Category Archives: DAZ Studio

I do love it when quality content goes below $5. Renderosity currently have an “all items at $3.50” spring sale on all the items in their store’s large Clearance area. I spotted the following $3.50 goodies among the 643,000 variants of V4 + glamour clothes…

Of special interest to Vue users:

Curious Greenhouse for Vue. Although note that it’s also currently on the Cornucopia store in a nice $5 bundle (with Curious Stacked Shack and Curious Shaker Row).

Curious Mason Jar Lantern for Vue, an add-on for the Greenhouse. Note that… “the flame will glow beautifully in a Global Radiosity Atmosphere” in Vue. Another add-on for the greenhouse is the new free pair of Gloves for M4 and V4 on Renderosity.

Makers of mountain scenes in Vue might be able to use the realistic Austrian Pine and Eastern White Cedar in .vob and .obj, and the gnarled Jeffrey Pine by Dinoraul.

Flinks Instant Meadow 2 – Weeds 3 and Flinks Dandelion for Poser.

Temple of the Shadows and Papyrus Boats.

Looking rather old now, but IanMPalmer’s Desert Village might just about pass for a distant town in a southwestern USA scene or on Tattoine (Star Wars).

Cydonia 3 for Vue is a sci-fi city backdrop in 3D.

The Tenement is an old American city tenement building from the 1880s-1950s.

Mega Real Cave Pack (.OBJs only) and additional Fantasy Rock Formations.

The 7 Keepers of Magic castle is not really my thing, but it would certainly be an impressive medieval fantasy castle to have rising up from a large Alpine forest.

Beau Quartier, a construction set of classic Parisian rooftops and building facades for building large city scenes of pre-car Paris.

While you’re at Renderosity, you might pick up Coflek-Gnorg’s quality free new Bunker Hill 20th century war scene.

Creatures:

Swidhelm’s Robustus and Iuvenis and Tyrannosaur dinosaur with its impressive skin texture. Six poses come with the Tyrannosaur, and there are more elsewhere on Renderosity in another pack by Swidhelm.

There’s also Swidhelm’s Fluvialanguis which appears to be a fantasy-prehistoric crocodile.

FA Tavrohk. Not especially impressive seen up-close, but… “everything possible has been done to ensure that the creature uses very little memory, so you can load a whole herd even on systems with modest amounts of RAM [memory]”. So far as I can tell, there are no alternative free textures or poses or horn types out there for the Tavrohk. The Bolladon and the Moo are probably more suitable for use as similar ‘alien planet’ herd beasts, for science-fiction landscape artists.

Snow Leopard by AM for Poser. Poorly served by its promo pictures, but like AM’s SaberTooth Reloaded it has excellent pre-applied fur which renders quickly.

MS13 War Mammoth Armour. Requires the DAZ base African Elephant and its Columbian Mammoth add-on, but it appears that the Mammoth is no longer sold. Some will have that in their runtime, but it’s there called mammuth so you’d never find it via search. If you don’t have it then I’m guessing that, with some wrangling, the armour rig might be made to fit onto DAZ’s LAMH Wooly Mammoth?

Poisen’s War Banners .OBJs could accompany your army of Frazetta-style war mammoths.

Also note the set of Cat Poses for the Millenium Cat, if you need more in your runtime.

Sci-fi:

SteamPunk BFG and V4 poses.

The alien Octos for M4.

Lair – Eco character preset for V4. The previews leave it uncertain if this is full-figure, or only waist-up.

Oskarssons Neon and Neon Materials. Note that these are both the later DAZ Studio edition, not the earlier Poser one, and that “she works fairly well with most Genesis poses.”

The Divine Order by Oskarsson for V4 and Aiko 4.

Atom-0-Ray Guns. Not well depicted by its naff main promo picture, but the design is nicely retro and there’s a huge set of parented poses for V4 and M4 in the classic pulp-art style.

Coflek-Gnorg’s very detailed cyberpunk YAKUZA Hacking Device and Sci-fi Portals set.

Steampunk:

Flying Cadet Lola Pepper for V4.

Lola-ready props on Clearance include SteamPunk Study props and Steam Props and SteamPunk Wand.

Madness Lab looks a bit basic in terms of textures. But it could be useful for those making a comic strip using Poser 11’s Comic Book mode, with characters such as Doctor Pitterbill and Lenore (and her Raven), and the Lab is more or less in the Lenore style. Also of interest in that context may be The Back, also on Clearance.

Privateer Twin Hull U-boat submarine.

Cryo Chamber, SkyCaptain3D’s first model.

1971s has a SkySmall Boat and Sky Boat on Clearance sale, along with a few of his other sky-craft.

Popular characters, new looks + props/clothes:

Shylee for the Mavka character, for which there’s a fair bit of faery/fantasy clothing available. Mavka is also supported by the Crossdresser clothing conversion software.

Steampunk Pitterbill clothing for Doctor Pitterbill.

The semi-toon Grandpa. Although note that Grandpa requires M4, M4 Morphs++ and Capsces’s Morphus morphs pack (the latter no longer sold?) to work. Still works without Morphus, but it’s not quite so toony.

