News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Monthly Archives: September 2019

Extract multiple .zip files into a single folder

Posted on by Posted in Companion software, DAZ Studio, Poser, Tutorials 1 Comment

A Poser or DAZ Studio user may find they want to un-zip multiple .ZIP files. Such as, for instance, a mix of store-downloads and freebie .ZIPs accumulated over a period of several weeks. The default behaviour of most ZIP utilities is to extract each .ZIP into its own folder. You may thus end up with 50 new folders. This is fine, if you want to carefully cut-paste from each folder to assemble a unified runtime, checking things as you go, and then merge that with your main runtime. That’s the best way to do it if your new content is from a wide range of sources, and you need to visually check each one for packaging problems.

But… let’s say you have all the Poser 11.2 free content .ZIP files downloaded. In this case you know that their folder structures are all going to be viable and all be the same. So you don’t need to manually check and re-sort. In that case you may want the popular WinRAR utility, because it can do what 7-Zip can’t — extract multiple .ZIPs into a single unified folder. Here’s the setting to tell it to do that…

(For multiple 3D Warehouse Collada .ZIPs you also need to tick “Rename” when the ‘overwrite?’ prompt appears, as many use the same model.dae file-name).

Then, once you have the unified mega-runtime containing your new content, you simply copy the ../runtime (or in some cases the ../content folder containing the ..runtime below it) and paste it into your existing main ../runtime or ../content folder as required. My main ../runtime folder is under My Documents, which means that Windows is happy to merge stuff into it.

Sadly it’s impossible to have a single .zip extract just its multiple runtime folders, combine them into one, while also retaining its own sub-folder structure. For instance…

|
fluffybunny/runtime/
|
  /textures/
  /libraries
  /geometries
|
fluffysquirrel/runtime/
|
  /textures/
  /libraries
  /geometries
|
fluffybear/runtime/
  /textures/
  /libraries
  /geometries
|

To a unified single combined /runtime/ folder, thus:

/runtime/
|
  /textures/
  /libraries
  /geometries

I’ve spent hours trawling through Z-zip, WinRAR, Powershell, and others. Nothing on earth will do it.

New Poser and DAZ users should know that it’s possible to tell your software to use multiple runtimes. You’re not restricted to just the default ones for your content (which may be in a place that Windows refuses to cut-paste into, or which causes over-write problems on a Mac). It may be more practical to have two different runtimes for i) your core shipped-with-the-software content and ii) your store-bought/freebies content.

Also, you can have the DAZ Studio runtime show up in Poser, though not all the content you see there can be imported to Poser’s stage via the DSON plugin. Likewise, DAZ Studio users can point the software to the Poser runtime, though they may not always be able to successfully load a bit of content from it (mostly due to Poser-only texture formats, I recall).

Poser: a tip on Sketch and Comic Book Preview

Posted on by Posted in Natural media emulation, Poser Leave a comment

A small point, but useful for some Poser 11 users to know. When designing Sketch Designer presets, they sketch differently depending on if the Comic Book Preview’s “Colour” filter is either ‘on’ or ‘off’ (“None”). Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference between ‘on’ and ‘off’, when working in Preview, with flat ‘toon’ lighting.

New content for DAZ and Poser, September 2019

Posted on by Posted in 3D Utilities, DAZ Studio, Freebies, Poser, Vue Leave a comment

It’s time for another pick of the month’s new 3D content releases, with a focus on DAZ Studio, Poser and Vue content. As usual I’m not featuring freebies that don’t offer commercial use. The CG Trader store timed out on me yet again, so they don’t feature here. No great loss, as they seem to be loosing the race with the new ArtStation store.

Science-fiction:

Urban Future 7 by Stonemason. A big quality scene with a great many camera opportunities, as usual from Stonemason. Shown here without textures, so you can see the mesh detailing.

Reptiloid Deepspace Hunter as an .OBJ only.

Rule them all with the Hover Throne for Poser. There’s also a new 17th century Royal Throne canopy that might be adapted to make it a futuristic match. Gotta keep the rain off your billion-dollar Hover Throne!

