The guys behind the Poser-created Anomaly comic book have a new Poser product coming soon. Faster Than Light is a new SF 3D comic complete with invisibly-embedded QR Codes which spark your phone or tablet into showing Augmented Reality overlays. Sounds a lot better than the old red-blue cellophane glasses!
Posted in Comics, Companion software, Freebies, Real-time animation, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry
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It’s all happening! A new Poser coming, and now Muvizu wakes up as well. According to their news mailing Muvizu, the very useable and free real-time toon production software from Glasgow, is moving forward again with a new Chief Exec. Also…
“From August we will introduce a market place where we will offer new characters – and content packs as well as expansion packs including multi-layer rendering and key framing.”
A new version 3 of Comic Life software has been released, and it’s a desktop Windows version. Comic Life aids you in layout out and lettering a comic book page. Sure you can do this with Photoshop, but it’s much more fiddly and will probably take most people about twice as long. You can also do it with Manga Studio, but that’s software for professional comics artists and there’s a bigger cost and a learning curve. So it’s good to see Comic Life back in the game and on Windows desktop again with a fresh version that works on Windows 8.x.
Here’s an interesting curiousity. 3dCutout semi-converts an installation of 3D Studio Max into a 2D animation studio…
“3dCutout converts Autodesk 3dsMax to a user-friendly software with bunch of new tools to help you create your own cutout animation.”
Although most people will be better off with the excellent and easier CrazyTalk Animator 2, which is built from the ground up for 2D, makes it easier to arrange props and characters in depth on the stage, and has an excellent royalty-free pre-made content system like Poser/Daz does.
Posted in 3D Renders, Comics, Natural media emulation, Spotted in the News
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This picture is 3D, though 98% of people wouldn’t know that from looking at it. It features in the latest 3D World magazine (Aug 2014), along with a tutorial. It seems to me to be another example of how 3D (in this instance ZBrush, 3ds Max) is increasingly able to successfully mimic 2D illustration, albeit with a little tickling in Photoshop. It’s another example that suggests that 2D and 3D will likely become pretty much indistinguishably mashed up together, at least for stills work, and in the relatively near future.
This is great to see, and shows the graphics world what DAZ Studio and Poser content can do in the hands of talented artists. The famous comics magazine Heavy Metal has used a Poser render created by Isikol, on the latest issue’s cover no less! #268 is the April 2014 issue.
His foreground character was rendered in Poser. The background is Stonemason’s The Enchanted Forest + Return To The Enchanted Forest + Jungle Ruins, all sent over from Poser to be rendered in Vue. Then the two renders were composited together in Photoshop.
Those interested in 2D animation should go grab my re-release of 500 free props and backgrounds intended for users of the new CrazyTalk Animator 2.
Update: now on Archive.org in perpetuity.
Did you know there’s now a free script to export OBJ 3D models from Poser and import the OBJ into the 2D animation software Anime Studio Pro? It’s been possible for some years now, but Smith Micro now offer the free Poser Python export script — along with two tutorial movies, one of which shows how to adjust the toon line weight on the object.
See also this 10 minute tutorial video, in which DutchWorkingMan shows how he uses Poser and Anime Studio Pro to get a believable cartoon cel-shaded look on an exported character.
The Smith Micro comic-book software Manga Studio can also apparently import OBJs — but in that case you simply drag the OBJ onto your Manga Studio canvas.
Update: script still available via Archive.org. Works for Poser 11 to Clip Studio.
A short Infinite Skills video guide/tutorial, on the new Comic Book render options in Poser Pro 2014…
Posted in Comics, Companion software, DAZ Studio, Natural media emulation, Poser, Spotted in the News
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Smith Micro have just officially announced Poser Pro 2014, and they’ve even priced and dated it: 21st May 2013!
Here are the new features, with my comments on each:
* There’s a new Pro-version only “Fitting Room”… “to convert your existing clothing and props to fit any figure”. Useful, although third-party software such as CrossDresser (my review) already does that quite well and also works seamlessly for DAZ Studio too. Plus a related… “Morph Brush now supports Sag, Tighten and Loosen so clothing works better”. Poke-through, begone! Maybe.
* “Pixar Subdivision Surfaces for fast and efficient scene building” This means you can change the density of the surfaces on your model, by making the mesh looser or tighter. Looks like an on-the-fly polygon-reduction system, and one you can apply to any bit of a 3D model. Nice. Not sure how many times I’d use it. If I ever had a scene that heavy then I’d break it into background, foreground, character, and then composite their multiple renders together in Photoshop.
* “Bullet Physics for Soft Body Dynamics, Rigid Body and Hair.” Nice, for the small handful of serious Poser animators.
