It’s possible to embed a scrolling PDF at DeviantArt, and have a download button for the PDF file show up. Who knew?
Author Archives: jonahjameson
Poser and DAZ to glTF 2.0 for Facebook?
Facebook seems to be all set to become the next tumbleweed-haunted MySpace, the way it’s going with censorship, data leaks, fake news, and ‘pay to reach your audience’ lockdowns on content. But for now it’s still adding new features. For instance users can now post 3D models on their Facebook posts, though only using “glTF 2.0” files.
How might Poser and DAZ Studio users get a glTF 2.0 file? Well you:
1) Output from Poser or DAZ Studio to Collada .DAE (easier said than done, a lot of times). Note that Collada export is Pro version only, in Poser 11.
2) Then you can use the official Collada2glTF to get a glTF file. Though it’s a command-line tool on GitHub, eeek!
3) Then it appears that when you upload the completed glTF 2.0 file to services such as Facebook, a back-end engine (which you don’t need to know about) will grab it and make it lightweight enough for speedy loading in the Web browser. Presumably it does this by reducing the poly-count and texture sizes. Facebook also has a size-limit on the file, and presumably its back-end will crunch your model down to that size.
If your initial Collada export is getting all scrumpled up, as often happens, then Facebook has a FBX2glTF which accepts the more reliable .FBX format. But be warned that it’s also currently a fearsome-looking command-line tool on GitHub.
Looking rather more user friendly is SketchUp’s free glTF 2.0 exporter plugin, though at only 61 views in a month it’s not currently a plugin that’s getting much lurv. And good luck with trying to get Poser and DAZ characters into SketchUp.
There’s also an online service glTF Model Converter which can handle .OBJs, but note “the timeout limit is 2 minutes and the maximum file size is 10 MB”. I also got loading errors on the Web page widget, but that could be due to my browser. Might be worth a try though, with a small prop. A DAZ/Poser content developer might be able to showcase small bits of their forthcoming product that way, on Facebook.
If you can run native Python there’s also a BatchGltf, offering a graphical user interface. I’m guessing that might be suitable for integrating into the forthcoming Poser 12 as a Python script for glTF 2.0 exporting?
2020 vision
Demos for the NVIDIA RTX are unleashed as a technology showcase this week, the Game Developers Conference. The RTX holds out the promise of…
“real-time ray tracing to game developers and content creators”.
It’s centred around the Volta GPU system, which NVIDIA says is… “multiple integers faster” than previous generation architectures when it comes to ray tracing. Microsoft is reported to be on board as a partner, with a… “new DirectX Raytracing (DXR) API. Any GPU capable of DirectX 12-class compute should be able to run DXR”, and a few game studios are working on demo games.
But it seems it’s not going to be boxed and in the $300 racks at the stores anytime soon. According to NVIDIA the technology is likely to take some “years” to mature, and for consumers to have the zippy hardware that can run it fully. I’d guess… perhaps by the year 2020?
Daz To Maya plugin
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Posted in Comics, Companion software, DAZ Studio, The Animation Industry
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DazToMaya 1.1 plugin, with auto-conversion of materials for Arnold/Vray in “Maya 2016 or higher”.
I imagine most DAZ Studio photoreal users will be happy sticking with the quality of their iRay / Reality renders. But for a modest $30 the new plugin may interest small-studio Maya users, people who need to more quickly import DAZ’s royalty-free content while doing work for clients.
Of course there’s also the possibility of tooning a DAZ scene in Maya. I’ve never really looked at Maya’s toon capabilities before, but I had a look just now. It appears the default toon effect is certainly not up to Cinema 4D standards. I searched in vain for a screenshot example of a Maya toon render that wouldn’t cause derisive snorts of laughter among readers/buyers of graphic-novels. But all the likely examples I lit upon turned out to be done in Unity or Unreal Engine, or Blender, or were highly customised Vray. Or they obviously took an enormous amount of time and fiddling to set up. But if you want to check it out, I read that Maya’s basic toon rendering engine is to be found at: Maya | Surface | Ramp Shader, and judging by the documentation it’s fairly tweak-able.
But it’s obviously nowhere near as good as the ink and toon effects in Cinema 4D, and remember that Poser Pro 11 to Cinema 4D is really easy to do via Smith Micro’s plugin.
