A good haul of DAZ freebies, for once. They just updated.
Author Archives: jonahjameson
Contest: design an interstellar generation ship
Design an interstellar generation ship, win a slice of $10,000 in prizes. Live now. Phase 1 deadline for entrants is 2nd February 2025.
NASA design for a warp-drive ship. Not big enough for a colony ship, but hey… in space these things can scale up.
Wonder Animation
Autodesk Unveils Wonder Animation. Interesting…
* Film your sequence as live-action…
* … then an AI translates what is sees to 3D polygons and rigs (3D scene, figures, mo-cap, cameras, camera movements)
* … then you can render the 3D consistently and quickly as a toon in 3D (Maya, Blender, Unreal game engine).
The drawback appears to be that it’s an online cloud service. Not local desktop software. Still, I like the idea.
New for Poser & DAZ – October 2024
New for Poser & DAZ – October 2024. My personal pick of the new releases and similar for Poser, DAZ Studio and Vue, for October 2024.
Science-fiction:
We’re a bit future-lite this month…
Hologram for G8F and G8M and add-on.
Halloween:
A free Steampunk-Halloween Carriage.
Free Glowing Eyes MAT for DAZ Studio.
A very unusual podcasting desk, The-Author for DAZ Studio.
FPE Fantasy HD Skins Suite for Genesis 9.
Toon and semi-toon:
A new figure from Darkseal is always welcome. His latest is Mandrake-Root. Also new is his Bobbit-Worm.
Free poses and SuperFly materials for Toon Chicken for Poser.
A free One Eyed Spider, as a companion for the old Poser Eye-plants etc.
Mrs. Pumpkin for DAZ Studio. Also at 3D SHARDS.
Free Anime LIE Tattoos for Genesis 9 Toon. Also G9 To Toon Shaders.
Mirai Anime Hair for Genesis 9 Toon, one of the few that regular comic readers might not scream and run away from.
Characters (for non-commercial fan-art only):
A free James T. Kirk 2.0 for Poser and M3 LowRes.
Erik for Genesis-9 plus Outfit. Magneto, from the X-Men movies.
A free Vin Diesel For Genesis 8 Male.
Storybook:
Free, a Froufrou_Dynamic Clothing for Victoria 4.
Figure morphs and add-ons:
2nd Face for Michael 3, possibly useful for those who want to draw in the face later, e.g. in a comic-book page. Since you would then be erasing this prop, the no-commercial use thing would presumably not then be a problem.
Dawn 2 Expression and Viseme Morphs.
hisBodyFX Morphs for L’Homme2 and face morphs, for the current flagship Poser male figure.
Free Fiber Mesh Eyelashes for Dawn 2.0.
Animals and Plants:
European Otter by AM for DAZ Studio.
Nature’s Wonders: Frogs of the World Vol. 4. The Bullfrogs.
Corgi for Daz Dog 8, one of a selection of new breeds for DD8. The DAZ Store also has Buckingham Palce and interiors.
Poser Art Shader Series (P.A.S.S. Ultimate Bundle), still free on the ArtStation Marketplace.
Hedgerow Kit 3 – Fall Hawthorne Hedges Brambles and DogRose for DAZ Studio.
Historical:
Stonemason’s new The Streets of the Middle East.
dForce Louis Hair for Genesis 9, a loose periwig.
Free, the Kings German Legion KGL for DAZ, from the era of the Napoleonic Wars.
MS24 RAF FEb2 with Control Dials for Poser.
A 1930s dustbowl dForce Travelling Salesman for G9.
A 1950s/60s de Havilland Vampire Jet Fighter.
A cool van that looks like it’s from France in 1958, via a Bilal graphic-novel, XI NA Van.
A British Canal Narrowboat.
MD Classical Guitar for Genesis 9.
Scripts:
New this month, a free PoserPython script to batch render PNG animation frame-sequences, from a folder of saved Poser .PZ3 scene files.
