News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Monthly Archives: March 2019

Automatic Shading of Hand-Drawn Characters

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A new academic paper, “Deep Normal Estimation for Automatic Shading of Hand-Drawn Characters” (Jan 2019)…

“We present a new fully automatic pipeline for generating shading effects on hand-drawn characters. Our method takes as input a single digitized sketch of any resolution and outputs a dense normal map estimation suitable for rendering without requiring any human input.”

Currently an ugly and unconvincing effect, which in the examples gives a heavy raised-relief shading. It reminds me of a child’s slightly-padded plastic puffa-sticker…

… but it’s interesting that such shading can be done at all in an automated manner, from basic 2D line-art without any reference to either the coloured version or a 3D model.

Particle Illusion 2019

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Particle Illusion was an After Effects 2D particle animation tool that was purchased by Boris circa 2018. They’ve given it a complete overhaul and their new 2019 version is 64-bit, as… “a lightning fast GPU-accelerated engine with a simple, easy-to-learn interface” with many new emitter presets…

Looks nice, but the drawback seems to be that it will only render into expensive high-end video software, such as After Effects and Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, or Vegas Pro. Apparently that’s also true of the ‘standalone’, which is only an editor for the presets.

Sci-fi artists of more modest means will probably want to look instead at the far more affordable HitFilm and its particle generator, if making movies and animation. HitFilm is a sort of ‘affordable After Effects’ at around £250, and can be had for less — plugging the add-on Particles module into its free Express version currently costs £45 here in the UK. The software recently had a total UI overhaul, which must be very annoying for seasoned users — but if you’re new to it you won’t notice that.

For stills one might look first at the affordable Corel ParticleShop and its addon packs, and even the many free Photoshop plugins kindly offered for Photoshop by Richard Rosenman.

DAZ Carrara 8.5 Pro can also load all your Poser and DAZ content, and has “a robust particle system” in 3D. As seen in action here…

The Carrara files for the scenes in the video are free here.

Storyboarder adds semi-automated ‘Shot Generator’

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The open source Storyboarder (beta with email-only access) has added a new ‘Shot Generator’. It’s a basic stage on which you have 3D objects and basic dummies. What’s nice is that the camera angle and framing is somewhat “auto”…

“Just type a description into the Shot Generator in the sidebar, press return, and generate as many shots as you’d like. Change parameters as you want. Shots are fully customizable.”

There’s also a “Random” button. You can see it in action about half way down the page, or in the 25 minute tutorial video.

Storyboarder seems to also be re-creating a sort of minimalist Poser / DAZ Studio / iClone, in some measure, but with ‘smart awareness’ of where the camera is in relation to the figures.

Once set up, you can instantly whisk the frame back into Storyboarder. Looks good.

The DAZ / Poser new content survey – March 2019

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Welcome to another personal survey and pick of the fresh content that’s been newly released in March 2019, for use with DAZ Studio and Poser.

Science fiction:

Nibiru Auditorium for DAZ Studio.

Meteor and Ship Crash Site. With the choice of either the spaceship or the glowing meteor.

Spaceship Wreckage, for a larger scale.

Sci-Fi Atmosphere Processing Deck. With 28 camera presets and camera-matched lights.

Assimilating Brain Unity, an unusual robot/cyborg production factory.

SOF-1A for Genesis 3 and 8 Female.

Advance Sentinel Drone.

Steampunk:

Junkhead is a cute rigged robot, given away as a low-poly freebie.

At SketchFab, a new steampunk rifle, albeit at $29.

Wasteland Warriors – The Fighter by Cybertenko. A 1940 style fighter plane, converted. For Poser with M4 poses. Also has a Moebius vibe, re: The Airtight Garage.

Historical:

1920s and 30s style Flapper Cloche Hat.

1920s and 30s style Flapper Showgirl Peacock-Feather Headdress for G8F.

Curtain Call for G8F. Possibly also useful for storybook, re: a “doll’s house come to life”, and similar.

Suitcase Collection Vol I. Travel-worn vintage suitcases for DAZ Studio.

The Streets Of Asia 4 by Stonemason. As you can see clearly here, a choice of lots of possible camera angles and views, which is one of the great things about Stonemason’s 3D set design…

The Explorer for G8M.

… and he’s probably after the Giant Cicadas or the Rare Orchids.

Mid 1960s-style freebie Accessories for LaFemme in Poser 11. Also Matching boots and heels.

Late 1960s Reel to Reel and Chair scene, and for added period authenticity some new Smoking Props.

A James Bond / Mission Impossible style Vault Room with lazers.

Late 1940s-style Gas Station Island, free in Vue and in .3DS format. The new 1960s style ZWorld Winter Gas Station could probably be adapted to fill out around these vintage pumps.

There’s also a new At the Car Wash expansion for a Gas Station setting.

M1919 Browning Machinegun for Poser.

Gatling Gun, with ammo carriage.

