News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Monthly Archives: October 2021

Winging it…

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I stumbled on a couple of interesting alternative possibilities re: curing the DAZ-to-Poser ‘butterfly wing’ eyelash problem, at least for Genesis 1 and 3. Get rid of the lashes altogether in DAZ, first.

1) A free set of G3F Morphs. One of which is…

‘No Lashes’ – embeds the lashes deep inside the head and scales them to a near microscopic size

Once loaded, found under: Parameters: Actor : Head : Face : “Eyelashes Hide”.

2) A free ‘No Eyelashes’ morph for Genesis 1. G1 is still useful for comic makers due to its great many creature and other morphs, and the ability to easily go to Poser 11 via DSON.

Once loaded, found under: Parameters: Actor : Head : Face : Eyes : “No Lashes”.

Works on a test Poser 11 import via DSON, and no “Sub-division OFF” is then needed there to fix the eyelashes.

Going Live…

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Well, my eBay bargain Asus Xtion Pro depth-sensing 3D camera has turned out to be better than expected. After trudging through an Autumn/Fall storm to pick it up, on opening the box it turns out to be… an Asus Xtion Pro Live. And thus, a later improved model and even more of an absolute bargain. Super.

The first Asus Xtion Pro was out for about a year before it was replaced by the later Live. This added a RGB camera and two microphones either side. It’s the model widely named by 2012-2018 software makers as their supported camera, alongside various early incarnations of the Kinect. It appears to support OpenNI 2.0 without needing to be flashed with new firmware.

Sadly though, this happy discovery means I shall never be able to tell readers if the first generation Xtion works with software X, Y or Z. As I now have no way of testing that.

Pitterbill, re-mapping blendshapes to morphs, in Faceshift…

Export .FBX from Poser, Binary, 2012 spec. Place in the \faceshift\targets working folder, along with any texture .fbm folder.

Open Faceshift. Tracking | Display | Target | Import. Import the .FBX. Pair jointNeck with Neck, and then the other morphs will appear. Align the head (better than seen here). Then match the targets, with the Pitterbill targets on sliders similar to Poser dials. Turn to 1.0 to activate the Pitterbill target.

Above we see the left blink being matched.

Release: MeshLab 2021.10

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MeshLab 2021.10 has been released. If you’ve missed the last few releases of this free open-source 3D mesh ‘Swiss Army Knife’, here some of what’s recently new…

* support for *.gltf, *.glb, *.nxs, *.nxz, *.e57.
* a brand-new plugin for exact mesh booleans.
* a new Python library for mesh batch processing (replaces old meshlabserver).
* a new “Texture Map Defragmentation” filter.
* a new Extra plugins for MeshLab GitHub repository.

Dinoraul sale

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On now, a 50% off Dinoraul sale. Lots of prehistoric creatures that veer toward monsters, a lake-full of ancient fish, and also lots of prehistoric trees. Also an Ice Age rhino and an early man.

Zipping through his store I noticed two I’d never seen before. Originally made for Poser 5/6, so I’m guessing they’re old Content Paradise creatures recently resurrected. Still too expensive for me at $8 each ($4 would do it), but now in the WishList. Good looking toony D&D-style monsters are always welcome in the runtime, and old textures don’t matter so much — now that we have up-scaling AI and the Poser 11 Comic Book mode.

Zock DR. Lives most of its life in a swamp-hole, one part below and another above water?

Maxer DR. Probably a flooded-swamp reed/mud-bank creature, usually half-submerged.

What’s new for Poser and DAZ in October 2021

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Halloween is coming up soon, so it’s about time for a slightly-early pick from the latest DAZ and Poser releases and resources which appeared during October 2021.

As usual, freebies are only here if they allow commercial use renders, or are obvious fan-art.

Once again, not everything at DAZ was looked at because of the usual “Out of Memory” browser crash on browsing back through the DAZ Store. Workstation desktop PC, masses of RAM, latest modern Chrome-based browser, only one browser tab open, pagination ‘on’ (i.e. not using infinite scrolling on the site). This is the only site this happens on. After three pages.

Science-fiction:

Ancient Sci-Fi Kitbash 3D Assets in OBJ at $5. Nicely done by Harry Rowland, and suitable for all sorts of ‘ancient alien civilisation ruins’ from steaming jungles to icy wastes. Note these are “suitable from far away establishing shots, middle distance and block outs” and your hero won’t be climbing them in close-up. Still, very usefully generic, and I imagine they’d work nicely with Vue ecosystems and atmospheres.