Old but new to me, free DAZ Studio Rotation Scripts. Use an old-school gaming joystick to move figures, props etc.
Software:
On YouTube, PD Howler 2025 – What’s New? and Introducing watercolor FX in Howler.
HeadShop 2025 Full Bundle, plus an ‘Identikit’ based on G8 and G9.
Poser 13.3.864 is released (October 2023). I’m impressed by how much they’ve fixed and added since 13.0. And it’s currently just $99 for Poser 13, if you have a licence for any previous version. Which suggests that Poser 14 may be around the corner.
How to Restore Drag and Drop from the Poser and DAZ library software ‘PzDB’, if you’d lost it through Windows upgrades which affected MS Office 2007’s mso.dll.
DAZ Studio Premiere – a new subscription version.
Free, the ComicRack Community Edition. Your fave old-school comic-book reader desktop software, restored to life again.
Inkscape 1.4, the free vector drawing software. Filters gallery with adjustable thumbnail previews. Unified fonts browser. Opens Affinity Designer files. Now only for Windows 8.1 or higher.
The new 3DCoat 2024.12, now with “AI Assistant”.
Topaz AI Gigapixel 8.0, with much better ability to ‘recover’ faces that are turned to the side.
The free InvokeAI 5.3, for Photoshop-like (layers) local AI image-generation on your desktop PC.
How to get a Stable Diffusion 1.5 landscape to 1536px, easily and without horrible-ness.
Tutorials:
The AntFarm at Digital Art Live. 90 minutes exploring the capabilities and wrinkles of AntFarm’s great content, guided by the man himself.
On YouTube, fixing render crashes in Poser when rendering large scenes, and fix plant transparency problems and ambient light problems.
On YouTube, Improve the look of Poser skin textures by switching the lighting attenuation-mode away from its ‘Constant’ default.
And the Internet Archive is back online, which means old Poser manuals, how-to books and also some choice bits of old abandoned software.
That’s all for now, more in due course.
Poser 13.3.864, but 11 vanishes…
Poser is newly at Poser 13.3.864 as of 16th October 2024. Includes a September release which…
“Fixed issue where number of cores used for CPU renders was limited to 4”.
Ouch. Yes, rather useful for those with 12 or more! Check the big list of previous fixes, since it may be you still have an older version of 13 and thus are missing out on a huge amount of polish and hard-work by the dev team. Also fixed is a “memory leak” for SuperFly renders of more than 2048px.
Note also that Poser 11 has now regrettably vanished from the “Downloads Purchased” option on the official downloads page. Which seems a pity for late-comers, since 11 can happily co-exist with later versions, and a Poser 11 runtime is looked for by E-on Vue when you integrate the two softwares. Vue is now free, and I assume E-on didn’t remove the Poser SDK from their final release — but I can’t download the newly free Vue to check if 11 is still looked for / required. Since there’s region-blocking on the download and no .torrent for it.
Reallusion 2024 ‘Animation At Work’ Competition
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Posted in Comics, Companion software, Competitions, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry
Leave a comment
Now on, the Reallusion 2024 ‘Animation At Work’ Competition. Deadline: 7th January 2025. Prizes, including XP-Pen ‘drawn on the screen’ pen-monitors.
Categories include “Best Use of CTA5”. I read that as “Best Use of Cats” at a glance, which would be a fun category if it existed. But no, CTA5 is version 5.x of the worthy and very well-documented desktop software Cartoon Animator (formerly CrazyTalk Animator). All entrants get a two-month free licence for CTA5.
I see the latest CTA 5.3 as a $90 upgrade from CTA3 Pipeline, at the Reallusion software store…
The “first purchase offer” coupon is because I haven’t logged in for a long time, I guess. It takes the price down to $90. The facial mo-cap bundle sounds fun, but knowing Reallusion it’ll only work with new characters which require expensive additional packs to make them work. That’s their long-time business model — low cost for the core software, and then charge like heck for all the additional stuff you need. Though admittedly, as I recall, there’s just the one version (no more ‘Pipeline’) which is something.
