Renderosity has a 15% off coupon for sales of $25 or more, from now through Friday 9th November 2012. Valid on Sale and Clearance items only.
Category Archives: DAZ Studio
3D Art Direct #22
The new issue of the DAZ Studio and Poser-friendly 3D Art Direct magazine is out now, for free. Great to see that the editors have given the cover typography and layout a more professional look…
Accessories and extras for Lenore and the Raven
A little survey of toon items, that seem to fit with the new Lenore and the Raven characters for Poser. Some would need retexturing, to match Lenore’s distinctive goth colour-scheme:
* Black fur matte for 3DU’s Pocket Pets Toon Kitty.
* Zombie Alchemical Ingredient Sacks.
* A Gothic Bird Bath for the Raven.
* Morphing Gothic Window/Arch (with similar-looking skull to the skull which comes with Lenore).
* Toon Daisy for Poser (could be a cheerful comedic counterweight to Lenore’s gloom).
* DAZ Studio 3 ghost shader presets (turn Lenore into a ghost. Requires DS 3.1.2.32 or higher).
* Possible House Exterior.
Lenore launches
Loving the look of the new Lenore and The Raven for Poser, which currently have their launch-discounts applied. Perfect for a webcomic.
Suitably retextured in black/white, I’d say that the Waffling Shruggle would be a nicely matching “third character” for a Lenore-based comic strip. Godfrey Lil’ Death could also work.
Apparently, DAZ users should adjust Lenore’s skirt material to 99% gloss to get a better look in DAZ.
Cthulhu lowered
The DAZ Store’s excellent Cthulhu Rising is currently on a 40% discount, which brings it down to $20.97. That’s lower than the initial launch discount, if I remember rightly.
3D content survey: ‘bad hair day’ for Poser and DAZ Studio
Tired of ‘Barbie and Ken hair’ for your characters? Need a ‘bad hair day’? Here’s my survey of some of the wilder and weirder hair types available for Poser and DAZ Studio. I’ve left out the anime-style mega-bunches, the flower-strewn faery braids, and the neon punk-rock mohawks.
April YSH’s Calais Hair and Morphing Ruff…
One at Renderosity and Fire Goddess’s ShoXoloR MAT sets…
Nightflower Hair seems good for a 1950s high-camp Vampirella-style character…
Also look at the free Upside Down Hair and the free wild cat-woman hair.
Need a snake-haired Medusa, the “turn you to stone” woman from ancient myth? There’s Naga Hair, although it looks a little old now.
Looking much better and with fully posable snakes is the more recent The Gorgon Medusa for V4…
Weird fantasy hair for men seems much less common than for women. There are a few ‘bandana and pseudo-dreadlocks’ hippies, but the male hair I liked the most was Volg for M4 (although it’s rather Wolverine-like, as most sci-fi/comics people will spot instantly)…
Surreal Esidor Hair for Esidor Hair would go well with Venetian or feather masks…
Need something sparse and troll-like? MOST’s free Troll for V3 comes complete with hair…
That’s it! Hope you found your hair to dye for!
Digital Art Masters 8
Entries are now invited for 3DTotal magazine’s prestigious and weighty Digital Art Masters book (volume 8). Send in your works via this web page. Accepted works must be available at 300dpi. Deadline: 26th November 2012.
$4 feast at Poser World
A very generous special offer from Poser 3D content specialist Poser World. To get full access to their huge library of 2,300+ items, simply…
1. register at the website.
2. then donate just $4 by PayPal (or more, if you’re feeling rich).
3. open the email with a password for one month’s full access to the content library.
If you want a second month of access, just donate another $4+ when your initial access expires. A very nice offer! Here are just a few of the goodies I downloaded…
Above: Poser World’s standalone “Evil Keeper” Poser character.
Above: Wizard Master for M3.
Above: Victorian-era hearse.
Above: Authentic Anglo-Saxon Warrior outfit for M3.
Free “Board of Souls”
A super free “Board of Souls”, a DAZ Studio and Poser prop, over at the Runtime DNA store…
Free importer takes Genesis characters into Poser
DAZ have a nice time-limited freebie for Poser users. A free importer that allows DAZ Genesis characters to be imported into Poser…
“DSON Importer for Poser empowers you to bring Genesis models directly into Poser.”
Renderosity Autumn/Fall Sale
Renderosity’s “Fall into Savings” sale of DAZ Studio or Poser content is underway. The sale ends 21st October 2012.
