Are you a DAZ Carrara user who’s keen to get the new Miki 4 into your runtime? There’s a new plugin from veteran developer Fenric, Poser Weightmap Injector. It shuttles Miki between… “Poser Pro 2012 SR2 and Carrara 8”, and it’s free. It should work on similar official Poser figures, but is… “not guaranteed to work for every dedicated Poser figure”. Presumably it also works with Poser Pro 2012 SR3 and Carrara 8.5, but that’s just my guess.
Monthly Archives: September 2012
Humans in Space Youth Art Competition
Another Space Art competition, this time for those age 10 to 18. The 2nd Humans in Space Youth Art Competition is backed by NASA and asks young creatives to…
“submit a visual, literary, musical and video artwork expressing your vision of how humans will use science and technology in the future to explore space and uncover its mysteries.”
DAZ Store’s big PA Sale “catch-up”
It’s your last chance to catch up on the recent big sale of almost everything at the DAZ Store. 50% off, so the Store’s web servers are definitely slowing down under the pressure! It all ends Friday. Update: now extended!
Every major DAZ Store content artist appears to be in the “50% or more off” game, until Friday only. Some of the fleeting ‘Fast Grab’ items go… “up to 70% off”. I found all but two items on my Wishlist were heavily discounted.
New free Cinema 4D student edition
The traditional 3D software Cinema 4D has released a… “free, fully functional, Student Edition of Cinema 4D”. Specifically, the new version 14. Which potentially saves you about $1,000.
Nice, but it’s actually not quite fully functional. There’s no plugin support in the student version (so presumably Poser Pro 2014 users won’t be able to use their official PoserFusion Poser-CD4 bridge plugin with it), and nor is there networked rendering. Oh, and the software expires after 18 months.
Still, if you were thinking of testing it then the student edition might be an option. The results can look rather pretty. Here’s Fredy3D’s “The Defenders of Bast Prime” from his New Egypt sci-fi series…
Fredy’s pipeline between Poser and Cinema 4D is actually via the $75 commercial plugin InterPoser, rather than PoserFusion.
Survey of free archery / bow & arrow content for Poser and Daz
A quick survey of free bows and arrows for Poser and DAZ Studio…
FoRender’s free bow and arrow…
A more “Ice Age” or “dragon age” style bow set is the Bow & Bandoleer…
Also rather fantasy, although suitable for sci-fi too, are the SciFi Battlebow M4 Smartprop and the SciFi Battlebow V4 Smartprop.
There’s a Cupid’s Bow and Arrow set…
Medievalists might like the Diviner’s Posable Yew Longbow with poses and morphs…
Keihan’s Bow & Arrow is an older model but it has a draw morph.
Not much in the way of free archer’s clothing, seemingly.
That’s all! Stay on target!
Fortis Space Art Contest
Swiss precision watch-maker Fortis is running a Fortis Space Art Contest for their 100th anniversary.
“The winner will accompany a crew of scientists onboard of a zero-g airplane and assist them with their experiments in weightlessness. Participants over age 18, from all over the planet, can take part in the contest.”
Simply submit your own space art creative artworks (pictures, graphic works, videos) which have a strong “Space” theme. Winner announced 31st March 2013.
Photoshop Elements 11
The new Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 is now available at Adobe. The makers Adobe have a special offer on now, offering free shipping on the boxed Adobe Photoshop Elements 11
.
Elements is the simplified and streamlined version of the full Photoshop, and it takes far less time to learn. It took me three years to learn Photoshop 3 and 4, over a decade ago. It would have been a lot quicker if I could have started on an easy Elements version first, and then upgraded later.
Amazon USA still have the new Photoshop Elements 11 on pre-order, and Amazon UK don’t even list it yet — so if you want a gift copy early then the Adobe offer seems worth looking at.
Hop on your bike for more freebies…
Currently free on the DAZ Store, Old Fashioned Bicycles, featuring a Penny Farthing and a wooden Velocipede (or “boneshaker” in English slang). Although the blurb gives the latter the German name of Draisine. They should be of interest to steampunk enthusiasts.
