All sidebar links checked by hand, repaired

All sidebar links on the blog have had their annual check by hand, and have been updated or deleted if necessary. A half-dozen more of the many old freebie site links now go to an archive at Archive.org, and I cannot guarantee that the .ZIP files will also still be accessible via Archive.org.

Smith Micro links are now fixed, among others. The MotionArtist link still goes to Smith Micro, because the download links for the final version are still hot — if you dig into the ‘farewell’ page.

Vue link also fixed.

3D&D’s wealth of free Poser D&D monsters and fanart is gone, but many of these are now starting to turn up on ShareCG.

Lost:

The greatest loss is Nursoda’s older freestuff at klopfholz .de. His newer freebies are all at Renderosity, but his older freebies are gone. The Free page was never saved by Archive.org (I checked). Or, almost gone… as the cunning multi-search-engine wrangler (eTools is your friend there…) can find at klopfholz…

Sleepy Hein
Psili ‘shrooms
Kali Underwear
Zwoggel
… and more.

If you like Nursoda’s figures, get the .ZIPs while they’re hot. The front page is ‘domain parking’, but the freebies are still there. For now. Sadly Archive.org still refuses to capture the Free pages, so I’m assuming a robots.txt file is still also active somewhere.

At summer 2021 we have also lost the software Topaz Clean 3.x, the best solution for de-grunging renders. Especially useful with Poser 11 for comics work… degrunge a colour flats render with Clean and then lay the pure lineart on top in Photoshop. It appears to have been taken off the market, so that Topaz can focus on their AI line of software. The last version is at Softpedia and was 3.1 (not 3.3, caused by Softpedia misunderstanding “3 3.1.0”; or 3.2, caused by a misunderstanding of “3.0.2”). Redirects at the Topaz site give the impression 3.x could be bundled in the $99 Topaz Studio 2, but there’s no mention of Clean on the Studio 2 page. Studio 2 does have an ‘AI Clear’ (not Clean) but the forums suggests it is weaker than Clean and aimed at RAW photographers and is not comparable. The old Clean 3 does appear to have been in the partly-free early editions of Topaz Studio 1.x (where the standalone version could do batch, interestingly) but was removed in the later Topaz Studio 2 and perhaps before. Topaz Studio 2 was a paid upgrade from a free Studio 1, to something not comparable. Sadly the free 1.x is no longer viable (installer stub only, modules, online log-in barriers after install) and there appears to be no viable replacement for Clean 3.x, just stuff for pro photographers with 48-megapixel SLR camera RAWs to process. As if they don’t already have enough tools to do that.

Added to the sidebar:

Mandelbulb3D. Can’t think why this was not on already. But it is now.

Several printed Poser books, now scanned and on Archive.org to ‘borrow’ as if from a public library.

Poser 2014 Reference Manual. Only a stub was installed with the software, you then had to get the full 950-page manual from Smith Micro.