Well hello Stephanie 4

The good people at DAZ3d released a new figure yesterday. Let’s all say hi and give a round of applause for Stephanie 4 Elite!

Stephanie 4, default settings. Bodysuit + 3Dream Boy Hair

Steph (she hates being called that but I’m going to do it anyway) is a whole new version of the previous Stephanie 3 figure. I guess the clue is in the name. The major change is that (as with Aiko 4 and Girl 4) she isn’t really a whole new mesh but is instead based on the main Victoria 4.2 model – Unimesh, as they call it. What this means is that Stephanie 4 is a custom morph (actually, many morphs!) that can be applied, mixed and matched with any of the other morph sets including Morphs++, Aiko 4, Elite, Girl, She-Freak, etc to create just the figure you want.

Don’t be silly Steph. RUN AWAY FROM THE GIANT LADY!
(Victoria 4.2, wearing the Stephanie texture rather well)

In a way, Stephanie is the missing link that the Victoria series has needed – and I mean that in the best possible way. All of the V4 morphs make it easy to dial-up a fantasy barbarian, buxom wench, anime character or a multitude of attractive supermodel types. Want big’n’beefy? That’s there too. But small – small was tricky, until now. Stephanie 4 is designed with Petite in mind.

Not, mind you, that Steph is small, really. According to the height charts, Vixtoria 4 is 5 feet 10 inches in height. Stephanie 4 scales that down to 5 feet 3.6 inches with is as near as dammit the average height of an adult female in the United States. Stephanie is normal.

“Ah,” you say, “Can’t I just scale down Victoria 4 to get the right height?” Not easily, no. Human body proportions alter according to height, so just scaling everything down will look odd. You could go in and scale each limb individually, but why bother? Stephanie 4 does it all for you. As well as the default Petite morph there’s also Proportion scale dials on the Body for Hour Glass, Lanky, Short, Stout and Super Tall and as with any DAZ3d figure you can mix and match between them to get just the figure type you want. If you’re looking for that perfect Short Lanky Super Tall woman with an Hour Glass figure, Stephanie is the one for you!

Steph4 with the Lily Body & Head and Lanky set to 1.0. UberVolume Dust on a Spotlight. Easy.

But that’s not all. See that Elite label? Stephanie 4 isn’t just a Base figure with a handful of morph dials – she comes with a metric ton of ’em, all designed to fine-tune the figure’s bumps and curves. Unlike the broad brush-sweep of the Morphs++ dials (ok, not that broad – there’s some good fine-tune dials in there too), these Elite-class morphs are a set of sculptor’s tools which you can call upon as required. Nice!

And that’s still not all you get. The Base package (free, remember) includes 18 great poses (all of the renders in this post use just a handful of them) and a pretty good skin texture too. It’s not going to win a Skin Texture of the Year award, but it’s a darned sight better than Vicky Base’s default purple rash :D Oh, and as you get the Elite Surface Shader (regular price $18.95 – here you get it free!) thrown into the mix as well, it is possible to turn it into something special too should you so desire.

Stephanie 4 texture without the Elite Surface Shader:

Same texture with the Elite Surface Shader (HDRPark with Velvet and Subsurface Scattering enabled):

Yes, the Elite Surface Shader is that good. If you haven’t already got it (from one of the other Elite packs, for example) then it’s well worth downloading Stephanie 4 for that reason alone. It works with the guys (Michael 4, FREAK 4, Hiro 4, etc) too! (Note to self: Write tutorial how to use the Elite Surface Shader)

It bears repeating – as Steaphnie 4 is based on the Victoria 4.2 mesh, she will accept and any all of Vicky’s textures, morphs, poses, expressions, hair and clothes (thanks to the magic of DAZ Studio’s Morph Follower) though you might need to do a little tweaking here and there. So far, I’ve had no problems at all.

Along with the 6 Proportion Morphs and multitude of fine-tune morphs, Stephanie also includes 9 complete Head and Body morph characters too with shapes covering a range of physical weights and build types. Again, you can mix’n’match between those, the Proportion morphs and any other Morph injections you want.

Steph’s Grace Morph, Short Proportion, 30% Girl 4 & a little Morphs++ dial spinning = Female Dwarf Fighter! Love how this turned out. Click to enlarge.

Alongside the free Base, DAZ3d have also released a Starter Pack (currently $34.97) and Pro Bundle ($69.97, includes the Starter Pack too) so as well as being able to steal Victoria’s stuff she also has an excellent range of clothes, characters, hair and poses all of her very own. And yes, Victoria can use all that too. High points for me are the Steam Punk Aviator clothes (oh yes!) and the cool as heck Dark Wolf Hair. Expect renders of those, real soon.

So, Stephanie is wonderful, and well worth the price (free!), but where would you use her? The smaller figure isn’t really suited to superhero renders (though I’m already envisioning a female Atom-style character just to prove myself wrong) but she is ideal for modern (or sci-fi) renders where Victoria’s height and proportions are too striking to be realistic. I’d also say she has a firm place for Fantasy renders too – Stephanie would make anything from a Halfling to a Dwarf or Elf with a touch of the dials.

This wulf approves.