Added to my sidebar Directory’s “Freebies” listing: Freelancecomic’s sci-fi armour selection. Note that there are file passwords along with the download links.

Added to my sidebar Directory’s “Freebies” listing: Freelancecomic’s sci-fi armour selection. Note that there are file passwords along with the download links.

Currently free on the DAZ Store, U.S. mailboxes…

Holiday Giveaway: Week 1 over at Renderosity. These are the new set of freebies I got in my runtime…
Need snow and frost on your scene? Snarly’s Snow Machine 2.2 for Poser is free. A script to cover any scene in frost and snow. Comes with an excellent manual.

The latest edition of the Poser/DAZ/Carrara friendly magazine 3D Art Direct is now available…

A new original toonimal character, over at 3D Universe, the Gruggle Monk for DAZ Studio or Poser… for free…

iClone 4.2 Pro for free, currently on a free cover-disk with the leading British PC magazine PC Pro (Jan 2013 edition). I’ve looked at the blurb in the magazine itself, on a news-stand, and it appears to be the full uncrippled version. iClone, for those who don’t know, is the excellent real-time 3D software (no rendering time, as it runs on a videogame engine). It takes a little learning, but no more than DAZ Studio does, and the learning resources are vastly better than for DS.
It’s perfectly possible to create excellent results once you know what you’re doing with it. Here’s a couple of my iClone real-time renders…
Cool free original toon sci-fi character, for Poser. Sam-anime…

Buried up to the neck in soil, and with a few leaves added, his eye and neck could also become a “mutant plant” character.
Smith Micro has released Poser SR3.1, and also the PoserFusion 2012 SR3.1 plug-ins updates…
“Poser Pro 2012 Service Release SR3.1 – (Version: 9.0.3.23027, Released 10/11/2012)”
A super free “Board of Souls”, a DAZ Studio and Poser prop, over at the Runtime DNA store…

“BioLight” is currently free on the DAZ Store…

It’s a Poser-only set of special glow MATs for the Terrors of the Deep: Jellyfish pack. It only works in Poser / Poser Pro 2014, and then only with “IDL/Raytracing enabled” activated in your render settings.
One of the things I love about iClone is that glow can be applied incredibly easily and quickly (like, one second). It can be applied to any object, and the glow realistically floods outside the boundaries of the object geometry. By comparison, a similar glow in DAZ Studio or Poser is usually either almost impossible or just a complete chore to achieve. It can be done in Carrara, but it’s a very convoluted set of fiddly steps to get it working. And even if you can get it to work, it increases render times exponentially. Whereas iClone just gives you the glow effect in real-time.
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.”

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!
Are you a DAZ Carrara user who’s keen to get the new Miki 4 into your runtime? There’s a new plugin from veteran developer Fenric, Poser Weightmap Injector. It shuttles Miki between… “Poser Pro 2012 SR2 and Carrara 8”, and it’s free. It should work on similar official Poser figures, but is… “not guaranteed to work for every dedicated Poser figure”. Presumably it also works with Poser Pro 2012 SR3 and Carrara 8.5, but that’s just my guess.

The traditional 3D software Cinema 4D has released a… “free, fully functional, Student Edition of Cinema 4D”. Specifically, the new version 14. Which potentially saves you about $1,000.
Nice, but it’s actually not quite fully functional. There’s no plugin support in the student version (so presumably Poser Pro 2014 users won’t be able to use their official PoserFusion Poser-CD4 bridge plugin with it), and nor is there networked rendering. Oh, and the software expires after 18 months.
Still, if you were thinking of testing it then the student edition might be an option. The results can look rather pretty. Here’s Fredy3D’s “The Defenders of Bast Prime” from his New Egypt sci-fi series…
Fredy’s pipeline between Poser and Cinema 4D is actually via the $75 commercial plugin InterPoser, rather than PoserFusion.
