The free Clavicula has released 0.9.9.1, with new features such as “custom shader layers” among other changes. It’s the successor to Neobarok and an innovative way of 3D modelling, completely free for desktops. The YouTube channel is here, and there was a Digital Art Live magazine interview with the maker in Digital Art Live Issue 64 (Christmas 2021).
Fantasy Attic’s Christmas Advent Calendar, now live. Accepting donations of giveaway Poser or DAZ gifts for the Calendar until 30th November 2022. Renderosity mail (see link) seems the best way to contact with a donation, although the organiser is also somewhat active on Twitter and DeviantArt.
Empty at the moment, but filling in due course for ‘one per day’ opening during December.
Olive is a new “free, portable, non-linear video editor built to compete with high-end professional video editing software”. Interestingly, it “reminded us a little of Camtasia Studio without the big price tag”, states MajorGeeks, testing the more stable 0.1 alpha. There’s also a nightly build 0.2 alpha as portable or installer, which is likely to be unstable for now.
The MajorGeeks comment about Camtasia was enough to make me test it. I could not get 0.2 working, and I found the 0.1 alpha did not have any Camtasia-like screen capture and annotation features. Still, it looks like a good basic no-nonsense free video editor, and works back to Windows 7.
Material Maker 1.1 has been released. Though only a .1 update there are lots of new changes and improvements to this great free replacement for Adobe’s Substance.
GIS & Middle-earth, plus free DEM files…
“the Center for Geospatial Analysis at William & Mary, has developed an extensive list of GIS layers of Middle-earth, including a 50m elevation model, roads, rivers, realms and many others. … The data shared below include the complete set of vector layers in wither shapefile or Esri geodatabase format and the 50m DEM of Middle-earth as four quadrants (geo tiff format).”
Based on the remains of the old (now offline) Outerra version of Middle-earth terrain, but substantially improved and overhauled. A 50m DEM is only suitable for a high “eagle’s eye view” or a highly zoomed-out isometric map. That said, AI auto-detailing for low-res DEMs is seeing some progress and will likely see more.
There’s no .torrent, just .ZIPs. I downloaded the smallest .ZIP and loaded the .TIF heightmap to Vue. Here’s the Gap of Rohan with the Fords of Isen, and Isengard at the top of the picture and in the centre of a bowl of mountains. Helm’s Deep is at the edge of the mountains on the bottom-left. A basic map is overlaid. You’ll need maps at massive scanned resolution, to looks crisp when overlaid at this scale. Though the ideal is probably just to get the angle and render, and then over-draw your own hand-drawn isometric map in the Middle-earth style. Although I near that pro GIS systems now have various auto-styles that might get you started there.
Posted in Companion software, DAZ Studio, Freebies, Spotted in the News
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Here’s an unusual one. A free UserScript for your Web browser’s Tampermonkey or similar, and which interacts with the DAZ site. All it appears to do is filter your purchased Interactive licences. So that you can just see those. Kind of useful, I guess, if you’re a developer who just needs to see your available assets… and not the 569 other things you’ve purchased over the years. It’s open-source and the code looks clean.. it’s not doing anything untoward.
Posted in Companion software, Freebies, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry, Vue
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According to the Newsletter, Terragen 4.6 is about to be released. This being the first big update for the advanced 3D landscape desktop software in two years.
* Windows now has .VBD export (was previously Linux only).
* Export clouds in .VBD for use in Blender etc.
* Better sRGB support.
* Better .FBX import, better .FBX export compatibility with Unreal Engine.
* Now with import and export of population caches as XML, as well as binary.
* Rendering speed improvements, faster Preview renders.
* Pro users get an experimental pipeline for RPC integration with other third-party tools.
* An open-source RPC Python module, so you can write Python scripts enabling other software to ‘talk’ to Terragen.
* Geolocation (aka “Georeferencing”) is said to become free in the Terragen 4.6 Free (aka Learning Edition, Non-Commercial). So far as I can tell, this is about aligning tiles side by side, rather than grabbing a DEM landscape tile from a user-friendly Google Earth style world-browser.
Still supports Windows 7+, and the update is free. Terragen 4 Free is free, and then currently Terragen 5 Creative is $299, the Pro is $599. A Mac version is coming soon, and a fun nodes-free ‘sky making’ Terragen Sky tool is also coming in December 2022.
Planetside Software (website has yet to update to 4.6 details/downloads. but should soon) and see also the YouTube channel.
Here’s my survey of DAZ and Poser content and other items, picked from the October 2022 releases. As usual, freebies are only listed if ‘commercial use’ for renders.
NOTE: One person has said links don’t work, but they do. If you can’t click through on Web links, then you probably have an over-zealous anti-virus software that also tries to police your links. Please try whitelisting www.renderosity.com and sharecg.com and www.daz3d.com.
