HOME | DD

Description
I saw Dangerguy01 's post on why he's sticking with G2 Genesis 2... StillMy Bruthah from Anuthah Muthah @nathanomir recently posted his perspective on converting figures to Daz' latest figure generation, Genesis 9. ,Well shucks, all the cool kids (or as Nathan would say, Groovy Hep Cats) moved to at least Genesis 3 a long time ago, if not G8 and now G9... should I do it too? Especially considering that the G2 figure is about a decade old, which is FOREVER in tech-time. I do consider it now and then but as should be obvious, I decide not to. Why not? It comes down to a financial concept that you can apply to many things in life: Return on Investment, or ROI. In this case, the investment is my time... but also, inevitably as with most things in this world, money. Time first of all: I have built up a substantial library of Genesis 2 figures, poses, hair and clothing props. I also have a lot of Genesis 3 hair and clothing which, with a couple of tweaks and tricks, work very well on G2, thank you very much. And anyone who works with Daz Studio will tell you that a big part of working with the application is somehow remembering where all that stuff is, or at least what it's called so you can search for it. To migrate to a later generation would take a HUGE investment of time on my part. I would first I have to update the customized figures I've created for myself and for others (the count is somewhere in the low hundreds). I'd be replacing Duster, Whirlwind, Black Phantom, Mistress Winter, Min Yin, the Motormaster, Cowhide Corsair, Indigo Dynamo, and many, many more with new figures. Duster took me many hours of experimenting to create, not just originally, but also her changes and evolution over time. The thought of starting over with her from scratch is daunting, to say the least. ,THEN I'd have to also update and/or adjust their clothing. Having worked with these props for a long time, I know many would require a lot of adjustments to fit properly across generations. Some won't fit at all and would need to be replaced. Every one of those few hundred characters I've created aren't just customized figures, they also have customized clothing. Especially the superheroes, which is what I mainly portray. I'd have to find a replacement with as many material zone options as the Ultra Bodysuit for Genesis 2 Females, which is my go-to clothing prop for about 90% or more of my superheroines--and it's so flexible I've even used it for a handful of male characters! Then I'd have to re-do all the superhero logos for the new costume base... oi. Also in need of an overhaul would be my collection of hair props. This wouldn't be quite as much work. Many of the hair props I use are, in fact, for Genesis 3. But some are for G2, and I currently don't use any for G8 or G9. Do G2 and G3 hair props work on the later generations? If so, with how much adjusting and adopting? Again, I'm sure it can be done, but... the time investment is accumulating by leaps and bounds. I'd have to abandon my existing pose collection and install, test, and become familiar with whole new pose and expression sets. And that's just the start; most "canned" poses and expressions are just starting points for me, saving me a little time to get the character close to the appearance I actually want. Fine-tuning the pose is almost always required to create the most expressive and intriguing images. So I'd have to become familiar with the new "bones" G3 and later figures have. For those of you who aren't digital artists, a digital figure has body parts you can select and adjust to pose the figure. Each successive generation adds more of these. For example, Genesis 2 has "Neck" while G3 and later have "Neck Upper" and "Neck Lower"; G2 has "Left Shoulder" while G3 and later have "Left Shoulder Bend" and "Left Shoulder Twist". While this gives the artists more choices and allows for more subtly realistic posing, it can also add more time and work to the posing process. And now let's talk money. I would need to re-invest in the majority of my digital collection. I would really rather not think about how much I've already spent on my library of figures, hair, clothing, poses, and so on. (Fortunately, environments/settings work across all generations... but everything else... yikes.) I'd have to buy things I already own again. (I'm old enough to remember when I did something similar with music, going from analog to digital. There's a reason illegal downloading became so popular...!) And it's not just about money I'd spend, it's also about money I'd forgo or lose. I do a nice little side-hustle in commissioned digital artwork. How long would I have to shut that part-time business down while I figured out all of the above? I'm thinking at least a few months. And then when someone who has previously commissioned me to create a custom character wants to commission another image with that character... well, they already paid once to have the character created. Can I really ask them to pay to create the character again? But then I'd be re-doing work I already did, for free. And once the investment of time and money is complete... what's the return? Will the artwork be substantially improved? Will the new figures really look that much better? Would the fantastically improved results justify me boosting my commission prices? From what I've seen... no. By all means feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but when I look at someone's work featuring G8 or G9 figures, I don't see that much difference from my G2 results. Not enough to justify the huge investment described above. If I was a full-time digital artist working for a gaming company or Hollywood, I'd have to keep up-to-date with the latest and greatest. But I'm not a full-time pro. I don't have an employer with deep pockets backing me up. It's just me. But at the same time, I'm not just an amateur hobbyist whiling away my free time. I take this part-time business of mine seriously, especially when it comes to fulfilling my customers' requests in a timely and satisfactory way.And now I'm competing with AI, which keeps getting better and better at astonishing rates. It's conceivable that in a few years AI art will force me to shut down my fun little side-hustle since anyone will be able to type a sentence or two and get the artwork they want for free. Hell, many can do that already. That possibility is yet another reason it doesn't make financial sense to invest in upgrading my tools of the trade right now. Nathanomir recently teased me that he and are like Statler and Waldorf of Muppet fame. But I'm not sticking to Genesis 2 because I'm an old, stuck-in-the-mud curmudgeon who hates change. Okay, yes I am, but that's not why. It's because, to summarize the diatribe above... changing just doesn't make sense. But feel free to disagree with me. By all means, extol the virtues of Genesis 9 or whatever you're working with in the comments below, or just share your thoughts on my rambling ones displayed above.... and thought I'd share the reason why I switched from G2 to G8

