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Wolfie's Review of V4 |
| I guess the best place to start is the top and work our way down to the toes. First stop, the Head:  Victoria4's head is siginificantly different than Victoria3's. The eyes are different, there are no eyebrow material zones and the eyelashes are vastly improved. There are many good things here but there are some not so good as well. Side View: The reduction in mesh densitiy is immediately evident especialy in the temples, cheeks and very important jaw line. This means less defined jaws for morps and less accurate deformation of cheeks and temple areas though temples are one of the areas not morphed very often. The V3 mesh reduced the density of the mesh in the scalp area where you really don't need the polys but had a massive resolution in the facial area. V4 is more uniform in the density. She also has an uncomfortable transition from the scalp to facial areas that doesn't follow natural human lines. Another pitfall for morphers. Front View: You will notice that the eyebrows are missing in V4. Yep, gone. No more eyebrows, you will have to rely on the texture template. This isn't a big problem because most of the artists paint in the eyebrows on the texture template but for those artists that used to rely on the transparent areas to do their eyebrows, you will have to change. It also means a loss for those of us that used to use the eyebrow material to put eyebrows on the figure that matched the hair color of the hair prop or figure we use in the scene. Frankly, I think the missing eyebrows is going to reduce flexability of the mesh. I am sure it won't be long until someone releases eyebrow props for V4. Another missing feature are the dimples. Nope, no more dimples for Victoria. All of the polys in the area of where dimples would go are now squares instead of triangles so anyone trying to make dimple morphs are going to have quite a challenge ahead of them. Not sure if this is good or bad, but to me V4 has more of an african look by default. She also has a smoother, more appealing face thats distinctly more female than V3. The Eyes:  Wow! Lots of changes here for V4 and most of it good for a change! In the side by side, you can see the lack of eyebrows but you can also see the improvement of the eyelashes and inclusion of a tear mesh. The eyeball also includes an extra mesh (shown in pink) specifically designed for applying reflection maps to while still maintaining iris (green), pupil (yellow), eyewhite (white) and cornia (clear). A bad thing in this area is the obviouslly lower mesh density around the eye. The Eyeballs:  As mentioned above, there are improvements here! There is more shape to the pupil, there is more shape to the iris and the cornea doesn't come to a point which will make morphing a little smoother (won't produce a spoke effect or point in the center). The meshes here don't show the new eye outer mesh and material zone. The polys in the eye white also look more square wich will reduce distortion in the material applied. Next stop, the Chest. Aparently DAZ heard our cries! They re-assembled the chest groups back to V2 layout where the breasts (both of them) are all on one group called the chest. Gone are the days of having to replicate your morph and mirror it to the other collar group! This is going to be a very good thing for morphers! Its now easier to morph the breasts since you will likely only deal with the chest which has X symmatry. That means you only have to do your breast morphs once and let the symmatry of your modler program take care of the other breast. It also means just one morph to inject instead of the typical 3 (lCollar, rCollar and Chest). If you are doing massive changes, you may have to deal with the abdomen but thats only in extreme changes. Nipples:  I don't know what alien figure they used for the model but aparently it has pentagon shaped nipples. For some reason, DAZ decided to make the transitional area between the nipple and the aerola a pentagon. WTH? Every nipple I have ever seen was substantially round. I have never seen a pentagon shaped nipple and I have seen my fair share of nipples. This is another pitfall for morphers as care is going to be the call word around V4. Next stop, the Abdomen:.  The abdomin from outward appearances does look smoother and has a denser mesh but it, again, doesn't follow the muscle groups. The V3 mesh had fewer polys in the abdomin but they followed the "6-pack" of a natural abdomen and V4 does not. The Belly Button:  DAZ did well by the new belly button as you can see from the side by side image. They supplied much more natural flow to the polygons and many more of them. This area is a vast improvement over V3. I also like the default shape more than V3's as its more of an upside down pear. Dunno, maybe its me but its more sexy looking and more pleasing to a male eye then the rudamentary pit that V3 has. The Genitals:  Again DAZ seems to have listened to its customers. They increased the mesh density here as well as vastly improving the UV mapping of the area. As you can see in the image, the genital area contains polys that are shaped and aligned well to produce a genital morph which, not so supprisingly, DAZ didn't include. They inicluded a primitve gen crease but its far from natual looking. Another opportunity for the morphers out there! There is no distinct anus though and not many polygons for making one. The Feet: And again DAZ seems to have listened to its customers, at least partially. They increased the mesh density here alot! The toes are more natural looking and the big toe doesn't have that odd bend that V3's had. Still no boes though. The big toe and the 4 other toes are all bent using morphs instead of bones. The New Groups! The body has been sliced up differently than V3 and other Gen3 figures. Gone are the buttocks! Why? Don't know but they are thighs now. Gone are the left and right collar sections as we knew them which used to contain the breasts. Good riddance. The breasts are now back where they belong, on the chest. The collar sections are now actually the sholders. The sholders are now what used to be the upper arm. These re-definitions are going to take a little getting used to for both the figure creator and the end user. When someone refers to my coller area, I don't think of my