News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Category Archives: DAZ Studio

What’s New for Poser and DAZ, April-May 2023

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

Slightly early this month, but it’s time for another pick of what’s new for Poser and DAZ Studio users.

Science-fiction:

Teleportation Effects VFX for DAZ Studio. 36 of them, with 4K textures.

DZ BSuitZ for G8M & G9. Usefully generic and plain, for when you want the focus on the character and not the suit.

Bomb place set for Poser, and separately for DAZ. A 33 part set. It’s by 1971s, so you know it’ll toon well in Poser’s Comic Book renders.

Need a control unit for the bomb? There’s a new free HX Console for DAZ. A retro 1970s style computer/radar console. Also looks suitable for Doctor Who remakes and suchlike. See also this new GMDSS 6000 Series Communication equipment freebie. If you need the complete caboodle, take a look a this monster control-centre…

The Corridor, a 2001 style corridor. If you enlarged the corridor and stripped out some bits you might even get a 3D roadway for some of the new Luxor Poser Prop flying cars.

Valvepunk:

A ramshackle Radio Watchtower, evocative of Fenton Wood’s Yankee Republic series.

DD PBR Painted Wood Shaders for iRay Vol. 2. Faded, cracked and scuffed.

Fantasy:

Shattered Steel. Breakable sword blades, for Poser.

CW_Michael for Genesis 8 Male, with an interestingly ‘almost semi-toon’ face and head.

Techno-Wizard Weapons SW for G3 and G8.

Fan-art:

Thri-Kreen for Poser. A Dungeons & Dragons creature.

Wanted: Weapons of Fate for Poser. A custom character for the stock ships-with-Poser figure Jessi, based on a game character. The description says “standalone”, but that can’t be if she requires Jessi.

Harrison Ford for Poser for the M3 LowRes figure. Could be useful if you have a big heavy scene, and you don’t want the crash it by adding a high-res figure.

Halloween:

Movie Mummy for G8M. You also get the ancient coffin.

Enakh Outfit for G8M.

Pyrotechnica 2. Burning, black smokes, plus a fireworks burst, for DAZ Studio.

Suds. 3D models of soap suds, for DAZ Studio. Could also be useful for alien landscapes, horror labs, or scenes where nano-technology runs amok.

Photo Props: Candles, with texture that make them suitable for close-ups.

Figures, poses and clothes:

Malikai and Hair for Genesis 8.1 Male.

AMV_Glasses, basic cheap reading-glasses for G2 to G9.

Lina for Antonia, an Eastern European look for the Antonia figure for Poser.

AniBlock animations:

10 x ‘in bed’ AniBlocks for Genesis 9. Couples lying in bed.

21 Action & Gun AniBlocks for Genesis 8/8.1.

Ready To Fight 2 AniBlock animations for the Genesis series. Specifically, ring boxing and kick boxing.

Toon:

Flix for Genesis 8 Male. Might also be used with the free Prof Hair for G8M.

Speaking Dishes and teapots for DAZ Studio.

Chull Clothes 2, for Nursoda’s new Chull figure.

Storybook:

SAMANT Pastry Shop, for Poser and DAZ.

A free DollBox for Poser, with La Femme fit. Also the Pretty Doll Vintage Dress.

Dino 03, a free cute stuffed-fabric toy dinosaur. Plus Food for Dino 03, which might also be used with other rotund beasts of burden.

A free Swimming Ring. Might be made to fit Dino…

Hr-257 hair, suitable for a ‘girl adventurer’ type character. For V4 and others.

Penny & Dress for G8F.

FG School Pack Supply plus backpack, for the FG Elementary Classroom.

A free Cheap Fountain Pen for DAZ Studio.

Tuscan Kitchen Accessories set.

Hobby Props Pottery, for all your potter’s wheel needs.

Animals:

Songbird ReMix Kingfishers, for Poser and DAZ.

Komodo Dragon by AM, for DAZ Studio.

Arkeno for Moshi The Kitten and Soffancska: Moshi, both material addons for the kitten.

UV Templates for DAZ Horse 3.

Landscapes:

3D Scenery: Lush Gate from ShaaraMuse3D, for Poser and DAZ. A useful wooded summertime arch, which also has a low-spec PC version. No Autumnal makeover MAT, but I guess you just tweak the colours.

Simple free Railings of the sturdy sort you might see on the sea-front of a coastal town. For Poser and DAZ. Includes old and sea-worn MATs.

Bastion Fortress – Brick Walls for Poser and DAZ. A texture addon for the Bastion Fortress Construction Kit.

Historical:

Very little this month, in Historical.

Second World War Jeep for Poser. 13 figures, poses, props.

Utilities and similar:

Explosion Debris FBX.

A free Mosaic MT5 material for Poser

Formation-X for DAZ Studio. Billed as “Configuration and Alignment Scripts for Large Groups”. Such as spacecraft battle formations. Released summer 2019, but it’s new to me.

Expandable Color Ramp for Poser 12 & 13, for SuperFly. “It will allow between 2 to X number of color points simply by daisy-chaining the nodes together.”

A free Cubic To Linear add-on for MojoWorld 3.11.

30 Realistic Fur & Hair Brushes for Photoshop.

Software:

UVMapper 4.0 for Windows, May 2023.

Blender 3.51 for Windows 7, no installer needed. The installer having been a roadblock before now, when Blender refused to install if your graphics card was unworthy. Now you can install anyway and run it on the CPUs.

PD Howler 2024.

At last, a dark mode for Paint Tool SAI 2, aka SAI2.

Poser 13 has had a number of updates since the initial release in March.

Tutorials:

Essential Introduction to Genesis 9 for Content Creators. With Esha.

Toolbox Treasures : Super Scripts for DAZ Studio. With Code 66.

New video tutorials on Poser 13 Installation and Poser 13 : Installing included content.

Making advanced Pixelart in Blender, a tutorial for a free addon. Looks quite effective.

Beginner’s Guide to Texturing in Poser: The Diffuse Node.

