3DModels launches its annual Car Render Challenge! for 3D creatives. Deadline is 4th December 2024.
Monthly Archives: September 2024
New for Poser & DAZ – August / September 2024
New for Poser and DAZ, in August and September 2024. My last such survey was on 1st August. So this is a two-month personal pick of what’s new in Poser and DAZ Studio, and also in some of the more interesting AI tools. As usual, freebies are listed only if commercial-use for renders.
Science-fiction:
Perhaps Earth’s last link with the Alpha Centuri relay-beacons, the old abandoned Parabolic Dish!
A free MegaCity Wall for DAZ.
Colony Surfaces II for Poser and DAZ…. “two 360-degree environments and 11 building and structure props” for the first pioneer colony on another world.
Squat Bot for DAZ. Probably destined to battle the also-new Cat-bot for supremacy of the alley-way.
Flinks Space 2 – Planets Add-On and Flinks Space 2 – Planets 2 Add-On for Poser and DAZ.
Power Worm for DAZ, a Dune / Star Wars sandworm lookalike. Plus the matching Danger in the Sand environment.
Futuristic Headdress Volume 2 for Genesis 9.
Oso Robot Servant for Genesis 9.
A Jetson’s style Retro Future scene for Poser. And a Retro Sci-Fi Spaceship to park on the lawn.
James T. Kirk 2.0, free for Poser. A head morph for M3 LowRes.
Steampunk:
XI Steampunk City, probably crawling with XI Steam Bots released by the dastardly moustache-twirling villain.
Lake Village set for Poser, by 1971s.
Magic Keys for Poser and DAZ. Including some with wings.
XI Fantasy Ornithopter. The NASA-style landing legs could probably be adapated to make it more steampunky.
FG Clock Collection of vintage clocks.
Fantasy:
Free base set of G8 Fantasy Shapes.
A somewhat hobbit-like Barnabus Ragwort figure for DAZ.
Halloween:
Sewer Lair for Poser from 1971s.
And deep in the sewer? Probably a pack of the new Worm Creatures for Poser. Great to see a new standalone unique Poser-monster released.
Worms probably controlled by the guy wearing the new Mad Scientist Outfit for G9.
HF Plutonium for Genesis 9, an Arabian-style Genie / Jinn figure for DAZ. For the clothes see Cybertenko’s new Three Kings – King Balthasar for Genesis 8 Males outfit.
There are also various Vanishing Point monsters going through the Renderosity store, which I think are either D&D or from permissive videogames. Careful of commercial use, on these.
2024 Fantasy Attic’s Annual Halloween Gifts freebies page. Live now, but as yet unfilled. I imagine that, as usual, quality donations of Poser / DAZ free content are welcome.
People and clothes:
The big release of the month is the base figure and newly quad-mesh Dawn 2 for Poser, plus Dawn 2 Head & Body Shapes and RigControl for Dawn2. Also a large number of items of clothing and so on, too many to link. She’s aka “D2” for short.
The forum threads for Dawn 2 help and demo renders are over on the HiveWire 3D Community.
Taking your characters off to an election rally? Then you’ll be wanting the free pack of 21 poses for G8M for the Zeddicuss Pickup Truck.
SuperHero Ready for G8M Volume 3 and Volume 4. Looking good for posed pin-ups for fan-art, as well as for use in making comics.
Storybook:
Arah3D Sunflower Summer Hats for G8F and G9.
Wood Anemone for DAZ. One of the plants that in the British Isles heralds the coming springtime. Plus a complete EVERYPlant European Oak Forest Biome for DAZ to put it in.
Edna, a free older female for G8F. Possibly a grandma storyteller.
Architecture:
Daycare Room. Specially designed for hyperactive sugared-up tots, by the look of it.
And when the daycare room’s hideous strip-lighting and eye-burning psychedelic colours have caused intense nausea, whisk the kids off to the new Hospital for DAZ. Designed in the Eastern and Southern European style.
STZ Shoe shop for Poser, and the maker also has various G8/G9 shoe shopping pose packs which match. Also for DAZ.
