OpenClipArt has been down for about six weeks now. The best searchable fallback I’ve found is Public Domain Clip Art which has 13,778 bits of clipart under Creative Commons or Public Domain, though that’s only a sub-set of the apparently 150,000 bits that OpenClipArt had at its demise. So far as I can tell, after extensive searching, no-one was keeping a full mirror or tarball of OpenClipArt at 2019.
Category Archives: Freebies
Currently free – M4 + Pro Bundle + extras
Currently free on DAZ, the M4 Hero Pro Pack. This includes the base M4 + the M4 Pro Pack + a load of M4 extras. “Michael 4 Shapes++” includes “Michael 4 Genitalia” and seems to include the vital “M4 Morphs++” pack in a supercharged expanded version — this may even interest those who think they already have the M4 and Morphs++ combo.
If you’re new to DAZ and Poser, and get this, you may want want my tutorial on how to activate and load Micheal 4 and Morphs++.
Also currently free is the original Troll, which is worth having in your runtime as there were many extras and makeovers and freebies made for him.
The welcome Mat
3Dream has kindly made SuperFly MATs for a whole lot of Poser hair, and has posted them free on ShareCG.
New content for DAZ and Poser, April 2019
Right then, it’s near enough the end of the month. Time for a survey of the new content released in April for Poser, Daz and Vue.
Note that I’m no longer covering freebies if they’re only ‘non-commercial use’ or if the licencing is confused (i.e saying “commercial use” in one place on the page and “all rights reserved” in another). Certain fan-art is excepted, where it’s obvious that there can’t be commercial use.
Science fiction:
Mervin the Alien HD for Genesis 8 Male.
Space Bundle for DAZ Studio. A highly detailed near-future cockpit and matching spacesuit for G8F.
A Port Horizon spaceport scene for Poser and DAZ Studio. Also The AntFarm’s Sci-Fi Wall for DAZ Studio.
Alpha One Ghost Outfit For Genesis 8 Female.
Not especially well-served by its preview renders, but ATVE Strider looks like it would have potential for wide desert scenes.
A free Phytopanel Wall suitable for ‘sci-fi greenhouse’ type scenes, and a room set into which the panels might fit.
An Italian style Monocycle ‘Mono-Scooter’ as an .FBX with material zones. On the new ArtStation Marketplace, at a very reasonable price and with commercial use.
Lickalicious for Genesis 8 Female, a mutant “super tongue” for G8F. With nine new bones in the tongue.
StarJet Cockpit for the StarJet.
Orbit Apartment for DAZ Studio.
There’s a new Collection at 3D Warehouse for free Space stations for SketchUp.
Steampunk:
Steam Voyager, a very nice Jasper Morello -style airship for DAZ Studio.
Wild West Mine, which could be fairly easily adapted for steampunk.
dForce Fancy Punk Genesis 8 and Travel Suitcase Collection for DAZ Studio.
Sliced for G8F and PBR texture set. Looks super, with uses from Doctor Who monsters, to fantasy forest-spirits, to steampunk mechanoids, to sci-fi aliens.
Cartoon Airplane at CGTrader. Low-poly but detailed, as a 44Mb OBJ. I’m guessing it’s probably the 4K materials that are making the file size so big, for a supposedly low-poly craft. It looks a bit Miyazaki / anime, but I’m assuming it’s not fan-art.
K-9 freebie for Poser. The famous robot dog from Doctor Who, and thus of course for fan-art only.
Free Steam Powered Clock at BlendSwap. For Blender, so you’d need to wrestle with the infernal Blender UI and export to .OBJ.
3 Wheeler car for DAZ Studio.
There’s a new Collection at 3D Warehouse for free Monowheels and monocycles models for SketchUp. See also the older MrSparky’s free CogBike for Poser, with V3/M3 pose.
Fantasy:
Behemoth HD for Genesis 8 Male.
Gladeling Female for G8F and dForce Gladeling Female Outfit.
There’s also Gladeling Male for G8M and outfit.
Fantasy Hair for G3 and G8 females and a set of hair colours.
Historical:
HD 3D Scenery: Buried Remains for Poser, from expert scenery maker ShaaraMuse3D. Very high-res textures. Suited to ‘prehistoric’ sabre-tooth tiger -type pictures, as well as modern pictures.
Jack Tomalin’s Trinity Atrium Fallen Iray Addon for Trinity Atrium Fallen for Trinity Atrium.
Authentic Early Roman Empire Imperial Legion guard, for Genesis 8 Male.
Retro dforce Retro Swimsuit from the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Audrey Hepburn for Genesis 8 Female.
