News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Monthly Archives: November 2019

BodyPix 2.0

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Google has released the free BodyPix 2.0. This offers automatic identification of people against a relatively noisy background, and then spots and tracks each person’s twenty-four body parts. It then segments, ID’s and colours each body-part. It can do this even while being fed around 20-25 frames per second, on fairly standard hardware such as an iPhone.

Version 2.0 adds “multi-person support and improved accuracy”.

They also offer the sister-software PoseNet, enabling a basic emulation of what a Kinect does but via standard Webcams…

both BodyPix and PoseNet can be used without installation and just a few lines of code. You don’t need any specialized lenses to use these models — they work with any basic webcam or mobile camera. And finally users can access these applications by just opening a url. Since all computing is done on device, the data stays private. For all these reasons, we think BodyPix is easily accessible as a tool for artists, creative coders, and those new to programming.

So… how to plug this stuff into a nice little DAZ/Poser-friendly Webcam utility? One that, at the flick of a drop-down menu, will happily real-time puppet and animate any stock figure from an Aiko 3 up to a G8 or La Femme?

“Meanwhile, in another part of town…”

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Comic Life 3.5.12 update for Windows and Mac, released a week ago.

I see that Packt have a pretty good free chapter from one of their how-to-books that goes in-depth on how advanced users can get the most out of setting up Comic Life 3. Unfortunately the PDF utterly lacks metadata or footers/headers, but the number in the file-name reveals it to have been part of their Manga Studio 5 Beginner’s Guide book. Only the expensive Manga Studio EX version has multi-page documents, so presumably that’s why they were suggesting the need to use Comic Life with the budget version of Manga Studio (now Clip Studio).

The over-the-top fantasy weapons shop

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The DAZ Store currently has a genuine $1 sale on 145 items. Loads and loads of over-the-top fantasy weapons and also a few shields, so it’s a bonanza if that’s what you want. No need to buy other items to ‘qualify’ for the $1 purchase.

Also noted at $1 were V4 Moon Broom Poses for riding a flying boomstick (the Moon Broom, free at DAZ); Naturals3 – Morphing Tree Trunk 1 for foreground use in a picture; RDNA Atmospherics – Fog which is an old but still useful set of middle-distance fog props for Poser; and a set of V4.2 Hand Poses for hands only. 3D Bubbles also looks like fun.

RTX for Poser?

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News today…

“Nvidia has announced NVIDIA Studio Driver that supports RTX-accelerated ray tracing in … Blender Cycles …”

Interesting. Poser runs Blender Cycles under the name “SuperFly”, so I can imagine a Poser 12 that plugs in the latest RTX-supporting version of Cycles… and thus supports RTX graphics cards? Or would it be automatically detected as being Cycles, and supported, if the correct NVIDIA Studio Driver was installed?

DAZ Studio already supports RTX.

F-clone at $33

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Some may remember F-clone from about three years ago. It’s “expression capture” software that outputs to the DAZ/Poser .PZ2 file format. When last seen F-clone was in an over-priced $199 version 1.0, and the results were apparently a little basic.

Now it’s in 1.12, has a free trial, and is currently on sale for $33 for personal use. It’s nothing to do with iClone, despite the name.

I got it working with an 2008 HD (1280px) Microsoft zoom-able webcam I picked up in a sale way back. I was pleased to find there are now Windows 8 drivers for the cam at last, yay! So it was worth keeping it in a drawer all these years. Seems to work best when the highest res in the webcam is selected, and the initial calibration is good.

Even in poor lighting conditions F-clone gave me results. However, once the facial data was captured the “Video processing…” then took so long, even on a mere 20 second clip, that I gave up on it for a few hours. Possibly it doesn’t like also capturing audio as well as video, though it appears to have this capability.

But returning to it after a PC reboot solved these problems instantly, and another 17 second capture resulted in a near-instant saving out of the finished .PZ2 animation to the desktop.

I then dragged and dropped the animation into DAZ Studio and onto a Genesis 2 base figure. I left “Limits on” for the figure and got a nice subtle idle animation. I then tried a G3F and turned “Limits off” on import of the animation, and got a much more expressive animation. G8F also took the animation, and the movement was quite nice. But the best was the G3F. Apparently G3 was the first Genesis to have facial bones, and the F-clone software is obviously targeted on those. The clue here is in the name of its file output: F_Clone_Daz_Genesis3_0.pz2

In Poser there was very little success, obviously because the animation process was targeting Genesis 3 which is a DAZ figure. Though Star and Doctor Pitterbill took head and eye movements quite well, but not the mouth movements. But for some that may actually be a feature, since it would allow you to lay in another “track” of mouth animation (e.g. from the Talk Designer in Poser) and another for blinks. That was about the limit of the success in Poser, with limited testing on A3, V4 and M4, and La Femme. Note that for Poser you have to add enough frames first (i.e. 3000) otherwise the .PZ2 will only animate the default ‘first 30 frames’ and you will likely get a ‘nodding dog’.

