What new goodies were released in May 2017, for the Poser/DAZ content ecosystem? Here’s my survey of what caught my eye this last month…
Science-fiction:
A new set of matching Greeble City Blocks from Stonemason.
Also some modular Eco buildings to add a bit more greenery to your Greeble city.
UFO crash site looks very cool. Someone will presumably give it an additional texture set in due course, to make it more steampunk / The War of the Worlds? Perhaps also a retro ‘Roswell’ 1950s makeover?
Storm Robot for Poser by Moscowich. A homage to the Mass Effect videogame, so probably not suitable for commercial use.
Med Shells to make a medbot of the Main Frame robot for Poser.
You Medbot (above) could be the robot tattooist in Coflek-gnorg’s new highly detailed Tattoo Salon for Poser, which has a Blade Runner / cyberpunk vibe. There’s also an equally detailed Tattoo Machine.
The AntFarm has an Anti-Gravity Diner and an Anti-Gravity Lift that will fit most vehicles.
Starship Wanda, an unusual fish-shaped spaceship.
Cyberia Dress V4, a basic but rather good-looking 1970s-style sci-fi dress for V4.
Greylien For Genesis 3 Male, from a hand-sculpt in ZBrush and with detailed textures.
There’s a free Mane in fibermesh, which fits the vast herds of Genesis 3 centaurs which have recently been released onto the DAZ Store. Could possibly also enhance an alien G3 character.
Fantasy and monsters:
Any new set from DM is usually worth looking at, and his latest is DMs Mystic AtmoSPHERE. G3F poses, matched to an emissive glowing iRay sphere. It looks perfect for wizards and seers and the like.
Cheech Evolution for G3M and poses. He looks like a remake of the free Poser character Creech, which shipped for free with Poser 8 and which I seem to remember was modeled on a public domain B-movie monster from the 1950s. In his new DAZ Studio incarnation he now has various add-ons such as the deep-sea King of the Deep outfit and poses.
Monster Skulls, including a cyclops.
Death Stalker, an unusual hybrid between an insect and a dinosaur. Just the sort of thing for your explorers to encounter in a Lost World or alien planet.
Historical:
Legionnaire for Genesis 3 Male. There’s already authentic Roman military gear floating around for M3 and M4, but if you need it for G3M then these do look rather good. They also include fits for a couple of G3 variants.
Satine Detective Outfit for G3F.
Dr. Graverobber by Cybertenko is a complete 1930/40s Indiana Jones outfit for Michael 4, plus whip.
The new Palm Road seems to fit well with Dr. Graverobber. It’s detailed enough for Vue users to also be interested in this.
Temple of Anubis for Poser. A simple but convincing bit of a fantasy Egypt, and it could also easily be imported to Vue. There’s also a new Secret Ancient Catacombs scene.
Pirate Dining, the cabin of a pirate ship. With a bit of work and some candle-light it might also double as the inside of a hobbit-hole. I’m thinking of the scenes with the singing dwarves in Bilbo’s kitchen, at the start of The Hobbit.
Classic Rickshaw, possibly also useful for a steampunk Fu-Manchu vs. Sherlock Holmes type of adventure-mystery.
Old_Revolver for Poser, another high-quality prop and texture set from Dante78.
An authentic Texas Ranger Outfit for G3M, complete with some really nice Wild West boots. Probably needs some “And I just rode thu’ that there desert…” MATs, to dust up the clothes.
Got milk? A traditional milk-churn and related props.
Double Trouble Braids for G3F. A nice Celtic look, and slightly mussed up, which would suit shield-maiden battle scenes. Audrey Hair is similar and shorter, with a pony-tail effect on top. Apparently the Bronze Age people used heavy metal crimped stoppers on the ends of the braids, to weight the hair braid.
Everyday characters and clothes:
Amber for G3F, with hair and everyday clothing. See also the new Real Sneakers 2.0 for G3F.
H&C Casual B outfit for G3M has a nice simplicity about it, while also being quietly futuristic. Designed to work well in close-ups and I foresee quite a few texture makeover packs being made for this set.
Scenes:
A Paris-style Metro Train interior.
An Island House complete with island and ocean.
There’s also a new Downtown Loft : Living Area, new from Stonemason.
Animals and nature:
SongbirdRemix’s bird expert Ken Gilliand has turned his attention to frogs, and he’s just released the Nature’s Wonders Frogs of the World Vol. 2 for Poser. It has those highly colourful, but highly deadly, ‘poison dart’ frogs. Created with Ken’s usual attention to detail and scientific realism.
Animations for the HiveWire Kitten.
Sea Washed Beach Rocks in hi-res for Poser, plus sand and a scene preset. May also be of interest to Vue users who want to do rock-pools and low-tide scenes.
iReal Animated Dandelion for DAZ Studio. Vue users already have a dandelion, but it’s not animated.
Country Ford for DAZ Studio and Carrara, a classic English ford. A useful addition for those with horses, hounds and historic vehicles in their runtimes. Also for stream-dipping scenes with child characters.
Wild Mossy Bamboo Forest for Poser.
The Forest could probably work well with Flinks Mossy Rocks HD for Poser and Vue.
Garden pottery for DAZ Studio. Very nicely textured with weathered textures that get past the ‘3D always looks too clean’ thing.
Vue users also have Ground Cover No.7: Pine Forest Floor which uses instancing to make sure each patch is unique. So you can apply it as an ecosystem on small patches of ground and not get repeating moire patterns.
Plugins and tutorials:
Scene Optimiser for DAZ Studio 4.9.3.29 and later, which allows you to drastically lower the memory required for certain types of scenes, and thus speed up your renders. I didn’t feature this last month because I wasn’t sure how well it worked, or how easy it was to operate. But I find it does work and it works well, making iRay rendering on a CPU ’10-minute feasible’ at 1800px x 1200px. It doesn’t only reduce the size of the big 4000px textures, but also seems to offer many other tweaks. Only for DAZ Studio 4.9.3.29 or higher, as it calls a function in the software that has only recently been introduced. The only frustrating thing is finding the damn thing. It’s under “Scripts” with the utterly obscure name of “V3Digitimes”. Who on earth would look for it under that name?
The Ultimate Guide to Creating Complex Outfits, a big multi-part training series with digital clothing expert Arki. Learn exactly how to make quality long dresses, full-length skirts, long-sleeved and multi-layered outfits.
Poke-Away3! for Genesis 3 aims to help cure clothing ‘poke through’. Often it’s just a case of making the offending body parts invisible, but there are times when that’s not going to work and you might need help from something like this.
DAZ Studio also has a Billboard plugin which gives you 2D billboards that always face the camera. I’m guessing you can probably do this by hand in DAZ Studio, but it’s likely that the plugin makes it easier and faster.
Lastly, currently on $2 clearance is the Poser Format Exporter for DAZ Studio 3 and 4, which from DAZ-only formats “generates Poser format Pose (.pz2), Face/Expression (.fc2) and Hand (.hd2) files from directly within DAZ Studio”.
That’s it. More picks next month.