Storybook:
BBarbs continues her fine series of believable Genesis 8 Young Child Poses, as freebies with commercial use.
dForce Prairie Queen For GF8 and textures pack. An American Pioneer outfit from the days of the Frontier. Could also serve as more of a generic Grimm’s fairy-tales storybook outfit.
Creepy Old Attic for DAZ Studio.
Interiors:
TS Barbershop and Hair Salon for DAZ Studio.
Oxford Library for DAZ Studio.
Landscapes:
Soggy Bottom for DAZ Studio, a new-made bog-garden with paths and pools.
“The long oasis” for Vue, and a free Stretch Tent for shading your desert scenes as a Poser freebie prop with commercial use.
Kake-zukuri Temple and garden, by a name new to me, i74.
Underwater scenes could be enhanced by the new Scuba Gear for Genesis 3 Male.
Animals:
Three volumes of Poser shorebirds, by Poser bird expert Ken Gilliland. Songbird ReMix Shorebirds Vol 1 for Wading Birds inc. Sacred Ibis (Ancient Egyptian); Vol 2 – Herons & Bitterns including the classic Heron; and Vol 3 – Small Waders for mudflats and shorelines.
HiveWire Antler Pack for the HiveWire Mule Deer Buck, which itself requires the HiveWire Horse for Poser.
There’s also a Whitetail Deer LAMH Preset for this and the CWRW Whitetail Buck textures, both at HiveWire…
Marguerite The Cow HD and Denver The Calf HD , both requiring the DAZ Horse 2. There’s also a Poses set for cow and calf and child milkmaid, and a complete French Cowshed.
Purr-fect kittimations with Animations for Millennium Cat, Pack 1, Animations and aniBlocks for Millennium Cat, Pack 2, for DAZ’s Millennium Cat in either Poser or DAZ Studio.
Tyrannosaurus Rex 3 Saddles and Poses for the new Tyrannosaurus Rex 3. After riding one of these your character might be needing a trip to the Wild West Outhouse.
Characters and generic clothing/hair:
Ethan for Genesis 8 Male. An excellent male character, believable and great hair. Looks like a very flexible guy, re: being able to range from medieval dragon-fighter to 1940s noir detective to spaceship captain and beyond.
dForce_French Twist Hair for Genesis 8 Female. Free dForce hair, with colours, and commercial use.
A dForce cape Splendid Chic for Genesis 8 Females which seems to offer all sorts of flexibility in terms of settings, from an Irish colleen to a sci-desert nomad and beyond.
Maki for La Femme, an affordable makeover from Japan for Poser 11’s La Femme.
La Femme – Another Look MATs, giving Poser 11’s new La Femme flagship female character an older and more weather-worn look.
A free set of G8M M8 romantic couple poses, SN I love U Poses.
Toon and semi-toon:
Toony Lizard Head Morphs for G8F.
Diarmuid for G8M, a Scottish-looking semi-toon lad character for DAZ Studio.
A toon-ish 3D model Shipwrecked Boat and a nice Wooden Pier at CG Trader, in .OBJ.
Shaders, materials and add-ons:
Vince Bagna’s SuperShaders for Poser 11 SuperFly, Volumes 1 & 2. Over 300 high quality Cycles shaders for the SuperFly engine in Poser 11, easily applied via presets. A must-have for Poser users.
Atmocam2 for DAZ Studio.
Render Queue for iRay, for DAZ Studio.
Tutorials:
Wrangling the Daz Studio Content Library.
Ten Style Secrets for Sequential Art.
That’s all for the month. More picks next month!
Freebie: Render in Background for Poser 11 Standard?
A new freebie from JLK, a Python Script which claims to enable Render in Background for Poser.
Poser 11 Pro already “Enabled rendering in background” for SuperFly renders (that’s the equivalent of iRay, DAZ readers), back in the official Poser 11 SR5 update patch in September 2016. Thus I assume this script is a workaround to enable background SuperFly rendering in Poser 11 Standard?
I don’t have the time to test this just now, but I assume it does what it says on the tin. The script’s code shows it expects Poser 11 and SuperFly.
Cover-disk freebies – the Archive.org survey
Ah, the smell of a new freebie cover-disk, physically taped to the cover of your latest inky print magazine. The careful finger-wrestling needed to get it away without damaging the cover, the sensual slide into the whirring CD-bay in your PC.
But that’s an experience that’s gone down the memory-hole, in these days of broadband abundance and digital magazine delivery. Yet the giant garage-sale that is Archive.org can recreate the old-time feeling somewhat, with its software archive of CD ISOs (for which you need Daemon Tools Lite to mount as a browsable disc on your PC).