Admittedly Arnold may get a good toon render option soon, though that’s not yet available. Possibly there are others for Arnold that I don’t known about. And Vray also appears to have basic toon shaders and can be tweaked. So there may also be options to explore there.
But for making still renders for comic-book frames etc it still looks best to load the DAZ character or prop into a $60 copy of Poser 11 (or export as .OBJ, if a Library load can’t be done). Then in Poser set up a flat IBL light and turn on the real-time Comic Book Mode. Thus getting a superior and quicker effect. Even more so, if you’re willing to swop out grungy 3D textures for something more toon-friendly.
Arnold Toons
Arnold is set to get a toon shader, currently in testing.
More samples here. Arnold has plugins for Cinema 4D, 3DS Max and others. Cinema 4D already has superior tooning in two of its versions, but 3DS Max users may be interested in an alternative toon renderer.
Unreal Studio launches
Unreal Studio is now available. No, it’s not the long-awaited virtual movie-studio based on Unreal. Architects and product designers will upload their CAD or 3DS Max files to the Unreal Studio servers, and then Unreal will send them back a real-time Unreal Engine render. There’s a plugin for 3DS Max that examines the textures and suchlike, and auto-converts if needed. Unreal Studio is currently in a free beta until November 2018, but is then set to be $49 a month. May be useful for some, perhaps especially for animated turnarounds, but you have to wonder why someone can’t run 3DS Max to Unreal Engine locally — if all it needs is a plugin and it’s producing a genuine real-time render.
For the boot
I was interested to hear about the surprisingly robust approach taken by the French when training their new VFX talent…
“[our] French counterparts [who run university VFX degrees, teach on] courses four or five years long, and cull students from the course who don’t meet the quality expected.” (Tom Box, interviewed in the latest edition of 3D World magazine)
In the UK it’s overwhelmingly a three-year degree. Although there tend to be a lot of first-year drop-outs, the duffers who remain on the course after that tend to be tolerated right through to graduation. They’re too often graduated as well, at management insistence, if only with a 3rd class degree. In France, it seems, the teachers have more control and thus a degree course’s reputation trumps the income from a student’s fees / the university’s student retention-rate statistics.
Stalled at the station
How can there not be a single Stylish makeover theme for Artstation, when there are 37 pages of such themes for changing how DeviantArt looks? Bizarre.
New for Poser and DAZ, February 2018
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Slightly late, here’s my latest monthly look at the new releases for DAZ Studio and Poser, and some items of interest to Vue users too. New items that caught my eye in February 2018:
Science fiction:
New from quality outfit-maker Aeon Soul, Orbital Merc for Genesis 8 Female.
The fun Prototype-X: Atomica for Genesis 8 Female, with a nice retro look to it. Not sure how often I’d use it, but definitely fun.
Prototype-Six for Genesis 8 Female.
Unusual sci-fi headgear with the KX StarSuit for G8F for DAZ Studio.
Hornet Outfit for Genesis 8 Female, with a cyber-style arm-cannon.
DP1 for the RoboSpider. It’s only a textures makeover, but it’s hi-res and it certainly improves on the old defaults.
Cyborg Generation 8 and its Light and Glow textures.
A new Sci-fi Stasis Pod, plus room and curvy ceiling pipes.
Underwater Bedroom for DAZ Studio. Simple, but nicely curvy. Could probably be adapted to have an outer space rather than an ocean view.
Aqua Striker Units for GF8. Looks like Pamawo is shaping up to be quite an interesting developer, if rather too expensive for me.
Need a sci-fi ocean creature to go with the above? Biomechanical Whale Animated, on Sketchfab store in .OBJ and .FBX formats.
Steampunk and valvepunk:
A well designed SF unit from 1971s.
A detailed retro Mind Control Lab and poses, for DAZ Studio.
A free Leather Hatta.
Fairytale:
Girly for Anceata is a freebie character and clothing and hair, all for Nursoda’s excellent Anceata for Poser. Has a nice Slavic / Finnish look. Although be aware that she’s a huge download of 350Mb! The culprits seem to be 250Mb of Paintshop Pro source files, in files called DressMAP.pspimage and AncPantsMAP.pspimage, which are presumably templates that can be deleted by anyone who doesn’t need them.
Tree And Swing for DAZ Studio. Also a set of matching poses.
Matching the Tree and Swing scene, the girls’ dForce Clothing Set 01 for Genesis 8 Female, from 3D Universe. And Mary Janes shoes.
