Lovely new Steampunk Airship, for DAZ Studio or Poser…

Lovely new Steampunk Airship, for DAZ Studio or Poser…

I’m pleased to see that the superb steampunk costume Apteromata Flight for Poser has been newly put up for sale at Runtime DNA. There were a few months where it wasn’t for sale anywhere, and it would have been a great pity to have seen it vanish. Runtime DNA also has all the MAT retexturing packs, Atropos, XP, and Finery.
Free animated “skipping” motion, for the 3D Universe Toon Rabbit…

I found a fine blog run by the UK developer of the Look at my Hair? (LAMH) DAZ Studio 4 plugin. As you might guess, it puts hair on animals, and possibly (I’m guessing) beards on humans…
It’s not quite commercial yet…
“Look at my Hair beta 1.0 is ready and will be dispatched to beta testers next week.”
But it looks like it’s not far off from going in sale. The developer says that…
“The workflow is so simple and immediate that you will feel entertained and blown away by it … Just pose your model as you like, and hair will follow!”
That certainly sounds enticing, but I want feasible render times when using strand hair. But even on that point, there’s hope. Because the developer says…
“curves are highly optimized and render very, very fast and with high quality”

DAZ Studio 4.5 has been released but only as a “release candidate” (i.e.: a nearly-finished beta version)…
This release candidate is available to all customers […] we recommend installing only one of either 4.0.x or 4.5.x on the same machine.
Among the new features that look important are…
* Viewport speed dramatically increased. For many viewport interactions, speed will be 2-5x faster than DAZ Studio 4.0.
* FBX files can now be round-tripped through DAZ Studio, including rigged and animated items in the scene.
* Shader Mixer has significantly improved workflow and documentation.
* New “Ready to Render” scenes have been added as part of the content that installs with 4.5.
By the way, what is wrong with DAZ’s website? All their forum links are broken when accessed via Google, the affiliate banner buttons are all broken, and their Store currently looks like this…
Sad to say, but I have a feeling that the fabulous Doctor Pitterbill character is going the way of Toon Boy Sam — a limited rush of additional content, and then nothing. It’s a pity when great characters for Poser and DAZ Studio becomes so easily neglected… so I thought I’d do a quick round-up of poor old forgotten Toon Boy Sam and his additional content (I’ve already done one for Pitterbill).
Toon Boy Sam:
He’s from the 3D Universe Toon family, and the main Sam character is available on the DAZ Store.
* Facial emotions and poses:
You’ll find a pack of 40 Emotions for Toon Boy Sam listed at Renderosity (although sadly currently marked “no longer available”). A few additional facial emotions can also be found at KCTC, in their free skateboarding poses pack for Sam. Content Paradise has Joy of Life, a pack of 40 “true-to-life” boy poses for Sam. Those three are the only face/pose collections I can find.
* Clothing:
The main Sam clothing pack is at the DAZ Store under the simple name of “Sam Clothing Pack“, complemented by Elleque’s free Sam’s Easy Wear pack.
The DAZ Store is also still hopefully selling a “Sam Developer Pack” of clothing templates, with redistributable meshes. And Teknology 3D also has a Sam Merchant Resource pack for clothing, which includes DAZ Hexagon files.
The core Sam character package comes with a sort of basic diving wetsuit or sports suit.
KCTC has a variety of free clothes, including a Robin -ish outfit (of Batman and Robin fame) and a Superman -like outfit. They also have shoes, although the high quality 3D Universe Hightop Sneakers may be your go-to pairs of footwear for an everyday Sam.
Character clothing themes for Sam have included…
~ the excellent KCTC’s “Sam Frost” frost sprite;
~ Irishmiss’s jockey and racing car driver;
~ a free beachwear and snorkeling kit;
~ a free ski wear set;
~ a Japanese style RPG adventurer outfit;
~ Winter clothes and MATs for them;
~ a smart junior office boy / weddings set of outfits;
~ an outfit with fantasy sword;
~ the DAZ Store’s “Safari Bundle” (not to be confused with similar animal packs of the same name) by 3djoji, includes a contemporary safari outfit for Sam. Although note that the same outfit is also available separately at DAZ at much less cost as “SamSafariPack“.
~ An old-style round American baseball cap designed for Sam can be had at Treasure Chest.
~ a free set of skateboard safety gear for Sam.
~ a My Hero Sam classic superhero complete with cape…

This last includes a bonus alternative skin texture and three eye colours.
* Clothing conversion:
A $10 Sam licence is available for the free CrossDresser 4.0 clothing conversion software.
* Props:
A traditional soapbox go-cart for Sam. There’s also a free Sam-sized skateboard prop.
* Hair:
Nothing special known, other than the hair that comes with the core character. Although KCTC has a variety of “fit” files for hair types I don’t recognise.
* Toon materials:
No, don’t worry they’re not fiendishly difficult-to-apply shaders like Visual Style Shaders. Toontones is a simple free materials set that makes it easier to do postwork that “toons” Sam renders.
DAZ has just launched a cool-looking superhero suit, that’s just as adaptable as the Genesis characters themselves…
Just released. A high-quality new bear, ArctodusDR, from Dinosaur expert and master designer Dinoraul. There’s also a white skin to turn it into a polar bear.

BishounenTaurus’s long-awaited manga style ‘Visual Style Shaders’ pack has been released on the DAZ Store. They’re a serious attempt to have DAZ Studio emulate…
“that airbrushed anime look […] the soft style commonly seen in Japanese Visual Novel games”
It’ll be interesting to see a set of real-world-use renders made with these, in combination with standard anime/manga style characters. Also to see how fiddly they are to set up, or if it only takes a few clicks. The shaders need DAZ Studio 4 Pro, not version 3.
Update: Well, I simply give up on “Visual Style Shaders for DAZ Studio 4”. After three hours of trying to figure it out, and poring over the forums and other snippets of info, it’s still completely baffling to me. The developer has a 17 page PDF with it, sure. This PDF explains the various features, but utterly fails to give the vital step-by-step instructions on how to actually find it and use it. How on earth does someone even start to use the Visual Style Shaders with DS4? I’d write a tutorial myself, but I’m completely at a loss as to where to even start with these.
Quality toon-content purveyors 3D Universe have a new toon cow, to go with their recently-released Bull and Calf characters.

A new video tutorial showing how to animate cloth in DAZ Studio 4 , with the free script animMorph. You also need the plugin Animate 2, if you want to combine the cloth animation with the character animation…
A great-looking Mass Effect style character from TheAntFarm, Zorn — just arrived on the DAZ Store.

Just published, Les Pardew’s new book for DAZ Studio 4 users, Figures, Characters, and Avatars, Second Edition. This is an update of his earlier book for DAZ, and this new edition of the official guide weighs in at 221 pages. The title shows up on Amazon USA as Figures, Characters and Avatars: The Official Guide to Using DAZ Studio to Create Beautiful Art. Potential UK buyers will either have to wait until the UK publication date of 8th June 2012, or order from the USA.
Here’s the book’s cover and the table-of-contents for the new edition… click on the table-of-contents to see the full-size version…

The DAZ Store has a nice freebie through 15th May 2012, a set of quality pirate chests, “Treasure Chests” which normally retails for $15.

The editors of 3D Art Direct magazine have started the magazine’s first download podcast. Artists covered in the first MP3 include…
DeeDee Davies (Vue Studio, Poser Pro and Carrara Pro); and Les Garner from Sixus1 Media (Poser models and props)