VUE scene breakdown: Making of “Fresh Water” with Vue expert Barry Marshall. Also a new Quicktip video: Duplicating Assets in E-on’s Vue.

That’s it. More next month.

Fan-art G8 figures

Posted on by Posted in DAZ Studio, Freebies Leave a comment

Testing Shinteo’s free fan-art G8 figures. There’s a lot of them, but he has a handy page which groups them by game, movie or whatever. Sadly, no Gravity Falls (no game?) or Lord of the Rings.

Click through to the one you’re interested in. There are hundreds of game characters. Click to a character, click the Patreon link, and there on the .ZIP file link.

I got Tintin, Doctor Doom (Marvel), Classic Spiderman (Marvel), Capt. Jack Sparrow, and Godzilla (I think he’s public domain now?) with no problem.

My quick pose and render of Capt. Jack. Responds to G8M expressions.

They’re low-poly game rips, so you probably shouldn’t expect to do pore-probing close-ups on the face. Also, I imagine you should expect texture atlases, so no re-texturing. Some require commercial morph packs to be present. Some of the eyes are a bit glazed and filmy, so may need tweaking.

Once installed they show up in Characters | @Cosplay, not G8. I haven’t tested if they can be mixed with other G8’s via sliders.

Note also the Tutorial on posing with my converted models, re: facial expressions. And the Eyes Offset Tutorial.

Denoising in Photoshop CS6 32-bit in 2023

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

DAZ’s free Photoshop Bridge only fully works when using 32-bit with a 32-bit Photoshop. Ideally Photoshop CS6. As I’ve explained before here on MyClone, here and here.

But imagine you’ve got it working and are auto-sending renders to a comic-book page that’s set up in Photoshop. Each render drops into a comic-book panel. But, since there’s a lot to render on each page, the renders are quick and grainy and have ‘fireflies’. This grain will not matter so much, if you’re then filtering them using a non-naff artistic Photoshop filter (Mediachance, Sketchmaster 2018, some G’MIC filters).

But what if you’d just like to denoise a photoreal render? Sure you can filter with an NVIDIA-only denoiser, back in DAZ Studio. But that feature has never worked for me, and I guess my NVIDIA graphics card is just not worthy. Or you could lift the shadows and create a flatter and more comic-book look with the Exposure Value and Shutter Speed sliders in DAZ. Less shadows, less noticeable grain and fireflies.

True, there’s a free mcjDenoise plugin for DAZ which actually uses Intel’s OIDN. But it can only be applied to the stack of recent renders. Thus it can’t work to process the render that’s to be automatically sent to Photoshop via the Bridge.

Ideally there would be a Photoshop plugin that uses the open-source Intel OIDN denoiser. Which has a superb AI model especially trained to clear 3D renders. This plugin would speedily fix all the grain and fireflies, in one click. But, rather surprisingly (given the potential market and the very open licence) no-one has made such a thing. There are only two Windows GUI standalones.

What about other AI-powered denoiser plugins for Photoshop? The Topaz AI Denoise plugins were available for CS6, but… only for 64-bit and they were trained for megapixel night photographers, not 3D renders. There were three or four pre-AI denoiser plugins for 32-bit, but they were expensive and (even if still available) are not ideal now.

Thus the fallback in 2023 would be the free and actively developed G’Mic plugin suite. Its 32-bit .8BF is happy to run as a Photoshop CS6 32-bit plugin. Currently in G’Mic, the 2022 filter Testing | Afre | Denoise appears to be the quickest/best on 3D renders. In fact it’s near-instant, which is very nice. But obviously it’s not as good as OIDN. The results are softer than OIDN, and not all noise is cleared. But it’s better than nothing, and if your comic-book page is destined for digital-only… then it may be good enough.

And don’t forget that .PSD is a portable format, so you can do all the render-catching and layout in CS6, and then load the CC 2018 or higher for postwork and filters.

But the ideal for CS6 would be that someone plugs OIDN into G’Mic in the near future.

What’s New for Poser and DAZ, April 2023

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

It’s time for another monthly round-up, offering my pick of what’s new for Poser and DAZ users.

As usual, freebies are not noted if they’re ‘non-commercial use’, unless they’re such obvious fan-art that no-one would consider using them commercially. Indeed, there’s a new fan-art sub-category this month.

There’s also a new G8/G9 store, 3D Shards, with some freebies. Takes quite a while to load, but looks great.

Science-fiction:

A generic futuristic Billionaire’s Office. Plus 30 cool hi-tech props.

A free CyborgLuna for Baby Luna, the free creepy baby which ships with Poser. There are some earlier Baby Luna’s Creature Heads morphs, but I see that only two of these might pass muster for a sci-fi look. Probably now needs a pack of cyborg head morphs.

Coflek-Gnorg’s Hostile Surface I and Hostile Surface II. Basic ‘first landers’ pioneer-era surface space-cabins for Poser, with quality interiors.

A big futuristic comic-book style Tank Model-X for DAZ. Needs some “Hulk… SMASH!” punch-blow morphs, I’d suggest.

Colony Control Tower, looking like it could be of use for re-making lost episodes of classic 1970s British TV sci-fi?

Sci-fi Fan Art:

James T. Kirk for Poser, which requires M3 Low Res and the David 3 texures. No hair, but I’m fairly sure there’s some Kirk hair around somewhere for Poser.

Marvel Ultimate Galactus Outfit for Genesis 8 Male. Looking pretty much like the original Kirby Galactus, as far as I can see. Rather cheekily, there’s a Marvel logo and also an Extended Licence for sale.

Desert Spaceport for DAZ, a large Mos Eisley a-like town from Star Wars with lots of angles. Not identical, and there’s clear prior-art, so commercial use as a standard desert town would probably pass the Disney lawyer sniff-test.

A Twi’lek for Genesis 8 Female, and Twi’lek Headpeice for Aiko 4, for non-commercial Star Wars fan-art.

Steampunk and Dieselpunk:

A pleasing retro-look helmet Protective Gear 018 MMKB.