So… I was idly expecting F-clone to only target the older DAZ/Poser characters, but I found the reverse. It works on Genesis 3 to 8. The Star 2.0 toon figure (G3) also works very well.

Add eye-blinks to G3 with the free EyeBlink Plugin which writes a timeline for them.

For $33 and with very easy .PZ2 output, it may be worth trying the free trial if you need to make long facial animations for your G3-G8. It also has sliders for smoothing and boosting, and for targeting of “toony faced” characters. With better light, in a proper mini-studio, and with calibration, you may find it has value for more expressive / subtle animations too. Perhaps even lipsync, though there are likely better tools for that if you’re serious about story-and-dialogue movie-making.

The .PZ2 files are human-readable text, so a little converter utility seems possible.

Incidentally, it seems there’s no cheap/free software that can input any still picture or short video clip of an expressive face, and then pop out a .BVH which can be dropped onto a 3D character so that they take the same expression(s). Perhaps there should be? Unless perhaps it’s actually in F-clone and I just haven’t found that feature yet?

Update: Tested on Windows 7 with the same webcam using older Lifecam 3.22 drivers (possibly geared to Win 7?). Seems to work much better even in low light. Note also that F-clone will only launch from the C: drive, so if you have problems launching that may be it.

Update: If anyone was thinking of making a converter script, here are the actor labels that are in the .PZ2 file. Here we see why mouth is not affected when applied to a Poser figure. All the action is going on in the lips and jaw.

actor head

actor lowerJaw

actor lowerFaceRig

actor lNasolabialLower

actor rNasolabialLower

actor lNasolabialMouthCorner

actor rNasolabialMouthCorner

actor lLipCorner

actor lLipLowerOuter

actor lLipLowerInner

actor LipLowerMiddle

actor rLipLowerInner

actor rLipLowerOuter

actor rLipCorner

actor LipBelow

actor Chin

actor lCheekLower

actor rCheekLower

actor BelowJaw

actor lJawClench

actor rJawClench

actor upperFaceRig

actor rBrowInner

actor rBrowMid

actor rBrowOuter

actor lBrowInner

actor lBrowMid

actor lBrowOuter

actor CenterBrow

actor MidNoseBridge

actor lEyelidInner

actor lEyelidUpperInner

actor lEyelidUpper

actor lEyelidUpperOuter

actor lEyelidOuter

actor lEyelidLowerOuter

actor lEyelidLower

actor lEyelidLowerInner

actor rEyelidInner

actor rEyelidUpperInner

actor rEyelidUpper

actor rEyelidUpperOuter

actor rEyelidOuter

actor rEyelidLowerOuter

actor rEyelidLower

actor rEyelidLowerInner

actor lSquintInner

actor lSquintOuter

actor rSquintInner

actor rSquintOuter

actor lCheekUpper

actor rCheekUpper

actor Nose

actor lNostril

actor rNostril

actor lLipBelowNose

actor rLipBelowNose

actor lLipUpperOuter

actor lLipUpperInner

actor LipUpperMiddle

actor rLipUpperInner

actor rLipUpperOuter

actor lLipNasolabialCrease

actor rLipNasolabialCrease

actor lNasolabialUpper

actor rNasolabialUpper

actor lNasolabialMiddle

actor rNasolabialMiddle

actor lEye

actor rEye

However, f-Clone can live-broadcast the following data via a websocket…

Head rotation X
Head rotation Y
Head rotation Z
Brow Left UP
Brow Left Down
Brow Right UP
Brow Right Down
Brow Centering
Brow outer left down
Brow outer right down
Eye Close Left
Eye Close Right
Mouse Open [he means mouth]
Mouse Left Smile
Mouse Right Smile
Mouse Left Spread
Mouse Right Spread
Mouse Left Frawn [he means frown]
Mouse Right Frawn
Mouse Left Centering
Mouse Right Centering
Cheek Left UP
Cheek Right UP
Left Eye Rotation X
Left Eye Rotation Y
Left Eye Rotation Z
Right Eye Rotation X
Right Eye Rotation Y
Right Eye Rotation Z

The .CSV output also has the same labels, though the .FBX appears to have the Genesis 3 labels. Thus it may be possible to make a .CSV to Poser .PZ2 converter. There is a csv_to_bvh.py for Blender which looks a promising converter template, though it fails in Poser 11 and VSC – it appears it can only run from Blender due to its need for the import BYP module. There is also a csv.to.bvh converter script, which seems to be in the R language?

