Genesis 2 Male Teen Jayden Review

08  Thanks to DAZ 3D for supplying Jayden

Genesis 2 Female has Teen Josie, and now DAZ have released Teen Jayden for G2M. Jayden is the first major character for Genesis 2 Male (after M6 of course). He comes with two texture sets (based on G2M UV’s), a full body and head morph, and a set of poses. He does not have unique UV mapping. But the base G2M and Michael 6 textures fit so closely that this is not an issue. As Jayden is crafted from the G2M base he is compatible with all the currently released morphs, so for those already invested in G2 there is a lot of versatility to be had. Jayden also comes with Poser companion files, so he is fully DSON compatible, but he does not have full Poser materials. For many users that prefer to customise, this is doubtlessly a non-issue.

M6 UVs on Teen Jayden - good fit

Michale 6 UVs applied to Teen Jayden comparison.

I had hoped to have this review up before the product’s release, but I got caught up with rendering and playing around with materials. Before I knew it Tuesday 21st (Jan 2014) was dawning and I had barely scrawled more than a few notes. First up I should point out that at this point I only have the basic Jayden package and not either of the bundles, which were not yet complete at the time DAZ contacted me. Hopefully I will have the pro bundle soon and will amend the review where necessary.

However, the Jaden package comes with plenty of meat. The Morph is solid. Jayden is an attractive and fit youth, though not overly so, which in my books is a good thing as this lends itself to greater versatility. The base texture set and the “bonus” Lance are both high quality. Lance has the look of a tough kid, perhaps street smart when loaded with the base material settings, but with tweaking there is a greater versatility there. In this way the set can be used for a great diversity of characters. Jayden’s default texture set is much more the usual fair one expects to see with a major DAZ character release – detailed, but crafted from someone that has very nice skin. Where’s pimples kid? I don’t know about you, but highschool was full of pimply days. Maybe this is a niche one of our adventurous content creators could tackle?

Teen Jayden custom shders sci-fi image. DAZ Studio render.

Light customisation of the base Jayden shaders. Minor postwork.

Jayden’s base texture set loads with materials configured with Age of Armour’s Sub Surface Shader Base. I’ve seen so many great renders done with this shader, but I just can’t get there. This is not to say the default configuration is bad, no, it is very good and many users will be happy to use it as is, but being a chronic tinkerer by nature it wasn’t long before I started to play around. Eventually I called it quits and got something rendered, but this wasn’t until I’d delved right into the Lance texture set, which I found much more interesting.

The Lance texture set loads with UberSurface settings. US is something I have a much better grasp of, though I found these textures themselves much more interesting than the base Jayden. Lance’s default SSS settings had me scratching my head. In all the lighting situation I set up there was little or no discernible difference between rendering with them on or off. Again, the settings here are perfect for many uses, but at default settings it is probably best to turn SSS off and save yourself some render time. SSS is one of those things I’ve been playing around with a lot in recent times so I spent a good deal of time getting this the way I wanted.

G2M Jayden teen. Scifi image DAZ Studio Render

Heavily customised Lance textures and shaders. Minor Post work.

Though I don’t currently have either the Starter or Pro bundle Teen Jayden I will remark that all the content that these bundles comes with appears very practical (and contemporary), and given the criticism previous DAZ releases have come under for including a lot of fantasy and/or sci-fi content, this seems like a positive move, but perhaps that depends on where you’re standing. For me, having a strong sci-fi bent, I prefer to see contemporary items than fantasy ones as they are often more easily incorporated into a sci-fi setting. Whatever product you select it will be a great addition to your Genesis 2 tool set.

Genesis 2 Male Teen Jayden. Lance Textures

Heavily customised Lance textures and shaders.

DAZ Studio Gets Alembic

300px-Alembic_logoDAZ Studio now has an Alembic exporter. This is a very cool development for animators and enthusiasts who want to make full use of DAZ Figures like Victoria 6 and Michael 6 etc with other 3D software and render engines.

Alembic is an open source file format developed by Lucasfilm and Imageworks. It allows users to export/import geometry, complete with animation. It differs from formats like Collada and FBX in that it does not export rigging and morph data. Instead Alembic exports vertices data from a scene, baking morphs, animation, and the influence of weight maps. In this way Alembic is sort of like working with an animated .obj file.

