Victoria (3D figure)

Victoria is a female articulated 3D figure developed and sold by DAZ 3D. There have been several "generations" of the figure, all bearing the same name.

The figure was originally created as one of three standard characters which also included the characters "Michael" and "Stephanie".^[1]

The "well-known 3-d model" can be manipulated into a variety of different ethnic and aesthetic female forms.^[2] The figure comes pre-rigged with standardized features, and is interchangeable in a variety of 3-D modeling programs.^[3]

History

Victoria 1, derived from the Zygote Poser 4 Nude Woman figure (popularly called 'Posette'), was released in February 1999 and was the first named figure for use with Poser. She was originally released as 'The Millennium Woman', but the resulting colloquial shortening to "Millie" led to DAZ 3D renaming her as Victoria.

Victoria 2, The Millennium Woman, was the next logical step in the figure development. This figure available in 2001 contained more body shaping features and a wide range of facial expressions. She was a highly defined figure with more polygons for a better, smoother look. Her appearance was that of Victoria 1 and could use the same conforming items.

Victoria 3, The Millennium Woman, was a departure from the older styles of figures. This figure has an even higher density of polygons (74,510 polygons compare to 28,989 polys for V1 and V2 ^[4]) and is rigged far smoother than the former millennium figures. Victoria 3 was the first of DAZ 3D "Unimesh" figures which supported a more efficient method of body shaping called "Morph injection". This feature allowed a user to insert only the features or Shapes they intended to use, this allowed a user to keep figure sizes smaller as files in their personal poser library. Victoria 3 was released in 2003.

The 4th generation of the figure began in December 2006 with the release of version 4.0 which included a new body shape and added several technical improvements to the figure. However morph injection for this figure was not initially available. The mesh for Victoria 4.0 was developed using Luxology's modo.^[5]

Version 4.1 was released in April 2007 and improved on the capability to load multiple sets of morphs into the character without causing conflicts.

Version 4.2 was released in February 2008 which added a set of built-in male morphs and further technical improvements.

Version 5 of Victoria came in the end of 2011. During the beta testing phases of DAZ Studio 4, there was released information briefly regarding the preparation of Victoria 5 as a part of Genesis. DAZ claims "Vicky 5 has much more versatility due to the fact she can be anything (a male, a kid, even a gorilla).".^[6] Moreover, Genesis clothing will fit all genesis figures, not requiring a 'unimesh' morph. Finally, the mesh of Victoria 5 was updated and made smoother, with the use of SubD, weight maps and optimizations natively to DAZ Studio. These could let morphs and movements be smoother, without glitches or bumps (not requiring 'morphing fix' add-ons at all, like arms fix, thighs fix and so on). Software like Poser can still load her with some plugins or exporting from DAZ, but will lacks enhancements not supported in Poser, like SubD.^[7]

As of October 2014, Victoria 6 is the latest installment.^[8]

References