Kali Fairy for Nursoda’s Kali.

V4 Gaia Poses for V4 Gaia.

Mongolian Princess for V4, which looks like a starting point for making a second-trilogy Star Wars princess.

And lastly… don’t sniff at V4, she’s got Biscuits Noses for V4… with noses “custom sculpted in Zbrush”! 🙂

That’s it. I skimmed through everything in Clearance, and that’s the stuff which caught my eye.

Renderosity has a huge 55%-off discount sale today and tomorrow on hundreds of top sci-fi, steampunk and imaginative fantasy content at their store. Renderosity Prime Annual Membership you can grab even better deals.

Here’s my personal survey of what I think are the most notable items released in mid and late 2016 for the DAZ and Poser content ecosystem. The survey has been made by trawling as far back as I can go on with the store “what’s new” pages, and my wishlists and my runtime. It’s been about ten months since my last such survey.

It’s been another good year for content, but also a year of change at several stores. One of the most notable changes was of course the denuding (and now effective closure) of Runtime DNA. Some content vendors have gone to HiveWire, some to the DAZ Store, a few to their own stores or even into retirement. Buyers may thus see apparently “new things” on stores that are actually older content from RuntimeDNA being transferred and uploaded. Thankfully I was familiar enough with the old RuntimeDNA range to know which items are really new, and which not.

Animals:

New content vendor Herschel Hoffmeyer makes a splash with a big Tyrannosaurus Rex as his first release. Dinoraul has dinosaurs pretty much covered, though, so you have to wonder what other niche Hoffmeyer’s obvious talents will make their mark in. Sci-fi “future-hybrid” creatures, perhaps?

Also making a big splash is The HumpBack Whale, a new highly detailed model with plenty of skins and poses.

The whale might be combined with Sea Beast.

A new cat is always welcome and the HiveWire House Cat and a HiveWire Big Cat and quality kitties.

Cuter still is Fennec for Foxes by AM which is an addon for Foxes by AM. Comes with Look at my Hair fur presets.

The HiveWire Gorilla for Dusk (free) and HiveWire Gorilla Poser fur also looks fun. HiveWire has also rolled out a whole lot of jungle content around their gorilla and big cat.

In that context note also Stonemason’s new Jungle Construction Kit, Abandoned Temple, Mayan Ruins and Fern Lake Bundle. Also the pose set Gladiator for Victoria 7 and Michael 7 where the poses are keyed to fighting a big cat (a DAZ Big Cat 2, rather than the HiveWire ones) hand-to-claw.

Talking of nature, it seems that the Poser 11-friendly versions of Vue, such as VUE Studio 2016, have recently been released. Certainly there are viable order pages for them now. Previously it was only the top-of-the-line Vue 2016 that had been released.

In nature there has been a surprising lack of quality small lizards until recently, but now Poser nature expert Ken Gilliland has produced a fine set of Nature’s Wonders: Lizards of the World which now has four packs. As always with Ken’s careful work, they’re accurate for real species and could be used for illustrations on nature-reserve information boards and booklets. I’d love to see him do a “Lizards of the British Isles” pack sometime, though I guess we’re behind hotter countries that have brighter prettier lizards.

I seem to remember that perhaps half of Ken’s Birds of Prey series for Poser, addons for Songbird Remix, were also newly released in 2016.

Environments and interiors:

Great designers such as Stonemason and 1971s continued to produce very high-quality architecture-based scenes, of course, each in their different way. Other architectural environments I noted were…

Abandoned Lighthouse for a mere $11.95. Vue only. There’s also a lighthouse-style Ham Radio Equipment set for DAZ Studio.

Medieval Scriptorium. There is a lot of medieval stuff around, and it’s easy to get tired of it. But I don’t think I’ve seen a scriptorium around before, and certainly not one this good…

BB3D Environments: Medieval Study could possibly be used as an external corridor with the scriptorium.

Aslan Theater (requires Aslan Court 3 and its Iray Addon)

Classic New York Brownstones of the Greenwich Village type. The perfect home for a 1920s pulp writer, and as such it might be paired with Newsstand.

Beyond the Clock, an unusual “inside the clocktower” interior.

Santa’s Toy Workshop and a very well designed Christmas Snow Globe.

Restricted Zone is usefully generic, lending itself to “Area 52-style” UFO tales or spy/thriller situations.

Faery, wood spirits and similar:

Mud Hole

Sticks the Wood Spirit. The fingertips seem a little under-detailed, but most of the time they’re going to be hidden in grass anyway.

I can imagine a storybook where Sticks the Wood Spirit may come out of the woods and live in The Gardeners Potting Shed for a while. Old Garden – Structures could provide additional environment for the Shed. A Typical British Farmyard might also be a setting.

The Forest King for Genesis 3 Male might also play a part in such a story.

Your heroine in such a story might wear the Melidae Crown for Genesis 3 Female.

Dandelion for Genesis 3 Female

Poseable Trees with Ivy.