Steampunk:

Blunderbuss flintlocks for Poser and DAZ with high detail.

Vintage Weather Predictors (fluid barometers) for Poser and DAZ Studio.

Cape and skirt in Marvelous Designer, a merchant resource source-file for just $2. The same seller also has trousers in a similar style. I’m assuming this is not too close to being fan-art from some Japanese anime.

A free lamp, with a valvepunk look. Would also suit a stylish mad-scientist lab.

Clothing and wardrobes:

Le Vestiaire a complete Art Deco style wardrobe and dressing room, with Egyptomania theatre-style dressing table. For DAZ Studio, and it requires the Modular Dressing Room.

Related, and possibly an annexe room for the Vestiaire, is the new Mirror Rooms.

A free morphing Hat prop for La Femme, the flagship Poser female character.

DC-RokkerBootz for La Femme.

Free Autumn/Fall Long Boots for La Femme.

dForce Halter Mini Dress for Genesis 8 Female has a top part that could be matched with suitable dark trousers (pants) for a more business-office look, with the high neck of the top offsetting the mundane ‘office look’.

Characters and poses:

New at CGBytes, the unusual Moody, Sulky and Depressed for G3 and G8, in DAZ Studio.

See also the new Z Utility Simply Bored Poses and Expressions for Genesis 3 and 8.

Liven up your spoiled and sulky kids with the free Rotting Zombie for Poser, based on a combo of legacy free-bundle characters such as Jessi.

Storybook:

Hog and Barrel Pub Exterior, which of course resembles a hobbit house. Unfortunately it’s too smart and would take quite a bit of work on the door to get it looking like a more rustic hobbit-hole, but you’ve got the basics here. Maybe someone will make a less ‘glam’ makeover for it, with the door surround gone, a finer and rougher wattle-and-daub crack texture on the outer wall, and a less square chimney. Perhaps also hedges instead of dry-stone walls.

BBarbs continues her free series of realistic free child poses for G8F. Including useful storybook poses such as “I found a tiny beetle” and “I’m flying”…

dForce CB Fantasy Suit for Genesis 8 Female, for DAZ Studio, which with a longer skirt might suit your ‘Good Fairy’ needs in a fairytale storybook.

Ali Baba dForce Clothing and Hair for Genesis 8 Male. The character showing it seems to be the new Jeremy for Genesis 8 Male?

Historical:

Classic Cowboy Poses For Genesis 8 Male. Including gunfight and hand-to-hat poses for the dForce Caballero Outfit. See also the new ZK Country Boots.

51 Panel Van for DAZ Studio. With junk/repair-yard poses for it.

A free set of Joe’s Old Vases for Poser, in a prehistoric style. Also Bowl Primitives and a simple Joe’s Cave.

A big set of free Explosion Effects for Poser, originally from Vanishing Point. Might be a bit old and blurry nowadays, but it would be something for digital overpainters to work with in big battle scenes.

A free Medieval River Quarry. In .OBJ and .FBX, with textures.

Bareback Barbarian Action poses, for charging prehistoric and ancient cavalry. Not something you see everyday, though I expect some older American Indian and horse sets will have similar poses.

Bacia shaving bowl helmet is a curious multi-use medieval freebie for your castle besieging soldiery.

Landscape:

A fine new Medieval Small Village Tower by Dante78 for Poser. Also in .OBJ format.

Christian Hecker (‘Tigaer’) is now on the thriving ArtStation store and has a new 8k Heightfield Terrain & Materials – The Ghost, “best used with Vue or Terragen”.

Storm Shelter with a detailed cellar below. Could be paired with the new FG Dusty Basement with Poses for Genesis 8 Female.

Halloween Lantern from 1971s, for Poser. The background Swamp Tree is not included.

High Mountain Portal with a slightly low-poly look and slightly stylised textures, that may make it especially useful for over-painters of 3D renders.

Animals:

dForce Hair for the Woolly Mammoth by AM.

Also dForce Hair for Brown Bear by AM.