* A new “Comic Book Preview Mode” for color and B&W cartoon illustration and animation. A bit more on this one: “This feature will enable you to create comic art with fantastic line control and color, or clean black and white outlines with persistent shading even when rotating or animating your point of view.” Plus some new semi-toon characters which will ship with the software.
Sounds cool, especially if we can tweak it and can make share-able presets. The existing sketch mode in Poser can be made to produce rather nice effects. But I’ve yet to see a useful straight comic-book filter from any software, and I’ll be surprised if Poser 2014 manages to finally get it right.
* “Interactive Raytrace Preview.” Grainy real-time preview in a tiny window, but it looks really useful in terms of seeing what your render is actually going to look like, and as such could save a lot of time. Reducing the amount of wasted “fiddle-about-with-it time” can only be good, since that’s a real drawback in using DAZ Studio or Poser compared to iClone.
* “OpenGL Speed Optimization.” Nice. It was a bit sticky and slow, for me, so improvements are welcome. Not sure it’ll be as lovely-looking and responsive as DAZ Studio 3’s implementation of real-time Open GL, but we can hope.
And of course, the ever-present promise of faster rendering…
* “The Firefly render engine has been optimized for faster performance when Raytracing.”
So for me, the new version boils down to: it may render a bit faster, it has a useful real-time preview, and the comic-book filter might be cool. The real-time preview window looks like the must-have “killer feature”.
Anyway, judge for yourself. Here’s the official video for the new features of Poser Pro 2014…
Booking now, a new free webinar from Smith Micro, “Using Poser to Create the Ground-Breaking Graphic Novel Anomaly“. With artist Brian Haberlin the creator (with writer Skip Brittenham) of Anomaly
“Anomaly is one of the most innovative and rousing epic adventures I’ve seen. This story of a team of explorers marooned on a distant planet marries action and ideas in spectacular fashion, and holds important lessons for our society today.” — Harrison Ford, actor.
“They have uncovered a shrewd world in Anomaly, one where simply fighting for survival is not enough. Loaded with offbeat characters and idiosyncratic socio-structures, Anomaly does a smashing job of bringing us back to the fundamentals of humanity.” — Ridley Scott, movie director.
I’m always been a fan of comics, and the chance to combine comics with animation seems like a dream come true — to someone who was a kid in an age when the coin-operated photocopier was the best advanced comics-production technology we had access to. So it’s exciting that Smith Micro, of Poser fame, have announced that they are to very shortly release MotionArtist, for making interactive digital motion-comics…
“MotionArtist is going to be released very soon with amazing improvements over the public beta version. These span from HTML5 output to animated panels, text and word balloons, 3d Parallax effect, and Anime Studio input. Start counting your pennies and watch for additional news about the official launch coming very soon!”
Reallusion also reportedly have something similar in the works, and it’ll be interesting to see what CrazyTalk Animator 2.0 looks like when it arrives. I’d expect Reallusion may learn a lot from letting MotionArtist launch first.
It’ll also be interesting to see how MotionArtist interfaces with Smith Micro’s comics production software Manga Studio, if at all. It sounds like it might interface more with their animation software Anime Studio and with Poser 2014.
Digital comics makers who draw or paint over their DAZ Studio or Poser renders for might be interested in a free webinar from Smith Micro on “What’s New in Manga Studio 5?”. Despite its somewhat misleading name, the specialist graphics software Manga Studio 5 is not just for manga artists. It’s just about the best dedicated comic-book production software available. MS5 also has the industry’s best range of pressure-sensitive digital “black ink” brushes.
The free one hour webinar is on 5th February 2013, at 3pm in the afternoon (US Pacific time). It’ll be presented by Doug Hills, comic book artist and author of the training book Manga Studio For Dummies
“Doug will explore the new, fully-customizable interface and show you how it can help to improve your workflow. He will also review the stunning new coloring and painting tools, demonstrate how it is even easier to import and use 3D character and background images, create word balloons, and much more. We will conclude the hour with a brief Q&A session where you will be able to ask questions and have them answered.”
The pro “Ex” version of Manga Studio is set for a summer 2013 release.
Loving the look of the new Lenore and The Raven for Poser, which currently have their launch-discounts applied. Perfect for a webcomic.
Suitably retextured in black/white, I’d say that the Waffling Shruggle would be a nicely matching “third character” for a Lenore-based comic strip. Godfrey Lil’ Death could also work.
Apparently, DAZ users should adjust Lenore’s skirt material to 99% gloss to get a better look in DAZ.
Evilinnocence has a sale on his toony “eye” characters. Perfect for those considering undertaking a webcomic, I’d say. Because you won’t have to do mouths.