sholder but in Poser, I will have to. There are now no less than 7 groups for the tongue! Wow!. Still no articulated toes. Hmph. The New UV Map and Textures: Holy smokes what a change to the UV layout! More drastic than V2 to V3 I think. There is no chance of having your old V3 textures work with V4. Thats to be expected with a new generation of figures though so you shouldn't be supprised at it. There are good and bad points to the new UV map and I will touch on a few: Genital Mapping: There isn't a specific genital map per se as some other figures have but DAZ did an excellant job of flattening the torso and the genital/pubic area of the map. Its a VAST improvement in this area over V3 style maps. In DAZ typical fashion, there are no genitals on the sample texture maps (shipped with the base figure), no nipples either. Since when did nipples become genitalia? Gray's redefine them or is DAZ on a mission to unisex the human race. Every human on earth, every infant, child, teenager and adult have genitals. For now, ignore the deformities, diseased and surgically altered ones, lets focus on the rest of the 99.99998% of the population on the planet. I mean good lord, they supplied the YT and PS people with no nipples. WTH? I can understand the no genitals but nipples? Anyway, for V4, the sample textures are missing genitals and nipples. In a odd stroke of mistake, they supplied a specular map in the sample images that has nipples and some sort of stubble in the pubic area and doesn't match the _NG torso map. Go figure. The standard maps and the high-resolution maps do include a map (supposedly with genitals) and a no-gen map (again, no nipples either). I don't know what model they used as a texture source for the genital texture but there are no genitals there, just a slight texture change and pubic razor stubble that looks like its a couple days old. Maybe they should have given the model some Nair that morning before the shower. The wet maps look really good, but again, razor stubble. A matter of scale: The torso map is aparently the base reference point for all the other maps' scale factors. Scale? What do you mean by that? Well, the face is not the same scale as the torso. Neither is the ears nor the limbs. This means that making truely seamless textures got alot harder than is was (or should be). When you are painting the torso, you have your samples' scale set to match and match each other. Ok, now you want to move on to the limbs (arms & legs), guess what? You have to change your sample scales now. No, the arms don't match the torso, neither do the legs. Oh, wait, it gets more interesting! The arms and legs are in seperate file from the torso and the arms aren't the same scale as the legs and both are different scales from the torso. You all right now? Here is the fun part. They connected the back of the scalp to the top of the neck of the torso so the scalp is in the torso file. Confused yet? Wait, it gets better! They also put the ears in the torso file as well. Ok, not a real problem but guess what? They are at a DIFFERENT scale than the skin for the body and scalp, and there is more! They also are a different scale from the face. Having fun yet? There are no fewer than 17 different scales to contend with:
Torso 1:1
For all the improvements in the UV, they sure threw in alot of curve balls. In my opinion, the ears should have been at the same scale as the face so the seam in front of the ear would be less problematical. The limbs (all of them) should have matched the scale of the torso EXACTLY. Differing scales for the nails isn't an issue, its the seam between the leg and the torso and the arm and the torso thats going to challenge texture artists. Another aparent downfall is that the face texture is now SQUARE as are most of the textures. This means the face is squished horizontally making photo overlays harder.Legs/Feet 0.8:1 Arms/Hands 0.9:1 Fingernails 2.6:1 Toenails 2.15:1 Ears 3.5:1 Lashes 15:1 Face 3.27:1 Cornea/Sclera 8.25:1 Lacrimals 8.75:1 Pupil/Iris 30.8:1 Eye Surface 10.1:1 Tear 7.8:1 Gums 4.15:1 Inner Mouth 1.80:1 Tongue 5.40:1 Teeth 5.25:1 Its not all bad: For all the problems they introduced, they did get some things right, at least in my opinion. The new eye layout is better, or at least I like it better on first looks. The torso is nicely scaled and flattened, a herculean effort considering the complex shape of a human torso. There is a seperate map for the new eye surface material zone (reflections) which they didn't supply in the templates download. You can grab my template here.. Both eyes (left and right) are included in a single map file, easier for mat poses and how often do you really want different colors for the two eyes? There are new tear material zones to give that wet eye look, very nice. Another improvement is that they grouped the teeth, togue, gums and inner mouth all on one map so the entire mouth insides are on one texture. Nice! Still MIA: Still missing are fully boned toes. I had seen leaks about bendable toes but they weren't accurate. There are morphs to control the big toe and the other 4 toes together. They are morphs, not boned digits like fingers. So much for the rock climing pose or the walking on un-even ground pose. Still no sock morph. Also not presnet is any decent morphs to detail the genitals. After looking at the mesh, I was sure I would find a morph or two for that. Nope. No decent genitalia included on any texture maps though they saw fit to include horrid razor stubble. The Numbers:  They say alot about the new figure. V4 has nearly 5100(7%) fewer vertexes than V3 and nearly 8500(11%) fewer polygons. The material zone differences are mainly due to the left/right eyes being combined into one material zone for both eyes (per zone). V4, for all practical purposes, has more material zones than V3. She also has more body groups due, mainly, to the increase in groups for the tongue. These statistics show that V4 is a lower resolution model than V3 in total but many areas are far more mesh dense than V3. Why fewer totals then? Probably accounted for in the serious reduction in face polygons. Not good at all. The face is probably the most complex and heavily morphed area of the body. Why DAZ chose to drastically reduce the polygons in this area is anyone's guess. |
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