CWRW Lion Family LAMH Presets. Requiring quite a chain of dependencies, the Hivewire Big Cat, the Lion Family, then the LAMH plugin. Renderosity also has a CWRW White Lion for it.

For a rather more humble kitty, free Poses for the original Poser Cat, which can be found in the legacy freebies .ZIPs for Poser 11.2. Many will already have this venerable old moggie, which has been around for many years now. Still, tooned or as a base for some Hair Room fur experiments this kitty can still work for some creative purposes.

A Sloth for $30. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sloth in Poser or DAZ Studio. This is for 3DS Max, but you might be able to get it over to DAZ or Poser as a pose-able .FBX file? Not sure if the hair would port over with it, though.

Songbird Remix’s Peafowl of the World, and Songbird Remix Peafowl Variants pack.

3D Underwater Fauna: Flowing Jellyfish, with light emission.

Plugins, scripts and utilities:

Face Transfer Unlimited. “Create an authentic 3D version of yourself or others with accurate skin tone and shading, by simply uploading a photograph in DAZ Studio”. “The free version of Face Transfer is included” in the very latest DAZ Studio 4.12 for Windows, and this is the paid download version. I’ve no idea if it also adapts the character’s bone-structure to the photo automatically, or handles the fitting of the eyes well, but I assume so.

The free Eyes Dilate for Genesis 8 Female and a G8F EyeBlink Plugin for DAZ Studio. The latter writes a repeating natural ‘blink’ motion to DAZ Studio’s animation timeline.

Free Superfly hair shaders for any dynamic hair made or grown with Poser’s Hair Room. Can also be used on animal / creature fur grown via the Hair Room.

Hide My Parts in Poser. A simple free script which pops up a panel to hide or show multiple body-parts.

P3DO opening fix for the Poser 11.2 update. P3dO is a third-party Poser library manager alternative.

Tutorials:

Character Development for Visual Stories made with 3D.

That’s it. More picks next month!

3D Warehouse going behind a sign-in wall

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New 3D Warehouse owners Quimby continue to slowly downgrade the service…

“Starting in October you will need to sign in to 3D Warehouse to download models.”

This follows the removal of older formats and older version-compatible files. If you have Collections there that you especially value, I suggest you consider mirroring them at more public and longer-term website.

More Poser 11.2 gleanings

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Added to my guidance article on how to go about your Poser 11.2 install…

* As I understand it, Poser in now 64-bit only, from version 11.2 onward.

* Files saved from Poser 11.2 load correctly in Vue R5. [No PoserFusion plugin is needed for the old Vue, but I’ve no idea about Poser and the new ‘subscription Vue’].

* [Another backup location, before installing…] It’s possible you also saved SuperFly custom or tweaked render presets to C:\Program Files\Smith Micro\Poser 11\Runtime\prefs\RenderPresets\SuperFly so check the dates there and .ZIP if needed.

* Kabuking’s Poser Python tools scripts are working fine in 11.2.

* The Dial Manager 2015 script/plugin is working fine in 11.2.

* The DSON plugin (for auto-import of Genesis figures and .duf props from DAZ Studio) seems to work fine. I’m told it may have slight problems when installing it, which means that you may just need to manually set your path to the relevant Poser directory.

* .PSD export with layers is fine.

How to get and use a ‘depth pass’ render from Poser 11.2

Posted on by Posted in Lighting, Poser, Tutorials 1 Comment

Now that all Poser 11 users have the Poser Pro features, and now that the auxiliary render-switches have returned in the latest Poser Pro 11.2… we can all do depth-pass renders in Poser!

(Background: The mini-drop-down for the z-buffers had gone missing from the UI in 11.1.1.35540 and the public release before that, though these render-passes were still there and could still be fully accessed by D3D’s Firefly script and any other Python script that called them. The ability to send multiple animation frames to the Queue Manager also returned with version .35540, which had had to be done via temporary script in the meantime.)

1. To prepare to do a depth-pass, first set up your scene and use a suitable light. Take a look through the “Top” camera, to make sure your props and characters really are correctly-placed in terms of distance from each other.