One good thing about the arrival of the first wave of broadband and DVDs was that the magazine cover-discs became very chunky and high-value, as the magazines strove to compete with the Internet from about 2006-2011. While nearly all the software they carried has been superseded, there are still free 3D models to be found on such platters…
Stuff for Poser Sampler (Zygote Media Group) (1998)
At 260Mb this was a CD, and small enough to get and test. Not worth having, although I did spot the old Zygote doe (deer), which when remapped and furred should look acceptable even today. Plus, light enough to have an animated herd.
Enter 3 CD-ROM (2005)
Apparently has the “DAZ Studio Base Content” install for DAZ Studio 3.
3D World Issue 110 CD (2008)
“Turbo Squid contributes a broad selection of clothing-based models, while linefour supplies fabric textures and models. DAZ Productions is providing its popular Morphing Fantasy Dress for free, along with supporting expansion packs and other clothing assets. Poser World also offers a quartet of real-world attire.”
3D World Issue 111 CD (2008)
“the complete scene files for this issue’s Vue and After Effects double-header [tutorial], including a deer model provided courtesy of DAZ Productions.” [possibly the same as the one on the Zygote sampler linked above]
3D World Issue 112 CD (2009)
“a rigged hummingbird figure for Poser from Runtime DNA, and two substantial model selections from ModelUP and Flat Pyramid”.
3D World Issue 113 (2009)
“Trial version of the aniMate plug-in for DAZ Studio, along with an exclusive sampler of animation clips for use with the software”.
3D World Issue 114 CD (2009)
“DAZ Productions contributes Michael 3.0 Base, a complete rigged figure with bonus textures, morphs and clothing and hair props”
3D World Issue 116 CD (2009)
“DAZ Productions is in heroic mood, offering a selection of bodysuits and textures for Michael 4 and Hiro 4, as well as The Freak”.
3D World Issue 119 CD (2009)
“figure models worth $233 from aXYZ design, buildings worth $232 from Flat Pyramid, a Poser figure pack”.
3D World Issue 120 CD (2009)
“a set of five high-quality models from Amazing 3D Graphics, an ultra-detailed human figure from ShineFX, and a collection of assets for DAZ Productions’ new The Girl 4 figure.”
3D World Issue 121 CD (2009)
“3d02.com offers five models in 3DS, MAX, OBJ and other formats, while Flat Pyramid provides a brain model for our 10-Minute Tutorial. DAZ Productions contributes a range of future vehicles for science-fiction renders in DAZ Studio or Poser. DAZ Studio 3 is also complete on the disc.”
3D World Issue 123 CD (2009)
“models from TurboSquid, DAZ Productions and Vanishing Point” [and] “the full version of Shade 8.5 Professional, as sold for $899. Mac and Windows versions are provided with tutorials” [e-frontier’s 8.5 release of its old-school 3D modelling software was 64-bit, and apparently there was PoserFusion connectivity with Poser. Superseded now by better options].
3D World Issue 124 CD (2009)
“models from Bluebrain 3D and The3DStudio.com, along with Poser assets from RuntimeDNA and Vue assets from Cornucopia3D”
3D World Issue 125 CD (2010)
“models from TurboSquid and ShineFX, along with DAZ Studio and Poser assets from DAZ Productions”
3D World Issue 127 CD (2010)
“a mammoth line-up of vehicle models and other assets. There’s a whole traffic jam’s worth of car models from Falling Pixel, The3dStudio.com, Arte-3D and Cornucopia3D, plus more modes of transport from DAZ Productions and modelLab.”
3D World Issue 132 CD (2010)
“an impressive collection of architectural models from Intero Visuals”
3D World Issue 134 CD (2010)
“models from The Game Creators, PROVIZ3D, Xfrog and Poser World”
3D World Issue 136 CD (2010)
“Assets include high-quality models from Joseph Harford, Dark Edge Design and Poser World.”
3D World Issue 137 CD (2010)
“high-quality models from Runtime DNA”. Being Gynoids 2 and 3 for V4, retro robot babes. Vol. 1 is still on the DAZ Store.
3D World Issue 139 CD (2011)
“the full version of Vue 8 Frontier from e-on software [and] all of this issue’s scene files” [the $99 entry-level version, Poser 8 import, only 2-core rendering, may have needed online activation]
3D World Issue 143 CD (2011)
“models from DAZ 3D”
3D World Issue 149 CD (2011)
“a full version of DAZ Studio 3 Advanced [DAZStudio_3.1.2.32_Win64.exe] with serial. There are also two sci-fi DAZ models: an environment [corridor] and a battle suit [Epsilon for M4].”
AOL File Library – 9500 to 9599 series (December 2014).
An archive that includes “[9557] Poser Library”. Which doesn’t seem to be a typo for “poster”.