Since my great grandfather was a bicycle manufacturer, it’s super to have the really old bicycle models in 3D form. It’d be great to see more of them. The bicycle went through hundreds of weird and wonderful variations, until the British finally came up with the classic “safety” bicycle that we use today.
Miki 4 released – free for a limited time
Two new flagship 3D human figures, designed for Poser 9 and Poser Pro, are now available from Smith Micro.
Miki 4 is out now as the successor to the popular Miki 3, and is “free for a limited time”.
Also available, and also “free for a limited time” is Tyler GND (Guy Next Door) which updates and revamps the older Ryan 2 character that shipped free with Poser 9 and 2012.
Halloween freebies survey, Sept 2012
Here’s my survey of some of the best traditional Halloween freebies for Poser and DAZ Studio…
There’s a high-quality vampire coffin…
Spark’s free Haunted House board game base is rather cute. As far as I’m aware it’s not actually based on a commercial boardgame design, although it does have a few similarities…
Toffee Apples as .obj files with DAZ Studio Mat files… I think they’re called ‘candy apples’ in America…
Little Mummy is a standalone toon-style figure of an Ancient Egyptian mummy… Was at RuntimeDNA, now appears to be lost.
A classic ‘sheet’ ghosty…
Karth’s Skull Prop…
And a nice free Skull and Candle for Poser…
Sadly I wasn’t able to find any free bats. Don’t fly off the handle! 😉
Getting started with Puppeteering in DAZ Studio – video
BryTy3D has a nice new 16-minute video tutorial, on how to get started with Puppeteering in DAZ Studio…
Skip to 1:10, if you already know where to find the Puppeteering interface element.
Blow-dry Werewolf
The Look At My Hair plugin for DAZ Studio 4.x is moving forwards. The plugin is currently in testing but the developer promises that it’s simple to use, and that it allows really easy hair styling on characters. Here’s the latest test render…
The Octane renderer has a new blog
The external Octane renderer now has its own blog. I took a close look at using Poser with Octane, back in March 2012, when Octane was still an unstable beta.
Tyler
A sneak-peek at the new Tyler GND, which is a new ‘official’ high-quality character morph for the Ryan 2 base character that ships free with Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2012…
If searching in your runtime, Ryan 2 is named as “Ryan2” with no space, and is found in ..\Runtime\Libraries\Character\People\Ryan\ The base Ryan 2 is seen below…
Note that Smith Micro’s store page says “Tyler GND requires Poser 9 or Poser Pro 2012 with SR3 or later applied.” I’m not sure why SR3, as Ryan 2 shipped with the first shipping of Poser 9/2012. Possibly Ryan 2’s weight-mapping was tweaked slightly in SR3, or something like that.
GND = Guy Next Door. There was also a Girl Next Door, GND Anastasia, which required Alyson 2. If you have her, she shows up in the runtime as Alyson2.
Update: Note that Anastasia’s “UPDATE 1.1 ADDS: BONUS Full GND Tyler figure for Ryan 2.” Apparently.
DAZ Studio v4.5’s new features
I finally found some time to take a look at the new features of DAZ Studio v4.5. It’s still free in the Pro version, which is of course the biggest feature for many users. 🙂 In 4.5 users also get, among other bits and pieces…
* FBX Import. (Useful, especially for iClone/3DXchange 5 users, but “not all features of FBX are supported”)
* Group Node (Group 3D elements together, to form ‘layers’ like in Photoshop. Sounds interesting).
* Viewport speed dramatically increased… by 2-5x… (Nice, but hopefully the new speed won’t mean jaggy edges in DAZ’s lovely implementation of OpenGL 1.6 in the viewport)
* Improved stability, less crashes. (/Cough/)
These are just the ones that caught my eye. Nice-sounding improvements, certainly. But not enough to make me want to leave DAZ version 3.0 (or Poser 2012, or iClone).