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Author Archives: jonahjameson
What’s New for Poser and DAZ, April-May 2023
Slightly early this month, but it’s time for another pick of what’s new for Poser and DAZ Studio users.
Science-fiction:
Teleportation Effects VFX for DAZ Studio. 36 of them, with 4K textures.
DZ BSuitZ for G8M & G9. Usefully generic and plain, for when you want the focus on the character and not the suit.
Bomb place set for Poser, and separately for DAZ. A 33 part set. It’s by 1971s, so you know it’ll toon well in Poser’s Comic Book renders.
Need a control unit for the bomb? There’s a new free HX Console for DAZ. A retro 1970s style computer/radar console. Also looks suitable for Doctor Who remakes and suchlike. See also this new GMDSS 6000 Series Communication equipment freebie. If you need the complete caboodle, take a look a this monster control-centre…
The Corridor, a 2001 style corridor. If you enlarged the corridor and stripped out some bits you might even get a 3D roadway for some of the new Luxor Poser Prop flying cars.
Valvepunk:
A ramshackle Radio Watchtower, evocative of Fenton Wood’s Yankee Republic series.
DD PBR Painted Wood Shaders for iRay Vol. 2. Faded, cracked and scuffed.
Fantasy:
Shattered Steel. Breakable sword blades, for Poser.
CW_Michael for Genesis 8 Male, with an interestingly ‘almost semi-toon’ face and head.
Techno-Wizard Weapons SW for G3 and G8.
Fan-art:
Thri-Kreen for Poser. A Dungeons & Dragons creature.
Wanted: Weapons of Fate for Poser. A custom character for the stock ships-with-Poser figure Jessi, based on a game character. The description says “standalone”, but that can’t be if she requires Jessi.
Harrison Ford for Poser for the M3 LowRes figure. Could be useful if you have a big heavy scene, and you don’t want the crash it by adding a high-res figure.
Halloween:
Movie Mummy for G8M. You also get the ancient coffin.
Enakh Outfit for G8M.
Pyrotechnica 2. Burning, black smokes, plus a fireworks burst, for DAZ Studio.
Suds. 3D models of soap suds, for DAZ Studio. Could also be useful for alien landscapes, horror labs, or scenes where nano-technology runs amok.
Photo Props: Candles, with texture that make them suitable for close-ups.
Figures, poses and clothes:
Malikai and Hair for Genesis 8.1 Male.
AMV_Glasses, basic cheap reading-glasses for G2 to G9.
Lina for Antonia, an Eastern European look for the Antonia figure for Poser.
AniBlock animations:
10 x ‘in bed’ AniBlocks for Genesis 9. Couples lying in bed.
21 Action & Gun AniBlocks for Genesis 8/8.1.
Ready To Fight 2 AniBlock animations for the Genesis series. Specifically, ring boxing and kick boxing.
Toon:
Flix for Genesis 8 Male. Might also be used with the free Prof Hair for G8M.
Speaking Dishes and teapots for DAZ Studio.
Chull Clothes 2, for Nursoda’s new Chull figure.
Storybook:
SAMANT Pastry Shop, for Poser and DAZ.
A free DollBox for Poser, with La Femme fit. Also the Pretty Doll Vintage Dress.
Dino 03, a free cute stuffed-fabric toy dinosaur. Plus Food for Dino 03, which might also be used with other rotund beasts of burden.
A free Swimming Ring. Might be made to fit Dino…
Hr-257 hair, suitable for a ‘girl adventurer’ type character. For V4 and others.
FG School Pack Supply plus backpack, for the FG Elementary Classroom.
A free Cheap Fountain Pen for DAZ Studio.
Tuscan Kitchen Accessories set.
Hobby Props Pottery, for all your potter’s wheel needs.
Animals:
Songbird ReMix Kingfishers, for Poser and DAZ.
Komodo Dragon by AM, for DAZ Studio.
Arkeno for Moshi The Kitten and Soffancska: Moshi, both material addons for the kitten.