$99 for Poser 13, if you have a licence for any previous version
Come Home to Poser offer…
Until 4th November [2024], users of any previous Poser version can upgrade to Poser 13 for just $99.
A good deal, and I guess it will also put you on much higher on the upgrade track for the forthcoming Poser 14. By “any previous Poser version” I assume they also mean Smith Micro versions?
I doubt it will go lower than this on Black Friday (29th November, this year). Of course, once Poser 14 has been out a while, it might become a $50 bargain at some third-party cyber-store. But I’m guessing that may be a while yet.
Renderosity Halloween 2024 contest – with prizes
The news completely passed me by, but I now see that Renderosity has a big Halloween 2024 contest with lots of prizes. Photography, 2D and Writers categories, as well as 3D. Deadline 28th October 2024.
3D World, RIP
The Christmas issue of 3D World, the magazine for 3D industry pros and wannabe-pro students, appears to be their last. Out now.
Following the recent demise of Digital Art Live, which faithfully served the hobbyist / amateur artist end of the same market for years, the demise of 3D World now leaves 3D creatives with no regular magazine. There’s still Imagine FX, I think, though it’s not much interested in 3D and in recent years its software news and reviews have become very sparse.
Restore Drag and Drop from the Poser and DAZ library software ‘PzDB’
How to restore Drag and Drop from the Poser and DAZ library software PzDB, on an older Windows OS.
Problem: Likely you have been installing various Microsoft updates and C++ redistributables and so on, on an older version of Windows. These may have overwritten elements which enable drag and drop of files from software which uses an underlying MS Access 2007 database. As a consequence, your PzDB may have lost its ability to drag-and-drop from the search results, to load the chosen file into your Poser viewport.
Solution: Get the Microsoft Office Access Runtime and Data Connectivity 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3) at the Microsoft Update Catalog. There get the accessrtsp3-en-us cab.
Once downloaded, right-click on and unzip the .cab as if it was a normal .zip file. Once done, double-click the accessrtsp3-en-us.msp installer. The Access 2007 components will be updated. There will be no ‘success’ message, but you can tell if it worked. No need to reboot now.
Launch PzDB and your drag-and-drop capability should have returned. It worked for me. Also seems to have repaired some lost functionality on the top menu icons.
Be aware that this will overwrite the core mso.dll in C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\microsoft shared\OFFICE12 with a possibly older version than you have. This may affect Office 2007 programs such as Word and Excel.
The alterative for drag-and-drop is to use the bare-bones but excellent external AIR library in Poser Pro 2014. This does, however, require that Poser 2014 be running first. You also need to update AIR to the latest version, for security.
Vue 2024 free is blocked in the UK
I finally found out what the problem is with the Vue 2024 download, at last. Someone is doing region-blocking. I’m in the UK, which means the download never starts. The download also fails on a completely different PC, also in the UK.
British users of Vue are being actively blocked, is the only conclusion. Either it’s E-on doing this, or there’s a slim chance that my ISP has the video file-hoster Limelight.com on some blacklist? E-on is using Limelight.com to host the Vue 2024 installer .zip files.
I discovered the region-blocking because if I switch to a U.S. VPN, and thus have my browser pretend to be in the USA, the 1.9Gb Vue 2024 download starts immediately. Sadly the VPN is a free one, and won’t stay active for the length of such a huge download.
There are no .torrents, which would have been the sensible thing to offer for such large .zip files.
Filatoon fail
DAZ Studio at last has a real-time comic-book mode, somewhat like Poser. ‘Filatoon’ works with the Filament render-engine (I knew there had to be a use for it, eventually). It’s included as standard in DAZ Studio 4.23, and is not restricted to the new subscription DAZ Studio version. Note that the Filament engine can’t run on a Mac.