Christmas Steampunk Car for Poser. An old model from Meshbox, but new on Renderosity. Likely to have a single texture-atlas texture, making it difficult to re-texture.

Fantasy:

FireShow, an unusual addition to a circus or medieval hall with jesters and minstrels. Though you’d need some wooden planking to cover the modern struts.

Halloween:

Free Fangs for LaFemme/L’Homme.

Morphing Skull together with Stands for Morphing Skull and Morphing Candle for Morphing Skull.

Leviathan for Daz Studio, a gloopy monster with tentacle sliders for posing.

Figures and poses:

A free pack of sitting and kneeling CRP Floor Poses 1-12 for G8F & G9.

40 x G8 expressions on sliders, in the Ross_Expressions G8 01 pack.

Young Anime Heroes for Genesis 9, stylised manga/anime type morphs.

Storybook:

Essential Stationery Props.

Coin-Operated Rides Mega Pack for DAZ. You could probably hide bits, such that the plane really takes off and flies the passenger through the clouds.

Smoking Pipe. With smoke and holding poses for G8/G9. For your old-school Tolkien-type storyteller, with a pipe by the fireside.

Toon:

Toon Horse for Daz Horse 3.

Animals:

Songbird ReMix Bee-eaters of the World, for Poser and DAZ.

Snitch, a strange creature for Poser and DAZ. Likely to appeal to those who have enjoyed playing the videogame Spore.

Landscapes and settings:

City Waterway by Predatron, looking useful for action-movie type scenes.

A2Z SciFi Loading Dock and Warehouse I v1 for Poser. A bit sci-fi, but could also be of use for those who need to make modern-day warehouse worker training videos.

Historical:

A free dForce 1940s Men’s Suit for G8M. Also a tweed trousers and pullover set. Also get the 1940’s inspired suspenders and bowtie for the free G8M men’s suit. “Suspenders” = “braces” in British English.

A free Sniper U.S. Ranger standalone, a low-poly figure for M3 Low Res and Poser, so you can have many soldiers in your scene.

DryJack’s Match Truck and Crane, the sort of thing you might see in a mid 20th century heavy industry rail-yard.

Those who like DryJack’s excellent British railway models and tracks/stations may also want the free Sign 14, the new British ‘Men at Work’ road-sign. Part of a larger free set of such things.

VZ-9 Avrocar Flying Saucer, which was really made (though barely flown) in the 1950s by the U.S. Air Force. Complete with interior, controls, smart-props, poses. For Poser and DAZ.

A free classic mid/late 20th century Cinema Part 1, with iRay textures. Also get Part 2.

A manky Industrial Warehouse Scissor Lift of the sort you might have found in an old abandoned warehouse in the early 1990s.

Utilities, scripts and similar:

A free Simple POV Camera for G3 & G8. Your scene shows what the figure sees.

A Procedural Braid Generator for Blender.

Free AND / OR / XOR Logic Nodes for the Poser Material Room, for Poser 12 and 13. Also an accompanying “Wondering how to use Logic Nodes for Poser material room?” tutorial.

A free Value Viewer for Poser SuperFly, a node for Poser 12 and 13.

A paid MAT Tiler for Poser 12, which… “automates working with seamless textures in Poser”.

A free Poser script ShowLightsInPreview, for Poser 12. I’m not sure I even understand the user problem it’s trying to solve, and I think it may already have been solved by an earlier Poser 12 script (‘Remove Wires in Preview’) which toggles the visibility of the lights wireframes on the scene lights. But you may be interested.

Also, there are now Renderosity gift certificates, starting at a $150 Gift Certificate.

The free script Lock & Unlock them all from here for DAZ Studio. For example, lock everything below the wrist. There’s also a similar Hide & Show parts of a figure below a certain point.

Software:

Poser 13 for Windows, in Early Access. Ignore the “Windows 10” spec, as it runs fine on Windows 7 (although it won’t then load encrypted store-purchased scripts). SuperFly is now the new Cycles 2 for much faster x2 rendering, especially for animations and this can also work on CPUs. The Intel Denoiser is updated, and PostFX is expanded and can now do Glow. An updated Walk Designer and Talk Designer, and more.

The 2D paint software SAI2 has a dark mode at long last. For fast painting with big brushes on a big canvas, there’s SAI2, PaintStorm, and the superb vector brushes in the free Microsoft Expression Design 4.

Tutorials:

How to convert DAZ to Poser – Part 1 Geometry and Part 2 – Materials and lights. But first watch Converting DAZ scenes to Poser the super easy way, which involves going through (shudder) Collada. Don’t forget there’s also the Automatic OBJ Exporter for figures, with poly-reduction in the streamlined semi-automated pipeline.

How to Bring all your Poser 12 scripts to P13 without re-installing.

E-on Vue – controlling materials and EcoSystems with the wetness index node, a new 20 minute video tutorial.

Controlling camera-angles in AI-generated image production, a YouTube playlist.

That’s it for April 2023. More picks next month.

New store: 3D Shards

Posted on by Posted in DAZ Studio, Freebies, Spotted in the News Leave a comment

Sickleyield has kindly made his formerly-paid ShareCG items free. I’m not sure what was formerly paid there, but going through the items I noted…

SY Big Wave iRay. A big ocean wave with spray. And posing bones.

SY 200 Morphs for Genesis 8 Head & Body.

His conversion of DieTrying’s 182 Morphs for Genesis 2 Male and Genesis 2 Female. Also available for Genesis 1.

His paid G8 items are now over at the new 3D Shards store (slow to load, give it time). A very slick store, with 78 items there at present. Has his new G8 Pinocchio wooden puppet-boy and the older Marshmallow Man / Snowman, among others.

What’s New for Poser and DAZ Studio, February/March 2023

Posted on by Posted in DAZ Studio, Poser Leave a comment

It’s nearing the end of the month, so here’s another round-up of interesting items for Poser and DAZ Studio, released since my last round-up in mid-February.

As usual, freebies are only noted if commercial-use, or if such obvious fan-art that no-one would think to use them commercially.

