way that doesn't happen is if Daz takes its next figure base and brands it as something other than Genesis.

While they could do anything they like, right now their naming scheme assigns "Daz generation" numbers to their flagship products. Victoria 6, Sunny 7, etc. Victoria and Micheal were Generation 1. Gen 2 being V2 and M2 and so on. Generation 5 was genesis with Victoria 5. At that time, they weren't doing that whole number thing with all of the flags, so only shapes that related to previous figures (The Girl, Aiko, Freak, Stephanie) got the 5 with Genesis. With Genesis 2, ALL the flagships got the 6. Same with Genesis 3 and the 7. Mika 7 is the first Mika. A product made, according to the marketing, because Aiko was no longer anime enough. Which makes Mika the successor to Kieko 6. The point being, outside of Vicky and Mike, Daz doesn't much care about the names. It's the numbers.

So, like I said, they could do anything, but to build Vicky 8 on a Generation 7 figure would break their pattern, and I think it's an important branding pattern for them. Daz want buyers to feel like those numbers mean something, even if they aren't sure what. I think they know that their user base will feel Vicky8 is a cheat if she isn't built on a Generation 8 figure. So if we see a Vicky 8, it will be on a Genesis 4 or equivalent product.

Hell, if she doesn't show pretty much the same level of tech improvement V7 had over V6, people like me will see it as cheat, anyway (much like V6 vs V5, in my mind. I know why they did it. V6 is easier to code/model for than Genesis. But, as an end user, I don't care. Admittedly, I model and code figures now, so I should, but I didn't at the time.) Aside from being easier to build for, Genesis 2 didn't really offer any advances over Genesis. G3 did. If G4 doesn't offer advances, I'll just be annoyed until I figure out/build tools to reverse G4 stuff for G3. I've got too much invested in G3 to feel otherwise.

I'd rather Daz get their shit together and actually make Daz Studio 5 a far more robust program (like ditching Optitex's proprietary and broken bullshit and having legit dynamic clothing and hair) and fixing all the bugs, rather than pumping out Victoria 88423809472385+ and her army of sameface clones/bug-eyed bloated lipped spinoffs for another 2 years in a row.

If they can focus more on getting their dynamics in check and more accessible to the general public, then they'll really have put the final nail in Poser's almost closed coffin, IMHO.

Plus, the guy who created the Generation X program (where you can transfer morphs to newer figures) just died recently, so without a new GenX, I probably won't even bother with Genesis 4, full-stop.

From a tech stand point, the Genesis 3 is actually less resource consuming compared to Genesis 2. Similarly, G2 is less compared to Genesis, but for different reasons. Like I said, the reason for the changes between figures had to do with Genesis's universal framework being difficult to produce products for while not giving any significant market advantage against V4 and Genesis 2 being built on proprietary Daz tech that they hopped would become an industry standard and didn't. Triax weights. Triax weights are an awesome idea, but they require 3 separate weight maps per bone. Similar effects can be created for most applications by just adding bones. You usually only need 8 or 10 more bones than a triax figure would have. That means a figure like Genesis, with 73 bones, has 219 different weight maps. Genesis 3 style on the same rig would have 81 or 83.

It's like that old saw (which is actually not true) that NASA spent a million dollars developing a space pen, and the Russians just used a pencil. Sometimes, there's a hi-tech solution, but it's easier not to use it. In fact, NASA also used pencils, and some random guy spent his own money (and a lot of it) making a space pen, which NASA bought for a big dollars, because pencil shavings and graphite dust are hazards in space, where gravity will not drag them out of the air. There is no similar gravity problem that Triax solves. It's a hi-tech solution that doesn't have a problem. It adds benefits, but unlike the space pen, those benefits don't outweigh the cost in development time. Game and movie makers are busy pushing other envelopes. They don't want to spend time and money making 220 maps when they can make 85. (G3 actually has 173 weight maps, but it has 173 bones, and most of those are in the face, which is also industry standard. A triax version of her would have 519 weight maps).

I agree that they will probably not push a new figure unless they see an opportunity to solve with it, but the ability of hardware isn't a particularly big issue for them, right now, at least in terms of the figure.

They way they do morphs has an impact on system memory, so they could fix that by going to a more poser-like injection solution. But the really big resource hog right now is iRay, and that's just an unbiased renderer thing. All of them are like that, since they are meant to be handled by GPUs