News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Monthly Archives: February 2013

Carrara 9 dated by DAZ

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Hot from the Carrara Cafe! News that DAZ Carrara 8.5 is to be released at the end of summer 2013, with Carrara 9 set to follow perhaps Christmas 2013 or in the first quarter of 2014.

Carrara 8.5 will include…

– Support for up to Windows 8 and Mac OSX 10.8
– DSON support
– Metadata support
– New animation tools (keyframe tool improvements, smoothing, keying every frame, etc.)
– Graph editor improvements
– Improvements to viewport avatars (Lights – spotlight, sun, moon, etc. Cameras – conical, isometric, etc.)
– Improved bullet simulation for soft bodies

Update: ok, they were perhaps a little ambitious on the timeline for the version 9 date, which has now been and gone. 🙂

3D content survey: World War One 1914-1918

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With the 100th anniversary of the First World War (1914-1918, aka “World War One”, “World War I”, or “The Great War” of 1914-1919) just around the corner next year, I thought I’d do a survey of characters, props, and 3D models available for DAZ Studio or Poser. Some I passed by, as they were too poorly textured or too old now. Here are those that made it…

Uniforms:

In HM’s Service is a solid collection of British uniforms and accessories for Poser…

hm

Poserworld also have their own WWI makeover textures for the RCMP outfit. Poserworld has vanished.

Craft and vehicles:

American Field Ambulance of 1918 with period body stretcher (there’s also a 1917 version)…

amb

The MKV Male Tank was a late entrant into the war…

tank

Royal Flying Corps DH.2 World War I Aircraft (sadly “no longer available for download”)…

fly

And a Thomas Morse 4CC biplane complete with textures for the U.S. Army in France (1917-1918)…

morse

You’ll find many other WWI-era biplane aircraft for free on Google 3D Warehouse.

While there are plenty of steampunk and fantasy airships, there doesn’t appear to be an authentic German Zeppelin or British WW1 Navy airship 3d model available for DAZ/Poser. Nor any First World War U-boat submarines, of the type that menaced the eastern seaboard of the USA. 3D Warehouse is the best place to look for those, where you will also find a quality 1918 Lancia German armoured car.

Barracks:

Standard barracks hut with detailed interior…

hut

Trenches:

Trenches for Poser…

trentch

There’s also a free trenches bonus model for Poser, although I suspect the machine gun that comes with it would be too modern for the First World War (there’s a quality British Browning machine gun on 3D Warehouse, which could be saved out as an OBJ)…

bonus

Barbed wire barricades…

barr

A rifle bayonet…

bayon

German wooden ammo box…

ammo

There was also an excellent “Battlefields: the Ridge” set for Poser (possibly from Coflek-Gnorg?), but which no longer appears to be for sale…

battlefields-the-ridge

Heavy guns:

The Flak 88 and its Flak 88 ammo (although possibly a WWII gun?)…

flak

World Dominance is a big greasy heavy German gun…

biggun

Ruins:

Stonemason’s quality Urban Ruins might be your first port of call for a ruined town in WW1…

stonemason

Warzone is also a major pack of ruins…

warzone

Additional update, Oct 2013: Red Cross Aid Station.

Reality 3 for Poser – due for March 2013 release

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Reality 3 for Poser 9 / Poser Pro 2012 SR3 is scheduled to be released in April 2013, at $59.95. It’s a plugin that connects Poser to the power of the free LuxRender high end render engine. Here’s the preview video…

Apparently it’ll be fully integrated with the Poser interface, and will include auto materials-conversion (so we shouldn’t have to spend hours fiddling with texture adjustments). GPU acceleration too, so those with fast modern PC gaming graphics-cards should benefit.

It’ll be interesting to read a Vue vs. Reality head-to-head bench test when Poser Reality 3 arrives.

Free Poser-and-comics webinar

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Booking now, a new free webinar from Smith Micro, “Using Poser to Create the Ground-Breaking Graphic Novel Anomaly“. With artist Brian Haberlin the creator (with writer Skip Brittenham) of Anomaly. The date is Thursday 28th of February 2013 (11am Pacific Time USA, 7pm UK Time).

anomalygrid

“Anomaly is one of the most innovative and rousing epic adventures I’ve seen. This story of a team of explorers marooned on a distant planet marries action and ideas in spectacular fashion, and holds important lessons for our society today.” — Harrison Ford, actor.

“They have uncovered a shrewd world in Anomaly, one where simply fighting for survival is not enough. Loaded with offbeat characters and idiosyncratic socio-structures, Anomaly does a smashing job of bringing us back to the fundamentals of humanity.” — Ridley Scott, movie director.

MotionArtist for motion comics

Posted on by Posted in Comics, Companion software, Freebies, The Animation Industry, Tutorials

I’m always been a fan of comics, and the chance to combine comics with animation seems like a dream come true — to someone who was a kid in an age when the coin-operated photocopier was the best advanced comics-production technology we had access to. So it’s exciting that Smith Micro, of Poser fame, have announced that they are to very shortly release MotionArtist, for making interactive digital motion-comics…

“MotionArtist is going to be released very soon with amazing improvements over the public beta version. These span from HTML5 output to animated panels, text and word balloons, 3d Parallax effect, and Anime Studio input. Start counting your pennies and watch for additional news about the official launch coming very soon!”

Reallusion also reportedly have something similar in the works, and it’ll be interesting to see what CrazyTalk Animator 2.0 looks like when it arrives. I’d expect Reallusion may learn a lot from letting MotionArtist launch first.

It’ll also be interesting to see how MotionArtist interfaces with Smith Micro’s comics production software Manga Studio, if at all. It sounds like it might interface more with their animation software Anime Studio and with Poser 2014.