There you go, that’s the lot! It’s a ‘lucky-dip’, if you have superfast broadband and want to try downloading and mounting the discs. To mount ISOs on a Windows 7 workstation you want WinCDEmu.
The DAZ / Poser new content survey – March 2019
Welcome to another personal survey and pick of the fresh content that’s been newly released in March 2019, for use with DAZ Studio and Poser.
Science fiction:
Nibiru Auditorium for DAZ Studio.
Meteor and Ship Crash Site. With the choice of either the spaceship or the glowing meteor.
Spaceship Wreckage, for a larger scale.
Sci-Fi Atmosphere Processing Deck. With 28 camera presets and camera-matched lights.
Assimilating Brain Unity, an unusual robot/cyborg production factory.
SOF-1A for Genesis 3 and 8 Female.
Steampunk:
Junkhead is a cute rigged robot, given away as a low-poly freebie.
At SketchFab, a new steampunk rifle, albeit at $29.
Wasteland Warriors – The Fighter by Cybertenko. A 1940 style fighter plane, converted. For Poser with M4 poses. Also has a Moebius vibe, re: The Airtight Garage.
Historical:
1920s and 30s style Flapper Cloche Hat.
1920s and 30s style Flapper Showgirl Peacock-Feather Headdress for G8F.
Curtain Call for G8F. Possibly also useful for storybook, re: a “doll’s house come to life”, and similar.
Suitcase Collection Vol I. Travel-worn vintage suitcases for DAZ Studio.
The Streets Of Asia 4 by Stonemason. As you can see clearly here, a choice of lots of possible camera angles and views, which is one of the great things about Stonemason’s 3D set design…
… and he’s probably after the Giant Cicadas or the Rare Orchids.
Mid 1960s-style freebie Accessories for LaFemme in Poser 11. Also Matching boots and heels.
Late 1960s Reel to Reel and Chair scene, and for added period authenticity some new Smoking Props.
A James Bond / Mission Impossible style Vault Room with lazers.
Late 1940s-style Gas Station Island, free in Vue and in .3DS format. The new 1960s style ZWorld Winter Gas Station could probably be adapted to fill out around these vintage pumps.
There’s also a new At the Car Wash expansion for a Gas Station setting.
M1919 Browning Machinegun for Poser.
Gatling Gun, with ammo carriage.
Old-style British Police Constable for M4 for Poser, aka a ‘copper’ or a ‘bobby’, from the days when they were still to be seen on the streets and without riot gear / paramilitary machine-guns. The puffy shoulders are a bit ‘meh‘, but a few flicks of the Liquify tool in Photoshop would cure that on still renders. The helmet could also be used as an Imperial pith-helmet with spike.
dForce Roman Cavalry for Genesis 8 Male and Daz Horse 2. Now there’s something you don’t see every day. Deacon215 has a variety of other authentic Roman items.
If you find you need some Roman deities to nebulously appear to your cavalrymen in the woods, look at the new Chronicles of the Gods Outfit for Genesis 8 Male and Universal Horns for Genesis 8 Male and Genesis 8 Female.
Fantasy and early medieval:
Moyra’s Classics – The Exotics, including a magical mage texture set for the earlier Desert Mage for Genesis 3 Male from a few years ago.
dForce Desert Robe Outfit for Genesis 8 Female. The plainer texture set also makes it suitable for Biblical and other scenes from antiquity.
dForce Inquisitor Robe for Genesis 8 Male.
dForce Fantasy Banner is a new freebie for DAZ Studio, by Greendragon And Smida at DeviantArt. Includes wind-tattered versions.
Vampiric Dark Mist Props and Poses for Genesis 3 and 8 Female. Seen here in solid, but the textures apply the mist effect.
Medieval Small Village Manor for Poser. Highly detailed and currently at a very reasonable $9. Also a matching Small House to serve as a side-building or (add windows up-top) a guard house at the moat.
Hr-216 Hair for V4 and Poser, for the Saxon shield-maiden look.
Aldwyn for Michael 4 for Poser. A MortemVetus figure which I seem to remember vanished with the sad demise of RuntimeDNA, and has now become available again at Renderosity.
Characters:
Mrs Chow 8 for G8F.
Ogrec for Genesis 8 Male, a characterful ogre with a dash of Hellboy.
Aurora La Femme for the free La Femme in Poser 11, with the same HD level of textures, plus an additional morph set for La Femme.
Toon:
Tess for Genesis 8 Female. A fine stylised semi-toon look for G8F, with the toon look accentuated here by the heavy eye-liner.
Grobot. Amazingly flexible and adaptable, and now free. Poser 11 not on the list, but she works well for me in Poser 11. There’s also a Poser 11 fix version if you find you need one.