But since there are now Websocket clients for Python the F-clone software could be a way of driving a Poser face in real-time in the viewport. f-Clone can output a real-time mo-cap stream via a websocket.

Superhero or Supervillain?

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“Superhero or Supervillain?” asked the New York Times on 13th November 2019 ($ paywall). “Technology’s Role Changes Comic Books” was the key thrust of the article, and that a change to computers hasn’t been quite as rapid as was once hoped in the white heat of the 1990s computer boom. Here’s the gist of the rest of it…

The “job of colorist and letterer has changed and been completely taken over by the computer … used to be a good inker was the best way to elevate a penciler’s work. Nowadays it’s a good colorist”. This is aided by better printing presses and nicer paper. Photoshop being the workhorse for colouring, on a Cintiq. A few will even “digitally color the main characters and paint the watercolor backgrounds by hand.”

The letterer “adds all the word balloons, editorial captions and sound effects to the page”. While he gets paid less to do more, due to the computer, he can still make more than the actual artist — due to the number of pages that can be zipped through in a day. Pro letterers working for big publishers tend to use Adobe Illustrator, and a few still even claim to do freehand lettering inside Illustrator.

Nothing all that insightful then, and the article is a bit lazy in not even mentioning 3D and Clip Studio and Poser and ComicCraft fonts. But I guess it helps to educate the masses a little.

DAZ Studio to Blender: the options

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DAZ Studio to Blender 2.8 is a somewhat interesting possibility, re: getting “free real-time rendering” of a static scene in open source software. Without the $1,000 cost of an RTX graphics card + new PSU for real-time ray-tracing (now supported in the latest DAZ Studio). Or the faffing around and cost of converting figures for real-time in iClone.

Another reason you might want to do this it to get the real-time NPR comics-making possibilities of Blender’s Eevee. Although Eevee-with-toon-shaders is still very much a work-in-progress, and seems likely to remain so for a few years yet. I suspect that “really real-time” options like U-Render may yet overtake Eevee, using OpenGL real-time rendering that’s i) not shackled to a game-engine; and ii) is graphics-card agnostic. While advanced OpenGL may never give iRay-quality results on DAZ characters, even with a good texture conversion-script, one imagines that the NPR tooning capabilities should be comparable to those of a mature Eevee.

DAZ to Blender:

Anyway, the best three DAZ to Blender bridge options I can find at the end of 2019 appear to be:

* The Japanese DAZtoBlender8 is $15 on GumRoad and also on Booth priced in Japanese Yen. Dated August 2019. Is specifically designed to take Genesis 8 figures into Blender 2.8 and higher. Seems to be made by a very dedicated Japanese guy, looks like it works well, and can handle animations and geografts. Has some basic English translation on the videos and there’s a PDF manual in English with screenshots.

* The free Diffeomorphic: Daz Importer version 1.4. Import static .DUF scene/character files into Blender, though some texture tweaking is to be expected after import. The 1.4 version is dated August 2019, and is said to work with Blender 2.8.

* The free mcjTeleBlenderFBX, dated 6th October 2019. But it’s not ideal. Note that the maker admits that… “By default the FBX import/export process messes the animation and the materials are poor”.

One could also do a simple OBJ export of a posed character. Then spend lots of time wrangling materials in Blender.

MangaName 2

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Japan’s MediBang released their updated MangaName 2.0 Android app, back in the summer. Available free on Amazon, it works on the Kindle Fire HD 10″. Also available on Google Play.

It’s a fine simple tool to create a rough comics storyboard, and is unique in being geared to multi-page comics storyboarding rather than screen animation. It appears to be ad-free. It’s a little temperamental on the Kindle HD, but you get used to how it needs things to be done.

Sadly they appear to have removed the multi-page manager feature from their main MediBang Paint desktop Windows software. But this little app still works fine for multi-page planning and re-ordering.

Cartoon w/ Line for hard shadows

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In Poser 11, the “Cartoon with Line” real-time display mode is another possible way of getting shadows. I’ve usually avoided using it as a shadows layer, because it doesn’t handle eyes or transparency well (e.g. trans-mapped eyelashes appear as oblong blocks), even though it can be rendered to a Preview render in a fraction of a second. But then I wondered… can its problems be lessened in Photoshop, if the layer-blending is subtle and if I find the right blend-mode?

As you can see here, in Photoshop it can be made to blend nicely into my new Poser custom Sketch preset (‘Flat Oils’ at 1800px, flattening and ‘painting-erizing’ while retaining most detail), and it provides shadows that look like part of the artwork. They are also colourised to match the base, while retaining hardness (though a slight blur help them to blend in further). Laying and blending the ink lines from the Comic Book mode completes the hand-done effect, and adding to the hand-made feel is that the inks don’t quite fit the Sketch-rendered colour base layer.

