Time for another survey of the new releases for Poser and DAZ Studio, and also a nod to other notable software, utilities and tutorials. My last such survey was at Christmas 2024, so this covers about the last seven weeks. Just my picks, as usual.
Science fiction:
DMs Hexa Zone, a rare sci-fi setting from DM. For DAZ. See also the new SE Futuristic Hall.
Hover Vehicle for Poser. Nice, in that I can almost believe that’s some kind of Hyperloop-compatible flying car of the future.
Retro-cycberpunk XI Neo Noir Car. Possibly going to gatecrash the new Sci-Fi Transport Tunnel.
Peep Box, for a sleazy ‘lower levels’ sci-fi setting. For Poser and DAZ.
Colony Meat Locker for body/robot storage on a space colony. Poser and DAZ.
Gothic and horror:
Poisen’s new Elysium. 30 different .OBJs for creating unique combinations for your celtic/tribal walls, shrines etc.
A free Catbus, sort of Miyazake fan-art, so I guess it shouldn’t be used commercially.
Currently free on DAZ, the i13 Library Pose Collection, half of which are non-sexy poses suitable for gothic libraries etc.
JW ShapelessM Morphs for Genesis 9. For when your guy gets stuck in the teleporter.
High-quality sheet Draped Ghosts.
Steampunk:
AJ Steampunk Lighthouse for Poser and DAZ.
Steampunk Mask for GF8.
dForce Princess Petra’s Gothic Dress for Genesis 9.
XI GSB Classroom, a Steampunk classroom. Possibly near to fan-art (? Harry Potter etc), so check before commercial use. Also a matching XI GSB School Courtyard. See also the new Punting on the River and Cathedral Hallway Restaurant which could easily serve as the headmaster’s office/staff-room. All for DAZ.
Fantasy:
DMs Hidden Treasure for DAZ Studio.
SY Essential Creature Morphs Genesis 9. Hooves, three fingers etc.
Storybook:
Cozy Cartoon World Living Room for DAZ Studio.
RA Warm and Cute K4, warm winterwear for Kids 4 figures.
Toon:
Free Kappa-kun for Poser, a Japanese-influenced standalone figure.
Free, Tobby elfkin preset for Genesis 8 Male.
Free, toon vampires for Genesis 9 Toon.
Characters, figure clothing and figure animations:
Elon for M3 LowRes. Free.
Free hair and eyebrows meshes for Genesis 9.
Landscapes and environments:
Isis Lock, a classic set of British inland canal locks, with a Millennium-style cast-iron bridge.
Industrial Warehouse Environment for DAZ. Possibly useful for making workplace training videos and graphics. Though it’s quite small (no room for the pickers to race around on electro-trolleys).
EVERYPlant US Great Basin Biome for Poser, a complete plant set. Also for DAZ.
EVERYPlant Great Basin Bristlecone Pine for Poser. Looking like just the sort of thing you might want to export to Vue. Vue export still works, you just need to also have Poser 11 on the PC, so Vue can see the Poser 11 SDK.
A free Dragons Lair and bridge. For DAZ.
Waterfall Builder kit for DAZ. See also the new Riverstone Gorge for DAZ.
Animals:
Nature’s Wonders Mantises and Nature’s Wonders Mantises of the World Volume 1 expansion. Biologically correct posable models. For Poser and DAZ.
Wombat by AM, with wearable fur preset.
Quoll by AM, with wearable fur preset. Apparently these are real, but with a little recolour could easily be fantasy/sci-fi.
Herbie, a sandy desert style chicken.
Emperor Penguins for DAZ, with furry chicks.
Historical:
A huge but rather believable castle for Bryce, Bryce_Castle_1. Free. Could be exported to Vue.
MS24 Abandoned Train Depot for Vue.
BV141 Asymmetrical Reconnaissance Aircraft. A wartime German spy plane. For Poser and DAZ.
Tutorials:
Creating texture overlays in Poser and fixing any broken Python scripts.
Optimize iRay Renders in DAZ.
Tutorial: Where and How to Install Poser Content for DS – Part 1 and Part 2.
How to photobash (combine multiple assets into a final image) 10x faster using the ‘Photoshop of AI’, the free Invoke AI.
“Weird black and white blobs might be the secret to controlling AI images”. Again, a tutorial for the free Invoke AI. Stark contrast changes can ‘guide’ the underlying image formation process, along with correct prompting.
David Revoy tells you all about All about LIQUIFY in Krita on YouTube. Krita is the free painting and drawing software, and now quite mature.
Updated, the AI list for artists using Stable Diffusion 1.5. New LORAs which offer particular non-photoreal styles in painting, sketching, illustration etc.
Scripts and other auto-helpers:
A script for DAZ Studio that tells you what version of Genesis character is, in your saved scene.
A useful Python script for Stable Diffusion users who have collected large local LORA stashes. The script reads the LORA name from the plaintext .PNG metadata, as found in an old image you might want to recreate. It then looks in your local LORA library, finds the LORA required to recreate that image, and copies it into your active Stable Diffusion LORA folder. You’re then ready to go, without a lot of faffing around trying to manually find the required LORA.
Got an Amazon WishList? Your personal notes on your items all became unreadably small and grey, recently. The browser UserScript ‘Amazon Wishlist item user-comments / user-notes – fix’ fixes the problem.
New software releases:
The new release Audiblez 4.0, now with a graphical user-interface. Free and open source. Create local AI audio voice readings and audiobooks, using the CPU rather than your graphics card. Possibly useful for animators who require non-robotic voices and long-form audio, produced locally.
The excellent freeware Anytxt Searcher has a new release and can now also run on Mac and Linux, as well as Windows. It quickly searches across the text inside your desktop PC’s documents. You can use regex for proximity search, by selecting ‘Regular Match’ in the search-type drop-down and then using (for example)…
\b(?:billboard\W+(?:\w+\W+){1,9}?script|script\W+(?:\w+\W+){1,9}?billboard)\b
This regex will find all instances of billboard occurring within nine words of script. You can see how useful proximity search might be if you have one of the local archives of Poser forums, such as those available on Archive.org.
The Poser 12 for $29 offer is still on, at Clip Studio’s web store Graphixly.
Also, note that old wishlists at the 3D Shards website will be wiped on 20th February 2025. They’re installing a new super-duper wishlist module.
That’s all for now! More picks in the springtime.