Old-style British Police Constable for M4 for Poser, aka a ‘copper’ or a ‘bobby’, from the days when they were still to be seen on the streets and without riot gear / paramilitary machine-guns. The puffy shoulders are a bit ‘meh‘, but a few flicks of the Liquify tool in Photoshop would cure that on still renders. The helmet could also be used as an Imperial pith-helmet with spike.

dForce Roman Cavalry for Genesis 8 Male and Daz Horse 2. Now there’s something you don’t see every day. Deacon215 has a variety of other authentic Roman items.

If you find you need some Roman deities to nebulously appear to your cavalrymen in the woods, look at the new Chronicles of the Gods Outfit for Genesis 8 Male and Universal Horns for Genesis 8 Male and Genesis 8 Female.

Fantasy and early medieval:

Moyra’s Classics – The Exotics, including a magical mage texture set for the earlier Desert Mage for Genesis 3 Male from a few years ago.

dForce Desert Robe Outfit for Genesis 8 Female. The plainer texture set also makes it suitable for Biblical and other scenes from antiquity.

dForce Inquisitor Robe for Genesis 8 Male.

dForce Fantasy Banner is a new freebie for DAZ Studio, by Greendragon And Smida at DeviantArt. Includes wind-tattered versions.

Vampiric Dark Mist Props and Poses for Genesis 3 and 8 Female. Seen here in solid, but the textures apply the mist effect.

Medieval Small Village Manor for Poser. Highly detailed and currently at a very reasonable $9. Also a matching Small House to serve as a side-building or (add windows up-top) a guard house at the moat.

Hr-216 Hair for V4 and Poser, for the Saxon shield-maiden look.

Aldwyn for Michael 4 for Poser. A MortemVetus figure which I seem to remember vanished with the sad demise of RuntimeDNA, and has now become available again at Renderosity.

Characters:

Mrs Chow 8 for G8F.

Manfred for Genesis 8 Male.

Ogrec for Genesis 8 Male, a characterful ogre with a dash of Hellboy.

Aurora La Femme for the free La Femme in Poser 11, with the same HD level of textures, plus an additional morph set for La Femme.

Toon:

Tess for Genesis 8 Female. A fine stylised semi-toon look for G8F, with the toon look accentuated here by the heavy eye-liner.

Grobot. Amazingly flexible and adaptable, and now free. Poser 11 not on the list, but she works well for me in Poser 11. There’s also a Poser 11 fix version if you find you need one.

Lolo Bot for DAZ Studio, a freebie.

Carnivorous Plant HD with iRay materials. And a vintage Glass House (greenhouse) to house it in.

Also of note in ‘toon’ is that Mr. Sparky’s Poser freebies are now available at Attic’s Free Zone.

Storybook:

Norfolk Windmill from DryJack, for Poser and DAZ Studio. And for the hill-crest on which the windmill stands, iREAL Animated Hybrid Tree for DAZ Studio. Complete with Animate 2 AniBlocks ‘blowing wind’ animations.

Poseable Swing for Poser, with new and aged materials. Free.

Granny’s pin cushion with pins, a freebie for DAZ Studio. Useful as a backdrop for mice characters and similar.

BBarbs’s ongoing set of free Small Child Poses, realistic and believable poses for G8, is growing larger by the day.

Creatures:

Crab. A realistic big crab for DAZ Studio. Presumably someone will now make some beautiful mottled textures for it.

Tyrannosaurus Rex 3. Fits with the latest scientific understanding, and also has optional 8k textures.

Hell Creek Modules. Highly detailed dinosaur terrain of 66 million years ago, complete with egg nests. Sections could also be made to serve as a backdrop for a desert oasis tent, by removing the redwood-type trees, and putting a water-well on the nest mound.

Landscapes:

The ArtStation marketplace is starting to get a bit interesting, for landscapes.

Sweet Spring for Vue at $12.

Lagoon for Vue at $12. Would make for a great setting for an early Babylonian lagoon city, such as Eridu.

FLUIDOS Presets: Waves for the FLUIDOS water simulation plugin for DAZ Studio.

The waves might be used with the new cute little Cave and waterfront for DAZ Studio. I’d have liked to have seen some close-ups in the previews, though, to see how well the textures hold up.

Weathered Civilization for Poser. An unusual terrain prop, with HD textures.

Moon Base tutorial, from 3D to 2D in Photoshop, at $6. The 3D software is left unspecified.

Tutorials:

Tinkering with Textures in DAZ Studio. Are you a DAZ Studio beginner, wondering what all those sliders and tweakables do for the materials? Break away from the presets, and discover step-by-step ways to make your scene’s materials unique.

New dForce Discoveries. I’m amazed at some of the things being done with the new dForce in DAZ Studio, but it seems much more can be done.

Scripts:

Universal Pose Splitter for DAZ Studio. Works with all Genesis types, and Victoria 4, Michael 4, The Kids 4. Select one part of a pose, split it out and save it.

Poser Python script to pick colour & assign to ToonID. Get a coloured mask for each prop and character in your scene. If working with the current fully-patched version of Poser 11, you may need a slight workaround to get a ToonID render out to Photoshop.