Science-fiction:

UniBot 09 a free retro bot for Poser. Old, but only just found by me.

Exotic chairs set for DAZ and Poser. Several with a sci-fi feel. And the big metal one is probably powered by anti-gravity.

The free Artdress for G8F has a Moebius-like sci-fi feel to it.

Steampunk:

LBLC_Steampunk Bar.

Nautilus Boat. Simple but effective.

Rusted Metal for DAZ iRay, a merchant resource.

Scrappy the Robot for DAZ Studio.

Fantasy:

Forest Spirits, Tree and Mushroom for Genesis 9, and poses.

Great to see Poisen back. His latests packs are Evil Trees, Elden and DireStones.

Varg 8 for Daz Dog 8. A Middle-earth movies style warg for DAZ Studio. Requires DAZ Dog 8. You’ll also find new warg-riders on the DAZ Store, though they’re distinctly beefier and more Warcraft than Tolkien’s generally small and wiry orcs.

Iron Mask for G8M. A medieval-style ‘man in the iron mask’ mask.

Storybook:

A free Winter In A Bottle. A home-made snow-shaker for Christmas.

See also the free Christmas Lighthouse, which would also fit the bottle.

Wooden Mecha. Pinocchio style wooden puppet for DAZ Studio.

Old Giant Wood Blackboard Chalkboard.

The new Hr-255 hair.

Skateboarding Bundle, being skateboards and G9 poses. There are also G8 poses in other earlier packs.

Toon:

Free, Dear Me for Sakura & Genesis 8. A free (for a limited period) DAZ Studio remake of the classic Japanese Poser base-figure NearMe, aka Near Me. Near enough, by the looks of it. With DAZ you’d get the wide range of clothes and hair, but you won’t get Poser’s excellent real-time Comic Book mode. Needs G8F base (free) and Sakura 8 (currently on a 60% discount).

Update: Nope, sorry, I just cannot get this to load on Sakura 8 (or G8F) as advertised. No instructions in Documentation folder. Shaping sliders are present, but they just make a mess of Sakura. File under: “the maker knows how it works, but no-one else does”.

The unusual semi-toon Tabbie for La Femme. It doesn’t look like the hair is included, but it’s Hr-162 with a dark leopard material on it.

King Of Frogs, low-poly for M3 Low Res. Might be just what you require if you need a stage full of dancing frog-men.

Sleepy Chull, a clothing add-on for Nursoda’s recent Chull figure.

Animals:

Reindeer for DAZ Horse 3. Also comes with white fur.

Nature’s Wonders Dragonflies & Damselflies of the World Vol. 2. Requires Nature’s Wonders Dragonflies & Damselflies.

Also Nature’s Wonders Turtles of the World Vol. 2, with the same proviso.

History:

An Ice Ages Prehistoric Tar Pit for your mammoths and woolly rhino.

An old traditional Middle East Town for DAZ Studio. Perhaps founded 12th century, and decayed to the 16th.

The Celestial Corsair for DAZ. A 16th-17th century sailing ship with a variety of MATs.

Boat 65, a free Pacific style rafter.

A free Old tobacco pipe.

Wolmol has a fine range of free SuperFly MATS for his railway models and rail sets.

A floppy Arah3D Lucky Hat, also looking suitable for a 19th century milkmaid etc.

An Elegant Billiard Room from the mid/late Victorian era.

A free Vintage dForce sailor dress and jacket for G8F, and Vintage sailor hat.

Apollo Mission Control room, for Poser.

Shaders, materials:

Feeling like going out on the terrace, in the first warm spring sunshine? You’ll be needing the Soda Pop! Shaders. 20 shaders for pop drinks, as DAZ .DUF files. You may also be needing some Orange Juice and a pair of fab sunglasses.

MP Realistic Hands for G8F.

Character poses and presets:

Free G8F Saucy Sitting Poses.

Two Gun Man Pose Bundle for G3M and G8M. Two-gun ‘action movie’ poses.

British TV buffs will recall Patrick Macnee as John Steed and Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. Together they were the British Avengers in the 1960s. Both free, but requires M3 Low-Res.

Utilities, plugins, software:

A free 7 Color Color Ramp for Poser SuperFly.

MAT Tiler for Poser 12. There’s a Demonstration video on YouTube.

PD Howler 2023 is now on the DAZ Store.

Tutorials:

Horror Lighting: A Definitive Guide.

The free G’MIC for Photoshop now has its digital camera emulation filters all documented.

That’s it for this month. As always, a few dollars for my Patreon will be of great help in these difficult times.

Boots for Genesis

Posted on by Posted in DAZ Studio, Freebies Leave a comment

There are a couple of worth-having male freebies on the DAZ Store freebies page, at present. The boots are especially useful generic ‘superhero’ type boots, if you want to get away from ‘fat clomper’ type of boots and toward something more stylish.

After install, the Boots for Genesis are found under: Genesis | Clothing | GnBoots.

Tested with Genesis 3 Male and Genesis 8 Male. Just choose Autofit | None and the boots fit nicely.

Obviously you’re going to ‘kitbash’ (or for 3D, ‘runtime bash’) with this, to make something unique. As I’ve done here. I don’t know of anything that’s specifically designed to work with the boots, and Ravenheart didn’t then make Genesis trousers/pants of a matching length. I can’t find any freebies that were made for the boots, and you only get one MAT with the boots themselves.

The base parts of ‘Sci-fi Guard Outfit’ for G8M seems to kind-of-work with the boots. But as you can see on a G3M there’s poke-through and you’d need to make an opacity MAT. I’ve quickly combined the boots/suit with other random stuff by grabbing some extra pauldrons and gloves from other content packs, and added the Armarni hair. Not great, but could work as a starting base for more character development.

New for DAZ and Poser, January/February 2023

Posted on by Posted in DAZ Studio, Poser Leave a comment

Time for another round-up of the last month’s new goodies and releases for Poser and DAZ Studio users. As usual, only commercial-use freebies are noted, unless they’re fan-art so obvious that no-one would think of trying to use them commercially.