Science fiction:
The stylish Mecha One Male for DAZ Studio. Also at CGbytes.
He probably drives the new Sci-fi Space Rover.
Protective Gear 011 for Poser and DAZ. Whacky retro sci-fi helmets plus G8 fits.
You may need one of those helmets if you go up against the mighty Toad cliff for DAZ and Poser.
Landing Leg, Morphing, V1 for DAZ Studio. Add bio-morphic landing legs to any craft.
ShaaraMuse3D Planetarium 2 for Poser and DAZ. A high-quality “planet seen from orbit” set. 8k texture maps and halo variations.
A DAH Natalya Space for G8F, a retro Russian space-girl. Appears to be a character from the old Destroy All Humans! videogame, so for fan-art only.
Retro Bicycle a stylised low-poly-ish Blender file, but nicely done.
Need something sleeker? Try the new Manga Anime Bike.
Colony Wellness Center, not something you see in colony sets every day. But such things will be vitally important, off-world.
Steampunk:
DryJack’s Steam Tank. Good to see him branching out from his superb model railway items.
An Old West Western Train for the presumably forthcoming “Railroad Construction Kit” mentioned in the blurb. With dial animations.
Another Street for The Streets of SteamPunk, A texture makeover for the recent big Stonemason scene.
Beach:
Still dreaming of summer and the beach? Try some free Cocktails for Poser.
A free Fast Boat 03a, with a nice look to it.
An unusual Hideout Armchair with wings adding privacy and also protecting from wind and sand-kicks on the beach.
Storybook:
Four Simple Boats for Poser, stylized and suitable for storybook / stop-motion type scenes.
A Snow White Gown for Fay Gown for G8F.
Fashion Kid Poses for Parah for G8. Requires CNB Parah which is a HD figure.
Toon:
Beagle for Melody & Micah for Poser. I have a “Furries Melody/Micah characters – how to load the head shapes” tutorial that may help with getting this up and running.
NIK Female Morphs for G8F has one that’s semi-toon.
Clothing:
Retro Biker for G8M sees Cybertenko moving into clothing.
A free D-Force Gothic Headpiece for G8F.
Halloween:
DAZ Crow and Poses and Gothic Crow Accessories.
Illustratur Ad Mortem by MortemVetus. Olde books, skulls and candles for Poser.
Dracula Hair Long for G8. For the new Dracula.
A creepy-elegant Feast Of Bones table.
Figures and figure add-ons:
Antonia Polygon 1.3 Standalone base figure, and Free Nightie. Antonia was one of the base figures developed in the Apollo Maximus era, as a female companion for Apollo. Version 1.3 appears to have been fully updated for Poser 11/12 and is now under a generous permissive Creative Commons Attribution licence.
The free Sara for La Femme for Poser. A full-body makeover for the flagship female who ships with Poser 11/12.
Clarinet and Poses for Genesis 8.
WkD3D G8M Face Pack, great and non-generic male faces/heads. But note that “This product contains only the head morphs – no textures are included. The skin textures used in the promos are noted on each image.”
The DAZ Genesis 9 base figure is out, and also various packs of base shapes, expressions, essentials etc. It was said in the webinar that if you can run existing HD figures then you should be able to run G9. Also apparently requires the very latest DAZ Studio.
Landscapes:
Some basic Grass for Poser, as a small square prop. Flink’s Grass would usually be my go-to, but this may be useful for tiling in the distance or for a large low-poly soccer pitch.
Viking Town: Set 3. Old VanishPoint content, but still able to look OK at a distance. Also useful for Anglo-Saxon scenes, as the hut buildings were often much the same.
Underwater:
ShaaraMuse3D’s new Photo Plants: Plants of the Sea. Sea-grass for your underwater scenes.
Underwater reefs by RaffyRaffy, sadly only for Blender and not Vue.
Animals:
Songbird ReMix Parrots Vol 6 – Amazons of the World 2 for Poser and DAZ.
Love A Cat for the HiveWire Housecat and Hivewire’s Dawn base female figure.
Mutton, a stylised ram (sheep), perhaps especially suitable for a scene that looks like a stylised stop-motion scene.
Historical:
Viking Warrior’s Horn Helmets for Genesis 8.
Renaissance Astronomy Room, complete with the relevant papers, tools and so on.
Jolly Roger Pirate Ship for Poser and DAZ. Updated for 2022.
A free 1777 Musket, French Napoleonic type.
1970s glam-rock boots, Wedge Platform Boots for G8F.
Utilities:
AutoLoad Creator for DAZ Studio. Use a simple UI to generate scripts that will autoload items onto a figure. Looks useful for content vendors, who can thus supply standalone scripts that can reproduce their promo images for users. Would be great to see this also extended to lights and cameras and render-settings.