Poser Process Command dictionary for Python in Poser. Free.

And finally… a simple but multi-use dForce G8F Tie as a freebie.

That’s it, more picks next month.

Release: 3DS MAX 2020

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Autodesk is now shipping the big daddy of 3D software, in a new 2020 version. The features I noted, among the list…

* new non-phorealistic shaders for NPR … including “Toon Width” and a rather naff-looking “Halftone”.

* greenscreen keying tools.

* point-cloud export now in .ply and .e57 file formats.

* faster viewport for complex rigs and animation preview.

* faster UV editing “when working with many UV islands”.

* “standard codecs when rendering AVI files”.

“Toon Width” has an un-parsable specification, but when I attempt to translate it approximately into plain English… it looks like it’ll automatically make toon lines thinner the further away an object is from the camera. Actually, that sort of thing would be a nice addition to Poser 12’s comic book capabilities, I’d suggest.

Release: Modo 13

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Modo 13 has been released, adding among other features…

* native GPU rendering for AMD Radeon.

* ‘Modo Bridge’ to the Unity and Unreal engines.

* “the UV toolset in Modo 13.0 has been further simplified”.

* define only a portion of a mesh to be used for creating boolean operations.

* “huge advancements to the schematic viewport, providing a cleaner and easier-to-manage artistic experience”.

* advanced storage, manipulation, and output of data in a variety of forms.

poserworld.com returns

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The old Poser World website is back up and there’s a message there that the former ‘lifetime members’ can again access their legacy downloads. I tried the login, but obviously what I purchased back in 2012 was not a lifetime pass and must have been a three-month pass or something.

The old catalogue is also online, though not functional, so at least it provides a catalogue of what used to be available…

I see that some bits of the old Poser World content are also now starting to show up on Renderosity, as well as at VanishingPoint (which appears to have purchased the old Poser World content as a job-lot). It seems a good time to re-appear, as there appears to be something of a small revival of interest in the best of the old A3/M3 V4/M4 content for use in Poser. I guess it’s partly down to a new generation of Poser users who never got the chance to collect a huge runtime over fifteen years or more.

I wonder if the plan is to start making new Poser content again, while pointing the old catalogue pages to links at Renderosity/VanishingPoint?

$100m of Epic MegaGrants

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Unreal Engine | Epic MegaGrants. $100-million, apparently. Applicants don’t have to have a game… “Anything in UE4 or relating to UE4 is eligible.” Or even something made in Unreal… “If your project is built in another engine or toolset and you want to move it to UE4, you are eligible to apply for an Epic MegaGrant”. It’s not restricted to the U.S…. “If we can legally make payment to you, you are eligible.”

Random City Maps

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The UK’s Marcus Johnson has a new 2D RPG Random City Map Generator for just $1 on ArtStation, and the licence allows… “up to one commercial project (up to 2,000 sales or 20,000 views).” It hooks into the free Substance Player, and needs it to work. Not sure what the output resolution and anti-aliasing is like, but presumably one could wrangle these into an isometric view and then pop 3D rendered PNGs on top.

The old Poser World content

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What appears to be some of the old Poser World stuff is appearing for sale on the Vanishing Point store.

I picked up all of their unusual and worthwhile content when they had a generous “all you can download” offer, in 2012 which was late in the life of their site.

But they had a lot of nice V4/M4 uniforms and M3 historical outfits that some people have missed since they departed.

So it’s good to see that some of these are starting to become available again. They’re still useful for overpainters and comic-book makers, or people who need lots of extra costumed characters in a historic scene.

Some of these are also on ShareCG, where there’s a rider… “Original model by, and acquired, from Poserworld, and now owned by VanishingPoint.” So it looks like the old Poser World content has been sold as a job lot.

MediBang! Contest 2019

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Tokyo’s MediBang! and Manga CPO have joined forces for a new contest with two sections, Manga and Illustration. They want a max. 32-page manga style comic, and / or an unpublished comic-style illustration on the theme of “Journey”. Free entry, and it appears to be open worldwide though they obviously expect to see a Japanese style in the entries. Deadline: 7th May 2019.

MediBang appears to be a sort of store platform for indie manga creators to sell their comics and illustrations in the Japanese market. They also offer the free MediBang Paint software, now fairly mature at version 23.x, and Jump Paint which is more of a guided experience with embedded tutorials for new manga creators. The contest doesn’t appear to restrict you to just this software.

ClipStudio – innovative new features demo

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The paid ClipStudio (aka Manga Studio) has a new short video demo of its new ‘autocolour line art’ and ‘pose extraction’ tools. The autocolour gives ClipStudio parity with the free Krita 4.x, and the semi-automated pose extractor is only in quite experimental stage at present. Notice how there’s an abrupt jump-cut in the video as we jump from the basic and rather clunky pose extraction…

… to something that’s obviously had a quite a bit of hand-tweaking…

Still, that it can be done at all is very promising for the future. And it’ll surely be coming to other software, as the research for it is in the public domain.