Landscapes:
3D Scenery: Lush Gate from ShaaraMuse3D, for Poser and DAZ. A useful wooded summertime arch, which also has a low-spec PC version. No Autumnal makeover MAT, but I guess you just tweak the colours.
Simple free Railings of the sturdy sort you might see on the sea-front of a coastal town. For Poser and DAZ. Includes old and sea-worn MATs.
Bastion Fortress – Brick Walls for Poser and DAZ. A texture addon for the Bastion Fortress Construction Kit.
Historical:
Very little this month, in Historical.
Second World War Jeep for Poser. 13 figures, poses, props.
Utilities and similar:
A free Mosaic MT5 material for Poser
Formation-X for DAZ Studio. Billed as “Configuration and Alignment Scripts for Large Groups”. Such as spacecraft battle formations. Released summer 2019, but it’s new to me.
Expandable Color Ramp for Poser 12 & 13, for SuperFly. “It will allow between 2 to X number of color points simply by daisy-chaining the nodes together.”
A free Cubic To Linear add-on for MojoWorld 3.11.
30 Realistic Fur & Hair Brushes for Photoshop.
Software:
UVMapper 4.0 for Windows, May 2023.
Blender 3.51 for Windows 7, no installer needed. The installer having been a roadblock before now, when Blender refused to install if your graphics card was unworthy. Now you can install anyway and run it on the CPUs.
At last, a dark mode for Paint Tool SAI 2, aka SAI2.
Poser 13 has had a number of updates since the initial release in March.
Tutorials:
Essential Introduction to Genesis 9 for Content Creators. With Esha.
Toolbox Treasures : Super Scripts for DAZ Studio. With Code 66.
New video tutorials on Poser 13 Installation and Poser 13 : Installing included content.
Making advanced Pixelart in Blender, a tutorial for a free addon. Looks quite effective.
Beginner’s Guide to Texturing in Poser: The Diffuse Node.
VUE scene breakdown: Making of “Fresh Water” with Vue expert Barry Marshall. Also a new Quicktip video: Duplicating Assets in E-on’s Vue.
That’s it. More next month.
DAZ Freebies, updated
The DAZ freebies page has updated.
Bike Eleo. Has some basic mono-colour textures though no-one ever made a texture set for it. Comes with rider poses for M4 and Genesis 1. And a Poser version! Nice.
After install, find it in Poser under Figures | Bike Eleo. Works rather nicely in Poser’s real-time Comic Book mode…
Yes, I know… I didn’t take time to dress M4 properly. He’s headed for the beach.
Release Blender 3.51 for Windows 7, no installer needed
Blender 3.51 for Windows 7 (early May 2023).
Now needing no installer, it will at last launch for me! Hurrah. Everything works, and it renders to Cycles using 12 CPUs with fair speed… while ignoring my unworthy GPU.
Previously the 3.x installers had decided my graphics card was unworthy, and totally refused to install Blender. Yes… I more than meet the minimum OpenGL 3.3 requirement, having 4.4.
Of course, not really needed now for most people. Since Poser 13 uses the latest Blender Cycles as the photoreal renderer. But still, nice to have it tucked away.
Recent Poser 13 updates
Poser 13 Early Access has had a number of updates since release, which was back at the end of March 2023. Here are some highlights I spotted on the Windows version, since “Poser 13.0.287 – 2023-03-29″…
* Added new Legacy Scatter checkbox to PrincipledBSDF node [aka “the Cycles super-node”] to avoid SSS glow.
Sounds useful for getting SSS skin looking right, at a guess?
* Sped up cancelling of Superfly renders. No longer waits for the whole scene actors and materials to set up.
* Gamma shift no longer shifts at end of SuperFly render.
* Maximum Undo limitation increased to 200.
* Improved render presets based on feedback.
* Light meshes no longer disappear in the preview. Lights property Auto Hide removed and now just stays visible or not visible depending on the visibility check box.