Judging by user try-outs and the official video trailer, it is definitely not as ‘artistic’ as Poser’s real-time tooning (which was made with the aid of comic-pros like Brian Haberlin). For instance, Poser makes its comic-book inking lines appear thicker as they near the camera. The DAZ real-time is definitely CAD-like, similar to what you can get with plugins at present with DAZ. Absolutely not going to satisfy any regular comic-book reader. Still, we have AI now, so it may be interesting to see what Stable Diffusion can do with the DAZ output, in terms of cohering it and fixing uglification, opacity map snaggles, and same-width outlines.
So, how to get DAZ Studio 4.23 with FilaToon?
On navigating the DAZ website to My Products / search ‘DAZ Studio’ / and then downloading the 756mb DAZStudio_4.23.0.1_Win64.exe — remember to also get the 48Mb IM00013176-42_DefaultResourcesForDAZStudio423.zip file which has the required Filament toon shaders. Copy the “Contents” in this .zip to your main folder path (if you have two paths, it seems it must be the first) and allow it to overwrite the existing Contents folder. Re-start DAZ.
Regrettably, Filament just doesn’t work for me in 4.23. All I get is a grey Viewport, despite doing everything correctly…
NVIDIA Drivers – yes
OpenGL 4.1 or better – yes
Load valid scene – yes
Set Viewport to Filament – yes
Set render to Viewport – yes
Filament Draw Options Node added to Scene – yes
Draw settings to ‘Style: Filament’ and ‘Bounding Box and Surface’ – yes
Distant and spotlight added to Scene – yes
Hardware anti-aliasing off – yes
… and absolutely nothing. Just a totally grey Viewport and a figure-control widget. I’d love to test and refine the new FilaToon, but… I can’t on my main workstation PC.
Filament does work fine for me in the older DAZ 4.21, which I did not allow to be uninstalled on installing 4.23. So it’s not like I can’t run Filament. It’s something in 4.23 that’s the problem.
I can also get the latest 4.23 Filament/ Viewport working fine on my Windows 10 Surface 3. But how then to get the FilaToon effect? Even after applying the shaders to a sample scene… I get nothing that looks like a toon. Nope… Filatoon seems to need a painfully detailed and long step-by-step tutorial on exactly how to set it up and get the effect. Quite the opposite of Poser, which makes the real-time Comic-book mode so simple that a small child can do it instantly.
DAZ Studio Premiere – subscription version
DAZ Studio has split into free and subscription versions. DAZ Studio 4.23 Premier ($18.98 a month at present, with auto-renew) has features not present in the free version. “Available exclusively to DAZ Premier members, this enhanced version…” etc. The paid features mentioned are…
– “batch rendering”
– “new dForce management tools”
– “advanced sculpting tools”
– G8 to G9 “pose converter” and G3, G8 to G9 “shape transfer”.
That’s it. Though add-ons also in the subscription are…
* the various game-engine rig exporters
* a Blender “environments exporter”
* the DAZ to Blender Bridge
* the DAZ to Maya Bridge
* There are also various monthly discounts on content, offers, etc.
The Premier web page also appears to imply that the DAZ Install Manager is now Premier-only. Though that would be strange if it were true. Why would DAZ lock their ‘content installer for dummies’ away from the mass of buyers? Anyway, never used it myself… so no loss.
In fact, no loss at all. I wouldn’t use any of the above, don’t much care about G9, or about exports. As for the bundled discounts, I prefer to snipe the 70%/80% discount bargains as they pop up on my Wishlist.
Now, if they’d have had seamless AI integration, that would have been something. With depth and OpenPose renders plugging straight into ControlNet slots, even. Maybe Poser 14 will beat them to that?
Contest: 3D Car Render
3DModels launches its annual Car Render Challenge! for 3D creatives. Deadline is 4th December 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!