This post covers releases and items which caught my eye in mid January to mid February 2023.

Science-fiction:

A fabulous Hollywood-level dForce Space Jumpsuit for G8F. I’m assuming it’s not fan-art.

Astro Car, flying car models for Poser.

1971’s new Place of Screams for Poser, and also seperately for DAZ Studio. Looks good, and his modelling always renders nicely in Poser’s Comic-Book line-art.

A stylised Dragon Limousine for Poser. With a bit of a texture makeover it would be suitable for a dieselpunk world. And if you need Presidential outriders, there’s the new Thirties Streamline Motorcycle.

AutoBar with robot bar-tender. For Poser and DAZ. See below, for a link to a good new robot/cyborg TTS voice.

Fantasy:

Poizen’s new HelmZ for Poser. As .OBJ files, so can also easily go to Vue and DAZ Studio. Not to be confused with the older Helmet-Z series.

Poisen’s new HeartZ 3D Models for Poser. Again, these are different from his older CharmZ 3D hearts.

He also has a new BoneGarden set.

Storybook:

Scaffolding for 1971’s Roller House, a nice and unusual freebie. Could be paired with AnnieMation’s Fairytale Road Trip model.

Chull Clothes One set, for Nursoda’s new Chull figure.

BlenCon – Cozy Room for Poser Superfly. Nice to see Poser conversions of Blender models. In this case, a free ‘cozy room’ interior suitable for the start of a ‘once upon a time’ tale. There’s also a Part Two.

Just add a few of the free Bambi Chairs about the room.

Animals:

Nothing in toon or animals this month, but there are some free Thicker Sabers for HiveWire Big Cat, for making a sabre-tooth.

Characters, clothing, hair:

Gear Up from Coflek-Gnorg, generic army packs.

Free Scuba Diver Suit and Scuba Diver Fins and Hood, Mask and Snorkel, all for Poser’s La Femme.

Hr-253 from Ali, a new hair with many fits including V4 and La Femme. Also a texture set with shading.

Dynamic pants and top for Antonia, the free Poser figure.

MP Realistic Feet for Genesis 8.

Office Aniblocks for Genesis 8. Sitting and typing, opens drawer and so on.

Landscape:

Tanglewood Stumpery – Fairy Tale Tree Stumps, Dead and Fallen Trees for DAZ Studio.

Photo Props: Aurora Effect from ShaaraMuse3D. Seems to be a “simple plane set” rather than each prop being an array of planes.

EV Ocean FX. 3D ocean models for Poser, including a water-spout or sink-hole.

Historical:

Ken has his Royal Hawaiian for Genesis 3 and higher on Renderosity. Was at Hivewire. His Hawaiian Voyager, Weapons of Lua, and Royal Hawaiian for Dusk are also now on Renderosity.

Leudo, a coastal Mediterranean trader, 15th-17th century. Could be framed rather nicely in the bay, by the new Wild Dog Rose.

Marta, a free boat model in .OBJ.

A Ford Model T car from Cybertenko, complete with ‘comedy crash’ morph presets. The first affordable mass-market car, much used in the old silent comedy movies of the 1910s and 20s.

1910s-30s Deep Sea Diver for G8M.

That Yellow Seaplane, a classic 1930s/40s sea-plane. With interior.

Utilities:

The free DAZ to Blender Bridge updated and fixed.

A free G8F Pose Transfer to G1 Script for DAZ Studio.

Batch Tonemapper. Free… “Batch Tonemapper is a simple program allowing you to generate thumbnails for .EXR or .HDR files.”

And in 2D, another free Krita free brush bundle from David Revoy.

Tutorials:

50 Shades of iRay: Create Your Own Unique Fabrics.

Mesh Grabber Expert Guide: Powerful Manipulation of Meshes and Morphs in DAZ Studio.

The new free video tutorial How to set up dynamic clothing in Poser.

Automatic TTS speaking – the secret control codes! Useful for those who use text-to-speech voices. And for robot voices, CereProc has a rather good paid movie-quality one. For more basic but free ‘comedy bot’ voices, see here and here.

Ok, that’s it for now. More next month.

EmmaAndJordi have a 50% sale

Posted on by Posted in DAZ Studio, Poser, Special Offers and Discounts Leave a comment

EmmaAndJordi have a 50% sale on…

On our Gumroad store we have all products 50% off using this coupon:

saintvalentine2023

They also say “Sale ends on January 17” but that must be a typo for ‘February’, since it’s a Valentine’s Sale with the details only posted today.

Nice items I noted while going through their entire store…

EJ Demon Races Creator and Morphs for G8.

EJ Alien Creator Morphs for G8F.

EJ Face Morphs and Details for G8M.

And a good complete G8M Conan-a-like, EJ Lorcan Deluxe Pack For G8M – Character, Outfit, and Poses.

In older items, Kids4 Fit Addon For Violet Hair and two other K4 hair-fits, Tyler Moods – Organized Expressions For Tyler (should you still have Tyler in your runtime), and a Morphing Ice Pop (choc-ice on a stick).

Daz to Blender Bridge updated and fixed

Posted on by Posted in Companion software, DAZ Studio, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry 1 Comment

Butaixianran has kindly created a free DazToBlender: Daz to Blender Bridge updated fork…

“I updated the official Daz To Blender Bridge, now Daz model can be exported from Blender with morphs and textures, so you can use Blender as a Daz Bridge to other 3D tools.”

It’s already had a number of bug-fixes, and animation import has been added. Normal maps can be saved to .JPG to reduce bloat. Also supports Genesis 8.1 and 9.

No texture or base mesh resolution changes are involved with the conversion, and the user is left to do that in Blender. Or just use Blender as a pass-through to other software. As always, geografts and complex geoshell and similar overlay things many not convert well.

Regrettably Blender 3.1 or higher is required, so you need a powerful enough PC to pass Blender 3.x’s “install or not?” test and get Blender to install. Update: Blender 3.51 for Windows 7 (early May 2023). Needing no installer, it will now launch on Windows 7! Hurrah.