Stonemason’s new Urban Future 8, another in the series for DAZ Studio.

Big Spheric Lab by Cybertenko. A bit X-Men, but the ‘steely-eyed missile-men’ of the 1950s got to make such structures first. Thus I guess you don’t have to worry about copyright on this, as there’s clear ‘prior art’.

Sumerian Winged Disk with interior.

Need opponents for your fleet of Sumerian Winged Disks? Cybertenko has a new Mercury Starfighter for Poser, with M4 pilot pose.

Need some quick Zbrush robo pilots for your sci-fi squadrons? The new MopBot ZBrush tool is free.

The APC758 for DAZ.

Jetcarrier for DAZ Studio. Stylish, and looks even better from underneath…

Cat Girl super-heroine mask for G3F.

Kitbashers 096 MMG3M, which has unusual super-villain knuckle-dusters.

Bastard, a 2000AD-like toon security guard for Blender. Free, for Blender 2.81 or higher, and with materials. Loaded fine in Blender 2.83 but I saw no textures.

The free Respirator for Poser.

Steampunk:

Just one this month, the free Steampunk arm for G8M.

Fantasy:

Blood Orchid Diorama by Akri.

G8F Creation Kit, a Merchant Resource for creating new fantasy and other characters, with automatic extended licence. Nice. Let’s hope there’s the same for G3 soon, which is still an important target for facial mo-cap.

Fury for La Femme, a generic fantasy warrior outfit.

Carts of various rustic types, seemingly in .OBJ with textures.

A 3 Raven Court iRay Winter Expansion, for the ancient 3 Raven Court.

Halloween:

Radu for M4. Dracula’s young brother.

Gothic Veil For G8F

Free Clown Hair for G8.

Free Claws for Halloween!… but requires “Alyson 2”. “Alyson who?” She was the Poser 9 base female companion to Ryan 2 (Ryan2 in your runtime search), two figures that shipped free with Poser 9. Poser SR3 Ryan2 was apparently required to run Tyler GND. I’m fairly sure there was also a female equivalent of Tyler GND so presumably (being based on Alyson 2) the claws will also fit her. They may also fit Ryan2 / Tyler GND, at a guess.

Free Halloween Masks including a werewolf.

Places, landscapes, plants:

Boulevard Beach for Poser and Beach Volleyball court.

Tiny Plants: Flowering Sea Thrift. The sort of plant you might see on a windswept island.

A free 3D-scanned Stonewall for DAZ, with matching ground square.

HD Scans Garden Ponds. Not quite a sedate British garden pond, but I guess in other parts of the world a pond that looks like this might be a part of the garden.

Photo Props: Baseplant Construction Set 2 from ShaaraMuse3D. Scrubby edge-land plants.

Storybook:

Anime Jester for La Femme.

A free Buzzed Nape Short Bob for LaFemme, the Poser flagship female figure.

A free Cake in .OBJ format.

EV Thigh High Socks for La Femme.

Toon:

Iuri Hair for La Femme and more, good generic short hair that looks like it could take a tooning material and Comic Book ink lines quite easily.

Lazy Hair Brush Set for Clip Studio Paint. A one-stroke toon hair brush, new in from Japan.

Animals:

Horizontal Dogs. 28 different ‘laying down’ poses for the HiveWire Big Dog and Puppy, and bonus Hivewire Cat poses. See also the dog breeds at Philosopher’s Egg.

Nature’s Wonders: Bees of the World Vol. 2 by Ken G.

Historical:

Deepsea Egyptian Ancient Texture Add-On, which puts back the original colours that were scoured away by millenia of desert winds. It’s a texture set for the Deepsea Egyptian Ancient Temple.

Old Library, a super new setting for DAZ Studio. This is a “PC+ Exclusive” and it seems you can’t buy it without a PC+ membership at DAZ.

dForce Chemise a la Reine for G8F. Also a dForce Edith Outfit from the 1910s.

Sarantos v16, a sporty late 1960s car. For a more mundane ‘1950s France’ feel, the Fiat Toplino and trailer.

Free hippy Wild Star Glasses for Genesis 8.

An FG Old Fancy Printing Press, a complete 1960s/70s print-shop. Could be useful for a gangsters tale? Think ‘counterfeiters’.