2. Apparently, in order to get a z-depth pass, you don’t need go to Materials Room | select “Atmosphere” | click “Create Atmosphere” | Select “Depth Cued” and adjust distances and fog colour. But I could be wrong on that. If you can’t get a z-depth that looks good by following the steps below, try adding this to the workflow.

3. At this point I changed the lighting to a darker type, so that the depth fog will show up better later on in the tutorial.

Render settings | Firefly render. I suspect it’s important that you have “Raytracing” ticked to get a z-depth pass, but I could be wrong. Along with your main render, switch on the “Z depth” auxiliary render switch. This tells Poser to render out a depth-pass along with your other renders.

4. Save your render via the little arrow icon, found up in the top-right of the render window.

Save as a .PSD file. A .PSD is a layered Photoshop file. One of the layers it contains is the “Z depth” render pass.

5. Load the .PSD in Photoshop and look in the Layers tab. You should see a layer marked “Z”, which will be turned off by default.

Turn that layer on and then Invert it [ Top menu | Image | Adjustments | Invert ] then set its Layer blending-mode to “Lighten”. With the main render sitting below it in the layer-stack, adjust the Z layer’s blending to taste. Here I have 60% blending opacity to turn a dark render into one where there’s some noticeable depth haze happening…

For deeper fog, duplicate the layer with some opacity to it, and also try adding other blend modes to the mix.

If you don’t have Photoshop you can also use open source graphics software, to open a .PSD file and do the invert and blend trick.

If you have a good version of Vue that can import a Poser scene, you can also do atmospheric fogging that way and quite quickly. Vue does it the brute-force way, but the effects can be very pretty and quite quick provided you have no clouds. The above Poser method, however, is a ‘cheat’ to save render time. You can probably also greatly enhance the effect by turning on “Atmosphere” correctly in Poser.

That’s it. You can of course use it on far more creative scenes, such as an army of mammoths and war-towers emerging from a dust-storm, etc. I’ll be looking more closely at the Atmosphere in Poser in a future post.

Brom for $10

Posted on by Posted in Comics, Poser, Special Offers and Discounts Leave a comment

Capsces has a small sale of older Poser toon stuff on the DAZ Store, including the useful-for-comics Brom for M3 and his amazing morphs, which are great in themselves but then also give access to various famous faces. Update: no longer sold.

Brom for Poser is currently down at $10 on the DAZ Store. (You’ll only see the discount if you’re logged in). Don’t be fooled and assume this is the just one semi-toon character as shown in the store preview. You’re buying this for the morphs, with which M3 can be hundreds of faces and body shapes. Brom’s head morphs do not require the M3 Head & Body Morphs pack, which is no longer sold.

Below I have Michael 3 (M3) with the regular morphs in Poser 11.2, the Brom head morph set injected, and a custom head preset. Real-time rendered in Smooth Shaded + Comic Book preview, and run by two simple lights.

No re-texturing, just a standard start-up M3 texture. No tweaking of the edges in the Materials Room, which is why the eye-edges are too thick. If you’ve been following the excellent made-with-Poser comic Sonata, you’ll recognise the basic approach.

For some reason such wrinkled and ridged faces look great in Smooth Shaded display mode + Comic Book inks. Unfortunately we appear to lack any mesh eyebrows for M3, that ink up nicely in Comic Book Preview mode.

Here’s a preview of just a few of the many semi-toon Brom presets that ship with Brom…

PoserFusion plugins for Poser 11 – last chance to get

Posted on by Posted in 3D Utilities, Companion software, Poser, Spotted in the News, Tutorials, Vue 1 Comment

I see that the PoserFusion plugins for Poser 11 are still available for me, via the old Smith Micro Download Manager — open the SM Manager with your special PoserFusion plugin serial number (not the regular serial number). There are four plugins which allow import of Poser scenes to Cinema 4D, Maya, 3DS Max, and Lightwave, but you’ll need to step back a few versions on these big-beast programmes. For instance, the PoserFusion plugin for Cinema 4D still works fine with C4D R17 (update: and R18 and 19, or so I’m told). Vue 2016 R4 didn’t need a plugin, with Vue able to natively import a Poser scene. The new subscription version of Vue can still handle easy import of Poser scenes.