I found about a third of my 48 ‘Wish List’ items have a $ sign against them. Some are just 15% off, but I did find a few that had cut prices by 50%. Nothing has gone down below the $5 mark, though. Certainly tempting, but coming so soon after the big DAZ sale means… I only have $10 left in my PayPal… /sobs into hankie/
Incidentally, the Renderosity Wish List icons are a bit cryptic, but — for the benefit of newcomers — a “$” sign against your item means it’s Discounted. “R” just means it’s Exclusive to Renderosity, and the “B” means it’s also available in a discounted Bundle Offer…
Poser and DAZ content survey: Autumn / Fall content
Here’s my new 3D content survey, for DAZ Studio or Poser. All things “Autumn”, except for Halloween freebies (which I covered in my previous survey). These are all 3D:
Autumn/Fall gourds are abundant and nicely textured in Pixelharbor’s Gourds… Was at RuntimeDNA, now appears to be lost.
Need a Cornucopia Horn to have all your 3D goodies tumbling out of? Cornucopias for Poser is free…
Flink’s items…
OBJ dead leaves are available in the free Scattered Fall Leaves pack…
Note that ‘dead leaves around the base of a tree’ are also available in Meshbox’s Haunted House 2010.
Transpond’s Fern Pack has an autumn fern in it…
Need animated leaves? Have a look at Falling Leaves Dynamic Prop for Poser…
Scattering maple (sycamore) seeds for Poser are available in Modualz Scatters Vol 7 – MapleSeeds…
And the trees these seeds are scattering off are available in the Modualz WildWood Vol 1 — Autumn Maples pack…
Need vines? Have a look at Modualz Autumn Vines Texture Expansion for the RDNA Vines Megapack…
Fogs are tricky and are probably best added later in Photoshop. Poser/DAZ plugins like Fog Tool Deluxe III send render times through the roof, in my experience, and can’t really be recommended unless you have a render farm or three tucked under your desk.
What Poser users might use for a basic Vue-like hazy distance is Oskarsson’s Add Fog tool, which is a set of simple OBJs.
To get a depth haze with DAZ 3 and plugins, see my tutorial.
I’m not going to delve too far into the thousand-and-one character textures sets and their dependencies. But I’d just note that there is a superb Nouveau autumn set which requires you have DAZ’s Elfin for V4…
A character wearing this dress might work nicely with the Forest Elf set which requires Nursoda’s standalone character Gosha…
Also have a look at the Autumnal Robin Goodfellow (which requires Puck for M4 and of course Michael 4 himself)…
Animals? The squirrel scampering about after the abundant season’s nuts is of course a classic visual motif of early Autumn. DAZ has the best looking 3d squirrel, although sadly I’ve yet to find a “red squirrel” morphs/texture set for it.
The best 3D woodland nuts that I’ve yet found are the sweet chestnut and the acorn available in the Gnome’s House set…
What’s an autumn scene without some fungi, toadstools and mushrooms? Traveller’s excellent three Mushroomz sets are worth having…
… and he also has a set of the more exotic woodland funghi — although I thought the textures on some of these were a little blurry (which perhaps explains why they’re on a fixed heavy discount)…
Nursoda used to have some very nice freebie ‘shrooms on his website, but sadly his site mysteriously vanished into the electro-smog in summer 2012.
That’s it! Enjoy your mellow and fruitful renderings!
$30,000 3D Environment Competition
The makers of the landscape software Vue have a new 3D Environment Competition 2012. They’re lined up $30,000 in prizes, a waggon-load of 3D VIPs, the CG Society, and 3D World magazine, among others.
Competition categories are:
* 3D Environment
* Character Rendering
* Architectural Visualization
They say that…
“Judging will be based solely on the quality, realism and artistic merit of the entries, not on the application used to create them.”
Although that’s not quite true. Since you have to use at least one E-on product (such as Vue or their Lumen real-time architectural software), if only in part, to make your picture.
Deadline: 16th December 2012.
Sammy and Sadie for Genesis
The toon characters Sammy and Sadie are now available at the DAZ Store, recreated for DAZ Studio’s Genesis character system…
I was impressed by the new look at a first glance, but then I very quickly had reservations. I think that’s perhaps for two reasons. Firstly, with toons the closer you get to a photo-real look, the creepier they get (see the Tintin movie, etc). Sam & Sadie’s ‘melted-chocolate’ hair probably doesn’t help to ease these characters out of the ‘creepy zone’. And secondly the DAZ renders have somehow lost the freshness and appeal of the Sammy character, in the main ‘splash’ image and in Sammy’s individual character image. But… perhaps it’s just a matter of presentation, and once people start using these new characters, they’ll look fine.
DAZ Store’s big PA Sale “catch-up”
It’s your last chance to catch up on the recent big sale of almost everything at the DAZ Store. 50% off, so the Store’s web servers are definitely slowing down under the pressure! It all ends Friday. Update: now extended!
Every major DAZ Store content artist appears to be in the “50% or more off” game, until Friday only. Some of the fleeting ‘Fast Grab’ items go… “up to 70% off”. I found all but two items on my Wishlist were heavily discounted.