This is my third post in a series I am writing to help use Daz Studio with the Unity Game Engine. While my references will be game engine specific since Daz exports in FBX format you can also use it in other engines. The first group of posts are covering the basics and things people should know before diving into using Daz Studio.
There are some confusing things about the Daz product lines and it can help to know them. I learned them over time and my goal here is to save you some of the confusion.
Daz3D has been making products for a long time. They have several generations of figure lines. There is a point where they injected some confusion mainly due to stopping the version naming they had been doing. They rectified that with the latest version Genesis 8, but for a few generations it was a bit confusing.
The goal of this post is to clear up confusion.
In The Beginning
In the beginning they named figures after male and female names. You could see things like Michael as a product. You can still purchase Michael 3.0 base. It is an older figure and definitely shows it's age.
M3/V3
Then the next version was released called Michael 4 and it was a rather popular figure. It is also known often as M4. So when you see reference to M4 this is what they are talking about.
M4/V4
Michael 4 Pro Bundle | Michael 4 Base
The other most common type of figure for these lines is the female counter part. It is called Victoria. So there is a Victoria 3, and Victoria 4 line of figures. These are often referred to as V4. If you want connect aware content then I don't generally recommend the 4 or earlier lines as they are often not content aware. You can still use them but you'll need to hunt through the library rather than using smart connect. However, if you are willing to browse through the library it is definitely the least expensive figure line to pursue that still has a lot of content.
Times of Change
In what would be known as version 5 of the figure line they released a new figure named Genesis which actually is a figure that can support male and female on the same figure. This is nice in that hair and clothing work interchangeable with male or female since those are just morphs/blendshapes. However, there is still some confusion. They also continued releasing Michael 5, Victoria 5, Stephanie 5, and others. These are often referred to as M5, V5, S5, etc. respectively.
Genesis, M5/V5/S5
Really take Genesis version and add 4 to it to get the actual generation of figure lines. Genesis is essentially the 5th generation of figures.
Genesis comes free with daz studio, so you don't need to purchase that. You'll find that the named figures have a lot more detailed musculature and such.
Then Things Change Again
The first phase of Genesis ends up being the only figure line that both male and female inherit from a single model. Genesis 2 comes out and once again they have separate Genesis 2 Female, and Genesis 2 Male figures. You'll see these referenced as G2F, and G2M. Yet you've likely guessed. The named product lines continue and they are now generation 6. This means you have products like Victoria 6, Michael 6, as well as some of my favorites Darius 6, Monique 6, Lee 6, and Mei Lin 6.
Genesis 2 Female/Male, G2F, G2M, M6/V6
In my comparison of polygon count the Genesis 2 figure line is the highest poly models of all the generations of figures including the more recent generations. They can be pretty detailed looking. Future generations maintain the detail but do so with more optimized models.
Settling into a Groove
Genesis 3 the detail continues to improve and there are a ton of products for this line. It continues the Male and Female separate models. In addition, the named figures continue and are now generation 7. Thus we have Michael 7, Victoria 7, Darius 7, etc. These are commonly referred to as M7, V7, etc.
Genesis 3 Male/Female, G3M, G3F, M7/V7
It can be difficult to fathom that earlier generations of figures are higher polygon count, but these versions look better.
Finally Clearing Things Up
Then suddenly they seem to have realized that having two different versions of products in terms of numbers was confusing. There is no Genesis 4. Instead they named it Genesis 8.
So now Genesis 8 Male, Genesis 8 Female, Michael 8, and Victoria 8 all have the same number. It is unified. It is also one of the most heavily supported and backwards compatible figures they have used. It is also less polys than the generations before it.
Genesis 8 Male, Genesis 8 Female, G8M/G8F, Michael 8, Victoria 8, M8/V8
Previous Tutorials
- DAZ Studio For Unity 3D - 1: Installing Daz Studio and Unity
- DAZ Studio For Unity 3D - 2: Getting the most bang for your buck in Daz
Future Tutorials
NOTE: This may not be the precise order in which I do them. This series will not teach you everything you need to know about Unity. That is impossible. It is a very powerful engine. If you need more details on Unity there is a vast community and a tutorial on almost every topic imaginable. There are even tutorials on many of the things I am going to write about in these tutorials. I will be however, doing all of these tutorials from my own experience and based upon a lot of trial, error, and learning.
- Explaining Daz Studio Licensing
- Explaining basic Daz Studio Panes
- Genesis 3 and 8 to Unity
- Bare minimum Daz products I recommend
- Some Unity products I recommend
- Dealing with Seams in Textures in Unity
- Genesis 2 to Unity
- Genesis to Unity
- Victoria 4 and Michael 4 to Unity
- Exporting Morphs from Daz to Unity
- Baking in some morphs - those damn high heels
- A study on eyes
- Using Blender to Fully enable PBR for DAZ Characters in Unity
- Making High Heels work Without Baking inside Unity
- Daz Poses and Animations to Unity
- Using Decimator in DAZ 3D to create Blend/Morph happy LODs, and to optimize
- 3D Baking Studio for Sprites in Unity
- Hair Designer for GPU Hair in Unity
- Simple LOD for Unity
- The Search for a Good Skin Shader
- Inherit Clothes, Hair, etc Scripts for Unity
- Sample Character Setup UI for Unity
- More on Mechanim
- Unity IK
- Final IK
- Emerald AI
- Instancing
- A Study on Controllers
- Various thoughts on possibilities
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