AutoSave for DAZ. A simple “save every…” tool.
A free DAZ Studio UI layout Industrial Layout.
A free DAZ script to List Products Used in a scene.
Camera Tracking Importer for DAZ Studio – HitFilm Composite Shot.
Regroup for Sketchup. UnGroup models, fix their axis, re-group. Might be useful for fixing badly-made models with good geometry, before getting them out to an .OBJ file.
A Photoshop Action to cleanly cut out Dream by WOMBO AI images and auto-heal the curved corners.
Tutorials and more:
Digital Comics Creative – volumes three and four. 100 pages packed with information and examples. This double-issue combo volume is aimed at those who want to use Poser to make line-art for comics and also make more storybook type pictures that emulate hand-drawn and watercolor. Also covers filters, and has a well-researched section at the end surveying the possibilities for mo-cap for comics production.
Making an Autofit Clone and Shape for Genesis 9. A basic starter tutorial.
Using Poser Constraint Groups for animation, a short tutorial by Nerd3D.
Scene Power Building: How to Quickly Build Content-Rich DAZ Studio Scenes.
Digital Art Live’s YouTube Channel is changing. Old videos are gone, and many new videos are coming. Be sure to subscribe.
Digital Art Live magazine #72. Newly expanded, with freebies, ten new additional features and 108 pages. The theme this month is “Costume”, with a focus on fun and futuristic clothes and an Elia Neck interview.
That’s it for the October survey.
Changes at ShareCG. Mostly a home for freebies, but some also try to sell there. For content sellers…
“Due to the high cost of sales processing, the minimum price of a new (or updated) upload[ed product] will be set to $5.00. In addition the maximum discount was reduced to 50%.”
“The above change will set the minimum selling price, at the highest discount, to $2.50”
Seems fair enough. But they go on to say that even $2.50 “is too low to our opinion”. So presumably they would like to see a discounted minimum-price being set higher, in order to cover their processing costs.
KitBash3D’s new art challenge is “Mission to Minerva”. Entrants get a… “free, 3D asset-kit filled with everything a spacefaring explorer needs” with the aim of creating a space colony in “concept art or animation”. Prizes include “NVIDIA RTX 4080 graphics cards, Wacom Cintiq 16” and more. Deadline: 2nd December 2022.
By accident I found the freeware MMD to DAZ, v2 (2019) plugin. May require Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable installed in Windows, which all but ancient dinosaur PCs should already have. Lets you import .PMD (older MMD) and .PMX (newer MMD) Miku Miku Dance figure files, apparently with the proper textures and bones, shaders, and toon outlines. You can also apparently drag and drop .PMX files onto the DAZ viewport.
Basic tutorial video: MMD Importer for DAZ Studio.
The other MMD option is said to be: Blender importer > FBX export (optionally also with dance motions) > Poser 11 import > save as .CR2 from which you can also take it to DAZ Studio. There may be other, perhaps better Blender importers by now, I haven’t made a huge search for them.
Now available, free on Gumroad, the “Battle” issue of Digital Art Live magazine. Also has a 12-page centre section on the Poser 12 software, to give some light relief in the middle. And a two-page technical primer on Poser-to-Vue.
The DAZ Freebies pages has updated.
Ninive 6 Starter Bundle has Beach Wave Hair for Genesis 2, and a set of Capsces poses (always quality).
Keiko 6 Basic Poses, suited to thin toony Genesis 2 figures.
Tale Hero Textures are nice, but require the Sarsa/Val3dart “Tale Hero” (not free) for Genesis 1. The shirt has potential, for hobbits.
An interesting new re-lighting service, ClipDrop – Relight. Requires a 2D picture-upload, and you then get “as-if 3D” real-time relighting.
I’m not sure how well it would work with a picture that doesn’t look like a head-and-shoulders passport photo.
I’m guessing it may also be flummoxed by wild Poser/DAZ stuff, such as an all-action hero cyber-elephant wearing goggles, posed against a complex cyber-city background.
Doubtless this sort of capability is coming to desktop software in a month or two, if it isn’t here already in something I haven’t heard about yet. But this is a nice online demo of the capabilities.
By the way, here is the “Click to replay” code, for the above demo. A few lines of simple HTML for Web pages. I’m surprised people go overboard with massive javascripts just to add a simple animated .PNG control…
Working in Opera (Chrome), Brave (Chrome) and Pale Moon (Firefox). You’re welcome.
Most readers of this blog will already also be members of the free Digital Art Live STUDIO forum. But if not, there’s the ‘joining’ link. It’s a more Facebook-like forum, not the old type.