Lolo Bot for DAZ Studio, a freebie.
Carnivorous Plant HD with iRay materials. And a vintage Glass House (greenhouse) to house it in.
Also of note in ‘toon’ is that Mr. Sparky’s Poser freebies are now available at Attic’s Free Zone.
Storybook:
Norfolk Windmill from DryJack, for Poser and DAZ Studio. And for the hill-crest on which the windmill stands, iREAL Animated Hybrid Tree for DAZ Studio. Complete with Animate 2 AniBlocks ‘blowing wind’ animations.
Poseable Swing for Poser, with new and aged materials. Free.
Granny’s pin cushion with pins, a freebie for DAZ Studio. Useful as a backdrop for mice characters and similar.
BBarbs’s ongoing set of free Small Child Poses, realistic and believable poses for G8, is growing larger by the day.
Creatures:
Crab. A realistic big crab for DAZ Studio. Presumably someone will now make some beautiful mottled textures for it.
Tyrannosaurus Rex 3. Fits with the latest scientific understanding, and also has optional 8k textures.
Hell Creek Modules. Highly detailed dinosaur terrain of 66 million years ago, complete with egg nests. Sections could also be made to serve as a backdrop for a desert oasis tent, by removing the redwood-type trees, and putting a water-well on the nest mound.
Landscapes:
The ArtStation marketplace is starting to get a bit interesting, for landscapes.
Sweet Spring for Vue at $12.
Lagoon for Vue at $12. Would make for a great setting for an early Babylonian lagoon city, such as Eridu.
FLUIDOS Presets: Waves for the FLUIDOS water simulation plugin for DAZ Studio.
The waves might be used with the new cute little Cave and waterfront for DAZ Studio. I’d have liked to have seen some close-ups in the previews, though, to see how well the textures hold up.
Weathered Civilization for Poser. An unusual terrain prop, with HD textures.
Moon Base tutorial, from 3D to 2D in Photoshop, at $6. The 3D software is left unspecified.
Tutorials:
Tinkering with Textures in DAZ Studio. Are you a DAZ Studio beginner, wondering what all those sliders and tweakables do for the materials? Break away from the presets, and discover step-by-step ways to make your scene’s materials unique.
New dForce Discoveries. I’m amazed at some of the things being done with the new dForce in DAZ Studio, but it seems much more can be done.
Scripts:
Universal Pose Splitter for DAZ Studio. Works with all Genesis types, and Victoria 4, Michael 4, The Kids 4. Select one part of a pose, split it out and save it.
Poser Python script to pick colour & assign to ToonID. Get a coloured mask for each prop and character in your scene. If working with the current fully-patched version of Poser 11, you may need a slight workaround to get a ToonID render out to Photoshop.
Poser Process Command dictionary for Python in Poser. Free.
And finally… a simple but multi-use dForce G8F Tie as a freebie.
That’s it, more picks next month.
Vue has Python scripts
Vue has Python scripts. Who knew? I didn’t, or had never investigated them and forgotten. But Ironsoul did, and mentioned it on the forums. So thanks to him. He pointed out that ImpWorks has a large slate of them for free as direct .ZIP downloads. Also a Vue Python scripting tutorial. Vue 2016 is not listed in the scripts compatibility list, but there’s no reason to think the ImpWorks scripts won’t work in the final version.
One such is…
* “Python scripts for loading and saving camera data to and from .CSV files. These scripts are useful for moving camera animations between scenes.”
Could this or something similar work with the “Poser – Export Poser Cameras and Lights” script which saves Poser camera co-ordinates out to .XML? To then pass Poser camera co-ordinates over into Vue, and have Vue locate the camera within an imported Poser scene? Or are the camera co-ordinate systems mutually untranslatable?
Other useful sounding scripts at ImpWorks, though possibly superseded in Vue 2016 by newly native features, are…
* “This Python script coats the outside of an object with an EcoSystem.” it works in Vue 2016. Keep the instances low, and the scales relatively small. Test first with 100. 5,000 is going to take ten minutes to cover a sphere. Could you make a ‘little planet’ with this? You could if you had about two days to tinker. It takes absolutely forever to design one good ‘little planet’ result, and then longer to render the damn thing. Not worth it.
* “Make the sky a solid block of one colour.”
Others:
Vue Infinite Python Scripts Page.
Blender to Vue.
Vue to Unity Terrain.
Working with the Vue interface with Python (GIS code snippet).
On my PC, Vue Python scripts live at…
C:\Program Files\e-on software\Vue xStream 2016\Python\Scripts
Added to the sidebar: G3 and G8 to Poser
Added to the ‘Plugins: Poser’ section, over on this blog’s sidebar…
Genesis 3 Poser Updater for Poser 11.