And over on the DAZ Store, Shoe Closet 01 Bundle for G8F and G9F.
KFE Japanese Office Vignette for DAZ. Possibly useful for manga creators.
A complete Thai-style River Village for DAZ.
Animals and their environments:
Songbird ReMix Trogons. and Songbird ReMix Barbets.
Peepachu the chicken.
A complete Carboniferous Biome for Vue, suited to your DAZ dinosaur exports.
DAZ UltraScenery2 – Australia.
Vermin Pack for DAZ, larvae, scorpions and more. Might be combined with Photo Props: Hollow Rocks as the setting.
Breed and age Phenotypes for DAZ Horse 3.
Historical:
MS24 Viking Ship for Poser. I think this may be the same one that vanished a while back. Now also available for DAZ and for Vue.
A mediaeval outfit, The Minstrel for Genesis 9, with unvarnished lute.
dForce Kazakh Costume for Genesis 9, traditional costume, and there are also jewellery and tent/yurt packs.
Free HM Airship R34 Colors for the L-1 Zeppelin.
Free 1920s Flapper shoes for G8F, and dforce Flapper Dress.
New York Fire Station in a vintage style.
Willy’s Station Wagon for Poser. Also available for DAZ. 1940s or 50s, by the look of it.
A small home Vegetable Garden for Poser and separately for DAZ. Probably best rendered as a Poser export to Vue, re: the Vue atmospheres.
Scripts, helpers, and special shaders:
A useful free Universal Blackout Box for DAZ. Remove the walls of a space to get a better camera angle, but… the light will come in. Use this box, and the light doesn’t come in.
Bone Minion for HiveWire Horse Poses. Bone Minions are now also for DAZ horses.
MD List of Products Used script, for listing what’s in a DAZ scene.
Tutorials:
Gradient Bump: Fixing a legacy texturing problem in old M4 clothes. Some old bump maps don’t work with SuperFly (Cycles) rendering. Fixing it just needs a few disconnect / connect changes in the Material Room, which are shown in the video.
HDRI control update for Poser. Native handling of HDRIs, and Python scripting control of them, has been implemented in the latest Poser. One of the benefits is a thumbnail preview of the HDRI when you load it for use with a Poser scene, which is shown here.
Software:
The comic-book production software Clip Studio 3.x is out, with the ability to import .BVH motion files.
PD Howler 2025, a budget-priced but powerful drawing and painting software, now even more 3D friendly.
AI:
A free tutorial on taking a rough sketch to nicer lines, automatically.
Newly released is Kalavai – your personal local AI cloud network. Similar to a render farm, by the sound of it. But for local AIs. Freeware.
Invoke 5.0 final is released. The best UI for artists and creative teams who want to run Stable Diffusion locally. Still free.
Other than that, note that the DAZ Freebies page has updated at last.
That’s it for now. More before Christmas!
Sketchy and Linerender
2024 Fantasy Attic’s Annual Halloween Gifts – page now online
Wow, is it that time of the year again? Yup, time for 2024 Fantasy Attic’s Annual Halloween Gifts page. Live now, but as yet unfilled. I imagine that, as usual, quality donations of Poser / DAZ content are welcome.
Slashed Troglodytes
A nice 86% sale at DAZ (today) enabled me to complete my Predatron fantasy collection for Poser, by loading up with a lot of Troglodye items for around $12.
I now have the complete: Trogoldyte and variants plus accessories, horns, boots and armour; Goblin and cowl etc; Giant Spider and riding saddle etc, Angor the goat priest and robes; the Warhound, and the Upland Troll.
Release: Playbook (beta)
Playbook is an online service-based Stable Diffusion, trained specifically to generate output that looks like it was 3D rendered from textured meshes.
You can already do this on a local install of the free Stable Diffusion, with free LORA ‘plugins’. There thus seems no reason to pay for such a thing, unless Playbook…
– is remarkably better than normal Stable Diffusion;
– is more stable (at following text prompts);
– can generate 100% stable characters along with stable outfits and clothing colours;
– can also generate textured 3D meshes which can be exported.
I guess we test it and see.