Ancient Boards – Weathered Wood and Plank Shaders for iRay.

Pose and animation sets:

WMs Macho-Man group pose sets for G2 through G8. I guess you’re meant to substitute the man shown for someone with a bit more beefcake.

‘Abducted By Alien UFO’ Poses for G8. Well made, by the look of it. Might also be useful for ‘space stations attacks’ where the station loses gravity.

Classic Superhero Poses for Genesis 8M.

Seated Model Poses for Genesis 8 Male.

Tutorials and new YouTube playlists:

How to Mimic PBR – Understanding Texturing for Clothing and Skin Assets Tutorials. Bump up your knowledge of texturing, with this complete guide to emulating complex PBR-like textures in Poser and DAZ.

Kitbashing for Beginners – Dramatically Expand your Asset Library. Specifically aimed at widening the range of what you have for your male characters.

Poser talks: lip sync in Poser. A new ‘rescue’ playlist of early videos about the standalone Mimic LipSync Studio 3 for Poser (no longer sold, still works) and the native Talk Designer that’s still in Poser 11 and 12 (and now supports La Femme).

Utilities and scripts:

Free Blinking scripts. Add a new animation track, run the script, and 600 frames of eye blinking animation are auto-added to your Poser figure. Fixed up and working/expanded in Poser 11, and also caters for figures with differently named ‘blink’ dials.

MC render – render clothes only. Useful for making Library thumbnails for variant MATs in Poser. Also a figures only variant.

An archived set of free Loop and Chain-making scripts for Poser. Still working in Poser 11, though, for the ones tested.

A new Billboard Builder for DAZ Studio, which requires the new base C66 Graphics Plug-in.

Remove Vendor Link files from Poser. Vendors have started putting their store-link pictures in the Library.

And finally, Mags Master for Poser 12. An assistant to help with magnets. Poser 12 only.

Ok, that’s it for now. More picks next month.

Xtion and iClone

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Well, well. I find my new bargain depth-camera once worked with, of all things… iClone. To be specific, with iClone Pro 5 at 5.1 or above. Also required the Reallusion Mocap Device Plug-in v.1.1 (for the first Kinect for Xbox version, running the OpenNI 32-bit drivers). This plugin is not in the 5.x Resource Pack and is now utterly unavailable.

I discovered the iClone 5 compatibility because, many years ago, the official forum moderator stated of the Asus Xtion and iClone 5.x…

“The Asus Xtion will work with the Primesense/Open NI version of the plugin, but it lacks the advanced features of the Kinect For Windows version, including Near Mode and Head Rotation.”

This is confirmed by this screenshot, which shows the three mocap plugin packages then available with 5.1…

Great, though of course the Xtion camera owner must then have an archive somewhere of 5.x AND the first MoCap plugin (which had in it all the SDKs and other requirements). The latter was always a $150 purchase, never free or a bonus so far as I know, and I never bought it.

In practice, though… it may not have been terribly useful. It’s not as though you could do simultaneous face + body, driving the character in real-time WYSIWYG, and you’d be missing hand and head animations.

ArmorPaint 0.8

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Out now, a new version of ArmorPaint, the PBR materials maker and 3D paint-on-the-mesh painter. Think of it as ‘Substance Painter for $20, without the subscription shackle’.

0.8 is described as “a major update” and it apparently also now runs on Android and the iPad, and has a new Cloud-based assets library. It’s sort-of-free. Free to compile from source code, or buy it ready-to-install for $20.

Movmi

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On the sidebar ‘directory’ of this blog, there’s now a new “motion capture” set of eight links. All in some way Poser/DAZ friendly. Some of this software has been around a while, in fact so long that it’s vanished from sale (mocap software tends to do that).

But the latest software is Movmi V1.2.4 (October 2021), which is freeware. From one-man developer Ahmed Askar, making a free AI-powered 2D video-based motion detector software for Windows 7. Movmi has had mocap extraction capabilities added in the last few weeks. Export appears to be to .FBX for now?

It’s AI, so the download is hefty at 1.1Gb. He probably needs to get it on a torrent, in time for when the masses arrive, but for now it downloads fast. The lad’s got the right idea: Windows 7 support, free, no sign-up required and ‘just download it’.