I found that all four PoserFusion plugins were lurking on my hard-drive, downloaded some time ago, in my: C:\Users\USER_NAME\SmithMicroDLM\Downloads\release\Poser11\PSFU\win directory.

On cut and pasting these out to save them, and re-starting the Manager, I was still able to access them afresh via download…

So this could be your last chance to get them, as I imagine that the SM Manager will cease to recognise serial-numbers fairly soon. Apparently Renderosity are not going to maintain these plugins, but that might just be a forum rumour. There’s a certain amount of mis-information flying around at present and I’ve seen nothing official on it.

The PoserFusion plugin for Cinema 4D still works fine with C4D R17 (some Forum voices say R19), with both old saved Poser files and saved file from the new 11.2 version. Basic C4D workflow is…

1. Top menu in C4D. Plugins | Poser. Tell C4D where to find the Poser runtime, if needed.

2. Clicking this adds a ‘Poser Object’ to the panel showing the list of scene content and materials, so that C4D knows how to handle what it’s about to have loaded.

3. In the panel beneath, Find “Object Properties”. Click the “…” button and load your Poser file from there.

4. Then once the Poser scene has loaded in, it will lack materials. Click “Load Materials” to have C4D go get the Poser materials from your runtime and load them onto the scene.

You can’t send cameras across, so you can’t later composite 1:1 with a C4D render and a Poser render.

For those finding this post in the future: this relates to the handover of Poser 11 from Smith Micro to new owners Renderosity, which happened this weekend with the 11.2 update.

Poser 11.2 install – an unofficial guide to the free content bundles

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Yesterday I posted a install guide for 11.2. Today it’s the turn of the content bundles.

What’s actually in the ‘new and improved’ free content bundles for buyers and owners of the newly released Poser 11.2?

Below is my annotated listing of key .ZIP files. These are manually extracted, and then you copy-paste-merge the ../runtime/ to your Poser runtime directory/folder…

C:\Users\Public\Documents\Poser 11 Content\Runtime

Then they show up in Poser, once the re-indexing has finished.

1) Common Files:

HiveWire3D_BabyLuna.zip

HiveWire3D_DawnBaseContent.zip

HiveWire3D_DawnBaseFigureAndTextures.zip

HiveWire3D_DuskBaseContentAndGorilla.zip

HiveWire3D_DuskBaseTextures.zip

HiveWire3D_Horse.zip

All the above are obvious. Look these up on the HiveWire Store if you’re unfamiliar with them. Baby Luna, and the generic Adult Dawn and her male partner Dusk. Dusk has a very good Gorilla makeover, for which there’s paid Poser Fur and a pose-pack at the HiveWire Store. I’m slightly tempted by the Gorilla, but without the paid-for fur and poses there’s not much point.

Also the Hivewire Horse base, for which there are many add-ons and makeovers at HiveWire.

LaFemmeContent_01.zip

LaFemmeContent_02.zip

LaFemmeContent_03.zip

La Femme is the flagship Poser female figure. This is not La Femme herself, but rather the freebie bundle with the extra content such as clothes, hair. I noticed Georgia and Bennie hair and also pose presets for these hairs.

Also noticed were two large sets of quality expressions. Girl Gear, Sweet Rebel and Elf clothing. Romantic Dress, Daisy Dress, some t-shirts and sportswear and other bits. For most people this will be a must-have for the extras, even if they already have the La Femme base. Apparently new first-time users of Poser 11 will now see La Femme as the default ‘start-up scene’ character, so I guess her base figure must be in the main installer.

On the forums it was said that La Femme would also ship with some new total-makeover characters, but I think what they meant was a set of slightly different Femme faces…

PoserPremiumContent_Figures.zip

Maisie with Tempesta3D’s ‘Angel’ toon makeover and matching hair. You may want to try to toon Maisie in Preview, so you’ll need to know how to make her control chips invisible. It’s a single dial turn…

A few other characters including a ‘poison dwarf’ (UniDwarf 2018), and an unusual skeleton.