New for Poser and DAZ, December/January 2023

Posted on by Posted in DAZ Studio, Poser Leave a comment

Welcome to another survey and personal pick of new Poser and DAZ content, since my last survey in mid December 2022.

Science fiction:

Talyn and Taron for G8.

Need an enemy for Talyn and Taron? There’s the new HF Mynions for Genesis 8 Male.

A TRON-style Phenolic Sphere for DAZ Studio.

A free Radio Telescope Dish in a ruined and unruined version, for Poser and in .OBJ format for Vue etc.

Samara Hair, a nice free generic sci-fi cut for DAZ Carrara.

Simarter Coat Stand. With a bit of re-texturing it could also be many things, from a science-lab device to a bird-feeder.

Steampunk:

A free steampunk-type Flashlight lamp.

Holiday Hats Volume 02 for G8F, with a couple of suitable ones.

Free 8 Hats For Genesis 8 Male, some steampunky and one noir in a The Shadow sort of way. Currently broken, but hopefully soon to be fixed.

A free fake handlebar mustache, for your inept steampunk spies.

Fantasy:

Nosferatu Male for Genesis 9. Super, looks like he has lots of character.

EA Exodus Pouch Freebie for G8. A worn medieval type water-bottle. Requires the EA Exodus Outfit for Genesis 8.

DMs Novum Crossing. A new set and matching light-set from DM.

Toon:

Stylised v2 for G8F. I assume this semi-toon figure is original rather than fan-art, but check carefully before commercial use.

MightyMite Headgear 014 comic-book bases for G8. Including a tight turban with gem.

Stylized Caveman, Hair, and Accessories for G8.

Lots of G8 fan-art figures from Shinteo. Not for commercial use, obviously.

Storybook:

The excellent new Chull figure by Nursoda, for Poser and DAZ Studio.

Free, 15 Expression Presets for Chull.

Free Vagabond textures for Nursoda’s new Chull figures..

Free DA-Eyes for Chull by Nursoda.

RA for Chull, a paid textures makeover. Also Colours for Chull Hair in DAZ Studio.

Free morphs for a more feminine body for Nursoda’s Chull.

A free texture set for a House Painter for Hein Sailor, by Nursoda. Also a free Casey Jones type Train Conductor for Hein Sailor. I think I’ve seen these before, but they’re new on Renderosity Freestuff.

Landscape:

Flinks Rolling Hills – Snowfall for Poser. And Flinks Rolling Hills – Winter Grass.

ShaaraMuse3D’s Ancient Forest Path as a modular kit for Poser and DAZ Studio.

Stranded, a desert scene for DAZ Studio.

A YouTube tutorial on creating your first scene in Terragen 4.6.

History:

Yes another army of Vikings has landed on the DAZ Store.

Ancient Roman Lictor clothing and props for G8M. And a Legatus Legionis army leader.

A free giant-sized Castaway Raft.

A ye Olde River-Ferry Raft capable of taking horses and livestock, free.

Ken Gilliland’s Vintage Furnishings: 1920s-30s kitchen, bathroom, lighting set.

Free WASP, Fly-Girls, USSAF bomber girls, all for Victoria 3.

1940s Telephone Noir set.

Alfred Hitchcock for M3 low-res for Poser. Make an army of low-poly Scary Hitchocks!

1950s type Industrial Warehouse Conveyer or DAZ Studio. Could also be useful for a ‘Santa’s elves’ type workshop. with some Christmas makeover.

Universal Sailor: Captain for G8M.

An early ’80s dForce Boy George outfit for G8.

Materials, textures:

Teatime! Tea Shaders for iRay, a free set for tea and tea-like liquids.

Utilities, scripts:

G9 to G8 morphs, free.

Quick Cam for Poser 12 as a panel.

PBR Go Physical for Poser 12, apparently “1-Click PhysicalSurface materials creation out of your existing Poser Surface materials”.

Tutorials:

Pros and Cons of printing Poser/DAZ figures with a 3D resin printer.

That’s it for this month.

Find the G8.1 FASC face controller interface in DAZ Studio 4.21.x

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

How to find and load the G8.1 FASC face controller interface in DAZ Studio 4.21.x.

1. You first install Genesis 8 Starter Essentials pack, if you have not already done so. It should be in your Library at the DAZ store. Possibly you have not installed this since before Genesis 8.1 was introduced, so you need to do it again — it now also includes the 8.1 stuff.

These are chunky downloads, and will take a while for those on slow connections. Extract the .ZIP and install as usual. Those with an install manager may do things differently, but this is the old-school way.

2. Load Genesis 8.1 from the DAZ Library (you do this from Genesis 8 Female or Male folder, not the 8.1 folder, for some reason).

3. In the Genesis 8 | Developer Kit folder…

4. … you will find the FACS (face controls interface) loader icon, the one with the powder-blue background…

5. Load this to a default Genesis 8.1 figure. You don’t need to first select the Head. In the hierarchy list you will now see that a FACS interface has been added.

6. Switch the DAZ Studio UI over to the Posing / Shaping tab, and the controls will become visible.

In practice, though, they appear to be far more trouble that they’ve worth. The huge main problem being that it’s very difficult to easily select each face controller ‘chip’, by simply clicking on it. 90% of the time, no matter what selection movement-type you have activated up-top…

… the attempt to select a face control chip by clicking on it fails to do or activate anything. Sometimes it selects and lets you work with it, but most of the time it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter where you click — the arrow, the plus sign, or exactly on the wireframe wire — most times nothing happens.

The alternative option of using the control sliders, which are alongside and do the same thing for each control chip, works fine. Though there you have the hassle of scrolling up and down the big list, and trying to work out what each control name refers to on the face.

iRay, hoo-ray…

Posted on by Posted in DAZ Studio Leave a comment

Time for another look at the latest DAZ. My last look was back in late July 2022. At that point 4.20.1.17 (April 2022) had iRay at “2021.1.2”. If you went on into the public betas then you got to 4.20.1.58, with iRay at “2021.1.6” and a thorough overhaul of FBX export.

