News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Category Archives: Companion software

3dCutout

Posted on by Posted in Comics, Companion software Leave a comment

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.”

UI-1024x637

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.

iClone6 and IndigoRT

Posted on by Posted in Companion software, Lighting, Real-time animation 1 Comment

News that the forthcoming iClone6 will support DirectX11 and also an external third-party GPU-accelerated renderer…

“Reallusion has acquired a special license from Glare to use the Indigo [IndigoRT] renderer in our AP. IndigoRT for iClone has the exact same features of Indigo RT, the only difference being that it’s dedicated for iClone rendering and won’t support Max, Maya, or SketchUp.”

I can’t yet find any side-by-side comparisons of the iClone5 renderer and iClone6 + IndigoRT. But here’s brand468’s 50-second render of an old low-poly scooter, exported from iClone to SketchUp and 2000px test rendered with IndigoRT…

50sek

So… useful for stills, perhaps, if you can spare 2 minutes per render to get all the grain off the image. Which is not bad. It would be a nice option for stills artists to have, depending on how nice the lighting model is and if IndigoRT supports glows and suchlike.

Cinebox

Posted on by Posted in Companion software, Films, Real-time animation, The Animation Industry Leave a comment

Trailer for the forthcoming Erasmus Brosdau film made with Cinebox, a genuine real-time WYSIWYG renderer that sits on top of the videogame engine CryEngine, and lets you make stills and movies with it in real-time interactive HD (like iClone, not like the slow grainy preview windows that pass for real-time in high-end 3D software). Cinebox has yet to be released, but it already looks pretty good…

Octane 2.0 released

Posted on by Posted in Carrara, Companion software, DAZ Studio, Lighting, Poser, Special Offers and Discounts, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry Leave a comment

The external render engine Octane 2.0 has been released for various 3D software, and has added…

* Displacement mapping.
* Faster hair and fur rendering.
* Better sky backgrounds.
* Motion blur.
* Region rendering (for making small test renders)
* Network rendering.

…and more.

Octane 2.0 is available for Poser 9 or 2012 or higher, DAZ Studio 4.5. Last I heard, a Carrara version of Octane 2.0 version is being worked on. All Octane users will need a newer CUDA-capable GeForce NVIDIA graphics card slotted into your PC, which for many will require fitting a more powerful Power Supply Unit than the puny one that shipped with the PC.

Free to students with a valid .edu or .ac.uk email address. Note that students are currently limited to the 1.2 version.

Firefox gets native 3D via bundled Unreal Engine 4

Posted on by Posted in 3D Utilities, Companion software, DAZ Studio, Poser, Real-time animation, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry Leave a comment

A new Firefox feature is rather cool…

“You’ll soon be able to stream and play highly realistic three-dimensional video games from within the Mozilla Firefox [Web] browser. … Firefox’s gaming capabilities don’t even require a Web browser plugin to function … ability to run the Unreal Engine, even the new Unreal Engine 4”

Firefox joins Google Chrome in this, as Chrome has had the same HTML5 3D gaming ability for a while now.

Given the pace that Firefox is developing it can’t be long until we see it in the latest Firefox downloads. In fact, those with the 64-bit developer Nightly build of Firefox can already play Monster Madness. Or, they can if they play it if can get past the dreadfully unintuitive UI interface which serves to hide the buttons that actually starts the gameplay. I clicked the main play button, but was then presented with nothing that would actually start the game. Though the game’s interface elements loaded fine…

madness

Such teething problems aside, we’ve come a long way from those far-off years when a clunky Java browser applet would load… and load… and then… crash and freeze your entire PC.

PzDB updates

Posted on by Posted in 3D Utilities, Companion software, DAZ Studio, Poser, SketchUp, Spotted in the News Leave a comment

I’m pleased to see continuing development on the PzDB DAZ/Poser content library management software. (My review of PzDB). Version 1.3 is currently in public beta testing…

“We’ve expanded to PzDB to work with more of your favorite CGI programs, so many in fact, we have introduced a new File Types window to enable you control which files PzDB indexes for you. You can now index more kinds of bitmaps and CGI Content files from Anime Studio, Corel Creative Suite, Google Sketchup, iClone, Maya, Quindam, Softimage, Wings3D, and even movies and audio files.”

Yep, iClone content indexing, as well as DAZ/Poser! Nice. Plus better indexing of those annoying new-fangled DAZ 4.x file types. It has a new and more polished look, too…

PzDBScreenCars

Tutorial: export an FBX from DAZ Studio

Posted on by Posted in Companion software, DAZ Studio, Tutorials Leave a comment

Toon Boy Sam from DAZ Studio to the real-time animation software iClone — complete with face morphs/phenomes, and eye movements made compatible with iClone’s 3DXChange character bone-rigging.

Part one of the tutorial is more generally useful for those who need to export FBX files for non-standard toon characters from DAZ…

Part two shows you the steps needed in 3DXchange Pro 5 and iClone…