A high quality Fairy Outfit for Karyssa 8 and Genesis 8 Female and Poses and Expressions. This will likely get a lot of third-party texture makeovers and add-ons, in due course.
Fantasy:
Safia Dynamic for V4 and textures set. Looks useful for the Arabian Nights and Conan/Frazetta sort of fantasy.
SY dForce Roman Clothing Male and Female for DAZ Studio. Adaptable for a variety of mythic settings.
MS18 Grain Mill in OBJ and FBX, and also for Vue 9 and up.
The old mill possibly guarded by the SkeleDog for the new HiveWire Big Dog for Poser.
Fantasy Trees for Daz Studio. Very nicely stylised, though it looks like the leaves are trans-mapped rather than geometry. Thus, the leaves are not likely to toon up nicely in Poser 11’s comic-book mode.
House of Traveler from 1971s for Poser. Very nice, although for ‘fan art’ only — as it’s almost exactly like the Corner Club in Balmora, in the famous videogame Morrowind.
Animals:
A superbly realistic Vampire Bat by AM with Look At My Hair preset.
Also an equally realistic Amazon Tree Frogs and Tadpole also by AM, and an Amphibian Pond scene for it to inhabit.
Rajasaurus DR, a new Dinoraul dinosaur for Poser. Also a new long-necked Giraffatitan.
Worms. Don’t overlook this, thinking “it’s only horror worms”. It also includes an earwig, a fat hawk-moth caterpillar, slugs, and snails. The quality fat caterpillar and snail also put this into the fairytale category.
Landscapes:
Mystic Red Lands for Poser, and accompanying Mediterranean Red Cliffs, with HD textures and modelling. Reminds me a bit of the fiery semi-volcanic uplands in Morrowind. Also likely to be of interest to Vue users.
End of the Tracks for DAZ and Carrara. Lots of potential uses, from Goonies / Stranger Things -style adventure to a complete tropical jungle or arctic makeover.
Fog Camera for DAZ Studio, with simple fog-volume props and presets.
Lastly there’s a free V4 character, Alex for Victoria 4 for Poser. Has the sort of ‘everyday look’ that might suit those making renders for small business and educational/charity clients.
That’s all the picks for February. The Cornucopia store is still down after being hacked, so the list is light on Vue items. More picks next month!
Polybrush 2.2
An interesting new natural/organic 3D modeling software, Polybrush. Now in version 2.2, and it’s “lightweight” — which means you don’t need a beast of a PC just to get it running. There’s a perpetually free Lite edition, with no library of preset brushes, or a full 90-day trial.
Not to be confused with a Unity plugin of the same name.
“Ve hav wayz of twiggling your prims…”
Are your 3D primitive’s nurb flange-sprockets correctly twiggled? val3dity: geometric validation of GML 3D primitives is a free tool to make sure your 3D primitives are the right shape. Exactly the right shape. Apparently there are formal standards for such things.
Release: VLC media player 3.0
The popular free VLC media player is now at version 3.0. I found I was still at 2.2.x. It’s a very major update, and all the new features of 3.0 are listed here. Features I noted…
* VLC now supports 360 video and 3D audio.
* Can stream to Chromecast devices.
* Can play Blu-Ray Java menus.
The only problem it has that, while VLC Media Player is excellent, one of its enduring mysteries is what happens when you drag-and-drop a 1, 2, 3, 4 etc list of files to a new playlist. The playlist order always gets garbled into 4, 1, 3, 2 etc. There’s still no way to re-order the list by File Name. Windows Media Player and other players never have any such problem. Even in version 3.0 of VLC there’s still no way to then re-order the list by File Name. You can re-sort the list every other way, but not by file-name order…
Windows Media Player has no such problem. Regrettably you can’t save a properly-ordered Windows Media Player list as .M3U and then load it to VLC.
VLC claims to understand Windows’ own .WPL and .M3U, but in practice it doesn’t. Load a .M3U and it goes haywire in a never-ending loading loop. Load a .WPL and you only get the first track on the list. Load an .ASX in VLC and while the playlist is intact and in the correct order, you’ll see certain files in the album ‘greyed out’. Save that list as a VLC native .XSPF, load that it back into VLC and VLC one again goes haywire in a never-ending loading loop.