PoserPremiumContent_3DScenery_01.zip through 03.zip

All good scenery and building items, you’ll want these. Also a folder for Bryce skies, ported to Poser.

PoserPremiumContent_PropsAndTransportation.zip

Again, useful bits and pieces (see some of the visual previews below). A complete detailed VW camper-van with paint presets which seems new to me. Cool fantasy spears and FX for them, and seemingly new.

2) Legacy Files:

ZLegacyContent_Poser-Props.zip

This also has modern thriller-style scenes that shipped with Poser 11 when first released. Also some natural plants, among other things. Worth having.

ZLegacyContent_Poser-Cartoons.zip

Robo-Kitty! Renderosity are missing a trick by hiding away SAK Robo Kitty (one of the best 3D characters ever made!) in this easily-overlooked legacy ZLegacyContent_Poser-Cartoons.zip file. Play to your strengths, Renderosity. Poser does superb tooning and this is still your leading free toon character, the toon equivalent of La Femme! Here, the Kitty is further hidden away, by being found under “Toys” once the .ZIP is installed.

The Robo-shark will also be fun for kids to make pictures with.

ZLegacyContent_Poser-Animals.zip

Some of the old Poser animals are still worth having, especially if you’re doing work with Poser’s real-time Comic Book rendering. The housecat still toons quite well. Some of the wild animals in particular are still useful, as they’re going to be in the distance in a scene and you’re likely to want a lot of them. They’re not heavy system resource users, so you can have herds and flocks in the hazy distance, or five giant octopii with poses etc.

ZLegacyContent_Poser-Hair.zip

You may also want this just for the P6 Jessi strand-hair, which can render relatively quickly in Firefly and then provides a good basis for over-painting or compositing more hair in Photoshop.

There are male James P6 equivalent hairs too. A pack of SuperFly shaders for this type of hair was recently released.

ZLegacyPoser11-installminimum_basic.zip

This has the useful ‘Primitives’ shape set (basic box, cone, pyramids, coils etc), and other things.

There’s no sign in this .ZIP of the PoserFusion plugins for Cinema4D etc. They’re not needed for Vue, at least up until Vue 2016. (I’ve no idea if the new subscription edition of Vue still works with Poser files or not). Where Maya/3DS/Lightwave/C4D users now get the PoserFusion plugins from is a bit of a mystery. Update: they’re here.

OK, I then merged the above extracted .ZIP files (but without Luna, Dawn/Dusk, Horse, Gorilla) into their own 10Gb runtime. Then I merged that super-merge with my existing Poser runtime, telling Windows to skip files if they already existed (“Skip these files”). Then I had PzDb re-index the runtime as a visual library with thumbnails. Here’s the pick result, had by scrolling through just “what’s new” for existing Poser 11 users.

Two big bundles of La Femme expressions. Here she has the Aurora La Femme character makeover.

Tropical desert-edge plants.

There’s much more than that, but those are my picks.

Now, finally, let your Poser re-index its content for 90 minutes while you go off and have a snack. It has a lot to re-index. Once the yellow wheel is pulsing (re-indexing), leave it to it, as you won’t find the new content otherwise and you may be wrestling with the software as the re-indexing process hogs your PC’s memory.

Also, I can confirm that drag-and-drop from the PzDB library software still works fine in Poser 11.2.

Poser 11.2 install – my workflow

Posted on by Posted in Poser, Spotted in the News, Tutorials 3 Comments

Poser 11.2 is available and here are my unofficial notes on the install procedure.

As I understand it, Poser in now 64-bit only, from version 11.2 onward.

1. Locate your file or email containing your Poser serial numbers. It’s possible they won’t be needed for the install, but you’ll need at least one of them to get the free content bundle at the download page. (Update: At this point you may want to start the Smith Micro Download Manager one last time and get the PoserFusion plugins).