So, at that point the major iRay “2022.0.0” beta had not yet landed in DAZ.

Softpedia now as 4.21.1.13 Beta (5th November) as the mass-market public download. Tracking back through the abbreviated changes on Softpedia doesn’t reveal much. Ah, but if you look at the the official DAZ Change Log you find…

Public Beta (4.21.1.13):

Updated to NVIDIA Iray 2022.0.1 (359000.3383)

Nice.

Although further scrutiny also reveals that because of the new NVIDIA driver requirement, iRay GPU rendering is no longer supported for Windows 7. From DS 4.21.0.5 to DS 4.21.1.13 the NVIDIA driver requirements leapt… from 471.41 to 516.93. But the last supported drivers for Windows 7 were 473.81 (for the retail gaming cards, though at a guess there may still be drivers for workstation cards?).

If you need GPU (rather than CPU rendering) on Windows 7, it now seems that 4.21.05 is as far as graphics cards users can go. This is the current offline installer found in your content library…

It gets you to iRay 2021.1.6 rather than 2022. But remember that iRay can run quite happily on CPUs, whatever the NVIDIA marketing hype would have you believe. So if you have enough CPUs and your DAZ settings look like this, you may be ok to try the latest 4.21.1.13 beta…

Ok, with that out the way, let’s look at what you get if you can get to the latest 4.21.1.26 public beta (currently ‘Installer Manager only’). You get the latest…

Updated to NVIDIA Iray 2022.1.1 (363600.1657)

Ok, so… what do iRay 2022.x and 2022.1.1 bring? Hot from the iRay dev blog, in my digested and amalgamated form…

– Deterministic guided sampling, and “fixed a performance issue when guided sampling was used on fast GPUs and/or small image resolutions.”

– Guided sampling caching on camera movement, which means “When navigating [the scene] with guidance enabled (i.e. 1spp), one now gets a much higher quality, especially in complex lighting situations”.

– Guided sampling for the caustic sampler, and “not only does the guided sampling for caustics decrease noise, but in general we fixed some issues/bugs with some of the difficult caustic paths.”

– “Much faster material and environment updates”, “overall more precise rendering and improved interactivity speed”, “reduced VDB memory usage by a lot”.

– Improved hair BSDF sampling, improved hair/fiber rendering performance on RTX capable cards.

– MotionBlur support for fiber/curve vertex motion.

– “Fixed some performance regressions (especially one that affected the DAZ benchmark scene)”.

– Ghostlight support (customisable).

– New selection/outlines [this seems to mean the annoying orange flashing that happens when you mouseover a scene object, but most people will have this turned off].

– Improved emissive volumes, “LPE support for emissive volumes”.

– New native particle / spheres system [snow, etc].

– Spectral sky model, “Qfully dynamic evaluation of environments (e.g. Sun&Sky, IBL)”.

– Multi matte output buffer. [Appears to be a form of Clown Pass, that renders the scene in pure red, blue, green, thus making selections easier in postwork?]

– Full OpenImageIO support.

– Unspecified “AI upscaling”.

Some of these will be graphics card specific, I would imagine, and the hair certainly is.

A standalone Intel OIDN de-noiser with GUI… Merry Christmas!

Posted on by Posted in 3D Utilities, DAZ Studio, Freebies, Tutorials 1 Comment

I dug up a free Windows GUI version of Intel’s CPU Denoiser, aka the open-source OIDN. This is standalone AI-powered desktop software made by a guy in Japan, and which no-one but some Lightwave guys seem to have ever heard about.

You feed it your partially-completed .PNG render, which has noisy ‘fireflies’ you want to clear. It works back to Windows 7, on SSE4.1 CPUs or better, and with most 64-bit OS’s.

So… no need to worry if Santa didn’t bring you an expensive $800 NVIDIA graphics card, or worry about wrangling with many dependencies on other bits of software such as ImageMagick.

It just works, and beautifully. Merry Christmas!

USE:

1. Download and unzip OIDN-gui from GitHub.

2. Run OIDN.exe and the simple graphical user-interface will appear.

Here you load the same target .PNG render into all three slots, “Beauty”, “Albedo” and “Normal”. Then “Run Denoiser”.

DAZ iRay can do the regular render (here called “Beauty”). But if you did also have additional auxiliary/buffer/canvas renders, then your “Normal” would help preserve subtle bump-mapping, while the “Albedo” would do the same for fine textures. And apparently these two work in tandem, so both would be needed.

But you may have already stripped most bumps with the DAZ Scene Optimiser, and have no complex fine-patterned clothes in the scene. If so, then you’re smiling.

There is however another way to add detail back into a denoised render. In Photoshop you drop the output over the original, as a new layer. Then you ‘paint the detail back in’, by running a soft-edged small Eraser brush over the bits where you need most details (eyes, eyelashes etc). This reveals the detail beneath… and hopefully doesn’t reveal any pesky fireflies.

In tests an old 32-thread Intel workstation took about 2 seconds on a single 1920px render, and gave great results even without having the proper “Albedo” and “Normal” auxiliary/buffer/canvas renders available. The denoised image is saved with the same file extension and type, in the same folder, but the filename will have ‘-denoised’ added.

It seems you can batch process a series of animation frames with this (untested by me). But here you should know that OIDN is not “temporally stable”. Which in plain English means that when the animation is run ‘you may see some slight waver or detail-popping’ across strongly denoised areas.

That’s it. There is a later version by the same maker, re-written for QT. But that has no regular Windows .EXE file, so far as I can see.

There’s another Windows GUI option here, but it’s drag-and-drop with no batch. The above software does batch.

Note: Not needed in Poser 12 and also the latest E-on Vue, as in both cases Intel’s OIDN is built-in. The above advice is mostly for DAZ and Poser 11 users.