So it’s another way of getting a ‘hard’ shadows layer, rather than a soft AO or similarly fuzzier shadows render. But note that one would need to manually erase trans-mapped sections, such as eye-lashes, or more likely just remove them entirely from the base model.

The light here is the un-altered “Dusk by Ocean” IBL AO light that ships with Poser 11.

Lumion 10 and NPR

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Lumion 10.0 has released, it’s a $1,500 – $3,000 “real-time architectural visualisation software”, and I wouldn’t normally bother mentioning such things here. But 10.0 adds new arty NPR presets…

“an experimental new Artist Styles feature, which uses AI techniques to stylise renders to look like the work of famous painters.”

Albeit which what appears to be a hefty render time. It’s not ‘NPR in real-time’, even on the sort of render rigs that architects have access to.

Waves from Japan

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My thanks to a friendly Poser user and comics producer in Japan, for telling me about the standard “Dusk by Ocean” IBL AO that ships with Poser 11.

As you can see here on this Mavka demo I threw together, this gives a subtly shadowed effect when using the real-time Comic Book Preview. Slightly akin to one of those padded plastic-vinyl ‘puffa-stickers’ collected by kids. But it doesn’t immediately scream ‘3D model’ to the viewer.

It’s very easy to apply, just two clicks. It seems at first glance to be a possible replacement for subtle blending-in of a shadows and/or AO layer using Photoshop, on certain types of de-grunged and somewhat pre-tooned characters. It works less well on a default character with grungy clothing and skin meant for Firefly.

Although one would ideally still want to have such a highlights layer for blending.

Along with the gamma-changing script that ships with Poser, which can be used to lighten-up dark grungy clothing textures, this seems like yet another piece in the puzzle of efficient comics production with Poser.

Dimension3D scripts – free Poser 11.2 fix available

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If you run the latest Poser 11.2.x., there are a couple of third-party Poser scripts that won’t work because… “unexpected version of Poser”, or gnomic error-messages to that effect.

All my existing scripts worked fine after the 11.2.x. update, so I didn’t need to investigate a fix. But then last week I purchased Dimension3D’s $9 eXtended Access. I found it was one of the affected script utilities.

But I’m pleased to find that it’s now fixed. Poser wizard SnarlyGribbly has kindly created a small AVFix script. It’s available free at the Dutch PoserLounge site, and works fine. (That page and .zip are now also archived to Archive.org, for safekeeping).

The installation instructions for AVFix are clear and straightforward. To help jog my memory in future, I installed the fix to a folder named “Snarlygribbly – fix Poser 112 errors” rather than simply “Snarlygribbly” as suggested. The fix script still worked fine.

Once installed I… 1) run the AVFix once, then 2) start my new ‘XA – Toolbar’. I find the fix will also enable the launch of the ‘XA – Content Library’ in the same way, though I use PzDB these days. Dimension3D’s Extended Shader Manager does not need the fix. The fix is also said to cure the Reality plugin launch problem, and will presumably do until the new open-source Reality version arrives which supports Poser 11.2.x or higher.

I’ve updated my Python scripts for Poser 11 page, with a link to the fix.

La Femme Pro 1.1 – 50% off

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The La Femme 1.1 Pro base, currently at a 50% discount at Renderosity. The Standard or ‘Educational’ version now ships free with Poser Pro 11.2, but this is the Pro Femme. It’s very difficult to work out what “Pro” gives you, in among the rather technical readme and store blurb. They need a marketeer’s first paragraph, I’d suggest, and to hide the techie specs under a drop-down. But after some digging in the Forums one finds that, basically, Pro is…

* anatomically correct in all respects, inc. genitals.
* compatible with HD (high definition) morphs.

Incidentally, she doesn’t have to look like Princess Di. She’s as adaptable as a G8F and can also look like this or this. Be warned that, rather oddly, many La Femme makeovers still don’t appear to come with SuperFly skin, and thus render to black skin.

‘Buy our shares, investors… we have talking cats!’

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Oh dear, Adobe wants to do talking cats. Their “Project Sweet Talk” aims to go head-to-head with the existing and very mature CrazyTalk from Reallusion. In a demo this week the only difference appears to be auto-identification of where the mouth and eyebrows are…

“The [Adobe] system works with any unprepared image, identifying and deforming facial features to generate mouth shapes and, to a lesser extent, eye and brow movements matching the audio file.”

But if CrazyTalk doesn’t already precisely auto-select the lips and eyes, then it’s a feature that can’t be too far off. How difficult is it, anyway, to just manually add a half-dozen control points to help guide the software? It’s part of the fun, especially for kiddie-oriented software.