Sci-fi:

Spaceship Laboratory and matching Spaceship Command Center and Spaceship Crew Room. All from PerspectX, a new name to me. By another vendor, SS Marcoor Control Room would also fit with these.

Psi Barracks and Psi MedBay

Dominator is an all-purpose “destroy the planet!” do-hickey, which can also double up as an invasion fleet.

Sci-fi Rover: Titan.

SciFi Medusa is a future VR helmet with cyber-tentacles!

2075 Feral Assassin X for Genesis 3 Female is an unusual “human kitty”.

Alien Relics and a Planet X-2 and Planet X-3 DAZ Studio landscape for them.

The BnB Cephalotus would make fun ‘alien planet’ plants. What if they arrived on earth? I can imagine a storybook or comic that paired these with the Songbird ReMix Kiwis to comedic effect. The Cephalotus can speak, sing, with lip-sync in Poser.

Flora Imaginarum offers more ‘alien planet’ plants.

Toon:

Vintage Robot for Poser.

B-Bot and B-Bot Add On.

Dr Pitterbill Hobo and Dr Pitterbill Hobo Textures, for Nursoda’s Doctor Pitterbill.

Toon Generations 2 for Genesis 3

Missing the great Nursoda? Take a look at Mythical Pixie for Genesis 3 Male and Impish Poses.

Clothing:

As America prepares to get back to work in January, Construction Worker Outfit for Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 looks like a timely addition to the runtime.

Too late now for Christmas but Mr and Mrs Klaus is very professionally designed and detailed.

Horror From the Deep is one for H.P. Lovecraft fans, and there’s also the new Blind Demon which is obviously a Night Gaunt when you add Wings of The Fallen.

Elven Weapon Bundle, worth seeing just for the preview renders alone.

Pioneer Airman for Genesis 3 Male and Female

For a similar but grittier look try Rough Rider for Genesis 3 Male.

Retro Skirt for Genesis 3 Female. The title is a bit confusing, as it seems the jacket is also included. Has a nice sort of “1840s” feel about it, which could make your 1890s steampunk feel a bit fresher.

Wise Sensei for Genesis 3 Male and an Asian River fishing hamlet scene for him. With a bit of tweaking and runtime-bashing he could also pass as a Bronze Age trader in Europe, of the sort found frozen in the ice a few years ago.

Poses:

MightyMite has continued to churn out pack after pack of comic book hero poses, and I’m told they’re good useful stuff. Anyone making superhero comics with Poser no longer needs a ‘pose scrapbook’ or similar, or to scrabble around in other pose sets.

Ironman13 (i13) has produced a much-needed wide range of quality poses and expressions for the DAZ Genesis 3 characters, often with mix-and-matching eye position and hand presets. For instance, i13 All Life’s Pleasures

Hair:

Pompadour Hair for G3M and M7 is a very fashionable style that seems to be worn by all the cool boys these days. Also look at Rodi Clean Cut Hair Style for Genesis 3 Male. Could go well with sci-fi, given a few white/silver shades.

Shaders:

320 x Quality SuperFly Shader Materials for Poser 11 SuperFly renders. Ignore the scary manual — you can just drag-and-drop these onto your model or character, and you don’t need to get into node editing or understanding the mind-bending theory of how such shaders actually work.

Tutorials:

Digital Art Live now has some of their training webinar recordings on the DAZ Store, such as Daz Studio Content Creation Mastery: Rendering Top Promos & Preparing Products for Sale.

Licensing:

There’s now a Stonemason Indie Game Developer License for many of the Stonemason environments.

That’s it!

So, let’s tot up what Black Friday bargains I’ve had tonight and today. In total, taking into account coupons and some store credit, my PayPal is down by just $28.00. Not a bad haul, for the spend. And there’s still a chunk of PayPal balance left for software or a plugin, if a deal suddenly pops up via Facebook through Cyber Monday.

Stryke Angel for Star!. Because… sci-fi! And it’ll soon be back up at an eye-watering $16 again. Can be converted for other characters via Crossdresser.

Lil Star Witch for Star!, not so much for the outfit itself but rather to give access to mix-and-matching bits of it with other Star! outfits, and to take advantage of freebies that may need the hat.

Dr Pitterbill Hobo outfit. Opens up new possibilities for Pitterbill in rural and gardening illustration and cartooning work.

HFS Environments: Ancient Tree. Trans-mapped leaves though, so it probably won’t play nicely with Poser’s Comic Book Mode. Note that Ostestes Trees (DAZ Store) do have polygon leaves though, so they work fine with the Comic Book Mode.

Cyborg Maintenance Unit

Oculus Mechanicus

Think Tank

Steampunk Classics-Lamp. I see there’s also an animated rig for this on Runtime DNA. Update: This appears to be one of the items which vanished with the demise of the RuntimeDNA store.

Advanced Shaders Launcher 1.5 for Poser and its Colorize add-on. Update: No longer works in Poser 11.

Adventurer Set for the semi-toon SuzyQ 2. Useful for converting via Crossdresser. The boots will be especially useful for other characters, and good pith helmets are rare.