“Product Notes: NOW UPDATED FOR GENESIS 8.”
It’s a freebie. Seems to have been updated for G8F in summer 2018. It processes G3 and G8 so they can be imported into Poser 11.
1890s steampunk flyer
Freebie: GroBot for Poser is now free
Now free as of yesterday, GroBot for Poser by Sci-Kwon-Do (Michael Seiber). A super-flexible super-morphable Poser toon robot character. Commercial use is kindly retained on making the character a freebie. In the large mix of shapes, there’s a nice toon cat-bot.
When the maker was selling this character on Renderosity, he stated it “doesn’t work properly” in Poser 11. I installed anyway, a simple copy/paste/merge of the runtime folder in the .ZIP. I then loaded Poser 11 and found the character’s parts under ‘GroBot’. As far as I can tell it’s just the preset poses that sort-of don’t work, and there’s an easy workaround for them.
The base figure loads fine from GroBot in Poser 11. All her Poses, Characters and MATs are found under various ‘GroBot’ folders. ‘Kitty Stand’ and ‘Kitty Squat’ characters work fine in terms of auto-application of the Kitty morph, but then adding any other new pose reverts her morphs to the standard GroBot robot shape. I guess this is the problem with Poser 11. However, there’s an easy workaround for this slight problem.
GroBot is quite a dramatic demo of how a character might make extreme morph changes and take extreme poses and yet remain smooth in Poser. One finds the morph dials by selecting the body and finding the ‘FBM’ Morph dials. “Kit-10” is the Kitty cat morph and it’s easy to control. Simply re-apply this morph to a set body pose, to get the Kitty feature back on the body again after applying a preset pose. You can also flatten the chest by slightly tweaking the ‘Gro-illa’ dial.
As you might expect, with her black MAT on she doesn’t respond well to Poser 11’s Comic Book Preview mode in b&w inks. But put the pink MAT on and she looks superb in that mode…
All the above pictures are in real-time Preview mode.
So, she works great in Poser 11, you just need to apply a little workaround when working with the preset poses. She doesn’t appear to accept any preset poses except her own, though some from other characters will move her arms, others her legs. The maker states “have limits turned ON, and IK turned off”, so that may help with third-party poses.
As a Kitty she could probably use a tail, but I recall noticing that she has a flexible ‘whip’ prop and that could probably serve.
Update: There’s a patch, Grobot For Poser 11, making her work better in Poser 11. Though you’ll want to read the readme.txt first. I did and I decided I’d stick with the original and my workarounds for now.
Release: Electra for Photoshop
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Posted in Companion software, Freebies, Lighting, Poser, Spotted in the News
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I’m always pleased to see a new Photoshop plugin from Richard Rosenman. He’s just released Electra, for all your sparking needs. From a tiny spark in a cyborg’s eye to a massive superhero-tastic ‘Amazing Arc from Above’ that gives the hero his superpowers.
Sadly it’s not one of his many excellent freebies, and your headphones may throw off more than a few sparks when you read the price… “$49.99”. Ouch. But it’s for Photoshop CS5 and above, and it will even run in Corel Painter 12 and above.
The plugin is one to try as an overlay for the new free Poser prop, Updated Morphing Beam prop for Demoleculizer, perhaps…
Your alternative plugins here would be: ‘Electrify’ in Alien Skin Eye Candy; ‘Electrify’ in Xenofex 2. I suspect that when Xenofex was retired, that was when ‘Electrify’ was added to Alien Skin Eye Candy, so they’re probably the same thing. I’m fairly sure that Corel ParticleShop also does something in that line (though perhaps a bit more ‘faery fireflies’), although that’s a hefty price.
Release: digiKam 6.0
Still missing your old Picasa software? The new digiKam 6.0 has just been released. It’s polished and free ‘open source’ software for handling, searching and previewing your entire picture library. 6.0 now supports video files, and major cloud services including Pinterest (though 500px is sadly missing). It also has the usual features that one expects these days, such as face detection, ‘visual similarity’ sorting, tags, etc. It’s new to me, but it looks and work fine. I see thumbnails and quick-preview for Photoshop .PSD files. The nice dark user interface is found under Settings | Themes.
While it’s obviously aimed at the “show me a ton of metadata” guys, working in fields such as wedding and magazine photography, there seems no reason why it can’t be a useful way to view and sort your 3D renders and animations. Be warned however, that this isn’t Picasa and and the initial set up of ‘albums’ is way harder than it needs to be. But it’s genuinely free.
