Some highlights from 2020. I’ve probably missed a few, but here we go…
The good:
NVIDIA Studio Drivers for DAZ Studio.
Significantly faster CPU-only rendering in DAZ Studio, via an iRay update. Useful for those with 12+ fast CPU cores to run iRay.
Free Bridge plugins for DAZ Studio export.
The Poser 11.3 patch added support for the NVIDIA RTX 20 series graphics cards.
The official Smith Micro 2016 training DVD for Poser 11 was placed on YouTube, free in HD.
For much of the year, NeoWin Deals had the full Poser Pro 11 discounted at just $80.
Poser 12 Early Access appeared, with upgraded photoreal capabilities and speed. At a reasonable upgrade price too.
The PoserWorld store returned and added a lot of legacy content, and also opened its buffet membership scheme again.
A new heavyweight Scatter Tool for Poser. And the P.A.S.S. Watercolour Shaders for Poser turned up again, for free, at ArtStation.
Store discounting became more or less “all year round”, and software deals too. But the downside it it takes time to keep up with it all.
Another year of free Digital Art Live magazines.
Even more superb DAZ and Poser content.
The G’MIC filters were made into a Photoshop .8BF plugin.
Keyshot 10 released with (at last, apparently) proper transmap handling, re: hair and eyelashes.
“Draw on the screen” pen-monitors were bigger, abundantly available and far more affordable than a few years ago.
The bad:
Smith Micro abruptly removed their Poser forums and recorded webinars. But the full Forums were uploaded to Archive.org in a .ZIP, including the “safe for work” technical screenshots. The service packs and patches were also archived in public, but not (as yet) the PoserFusion plugins. (Update: the PoserFusion can be had via the Renderosity forums, where ‘Structure’ keeps an archive).
The unique MotionArtist motion-comics software was discontinued by Smith Micro, but at least they unlocked it before they went, re: the software “phoning home”.
The Poser 11.3 update apparently bjorked the DSON importer (thankfully I never upgraded to 11.3). (Update: Apparently fixed now, at summer 2021. But the DSON plugin is now no longer available)
DAZ Studio totally stopped working on the new Mac OS. So did Vue.
The DAZ Decimator plugin was being sold at $100.
Vue content/scene production comes to a halt. But Vue continues to very easily and effectively import Poser scenes, inc. in the latest subscription version.
The big HiveWire store is to close (closing sale is now on). But most of it will be moving to Renderosity. The lively forums remain.
The latest Blender 2.9.1 locks out a lot of users with low-end graphics cards (e.g. AMD with TeraScale 2 and 3) and refuses to load… until you buy a ‘worthy’ card.
A graphics-card drought, and massive price-gouging on eBay.
SketchUp desktop went subscription-only.
DeviantArt’s new ‘Eclipse’ UI. Ugh.
Wacom officially runs spyware on your PC… “”Wacom tablet drivers phone home with names, times of every app opened on your computer”.
The soft:
Too many nice software upgrades to mention, but especially notable…
MALT/BEER for Blender reached version 1.0 beta, bringing a proper NPR base to Blender.
Realistic Paint Studio 1.2, which has to be the best and friendliest desktop painting software yet.
A new version of the free Meshlab utility.
Comic Life continued its slow-but-sure regular upgrades for the desktop version.
AKVIS Decorator 7.0 appeared, no longer sluggish and with a 3x speed boost.
And of course… the marvel that is GigaPixel AI 5.3.
Here:
My new Technical search engine for Poser and DAZ information. Google Search, but without the spam and scams. Also useful for “where can I find…” searches.
Various working solutions were found and documented, here on this blog. Including Magic Billboards, Poser to Clip Studio in a script, detect and extract skin from a render, toggle all ‘light wires’ off for a Preview render in Poser, and much else.
A big overhaul of the links and other site things, in summer 2020.
Lots of cool new software was found or acquired, much of it free or budget-priced. MotionArtist was bagged from eBay, PhotoLine along with the free Paint.NET and its marvellous free plugin ecosystem, Atangeo Balancer, the free Microsoft ICE, Clip Studio (a $25 mis-fire, but useful for vectorising), GigaPixel AI, and numerous tools for correcting the warp on old postcards and colourising them. And of course numerous scripts and addons and plugins for Poser and DAZ, Photoshop and others.