2. Clear space on your hard-drive as required. Plan on having 30Gb spare, if you also download and un-zip all the bonus content. You’ll need space for the installer downloads, the install and its expanded runtime, and the bonus .zips and their extracted runtimes, before you then start deleting the installers.

3. Download the required files for Poser 11.2 and also access the free content .zips if required (those are behind a serial-number access box and can be added later if needed). At around 1.3Gb for the main files, I downloaded overnight and the servers were stable. Renderosity is using Amazon servers so they’re rock-solid.

4. If you’ve used Poser a lot, you’ll want to backup your preferences and customisation. On Windows, first navigate to C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\AppData\Roaming\Poser Pro\11 and make a .ZIP file containing what’s there.

It’s possible you also saved SuperFly custom or tweaked render presets to C:\Program Files\Smith Micro\Poser 11\Runtime\prefs\RenderPresets\SuperFly so check the dates there and .ZIP if needed.

You now have a ZIP backup of all your settings and preferences, preferred launch state, custom Sketch presets, custom render presets etc. Copy the .ZIP(s) somewhere safe.

5. Backup your installed Python scripts in the same way, from C:\Program Files\Smith Micro\Poser 11\Runtime\Python\poserScripts\ If Windows won’t let you make a .ZIP while within C:\Program Files then copy-paste the files out somewhere else. Also, did you edit your .ini file to have a script launch with Poser? If so, you’ll also want to be sure you have that too (poserStartup.py, should be in \poserScripts).

6. Backup C:\Users\Public\Documents\Poser 11 Content\Runtime\Libraries which is the Poser 11 native runtime where you’ve probably saved custom expressions and custom lights to. I know I had.

7. Selectively backup C:\Users\Public\Documents\Poser 11 Content\Runtime\Textures by sorting by date, then seeing what new folders you may have added there. For instance, I see I put the ‘Vince Banga’ SuperFly shader pack there when I first installed Poser, and wouldn’t want to lose those. You probably don’t want to save the entire default Textures folder, as it’s probably weighing in at 5Gb or more!

8. Ok, now close down Poser 11 if for some reason it’s running. Close down anything else that might get in the way of an install or hog memory etc.

9. Ok, start your downloaded ‘Install Poser 11.exe’ file. At 1.2Gb in size, expect Windows to ponder and prod the installer for 40 seconds before launching.

10. Once running, the Poser 11.2 installer wanted to backup, rather than use, my existing preferences. I had to explicitly tell it to use the old preferences…

I suspect this is probably a fairly vital step, so ponder it carefully.

11. Install took about five or six minutes. I decided not to launch Poser 11 on completion, as I wanted to run PoserSupport.exe as well. This may not be needed, as the main installer may have done this on my behalf already. I suspect that was the case, actually, as they were both placed in the same folder.

12. In the Start menu and on the desktop I now had shortcuts pointing to…

C:\Program Files\Smith Micro\Poser 11\Poser.exe

Interesting. Not to ..\Renderosity\.. ? Nope, seems not. The path to .exe is exactly the same as the old Poser. Perhaps if I had accepted ‘Backup preferences’ it would have been different?

13. Load ‘er up and… you may not actually need to paste in your serial number. I found I didn’t have to. Check Help / Registration. While you’re there you may want to un-check “Send usage data to…”.

On checking Help | About Poser you’ll see the new version number in the corner.

14. Load a scene and check your vital Python scripts. I had read in the Renderosity forums that ‘D3D’s XL – Extended Library’ no longer worked, but everything I needed still worked. These were checked by me and work…

* SceneToy 2014 (I see there’s now a new version of this, interestingly, but the old one works fine).

* SnapTo.

* Rust-Icator.

* D3D’s XS eXtended Shader Manager.

* D3D’s Render Firefly panel.

* Kabuking’s Poser Python tools.

* Dial Manager 2015 script.

* Snow Machine 2.3 (Firefly and Preview only) (not vital, but fun).