New for Poser and DAZ, November/December 2022

Posted on by Posted in DAZ Studio, Freebies, Poser Leave a comment

Slightly early due to Christmas, here’s my regular monthly survey of what’s new and interesting for artists using Poser and DAZ Studio. As usual, freebies are only linked if they’re ‘commercial use’ for renders, or are so obviously fan-art that no-one would try to use them commercially. Also I’m not trying to cover the new G9 stuff for DAZ, though there is a bit of that here.

Science-fiction:

A lovely retro GT Skimmer flying car for Poser. “Scaled to Poser figures”.

Flitting alongside your flying car, probably some Animal Jah alien birds. Note sure how Avatar-alike they are? Could class as fan-art?

Your space-opera lead hero has arrived. The stylish and subtly stylised PN August for Genesis 9.

Cryopod 3D Asset for Blender. I had success in exporting this to .OBJ from Blender 2.83.

A free Hex Floor scene prop. Could also make a wall. See also the new Architectural Wall Panels.

A new Sci-Fi Holographic Chess Set.

Steampunk:

Fallen Angel metal wings for M4, V4, G8.

Steampunk Sound Blaster by Cybertenko. Looks fun. “Drop that maguffin, HPL, or I’ll serenade you with a blast of ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’!”

The free Herr Doktor for Michael 3, a 1920s style doctor-surgeon. With clothing, gear and hair. Also suitable for steampunk.

A free Magnifying Glass.

Alpen Express. Could also double as an undersea viewing carriage, with a bit of a dieselpunk texture makeover.

Halloween:

Yes, there were a few latecomers to the Halloween party. Such as the free LaVampire for LaFemme for Poser.

MortemVetus’s The Witching Hour Poser props. Looking fairly old now, it has to be said… but also looking suitable for Poser 11’s Comic Book line-art.

EArkham’s ZWorld Orb Beast of Many Arms. The beast is likely to come through one of the new SY Magic Portals.

Zombie Run Poses for G3, currently free on the DAZ Store.

Halloween Outdoor Decor, with a nice scarecrow prop.

Toon:

Meshbox’s Professor Santa for Poser. The description is confusing and seems to have been partly copy-based from a ‘Bedtime Santa’ figure. Suggests Chunk may be needed as the base figure, but this is not specified in the dependencies listing.

A free Dody Morph Preset For Aiko 3. This was released a few years back, I recall, but is now on Renderosity.

The same maker also has similar free V4 and M4 presets.

Vest 021 for G3. The hat has possibilities, re: runtime-bashing a Moebius style comics character.

The free Christmas for Nursoda’s Fen character.

Storybook:

A free traditional elf outfit for K4.

Judith Christmas – Cap and Judith AddOns for La Femme for Poser. Requires Judith and La Femme (who ships free with Poser 11 and 12).

V4/A4 Ankle Boots. Generic stylish boots, suitable for a more modern type of storybook tale.

Free Lipstick stick.

A free Alphabet Locker in .OBJ format.

Characters, clothing and accessories:

The free Indiana Jones for Michael 3 for Poser. Plus accesories. And for accomanying ‘extras’ scene fillers, Agent Civil 1940 low-poly for M3.

El Mariachi Guitar Case and gangster add-on.

Free iRay Sequins Shaders and Satin Dot shaders.

Some new freebies for the new makeover for the old Antonia base figure for Poser, Toni-Sweater for Antonia and Dynamic Frost Dress.

Genesis 9 Clones for All. Autofits to send G9 clothes and hair back in time, to work on all previous Genesis figures.

Animals:

Songbird ReMix Ostrich Sulky, for your ostrich-racing fun. This is just the carriage (the ‘sulky’) and harness, not the ostrich. Though you can buy one of those as well.

Beyond the Pale, a white horse makeover for the Hivewire Winged Horse.

Nature:

Photo Props: Swirling Tornado Effect by ShaaraMuse3D.

A free wooden bench with snow, perhaps suitable for human / animal interaction scenes.

Flinks Rolling Hills – Ground Snow props.

Easy Environments: ExoPlanet VIII, which I suspect is an Avatar-alike scene.

Grass Mazes for DAZ Studio.

Currently free on DAZ, Hanging Vines – Ivy Plants. In my experience, anything “ivy” sends render times into orbit, but maybe these will be different.

Historical:

Effigy Builder Bundle for Genesis 9. Figures to statues, using geoshells and ‘stone hair’. Might be combined with the Underwater Relics Shaders for iRay.

Ancient Roman Roman Artifacts III including a household shrine. Also a new Triclinium (ancient bed).

A free Mesoamerican Headress for G8, plus wearable presets. I’m unsure how authentic it is.

Bamboo Houses, also seen in the Florida everglades.

A free olde-time travelling wagon. He may be heading to The Sawmill.

Arah3D Holiday Hats Volume 01, in a European 1900s style, for G3, G8, G9.

The Paragon – Encore, a complete late 1920s / early 30s Deco nightclub. The same artist has earlier matching Deco items for sale. Looks superb.

Vintage 1930s/40s XI Microphones.

A detailed pre-war Fishing Boat, free in .OBJ format.

Universal Sailor U.S. Navy for G8M. A classic sailor suit.

A free 1960s type Carpet Sweeper Prop.

Free 1950s-70s type Cable Cars.

Sprinter, a sporty late 1970s car for DAZ Studio.

Scripts:

The free Genesis 1/2/3/9 pose converter for Genesis 8 script. Load anything that’s pose-tastic, to G8. Try it out with the free G9 Microphone Stand Poses 1-4.

You can also go the other way, with the free Genesis 1/2/3/8 pose converter for Genesis 9.

Spinaround for Poser 11. Automated setup of turntable renders.

Render Knight Script for Poser 12, to help out with the confusion many seem to feel when faced with the new Poser 12’s SuperFly (Cycles) settings. There are way more variables to consider in Poser 12. The basic thing to know is that “Branched Path” is for CPUs and does not play nicely with your super $1,000 graphics card — which may need something completely different.

Ok, that’s in. More in 2023.