Some people were having problems finding them. Toggling them on and off, vital for Comic Book Preview renders, should not be affected.
* “Make Movie” no longer attempts to apply 2D Motion Blur when it shouldn’t.
* Fixed broken IBL lights. IBL lights now work. IBL correctly turns on ambient occlusion when prompted. Creating an IBL now automatically connects the image map.
* Corrected Post FX Exposure and Saturation – default to 0 instead of -1
Yes, I was seeing that. Fixed now, by the sound of it.
* Fixed Atmosphere so it correctly displays volume in SuperFly.
A new Brian Haberlin comic
I see there’s a new Brian Haberlin comic, since February 2023. Currently in episodic mode. The covers are part- painted, but the interiors are his usual style of art made with the assistance of Poser and highly polished. The Last Barbarians is a high/dark fantasy tale with a D&D vibe and some gore, and is currently up to #4… with #5 announced. I’d guess it might run eight issues, as his series usually do?
Vanishing monsters
Oh that’s a pity, Poser dinosaur maker Dinoraul has removed his some of his items from Renderosity. Gone from my wishlist, with no chance of grabbing them via discounted $3 retirement sale are…
Kroger DR
Branchenia DR
Kraba DR
Devilop DR
Mantyx DR
Zomora DR
Grandor DR
He’s still on Rendo with a store, but these early monsters are gone.
Combo
Hel1x has a new and fine demo picture, showing the effective combination of an AI-generated base + Poser and DAZ for the figure, Vue for added landscape (backdrop and atmosphere?) and Corel Painter.
AI-driven hair movement
As good as dForce? “Helmet-hair” gone, forever? A new AI driven Hair Simulation on the GPU.
Animated demo:
Loops three times.
Click here to replay
Renderstudio for Poser 11
DAZ’s time-limited freebies have updated with a new set.
Worth having, “To the Beat Poses” dance-exercise poses set for Genesis 2, with Poser CF files (for DSON import to Poser).
Also two large IBL light-probe environment sets for Poser, including Renderstudio – Skylight And Atmosphere which has 8,000px sky panoramas and atmosphere presets. “Extremely fast rendering”, according to the original RuntimeDNA blurb…
The included Atmosphere module will not put any strain on your rendering times as it is generated by Poser’s very own ‘Depth Cue’ cue system. I have found that using these atmospheres adds no extra rendering time at all!!!
Tested and working in Poser 11, and as it uses no scripts I assume it would also work in P12 and P13.
It’s true, it’s pleasingly fast. But it’s also only able to use the old Firefly engine, since the depth-fogging atmosphere and sun-colour don’t appear in the newer SuperFly (i.e. Blender Cycles).
Simpler and quicker than Poser to Vue. Here are comparisons…
Simple English terraced houses with Renderstudio set up in Poser. Very quick Firefly render, less than a minute at 1800px.
Simple English terraced houses with saved Poser scene to Vue import. Slow even at 1800px (8 minutes), textures now look a lot better but more grungy.
Note that Vue’s default Final preset was possibly using high bumps and displacement, which with a different render setting I might have been able to add to the Poser render to make it more grungy and 3D textured.
Anyway, it’s not SuperFly or Vue… but yes, it’s fast as well as easy in Poser. You get fast Poser atmosphere presets with an easy sunlight position dial and sun colour presets. Which may be just what some Firefly users need for a big outdoor backdrop, for a finished product in which the foreground is going to be the focus of attention.
By comparison, the same prop/scene is so horribly unwieldy in the DAZ Studio viewport as to be essentially unusable. I didn’t even get as far as rendering, before I gave up on it.
Shap-E
Shap-E, a basic ‘prompt to 3D object’ generator. Fast and free. Tested and working.
CodeWhisperer
Possibly interesting for Python-coders who craft Python scripts for Poser, Vue, Blender, and others. The new Amazon CodeWhisperer, a free code-generator from Amazon, that appears to be genuinely free and supposedly “unlimited”. Although you do need an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account.
