News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Monthly Archives: January 2023

Poser 13 dated, new Cycles

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Some official news of the Poser 13 Release.

* Aiming for a March 2023 release.

* Queue Manager will now support the PostFX processing panel, and also GPU rendering. Useful for animators.

* “Both CPU and GPU-based renders will be significantly faster using the updated SuperFly render engine.”

So that latter point means the newer Blender Cycles render-engine, of which Superfly is a re-branded version. Cycles has “a massive performance boost” back in April 2021, and I’d assume that’s the version Poser 13 will be upgrading to.

I would imagine that the very under-powered PostFX processing panel will also get some care and attention. It’s the obvious and logical thing to enhance, in terms of building on Poser’s unique market niche in fast and commercially-useful non-photoreal rendering from 3D (e.g. real-time Comic-book mode and Sketch rendering).

New for Poser and DAZ, December/January 2023

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Welcome to another survey and personal pick of new Poser and DAZ content, since my last survey in mid December 2022.

Science fiction:

Talyn and Taron for G8.

Need an enemy for Talyn and Taron? There’s the new HF Mynions for Genesis 8 Male.

A TRON-style Phenolic Sphere for DAZ Studio.

A free Radio Telescope Dish in a ruined and unruined version, for Poser and in .OBJ format for Vue etc.

Samara Hair, a nice free generic sci-fi cut for DAZ Carrara.

Simarter Coat Stand. With a bit of re-texturing it could also be many things, from a science-lab device to a bird-feeder.

Steampunk:

A free steampunk-type Flashlight lamp.

Holiday Hats Volume 02 for G8F, with a couple of suitable ones.

Free 8 Hats For Genesis 8 Male, some steampunky and one noir in a The Shadow sort of way. Currently broken, but hopefully soon to be fixed.

A free fake handlebar mustache, for your inept steampunk spies.

Fantasy:

Nosferatu Male for Genesis 9. Super, looks like he has lots of character.

EA Exodus Pouch Freebie for G8. A worn medieval type water-bottle. Requires the EA Exodus Outfit for Genesis 8.

DMs Novum Crossing. A new set and matching light-set from DM.

Toon:

Stylised v2 for G8F. I assume this semi-toon figure is original rather than fan-art, but check carefully before commercial use.

MightyMite Headgear 014 comic-book bases for G8. Including a tight turban with gem.

Stylized Caveman, Hair, and Accessories for G8.

Lots of G8 fan-art figures from Shinteo. Not for commercial use, obviously.

Storybook:

The excellent new Chull figure by Nursoda, for Poser and DAZ Studio.

Free, 15 Expression Presets for Chull.

Free Vagabond textures for Nursoda’s new Chull figures..

Free DA-Eyes for Chull by Nursoda.

RA for Chull, a paid textures makeover. Also Colours for Chull Hair in DAZ Studio.

Free morphs for a more feminine body for Nursoda’s Chull.

A free texture set for a House Painter for Hein Sailor, by Nursoda. Also a free Casey Jones type Train Conductor for Hein Sailor. I think I’ve seen these before, but they’re new on Renderosity Freestuff.

Landscape:

Flinks Rolling Hills – Snowfall for Poser. And Flinks Rolling Hills – Winter Grass.

ShaaraMuse3D’s Ancient Forest Path as a modular kit for Poser and DAZ Studio.

Stranded, a desert scene for DAZ Studio.

A YouTube tutorial on creating your first scene in Terragen 4.6.

History:

Yes another army of Vikings has landed on the DAZ Store.

Ancient Roman Lictor clothing and props for G8M. And a Legatus Legionis army leader.

A free giant-sized Castaway Raft.

A ye Olde River-Ferry Raft capable of taking horses and livestock, free.

Ken Gilliland’s Vintage Furnishings: 1920s-30s kitchen, bathroom, lighting set.

Free WASP, Fly-Girls, USSAF bomber girls, all for Victoria 3.

1940s Telephone Noir set.

Alfred Hitchcock for M3 low-res for Poser. Make an army of low-poly Scary Hitchocks!

1950s type Industrial Warehouse Conveyer or DAZ Studio. Could also be useful for a ‘Santa’s elves’ type workshop. with some Christmas makeover.

Universal Sailor: Captain for G8M.

An early ’80s dForce Boy George outfit for G8.

Materials, textures:

Teatime! Tea Shaders for iRay, a free set for tea and tea-like liquids.

Utilities, scripts:

G9 to G8 morphs, free.

Quick Cam for Poser 12 as a panel.

PBR Go Physical for Poser 12, apparently “1-Click PhysicalSurface materials creation out of your existing Poser Surface materials”.

Tutorials:

Pros and Cons of printing Poser/DAZ figures with a 3D resin printer.

That’s it for this month.

Release: ZBrush 2023

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ZBrush 2023 has been released. I think this is the first release after they were purchased by the Cinema4D owners Maxon. The last ZBrush I looked at here was ZBrush 2021. But I know that some in the Poser and DAZ crowd use ZBrush as a round-trip software, so the new 2023 version seems worth a quick look.

The big news is that the Redshift renderer is now integrated into ZBrush. But only for CPU rendering, not the GPUs that Redshift runs best on (GPU rendering is only unlocked if you pay a subscription). This ‘integrated Redshift’ comes with the required materials and PBR controls. It also supports bucket rendering.

Things I’m not sure about:

i) if it’s just for final renders or is also able to power the Viewport in near real-time (if you have good enough hardware for that) like iRay can in DAZ Studio;

ii) and if Redshift will render the many comic/toon non-photoreal presets (BPR/NPR) that ship with ZBrush. I suspect not, since those will be highly tuned for the existing BPR (“Best Preview Render”) in ZBrush.