Description
I saw Dangerguy01 's post on why he's sticking with G2 Genesis 2... StillMy Bruthah from Anuthah Muthah @nathanomir recently posted his perspective on converting figures to Daz' latest figure generation, Genesis 9. ,Well shucks, all the cool kids (or as Nathan would say, Groovy Hep Cats) moved to at least Genesis 3 a long time ago, if not G8 and now G9... should I do it too? Especially considering that the G2 figure is about a decade old, which is FOREVER in tech-time. I do consider it now and then but as should be obvious, I decide not to. Why not? It comes down to a financial concept that you can apply to many things in life: Return on Investment, or ROI. In this case, the investment is my time... but also, inevitably as with most things in this world, money. Time first of all: I have built up a substantial library of Genesis 2 figures, poses, hair and clothing props. I also have a lot of Genesis 3 hair and clothing which, with a couple of tweaks and tricks, work very well on G2, thank you very much. And anyone who works with Daz Studio will tell you that a big part of working with the application is somehow remembering where all that stuff is, or at least what it's called so you can search for it. To migrate to a later generation would take a HUGE investment of time on my part. I would first I have to update the customized figures I've created for myself and for others (the count is somewhere in the low hundreds). I'd be replacing Duster, Whirlwind, Black Phantom, Mistress Winter, Min Yin, the Motormaster, Cowhide Corsair, Indigo Dynamo, and many, many more with new figures. Duster took me many hours of experimenting to create, not just originally, but also her changes and evolution over time. The thought of starting over with her from scratch is daunting, to say the least. ,THEN I'd have to also update and/or adjust their clothing. Having worked with these props for a long time, I know many would require a lot of adjustments to fit properly across generations. Some won't fit at all and would need to be replaced. Every one of those few hundred characters I've created aren't just customized figures, they also have customized clothing. Especially the superheroes, which is what I mainly portray. I'd have to find a replacement with as many material zone options as the Ultra Bodysuit for Genesis 2 Females, which is my go-to clothing prop for about 90% or more of my superheroines--and it's so flexible I've even used it for a handful of male characters! Then I'd have to re-do all the superhero logos for the new costume base... oi. Also in need of an overhaul would be my collection of hair props. This wouldn't be quite as much work. Many of the hair props I use are, in fact, for Genesis 3. But some are for G2, and I currently don't use any for G8 or G9. Do G2 and G3 hair props work on the later generations? If so, with how much adjusting and adopting? Again, I'm sure it can be done, but... the time investment is accumulating by leaps and bounds. I'd have to abandon my existing pose collection and install, test, and become familiar with whole new pose and expression sets. And that's just the start; most "canned" poses and expressions are just starting points for me, saving me a little time to get the character close to the appearance I actually want. Fine-tuning the pose is almost always required to create the most expressive and intriguing images. So I'd have to become familiar with the new "bones" G3 and later figures have. For those of you who aren't digital artists, a digital figure has body parts you can select and adjust to pose the figure. Each successive generation adds more of these. For example, Genesis 2 has "Neck" while G3 and later have "Neck Upper" and "Neck Lower"; G2 has "Left Shoulder" while G3 and later have "Left Shoulder Bend" and "Left Shoulder Twist". While this gives the artists more choices and allows for more subtly realistic posing, it can also add more time and work to the posing process. And now let's talk money. I would need to re-invest in the majority of my digital collection. I would really rather not think about how much I've already spent on my library of figures, hair, clothing, poses, and so on. (Fortunately, environments/settings work across all generations... but everything else... yikes.) I'd have to buy things I already own again. (I'm old enough to remember when I did something similar with music, going from analog to digital. There's a reason illegal downloading became so popular...!) And it's not just about money I'd spend, it's also about money I'd forgo or lose. I do a nice little side-hustle in commissioned digital artwork. How long would I have to shut that part-time business down while I figured out all of the above? I'm thinking at least a few months. And then when someone who has previously commissioned me to create a custom character wants to commission another image with that character... well, they already paid once to have the character created. Can I really ask them to pay to create the character again? But then I'd be re-doing work I already did, for free. And once the investment of time and money is complete... what's the return? Will the artwork be substantially improved? Will the new figures really look that much better? Would the fantastically improved results justify me boosting my commission prices? From what I've seen... no. By all means feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but when I look at someone's work featuring G8 or G9 figures, I don't see that much difference from my G2 results. Not enough to justify the huge investment described above. If I was a full-time digital artist working for a gaming company or Hollywood, I'd have to keep up-to-date with the latest and greatest. But I'm not a full-time pro. I don't have an employer with deep pockets backing me up. It's just me. But at the same time, I'm not just an amateur hobbyist whiling away my free time. I take this part-time business of mine seriously, especially when it comes to fulfilling my customers' requests in a timely and satisfactory way.And now I'm competing with AI, which keeps getting better and better at astonishing rates. It's conceivable that in a few years AI art will force me to shut down my fun little side-hustle since anyone will be able to type a sentence or two and get the artwork they want for free. Hell, many can do that already. That possibility is yet another reason it doesn't make financial sense to invest in upgrading my tools of the trade right now. Nathanomir recently teased me that he and are like Statler and Waldorf of Muppet fame. But I'm not sticking to Genesis 2 because I'm an old, stuck-in-the-mud curmudgeon who hates change. Okay, yes I am, but that's not why. It's because, to summarize the diatribe above... changing just doesn't make sense. But feel free to disagree with me. By all means, extol the virtues of Genesis 9 or whatever you're working with in the comments below, or just share your thoughts on my rambling ones displayed above.... and thought I'd share the reason why I switched from G2 to G8