Regrettably there’s no real perfect mid-ground in this sort of free software. There’s ‘ugly but freeware’ like Faststone and XnView, or pro-feature overkill slickness in software like digiKam (similar to Photo Supreme, incidentally, if you need a paid option). The free IrfanView would be an absolutely perfect mid-ground software for this, but it lacks just one vital feature — folder bookmarking. Of course, there’s always Picasa itself, and though it may have been abandoned by Google it’s still free and still works fine in Windows. It has movie and Photoshop .PSD support, and can launch a picture in IrfanView with a right-click on its thumbnail.
Poser/DAZ New Content Survey – Jan/Feb 2019
Right then… it’s time for a survey of the recent new Poser and DAZ content. If you want to see my last one, a huge six-month catch up for May 2018 – Jan 2019, it’s here.
But the new post below only surveys and picks out interesting / unusual / useful new content released in the last month, from the 23rd January 2019 onwards.
Science fiction:
Hoverbike Poses for Genesis 8 for the Yamaki Hover Bike.
If you need police hover-vehicles for the persuit, see the new Speeder.
Most readers will already have sci-fi armour suits, but I do like the new Supersonic Sci-Fi Suit for G8F. It’s not too over-the-top or gaudy, and appears to have some nice slight wear on the edges.
Jewel Of The Nile for G3F and G8F. Rather impractical to ride a camel with, I imagine, but it also has uses in a futuristic sci-fi setting. It’s “a HQ realistic coin veil”, though it doesn’t appear to have dForce.
Bubble Hair for Genesis 8 Female. Unusual, and again I can image a sci-fi / superhero story in which the movement of the hair can be thought-controlled, like Medusa in Marvel’s Inhumans.
Elsewhere for DAZ Studio. This is not well-served by its Store preview, but turns out to be ‘alien planet’ rock-pools (aka tide-pools), done to Oskarsson’s high standards. With strange Yuggothian fungi, alien plants, and glowing lurkers beneath the water. It’s not for everyone, but I like the look of it.
Robo Cleaner by Coflek-gnorg, for Poser and DAZ Studio. Highly detailed robot street-cleaners, for everything from your Blade Runner street scenes to your 2000AD-style Robo-busters tribute comic.
The persnickety supervisors of the lowly Robo Cleaners might be the new Osy21 low-poly floaters on CGTrader, at just $2 in FBX format.
Also from Coflek-gnorg is a fab Pulp-era Sci-fi Flying Saucer complete with detailed interior. Definitely one to look at if you’re planning to make an ongoing retro sci-fi toon comic and are in need of a ‘star’ spacecraft.
Monsters:
Lycan HD werewolf for Landon 8 for G8M. DAZ Studio.
Fantasy:
The flood of dForce-enabled clothing continues, though very little of it has been fantasy and sci-fi in the last month. A huge exception is the dForce Wing Ranger for Genesis 8 Female. Fabulous Hollywood-level work, here. She comes with a good bow and arrow too. Fits the new Meshworkz Dragonfly, which serves as her winged steed.
Jars with eyeballs in. You can never have enough of them, and the new It’s Magic for DAZ Studio has them, along with much else.
FG Place of Power for DAZ Studio, combining a magician’s lair, library and steampunk elements. I was about to pass this over as ‘just another medieval alchemist lab’, aided by the too-dark preview renders. But on closer investigation it seems to offer something a little different, and is nicely priced at $19. Worth a look, if this is your thing.
Retro and historical:
It’s unusual to see a new release for Bryce, but Battis Khamba Chattri is an Indian temple scene. Also available for Vue.
Task Force for Short Sunderland for Poser, by Cybertenko. Paint makeovers of the famous Second World War Sutherland flying-boat, and a new dinghy. For some, it may be worth the $6 just to get such a detailed wartime dinghy. It seems you don’t get the poses shown, but I’m guessing these may be included with Cybertenko’s Sutherland packages?
The Explorer For G8F from Sixus 1. A set of jungle explorer clothing, iRay-ready textures and grip poses. As you can see, it could fit well with the dinghy seen above, for a jungle river trip.
Minnie 1920’s Dancer Headdress for G8F. It’s not headwear that you’re going to use everyday, certainly, but it reflects the over-the-top hat-culture of the 1920s and it’s definitely unusual.
Singing in the Rain for G8 in Daz Studio. A complete set with scene, props, G8 poses and rain.
Conquistador Outfit and Armor for Genesis 3 Male. A full Spanish soldier outfit, which is something you don’t see every day. May also have runtime-bashing potential for those making other outfits for the period.
WW1 Trench, No Man’s Land. A battle-scarred First World War trench with accessories and a no-man’s land border.
Army Camp Barracks. Modern accessories, but I imagine only an hour’s tweaking would be needed to make this suit the 1970s/80s.
For the Army Camp also see the new Leopold HD for Genesis 8 Male.