There are also some updates to the bundled Sculptris Pro. Sculptris gets what’s said to be a new SubDivide slider control, and the ability to restore areas of higher polygons by painting the back onto the mesh.

There are still perpetual one-time payment ZBrush licences, but these are expensive and you no longer get free upgrades from earlier versions. I imagine that many users are going to be thinking that there are not enough benefits to upgrading to 2023. It doesn’t look like an incredibly feature-rich whizz-bang ‘no-brainer’ upgrade to me, especially given the high price.

Many will be sticking with what they have, and thinking of switching. For that there’s:

* Blender 3.2 or higher, if you can stomach the UI and have a suitable graphic card;

* the hugely-improved and relatively user-friendly 3DCoat 2022 (it’ll be very interesting to see what 3DCoat 2023 looks like), a nicely priced one-time purchase and works back to Windows 7;

* and everyone seems to have forgotten about Autodesk’s Mudbox, but it’s still out there and apparently many students still pass through it briefly at university;

* there are a few others in either OpenGL browser form or mobile app, such as the popular Nomad Sculpt with its real-time lighting.

Release: Vue 2023

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E-on has released their landscape software Vue in the 2023 version. This offers “feature parity between Creator and Professional” and unlimited render-size for Creator. Creator is now “personal non-commercial use only”, but that really shouldn’t affect most hobbyists and students.

Vue still has easy automatic Poser integration / import, on which see the recent test in Digital Art Live magazine #71…

Which means this new unified 2023 version now offers an easy Poser export route to…

3D Studio Max 2016 to 2023
Maya 2015 to 2023
Cinema4D R20 to 2023

Creator 2023 users now have access to these export options, since they are no longer locked away in the more costly version of Vue.

Renderosity Marketplace to update

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Advance news of a Upcoming Renderosity Marketplace Update. After the forthcoming changes…

* “Vendors should find a more streamlined experience”

* “Buyers will have an easier time managing purchases, as well as looking through their history or Wishlist.”

Sounds good. Also news of the Poser 13 release dating. They state a… “planned Q1 release of Poser 13” in 2023.

Find the G8.1 FASC face controller interface in DAZ Studio 4.21.x

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How to find and load the G8.1 FASC face controller interface in DAZ Studio 4.21.x.

1. You first install Genesis 8 Starter Essentials pack, if you have not already done so. It should be in your Library at the DAZ store. Possibly you have not installed this since before Genesis 8.1 was introduced, so you need to do it again — it now also includes the 8.1 stuff.

These are chunky downloads, and will take a while for those on slow connections. Extract the .ZIP and install as usual. Those with an install manager may do things differently, but this is the old-school way.

2. Load Genesis 8.1 from the DAZ Library (you do this from Genesis 8 Female or Male folder, not the 8.1 folder, for some reason).

3. In the Genesis 8 | Developer Kit folder…

4. … you will find the FACS (face controls interface) loader icon, the one with the powder-blue background…

5. Load this to a default Genesis 8.1 figure. You don’t need to first select the Head. In the hierarchy list you will now see that a FACS interface has been added.

6. Switch the DAZ Studio UI over to the Posing / Shaping tab, and the controls will become visible.

In practice, though, they appear to be far more trouble that they’ve worth. The huge main problem being that it’s very difficult to easily select each face controller ‘chip’, by simply clicking on it. 90% of the time, no matter what selection movement-type you have activated up-top…

… the attempt to select a face control chip by clicking on it fails to do or activate anything. Sometimes it selects and lets you work with it, but most of the time it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter where you click — the arrow, the plus sign, or exactly on the wireframe wire — most times nothing happens.

The alternative option of using the control sliders, which are alongside and do the same thing for each control chip, works fine. Though there you have the hassle of scrolling up and down the big list, and trying to work out what each control name refers to on the face.

The MiDaS touch

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MiDaS uses trained AI to take a normal 2D image and output a 3D depth-map. In Poser-speak it’s like Poser’s ‘auxiliary Z-depth’ pass or render.

Free and public, no sign-up needed. Just drag-and-drop your image. It can probably also be installed locally, though I haven’t looked at the requirements for that.

Once you have it you can use the usual Photoshop layer inversion/blending-mode tricks to create ‘depth-fog’ in the scene, where there was none before.

Testing Nursoda’s Chull

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On test, Nursoda’s new standalone figure-character called Chull for Poser and DAZ.

Toons reasonably well in Poser, under Comic Book mode + B&W line-art + different Display Modes.

Real-time Comic Book line-art, Sketch and a filtered colour Sketch render can easily combine in Photoshop for a Storybook look…

Takes poses from Aiko 3 / Hiro 3, Sam & Sadie, more or less. Old default Poser boy ‘Ben’ poses work well and he has a good ranges of generic standing/walking/running/sleeping poses. Chull also takes poses from Nursoda’s long-legged Koit, Fon, Kali, Malini, Pitterbill and even does a bit with poses from the Merpal and Ronk.

Expressions from other Nursoda figures mostly don’t work, but some from Wingen’s set are sort of useable.

Another great figure and outfit. The textures are dark/grungy as usual, but there’s a template pack to make lighter/plain-toony ones. Or you can just lift the gamma across the figure/clothes. Scripts | MaterialMods | Change Gamma | try 0.5 and omit the Transparency. Not undo-able except by running the script again.

Also works out-of-the-box in iRay for photoreal renders. Just make sure your DAZ Library knows where you Poser runtime is, and load from there. Poses and Expressions work in DAZ. No need to adjust textures or suchlike on clothes. You’ll only want to turn down skin-gloss (Surfaces / Specular) in DAZ, as there are hotspots (you can see one on the hand on the right of the picture, below). Take Specular Glossiness from 98% down to 20%, to fix most of this plastic-y shine.