News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Category Archives: Competitions

Contest: Internet Archive’s Public Domain Film Contest 2026

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The copyright release season approaches. The Internet Archive is running a contest for creative short films that use public domain material, especially the releases due on 1st January 2026.

Make a 2-3 minute short film, and add an equally open soundtrack. No ban on the use of AI, which is especially notable since good-quality local AI Video2Video generation has become accessible/affordable in the last year. But I’d image that the original footage is what the judges will be looking out for. The 1930 date suggests obvious linkages with early pulp science-fiction. Deadline: 7th January 2026.

Here’s a survey of what’s entering the public domain in 2026, with a focus on fantasy, science-fiction and horror.

Contest: 2025 3D Steampunk Universe Contest

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The Renderosity 2025 3D Steampunk Universe Contest is open.

Some “AI postprocessing” of a Poser render is acceptable, though apparently this actually only means AI used for “(color correction, tone, saturation, or special effects)”. So I think they’re considering Photoshop’s tools there, which I guess might conceivably now entail AI use. They don’t seem to want a Poser render sent through Stable Diffusion Img2Img.

Limited to 1200px at 72dpi.

Nice prizes, although not including Poser licences, unless they’re to be included in an unspecified “Humble Bundle Software Collection” which it seems has yet to be released. Save your pennies for that one, I’d suggest, presumably to be released in July.

Deadline is 4th July 2025.

Reallusion 2024 ‘Animation At Work’ Competition

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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.