Installing the Asus Xtion Pro in 2021

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I bagged a nice “why-not” eBay bargain on an old Kinect-a-like motion-capture device. Yes, there are still a few real low-price auction bargains from real people to be had there, among the vast herds of re-listers and ‘gadgets from China’ sellers. The Asus Xtion Pro depth-sensing camera is arriving soon. Unlike the early Kinect it’s Windows-friendly and can do good face capture, and unlike a luxury iPhone it doesn’t require a small mortgage and a contract-shackle.

But until it arrives, after much search/research, here are some useful files for getting an old Asus Xtion Pro depth-sensing camera running on Windows. The links and notes may help others.

1. The official Asus drivers ISO are here (V1164_1202.zip), and also the firmware patch (FWUpdate_5_8_22.zip) to enable this camera to use OpenNI 2.0 or higher. (Your Web browser may need to turn off some blockers to see the javascript selection options).

2. Get the ISO unzipped and mounted. WinCDEmu is a good free driverless mounting utility, if your Windows baulks at driver-based ISO mounters. It’s important to note that once installed the firmware will require you also have the Primesense SDK Version 20.4.4.0 installed. The firmware-patched camera can only use OpenNI 2.x with this present. The installer from the ISO should get you this, as you’ll see by checking Uninstall…

Here there seems to have been some slight confusion, that now needs clearing up. I’m pretty sure that this “Primesense SDK Version 20.4.4.0” is what the official drivers page slightly misleadingly calls the “SDK OPEN NI Package 20.4.2.20 or higher”, from the Asus Xtion Pro’s sensor maker Primesense. There does not actually appear to have been a “OPEN NI Package 20.4.2.20″… and I think OpenNI Windows x64 2.2.0.33 and Primesense SDK Version 20.4.4.0 were confused and conflated by the person writing the driver listing. Easily done.

3. After the ISO install, check in Windows Uninstall to see the above version number is correct. Then connect the camera to a USB 2.0 port. I’m not yet sure what order the following two steps are to be done in:

i) install the updated firmware. Your original model Asus Xtion Pro should now work with OpenNI 2.0 and most motion-capture / robotics / 3D scanning software that requires 2.x.

ii) install the OpenNi 2.x drivers, presumably from your new C:\Program Files\OpenNI2\Driver folder. Possibly Windows will auto-install a driver as soon as the camera is plugged in, in which case you may need to ‘Update driver’ later.

On removing and then plugging back in your camera, the Primesense drivers should then — judging by screenshots from an old Windows 7 install guide — become visible in Windows Device Manager. The device shows as a “Primesense Carmine 1.08” (branded at retail as Asus Xtion).

OpenNI Cookbook has three pages which may help with this part of the process.

4. But the ISO appears to only install OpenNI 1.5.5. Now then… why does the drivers page say it contains the 2.x version? For the moment I’m guessing that the answer is that the Primesense SDK Version 20.4.4.0 may actually contain OpenNI 2.2.0.x within it or perhaps even 2.4.4.x. That would sense for a SDK (software development kit).

But if not, then as I’ve done here, also install OpenNI 2.2 from OpenNI-Windows-x64-2.2.0.33.zip at Stucture.io. This is a worthy community archive and so far as I can tell this appears to be the ‘last good’ version, before evil megacorp Apple stepped in and snaffled all the patents for use with their luxury iPhone.

5. Ok, you may then have something that will enable the camera to work when plugged in. If you look under C:\Program Files you should see these new folders.

If you get conflicts between OpenNI1 and OpenNI2, I guess you just uninstall version 1.

Note that there is also a firmware patch to take the camera’s USB 2.0 to 3.0, though one firmware patch will be enough for me for now. There are also various 32-bit installer versions of the above, if your old software requires 32-bit.

Note also that the Asus Xtion Pro is not to be confused with the Asus Xtion Pro LIVE version, which came out a year later and added an RGB camera to what is otherwise 99.9% the same model. Some old software appears to require Asus Xtion Pro LIVE, and I’ll test if it can run from a ‘firmware-updated Asus Xtion Pro capable of OpenNI 2.x’.

I’ll keep readers informed about progress, and if all this works when the camera arrives and is plugged in.

The original Xtion Pro works with:

* Unity (via various plugins and projects, or DIY your own)

* iPi Recorder + iPi Mocap Studio (body only, round-trips .BVH from Poser and DAZ)

* Fastmocap Professional (export supposedly via .BVH targets for M4 and Poser 6 and 8, body only – but see this Oct 2014 review before buying).

