Not sure about Genesis 8 but by the looks of it it’s an update to Genesis 3 that allows for better backwards comparability with in the Genesis framework but we have been using Genesis 3 for a few years now and since 4.15 there has been some major improvements in rigging solutions as well as materials and skinning that there is no longer the issue to haring to export to 3ds Max first to correct for weighting problems
IK is IK and UE4 calling it 2 bone IK is more of an indication of how many bones are in the IK chain as to the needs of the Epic rig that is not a limitation as to the ability to add constraints required for the more complex HIK or Maya’s FBIK type solution. That’s to say even though Epic does provided an IK solution it’s use is more general as to the typical twist bone configuration as compared to Epic’s rigging solution which was originally designed as to the unique requirements of games built and designed by Epic Genesis’s configuration is typical where Epic’s is unique.
Epic has already begun to address this problem by adding support that allows joints to be locked but has yet to add the ability to constraint the parent child parent child relationship of the G3, as well as others,that uses this typical configuration but our coders have been able to build constraints that creates 2 bone IK type solution using the G3 rig.
As is G3 contains about 180 bones which also includes joints necessary for creating facial animations using cluster shaping which has a much lower work load and is the direction I think Epic is heading as Paragon character are using the cluster configuration rather than morph targets.
Sharing some general testing stuff.
Not work safe.
And
The first was a test to see how fast a procedural lip sync solution could be hooked up and the second tests cross character comparability with out the need to retarget animations.
Going back to the original question though is comparing Daz Studio to Iclone is only a comparison as far as the need to have a resource that could be used to create player models but is kind of like comparing a spreadsheet to a word processor. If you need to add numbers then a spreadsheet is the thing, if you want to write a book then the logical choice is a word processor. In this case Iclone is an animation tool and Daz Studio is a visualization tool.
So
With in context if the need is to create a custom character from scratch then DS is the logical choice as it has the tools necessary to accomplish this task where Iclone solves the problem by importing assets made using Daz Studio into their application. A better comparison to ED would be Poser, Fuse or even Make Human which of course you can also import into Iclone.
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