I see that we even have the Auxiliary Render Data drop-down restored to the Firefly render panel. Hurrah! It had gone missing a few incremental 11.1.x update versions ago. Now you no longer have to get to its functions by using D3D’s Render Firefly panel script. This is the easiest way to get a depth-pass render, now available to all since we all have Poser Pro now.

Drag-and-drop from the PzDB third-party library works fine, and works the same as it did before. ‘D3D’s XL – Extended Library’ is also set to get an update tweak to get it working again. There’s already a P3DO opening fix for the P3DO library plugin. Apparently the current Reality rendering plugin is broken and will need a minor update soon. Update: the fix is now available for Reality and D3D’s scripts.

15. The UI appears unchanged, and retained my preferred 1.20 scaling. I don’t see the Renderosity Store integration in the content library. Perhaps that only happens if you use the “Search” tab and click the cloud icon to “Show Remote Results”? I’ve never used that, as if I have to search I use the third-party PzDB library. So that’s good, there’s no ‘all-singing all dancing’ Store parked in the corner of my Poser.

So, it all went fairly smoothly for such a potentially precarious handover.

The PoserFusion plugins (connecting Poser with Cinema 4D etc) can no longer be accessed for download inside Poser itself (Help | PoserSupport), and nor are they currently in the list of bonus or legacy .ZIP files. Nor are they inside the more obvious .ZIPs there. Update: they’re here.

Files saved from Poser 11.2 load correctly in Vue 2016 R4.

I’ll make another post here when I see what’s in the bonus content download packs…

Update: it appears the Queue Manager can be installed by running the main installer again and choosing the relevant drop-down. Poser and Queue Manager version-numbers no longer need to align, in order to work together after install. (The later Poser 11.3 is said to also add a desktop shortcut to Queue Manager 11, after install).

Update: Updating to the next incremental version number (e.g. 11.2.271 to 11.2.284) appears to require a re-download of the 1.2Gb “Install Poser 11.exe”. That’s a bit of a drag, and also a risk, as presumably every time the user may forget to tick “Use Existing Preference Files”, in which case their custom presets and preferences are wiped. Take care when doing such an incremental upgrade.

Update: The DSON plugin (for auto-import of Genesis figures and .duf props from DAZ Studio) seems to work fine. Note that if you were for some reason running a 32-bit DSON plugin, you now need the 64-bit version of DSON. A 64-bit Poser can’t handle a 32-bit DSON plugin.

Update: .PSD Photoshop export, with renders saved out as layers, is fine.

Update: the serial number ‘ping’ to the server is said to be once every 28 days. Therefore Poser 11 should not auto-check with the licence server every time you load it.

Update: I added a script-fix link, for Reality and D3D (see above).

DAZ Store – freebie and $2.50 sale

Posted on by Posted in Freebies, Poser, Special Offers and Discounts, Spotted in the News Leave a comment

Currently free on the DAZ Store, the steampunk Riae Outfit for V4, with hair. The hair is a figure and ‘grown’ by Poser’s Hair Room, and thus doesn’t show up in Poser’s real-time comic-book mode. Here I’ve replaced the Riae Hair with Moetan’s Up_Hair which is short hair that works fine in Poser’s Preview.

The real-time Ink lines from Poser have here been run through Krita’s G’Mic filter (modified Hard Sketch).

Also, there’s a small sale on at the DAZ Store at present. You might usefully check your Wishlist. Here’s what I bagged for just $10, from the $2.50 page.

There’s a lot of Darkseal Poser stuff (much of it good for tooning, though steer clear of the BioSkins) and also a sale on old Cornucopia3D store models, all at $2.50 each. Note that the Render Passes tutorial I chose to take a look at weighs in at 1.7Gb (3.5 hours). It was made in 2013, so is likely out-of-date (update: yes it is, substantially). It uses Photoshop CS5 for the Photoshop bits.

The Medieval Village and SteamPunk Lost House, despite their size and detail are less than 50Mb each. They’re in unlocked .OBJ format, not Vue licence-locked.

I’m very pleased to get the Lost House. It had been on my Cornucopia3D store wish-list for a while, then the site vanished, and now I have the House for just $2.50! Nice.