* Visikord (motion-controlled music for VJs, art installations, haunted houses etc).

* UNREAL4MIRROR (Virtual fitting / dressing mirror plugin for Unreal Engine 4).

* “The Claw is an arcade machine with futuristic controls. We replaced the traditional joystick and push button” with the Asus Xtion Pro.

* iClone 5.1 + one of three MoCap Plugins then offered (the latter now deeply unavailable).

* Blender (human motions automatically laid along timeline, to control a water surface).

* Artec Studio (scan 3D objects to meshes).

* Should work with most other object-scanner software. No textures, as that would also require the slightly later Xtion Pro Live’s added RGB camera. But ArmorPaint would do the job on the mesh fairly easily.

* Personify Presenter.

* Nuitrack.

* Faceshift (Facial mo-cap. Defunct now, purchased and killed by Apple. Later versions required(?) Xtion Live. But at 2015 they stated “All available cameras which produce good tracking quality are publicly supported by us or will be shortly. In 2015 you could get “a perpetual licence for non-commercial use for $150”, and don’t you now wish you did?).

* Matlab (for science/data analysis).

* GV-3D People Counter (counts the number of people entering a space).

Can also save a capture to an .ONI (OpenNI) file that appears to be .BVH-like… in that it packs all the frames as prerecorded skeleton movement data. This can be loaded to Unity via OpenNIContext. In addition, the .ONI timestamps can be queried with code, it’s said.

Also used in various robotics, medical, science projects etc. It has even been used in farming, as a “3D cow scanner” to detect lameness.

Fitted to some drones by ambitious drone-ers.

Also natively “supports push, wave, and tap gestures” for control of Windows software, and at launch shipped with the Kylo Browser (gesture-based Web browsing). Make “simple rotation gestures to zoom-out and zoom-in”, which sounds like it could get interesting with large digital maps.

At launch in Spring 2012, the list of compatible games included…

* SEGA’s Virtua Tennis 4.

* EA’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.

* Capcom’s Street Fighter 4.

* Rovio’s Angry Birds.

* Beatbooster was a slightly later flagship sci-fi racing/exercise game for the device. Judging by YouTube videos, not one for gamers who dislike motion-sickness. Seems to have vanished.

* Related to games, the TurboTuscany demo. World’s first VR headset with full-body tracking, which used the first Xtion.

Collapsing code in Visual Studio Code

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The free desktop PC software Microsoft Visual Studio Code (‘VSC’) is a sort of super Notepad++. It’s what you now want in order to copy-paste coloured code into the Renderosity Python forum, since a recent back-end forum update. Notepad++ on its own can’t do that particular job.

Here’s a handy tip for editing a non-Python Poser file with VSC…

Crtl + K.
Then hands off keyboard.
Then Ctrl + 3.

This collapses the zillion lines of nested code, as you can see here. Much more comprehensible now…

Then Mouseover the blank bit, to reveal the arrows that expand the hidden code block…

Not sure if this also works in Microsoft’s newly launched online version of Visual Studio Code, but it probably does.

Also, in the sidebar of this blog I’ve added links to a couple of free community-made editors for Poser file types (.CR2, .PZ2, etc).

Poser 12 Early Access 12.0.703

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Poser 12 Early Access has a new version, 12.0.703 (13th October 2021) for download. The last one noticed here was 12.0.617 (early August 2021). According to the Changelog / Release Notes it’s been through seven unreleased iterations since then, with this current public release being the eighth such.

This time around Python has been a clear focus of the hard work. Various PoserPython fixes, and some nice extensions of Python’s capabilities in Poser 12:

– Python API method poser.PrefsLocation() now returns full path including filename of Poser prefs file.
– Python: Provided an easier way to identify a library “prop”.
– Python: Now accesses some of the Material Room context menu commands.
– Added material.SpecularMapFileName() function to Poser Python API.
– Added support for addons-style third-party Python scripts that load at start-up.
– Added method to find a parameter specifically by internal name.
– Python API event now recognises when user has switched to another room.

Many more Python changes are detailed in the full Changelog / Release Notes.

I also see notes of various work done on Animation Sets/AnimSets and also the Material Room. Collapsible hierarchy. Also some small UI fixes, and the Japanese translation of Poser gets another tweak.

Lots of fixes for installing downloaded purchased content and scripts, too.