Unusual props and magnets:
dForce Magnet for DAZ Studio. Pin a magnet to your dForce clothing, and have your character appear to be pulling or lifting their clothing. The built-in dForce takes care of all the physics of the cloth draping.
Marquee Light Letters by Cybertenko. Classic fairground, movie theater and dressing-room lights for Poser, with the bulbs throwing off emissive light in SuperFly renders.
For DAZ Studio there’s also the new Broadway Light Bulb Letterings and Real Neon Letters.
Such ‘bulb letters’ might be combined, as ‘bulbs only’, with the new Synergy ABC – Poses for G3F-G8F…
Morphing Splat for DAZ Studio, with 50 morphs. Splatting and pooling liquid.
Also look at the latest Messy FX Set 2: Food Mess for Poser, free on Renderosity.
La Femme:
The new La Femme Base Figure for Poser 11. She now has a small flood of everyday and club-style dresses and hairs on Renderosity. Almost no freebies that are worth having though, and nothing that appeals yet in terms of sci-fi, fantasy, armour etc.
La Femme injection for Prefittter-CR2. Works with The Prefitter to get V4 clothing ready to go to Poser’s Fitting Room (Pro only). This seems to be the best ‘V4 to La Femme’ solution at present, in the absence of a Crossdresser 4 file for La Femme.
Landscapes:
Flinks Snow Grounds 1 and Snow Grounds 2 as OBJs. A collection of detailed snow terrain tiles. The materials suit either Poser or DAZ.
The Snow Grounds could be paired with the new HD Upturned Winter Boats for Poser, from ShaaraMuse3D.
Dried Out River for Poser, by ShaaraMuse3D. Shaara’s usual HD scene with 4k textures and a full preload preset. One could of course add just a bit of water, to make shallow trickling pools. Good for those with dragonflies and small lizards in their runtime. Likely to also interest Vue users.
Wild Flowers Vol 5 – Woodland Plants and matching new grass. Said to be “Perfect for macro renders”. Also look at the recent Teeny Tiny Plants, also from Martin J. Frost.
Animals:
This month it’s only the dragonfly seen above, and Nature’s Wonders Lizards of the World Vol. 4 which is another fine release for Poser from nature expert Ken Gilliland. And has DAZ presets.
Toons:
A poor month for toons, but I see that Darkseal’s toon Squidy for Poser is now on CGBytes, having been on the now-vanished Content Paradise.
Storybook:
New on CGTrader a modern children’s public library / reading-room for a reasonable $30 in OBJ. Royalty-free renders.
Need a modern librarian for your library? The new dForce Eloise Outfit for Genesis 8 Female and dForce Eloise Outfit Textures gives you one nice pattern texture for it…
Dayana & Karina Bloom HD for Genesis 8 Female. With the sort of face-shape that would suit a modern comic-book aimed at 9-12 year olds. Comes with a matching older sister who is more of a regular human.
Deco Vignette II for DAZ Studio. I guess you’d have to make this a central Howl’s Moving Castle-style ‘magic door’ for your story, to get your money’s worth.
Town Circle, a traditional German/Austrian-style village centre.
Nursoda has also kindly released several freebies at Renderosity recently, for his characters, but note that they’re flagged as ‘non-commercial use only’.
Utilities:
RSSY Clothing Converter from Michael 4 to Genesis 8 Male. Convert clothing from M4 to G8M, in DAZ Studio. Seems to be relatively simple and well-documented.
PoseConverter for Poser – Updated. A free Python script with user interface, that works inside Poser. Convert pose presets from one Poser character type to another. Only has two converter modules at present.
That’s it, more picks next month!
How to get Gaea 1.0 from outside the USA
Ah, solved… the new landscape software Gaea appears to be region-locked in terms of the download of the free version!
After days of being blocked, I turned on a VPN in my browser and pretended to be in the USA… and the installer began downloading immediately! Thus it must be blocking us, here in the UK. Anyway, I now have 1.0.14x installed. So, use a VPN (such as the free Browsec) if you can’t download it from your location.
The first thing I wanted to know was if it was possible to get a simple .OBJ mesh, and do so easily. It is. To export a terrain you…
1) “Set” or “Enable” a Node. This cryptic message is unexplained but appears to mean that you press F3 on each node on the sample terrain to mark it for export, then add a “Mesh” node at the end of the node-chain, and also F3 it.
2) Then you press the “Build” button, open the “Build” window and set it to 1k resolution (the limit on the free version) and “Build”.
3) You quickly end up with a set of PNGs in C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\Documents\Gaea\Builds\ If you also added a Mesh node, you get a fat .OBJ — even 1k resolution landed me with a 196Mb .OBJ file.
