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The problem with DS isn't it's capabilities. If you know all the hidden/confusing functionality that it has, it's a really good rendering program that has the ability to use already created assets to get whatever scenes you're looking for. It's got a large community of content creators who pump out new assets faster than any other software. It has dForce, which is great once you figure out how to use it. DS isn't a total dog.
But it's not good at a lot of things as well. You can't create/sculpt with it (other than basic primitive objects). It's not very good at animation. It's not good at making large, sweeping, complex scenes. Without sites like this, it's too cost prohibitive to get a lot of the tools/plugins/scripts, clothing, environments and props that allow DS to reach it's full potential.
However, the thing that makes DS suck is it's business model and coding. First, unlike Blender, it's not open source. You have to be a PA and get a license from DAZ to make DS work better through tools/plugins (e.g. Mesh Grabber, pose convertors, dForce companion, etc.). This stifles the creation of things that improve the customer experience as PAs focus on creating characters and clothing. Second, the code is old and clunky. It consumers massive amounts of memory and CPU/GPU power compared to Blender, which has better render options and more functionality.
DAZ doesn't need to make DS more than what it is (a good modeling/rendering software). But it needs to fix the underlying code to be faster, less resource intensive, and stop slowing down to a crawl if you move the drawstyle in the viewport to Iray, even with one character with some clothes on. Good luck loading more than a couple of characters, some props and a relatively complex environment into a scene unless you have a $4000 computer. Also, the interface can do with a refresh, bringing it up to 2023 norms, rather than the 2012 look and feel that it still has.
As for G9, I like the women but the men look way too feminine. The unimesh might be the wave of the future (again), but so far, it's a fail for me.
I've played around with G9 on and off since it was released last autumn and my main issue with the figure is the new UVs. I'm so heavily invested in textures (skin, makeup, etc.) for G3/G8 that it's hard to adjust. There's still a lack of morphs and figures available for G9, compared to G8, but I know it's just a matter of time with that stuff. I can't say I have the same complaints about the unimesh that others do; with some adjustments, you can still create some comparably shaped figures. But I understand folks' frustrations with the figure. Genesis 8.1 was barely a couple of years old and boom, Genesis 9. Makes me wonder how long a lifespan the current generation will have before they upgrade again and try to milk folks for even more money.
I would add that it also slows down rendering times shamefully... I have a 4070ti, on Iray if I use G9 models inside rooms, which are already slow to calculate, after 10 minutes the render hasn't even started, it remains loading, if I do the same with G8/8.1 the rendering starts in a few seconds, even in very heavy scenes.. if I have to increase the rendering times a hundredfold with newly released hardware, I really do without it..
I believe that Daz has been a little behind in the developing digital art scene. They bought some companies that made digital avatars which didn't have a market. They then invested in NFT that basically didn't have a market. They didn't take early advantage of Blender use. They couldn't figure out a way to utilize 3d printing. Now they are falling even more behind because of AI. I had mentioned before I think they will release a Daz Studio 4.9X. It will be a couple of small fixes to wrap up it's development and then a quick announcement they will move to Unity. They will make some janky plugins to make things sorta work with their old products, but will focus on a DAZ People 10 (or some catchy name) that will work with Unity and maximize their profits, and not "waste" money on building a new FREE engine. They (for a while) will maintin their store and probably start selling Unity assets, photoshop plugin, silly AI plugins, and slowly lose artists who have decided to moved over to Renderosity, the Unity Store or some other software.
@Fariden
Even Iray, let's be clear, is a proprietary engine of Nvidia and Nvidia is known to row against customers to extract as much money as possible from them... I went from an RTX 2080 to an RTX 4070ti, rendering 4 walls is still shamefully slow, these things I was using hardware from 12/15 years ago on C4D AR and it was faster. Iray is fine when there are no closed scenarios, an interior of a house is fucking heavy to calculate, with any hardware, even from 1000 euros, furthermore it does not support multi gpu pooling of VRAM, it does not use the system ram when the Vram runs out, on many things are really behind other engines.. it's really a torture to use it sometimes, you invest a lot of money in powerful and expensive hardware and you find yourself once again having ridiculously long calculation times for 4 walls around the character..
We still see users forced to render in tiny formats to make up for the crazy heaviness of Iray, to be able to use walls around the character... it's becoming ridiculous, as well as annoyingI agree with you 100%, I am still new to the 3D world and after using Daz for some time I actually installed a 3rd party engine into it from Octane to render my stuff because it's also just faster to preview my scene as well, let alone render it.
i gonna say i i'm on the wagon of peples which dislike the g9, it for me was a downgrade and insult to the customers, , like to make the character more like "metahuman' they removed the daz character own topology and go for a full homogeneous quadr, which helped to make a more genderless body. but it also removed many details, like "nipples and navel to be sold a part as one of the most scum actions for me so far, it started with the gens from v4 to genesis, then now on g9 they removed nipples and navel to be "sold stand alone and grab more money', what gonna be in the future?, you will have only the head and have to buy each part of the body????, while i did expend a ton of money on daz from v4 to genesis 8 specially gen8 and gen 8.1, i really didn't use a single g9 stuff, because i really hated what they did on that.
It was a commercial decision Elrond. Look through the last few pages in the Daz store. A whole lot of it is just G8 stuff that has been remade for G9..... G9 poses we already have for G8, clothes and hair very similar to what we already have for G8, another fucking bathroom... and it all looks pretty terrible and amateurish.
I've taken a rest from DS and concentrated on SD since April. Currently learning how to animate cute stuff.Personally, since I started with G9 it grew on me. I really like the fact that I can use all outfits and not worry about "Oh does this fit on the Male or the Female figure ?" I can see the people's points about it being a cash grab, which it mostly was but since I started on G9 and so much content has been coming out for it I started to really dig it. My only complain would be that I still think that the artists who sculpted characters for G8 really made them prettier than almost anything that came out for G9 (but this is subjective, so yeah).
However I do sympathize with everyone here who built their library around 8/8.1 generations.
The thing is, every time you use an androgenous base, all you favour are androgenous characters.
They are not easily sculpted into stereotyped male or female due to mesh density issues.
For instance, there is no increased mesh density around the chest area.
Good for transgender or fantasy beings perhaps, but not scoring highly otherwise.🙁
exactly that is one of my big issues with g9 hist topology, wich also means body density is so bad around the torso, it's so low poly compared with previous genesis, which make hard to make really good female charcters male not so bad, while the head and specially face got a really good increase in polygons give more diversity, in body it was like metahuman which is what make metahumans in many cases also so bad, because of those androgenous body, from a biologic point of ivew male and female peoples are too different to be proper handled by a androgenous body, that is why i liked both g3 and g8 because you have a proper male and female bodies, both being proper adressed in a good way, another big issue is how "ugly" is the base female body and in some point male, she barelly looks like a woman compared with g8 female.
@Eelgoo & @Elrond - I think G9 was designed for portraiture given the increased polys and neglect of the rest of the body (poor joint bending etc). I said as much on their forum and got my comments quickly deleted. Might have touched a raw nerve there 😁.
If DS5 "omniverse" goes cloud/subscription that will be the end of it for me. I've basically lost interest in it anyway.
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