Release: Google Earth Pro goes 64-bit
Did you download Google Earth Pro when it became free, a while back now, but haven’t updated it since? The latest Google Earth Pro 7.3.1 update brings “new 64-bit support, performance improvements”. There’s no auto-update in the software, it seems, so you have to go fetch the new installer manually.
Possibly of interest to readers who use Google Earth to find terrains that can then be extracted from datasets for use with 3D landscape software such as Vue and Terragen. Or those who donate 3D building models to Google Earth.
What’s new for Poser and DAZ: January 2018
It’s near the end of the month again, so here’s my round-up of the new releases for Poser and DAZ for January 2018. It’s probably been a bit of a slow month for the store sellers, as I’m hearing that’s been the case for many who sell online. It’s been an especially slow January, this year, it seems.
Also of note this month is the unusually large amount of “fan art” for sale.
Sci-fi:
Sci-Fi Cat Car. It’s on the DAZ store, so I’m assuming that it’s original and not fan art inspired by some Japanese anime?
A believable near-future Space Station for DAZ Studio. Similar to NASA/ESA designs I’ve seen, but they’re public domain so you’d be OK to use this for commercial renders such as a graphic novel.
2049 Diva Hat by Coflek-Gnorg. Given the name I’m assuming something like this is in the new Blade Runner 2049, which is a movie I still haven’t seen yet (the DVD isn’t available yet, here in the UK).
The Duke for G3M, with a sort-of David Bowie look. Be aware that this requires you have the G3M Body and Head Morph packs.
Steampunk:
Sixus 1’s Mr Bogey for Daz Studio. A fantastical Harry Potter-ish version of a Victorian “Organ Grinder’s Monkey”. Expensive, for a standalone, but comes with… “bonus strand-based hair, highly-detailed clothing and poses.”
Mr. Sparky’s free Super SteamPunk Shooter for Poser. Would probably look best being wielded by toony rather than photoreal characters.
Fantasy:
Sixus 1 has given his old V4 Lamia monster a makeover, as Lamia for Genesis 8 Female for DAZ Studio.
Orc HD for Genesis 8 Male for DAZ Studio.
dForce Angel of Death for the Midnight Skeleton for DAZ Studio.
Wild Boar by AM, with Look at My Hair presets. Nice but a bit small. We could probably do with a Gilgamesh-sized monster-boar as well.
1971s’s Charming house will be instantly familiar to all players of Morrowind who slipped past Fargoth and got as far as Balmora. Lovely work as usual from 1971s, but probably best used as “fan art only”.
Xeno-Temple for Daz Studio. Again, it’s fannish in that there’s a big nod here to the Aliens movies and Giger.
Toon:
A stylish 1950s Killer Bug from Outer Space for DAZ Studio.
The free EQ POP dog for Poser 11, and free coats. Looks original, and commercial use of renders is fine.
A free pack of Colors 4 Toon Renders materials for Poser. I haven’t tried them yet, but I assume they’re OK.
Historical:
A detailed Hovis-style 1910s Vintage Shop Bicycle for DAZ Studio.
A 1960s Yellow Submarine. I’m fairly sure this is still in copyright, to whoever owns the Beatles’ intellectual property this month, so this is another one that’s best used for “fan art only”.
A Helping Hand Poses for Genesis 3 Male, for battle and disaster scenes.
The AntFarm’s Freight Elevator and Basement.
Jack Tomalin’s well-known Parkside Box Car 3D model gets an upgrade to Parkside Box Car 2018 for DAZ Studio.
And there’s a set of four nice free Medieval keys for DAZ Studio.
Landscape:
The Cornucopia store is still down, and there’s not a great deal of landscape elsewhere this month. But ShaaraMuse3D has hi-res 3D Scenery: Frozen Snow Formations for Poser, with 8K HD textures.
Planet Glise 2 also looks good. Although it’s for DAZ Studio it looks like it would work well if flooded in Vue, thus serving as a quick-start basis of a prehistoric or alien underwater world.
That’s it, more picks next month.
Release: FontLab VI
There was once an excellent desktop software package called FontLab, which was the best professional tool you could get for creating new Windows fonts or tweaking old ones. Now FontLab has finally been updated, indeed completely overhauled, and released as FontLab VI. Regrettably the new cost is a glyph-curling $689, but if you purchased FontLab 5 (way back when Windowsaurii roamed the steaming primeval swamps of the Interwebs) an upgrade is a more feasible $199.