In many situations Collada and FBX produce unpredictable results, and sometimes a huge damn mess, which can take a lot of time and effort to fix. The extent of the problems with these file formats varies a lot depending on programs used for export/import.Alembic sidesteps these issues by baking the geometry. Yes, this does result in some lost flexibility in the program these files are imported into, but for many situation this is perfectly reasonable, and saves much time. For the adventurous and/or skilled the figures can be re-rigged, if necessary.

The only problem then is that the default animations tools in DAZ Studio are very primitive and frustrating to work with. So in this situation the usefulness of the new Alembic exporter is somewhat limited to all those that have anything less than godlike patience (and then that really depends on which gods we are talking about). So for those who are wanting the most out of Genesis, Victoria, Michael and Alembic, more animation tools might be called for. To this end GoFigure provides better key framing tools with keyMate and introduces a graph editor with graphMate.

One issue I have with the Alembic exporter itself, is that it doesn’t come with an importer. Now, the name spells it out clearly enough, EXPORTER, but I still would have like to see an import feature. Bringing physics simulations into DAZ Studio this way would save a huge amount of time and resources. Well, maybe next time.

Alembic compatibility and your software of choice

As a LightWave user I’ve already come across some problems. LightWave’s Alembic importer is limited to a single material zone, so this means that all UV mapping and surfaces are lost. This shortcoming was passed onto the development team several months ago. Fingers crossed for a fix before LW 12. So to avoid frustration and hair pulling I strongly suggest you check the extent of your software’s Alembic support before you purchase the plugin. A quick Google tells me that many major programs from Maya 2014 to SpeedTree support for Alembic (to what extent I don’t know). 3DS Max requires are rather heftily priced plugin, but apparently works quite well. So, while I can’t fully make use of DS’s new exporter there are still a good many animators, pro or enthusiast, that will benefit from it.

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Dawn of A New Era Round 1 Finalists

Having let my fingers slip on the pulse of this contest somewhat I’m not exactly sure when the first round of the Dawn of a New Era round 1 judging ended, but a gallery with all the finalist has been set up at HiveWire 3D. The gallery is derived from the winners of the round one judging held at HiveWire 3D, Renderosity, YURdigital, and Runtime DNA. The selection encompasses a wide range of themes and varying skill levels. There are some outstanding entries. Eliane CK’s “Dawn with robot dog”, and DisparateDreamer’s “Look At Me” (with beautiful digitally painted hair) are my personal favourites. Another piece that grabbed my attention was “Eos” by Voytek, which is a vibrant, outstanding portrait with displaying a high level of technical and artistic skill. I would not be surprised if the piece took out the top prize.

The contest boasts some amazing prizes including cash, software and content. If chronic procrastination wasn’t my greatest talent I would have loved to enter. It is not clear when the final round of judging will conclude. Congratulations and best luck to all Dawn of A New Era finalists.

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Awesome Sci-fi Releases At DAZ 3D

Just a short post to express how nerdy and happy I am to see a sci-fi packed day on DAZ 3D’s store. We have a mix of brutal post-apocalyptic, gleaming futuristic cyborgs, cold war era gloom and some of The AntFarm’s patent weirdness, in HD!

It is always hard to trump the post-apocalyptic ruins (in my mind at least), but maybe just maybe it can be done with the next installment in Parris’ beautiful cyborg line of characters. This time around, and probably not surprisingly our shiny cyber girl is for Genesis 2 Female. She comes with the material options we’ve come to expect from this line, including the low light/night reflection options we saw introduced with the Genesis based release.

Unlike her predecessors, she was launched with two additional (and optional) expansions. Genesis 2 Female Bot Armour Set 2 adds assault cannon arms and a sleek warrior’s helmet, boots, and an alternate torso for a more machine/human hybrid look. It can be used as either a standalone product, or to supplement Bot Armour The other expansion throws a spiffy set of advanced custom shaders into the mix.

You can pickup the Genesis 2 Bot Armour either as a bundle, or pick and choose the packages you want.

Another item I picked up today was drakken34’s Checkpoint 44, a beautifully battered and charred tower of some sort of military origin. It looks the part for the inevitable wastelands of the post-apocalyptic environment, but would be a fitting addition to war torn cities, and crumbling dystopias everywhere.

Supplementing this release nicely, drakken34 has also put out two packs of makeshift weapons perfect for crime ridden streets of a rotten metropolis just as much as they would be for arming post collapse raiders and militia.

Always love to see sci-fi days at DAZ. Hope to see many more of them