It’s powered by AI, of course. Be warned that the ‘free’ tier of AWS is only a 12 month trial, last I heard. Then you have to pay to keep the AWS account.
Fan-art G8 figures
Testing Shinteo’s free fan-art G8 figures. There’s a lot of them, but he has a handy page which groups them by game, movie or whatever. Sadly, no Gravity Falls (no game?) or Lord of the Rings.
Click through to the one you’re interested in. There are hundreds of game characters. Click to a character, click the Patreon link, and there on the .ZIP file link.
I got Tintin, Doctor Doom (Marvel), Classic Spiderman (Marvel), Capt. Jack Sparrow, and Godzilla (I think he’s public domain now?) with no problem.
My quick pose and render of Capt. Jack. Responds to G8M expressions.
They’re low-poly game rips, so you probably shouldn’t expect to do pore-probing close-ups on the face. Also, I imagine you should expect texture atlases, so no re-texturing. Some require commercial morph packs to be present. Some of the eyes are a bit glazed and filmy, so may need tweaking.
Once installed they show up in Characters | @Cosplay, not G8. I haven’t tested if they can be mixed with other G8’s via sliders.
Note also the Tutorial on posing with my converted models, re: facial expressions. And the Eyes Offset Tutorial.
Denoising in Photoshop CS6 32-bit in 2023
DAZ’s free Photoshop Bridge only fully works when using 32-bit with a 32-bit Photoshop. Ideally Photoshop CS6. As I’ve explained before here on MyClone, here and here.
But imagine you’ve got it working and are auto-sending renders to a comic-book page that’s set up in Photoshop. Each render drops into a comic-book panel. But, since there’s a lot to render on each page, the renders are quick and grainy and have ‘fireflies’. This grain will not matter so much, if you’re then filtering them using a non-naff artistic Photoshop filter (Mediachance, Sketchmaster 2018, some G’MIC filters).
But what if you’d just like to denoise a photoreal render? Sure you can filter with an NVIDIA-only denoiser, back in DAZ Studio. But that feature has never worked for me, and I guess my NVIDIA graphics card is just not worthy. Or you could lift the shadows and create a flatter and more comic-book look with the Exposure Value and Shutter Speed sliders in DAZ. Less shadows, less noticeable grain and fireflies.
True, there’s a free mcjDenoise plugin for DAZ which actually uses Intel’s OIDN. But it can only be applied to the stack of recent renders. Thus it can’t work to process the render that’s to be automatically sent to Photoshop via the Bridge.
Ideally there would be a Photoshop plugin that uses the open-source Intel OIDN denoiser. Which has a superb AI model especially trained to clear 3D renders. This plugin would speedily fix all the grain and fireflies, in one click. But, rather surprisingly (given the potential market and the very open licence) no-one has made such a thing. There are only two Windows GUI standalones.
What about other AI-powered denoiser plugins for Photoshop? The Topaz AI Denoise plugins were available for CS6, but… only for 64-bit and they were trained for megapixel night photographers, not 3D renders. There were three or four pre-AI denoiser plugins for 32-bit, but they were expensive and (even if still available) are not ideal now.
Thus the fallback in 2023 would be the free and actively developed G’Mic plugin suite. Its 32-bit .8BF is happy to run as a Photoshop CS6 32-bit plugin. Currently in G’Mic, the 2022 filter Testing | Afre | Denoise appears to be the quickest/best on 3D renders. In fact it’s near-instant, which is very nice. But obviously it’s not as good as OIDN. The results are softer than OIDN, and not all noise is cleared. But it’s better than nothing, and if your comic-book page is destined for digital-only… then it may be good enough.
And don’t forget that .PSD is a portable format, so you can do all the render-catching and layout in CS6, and then load the CC 2018 or higher for postwork and filters.
But the ideal for CS6 would be that someone plugs OIDN into G’Mic in the near future.
New 3DCoat manual
Slick new documentation for the 3DCoat 3D painting / texturing / sculpting software. Fully updated, translated and pretty-fied.
