News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Category Archives: Poser

PzDB R.I.P.

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Moving to Windows 11 means losing the venerable PzDB Poser Library database / manager, which regrettably no longer works on Windows 10/11. Which for me means moving back to using Poser 11 as my main Poser, so that I can run Shaderworks Library Manager 2. Library Manager builds a runtime database like PzDB did, so its search is reasonably fast on a vast runtime. It also docks into the Poser UI. As a bonus, I get my XS-Toolbar and Scene Toy back. The Library Manager UI is a bit painful (subtle colour-coding might have helped), but not impossible once you get the hang of it and better than the native Library.

To build the database you first need to undock the native Library and close it. Then build the Library Manager 2 database of your runtime. Otherwise you’ll get crashes on a vast 20-year runtime. Also, Library Manager 2 needs the AVfix to run.

In Poser 11 there’s no Superfly for 30-series graphics cards, unless one renders on CPUs. But actually I find a CPU render with 2 x Xeons (24 threads) at 1024px is quite bearable. Currently, I’d only want SuperFly for a colour blending layer in Photoshop. I can always go over to DAZ or Poser 13, if I want to build a super-photoreal picture at a large size.

The only thing Library Manager 2 lacks is a “what’s new” view, showing the stuff you just spent time installing into the runtime. Although Everything can approximate that (Large Thumbnails / View By Path / Search for Picture / Date Created), after a re-indexing of the runtime. ‘Everything’ is also especially useful for quick “do I already have it?” lookup when shopping. The filetypes list to exclude from its search are: *.lnk;~$*;$*;*.xmp;*.jpg;*.obj;*.tif;*.bmp;*.txt;*.bat;*.py;*.pyc Sadly the one thing you can’t do with it is add keyword tags to individual or selected search-results — for that one would need DigiKam.

Those with Poser 2014 also have the option of launching that alongside Poser, then reducing it to the taskbar while just keeping its fast floating Adobe AIR library to lay over the Poser 11 interface. Both AIR and Library Manager have drag-and-drop onto the Poser stage. But AIR has the disadvantage of tiny, almost inscrutable, thumbnails until you click on an item. Also, it won’t dock into the Poser 11 interface, and you have to have two versions of Poser running at once.

Perfecting 1:1 watercolour in Flux Kontext

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Could Flux Kontext Dev handle a backdrop as well as a character, thus bypassing the need to composite later? To find out I threw together a basic garden around Nursoda’s Ronk figure and his snail. Obviously, one would spend a lot more time constructing a garden that was destined to appear in many scenes in a storybook or comic. But this is just for a workflow demo.

Pretty ugly from Poser (Comic Book mode lineart and a bright light preset helps it along, but like all 3D it’s desperate to go ‘dark and grungy’). Yet Kontext handles it nicely. Note the new word at the start of the prompt, ‘Filter …’

The problem is then the garish day-glo nature of the colouring on the new image. But because we have 1:1 registration with the Poser source-image, we can easily lay the colours back in by using it as a colour blending layer in Photoshop. Here that’s been done. Then just a little of the Kontext colour has been brought back in. The layer was then flattened and auto-contrast applied, then desaturated slightly to take account of the colour-boost caused by the auto-contrast. The final result…

And since it’s come from Poser, we can have easy-select masks galore via a clown pass / toonID render, should any further postwork be needed. And if a holding-line around the character, or a blurring or fading of the background, is needed… then Poser can also supply the masks needed.

1:1 watercolour in Flux

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A quick Poser experiment with the new Flux Kontext Dev. Nursoda’s Ronk and his snail, in Poser. Render to real-time Preview at 2048px, with high texture quality and a little Comic-Book applied. Lay this Poser render on white in Photoshop, reduce to 1024px and use this as the seed image.

The prompt gives a pencil and watercolour effect, but does not cause the layer-registration to shift. It remains an exact 1:1 match, despite the style change. In other words, Kontext can act exactly like a Photoshop filter would. Takes about 70 seconds on a 3060 12Gb graphics-card, at 1024px. This speed is comparable with intensive Photoshop filter plugins such as Reactor or G’Mic. There is a ‘turbo’ version from a third party, said to give a 2x speed up, but it appears to require intense Python wrangling and lots of tracking down dependencies to get it to work.

A 1:1 match means we can restore the Poser colour, by using the original render as a colour-blending layer in Photoshop. Which means we can have consistent colour from panel to panel and page to page, when storytelling in a comic or storybook.

We get a little drop-out of definition. For instance, the spiral of the snail’s shell is lost. If we had a lineart only Firefly render from Poser, we could bring it back by layering in Photoshop.

Update: It appears that if you go back to it then next day, and experiment with style descriptions, then try to go back to the original prompt, the earlier styled generations somewhow adversely affect the later output (more hard and cartoony than it should be). Possibly old latents are being partly re-used? Anyway… start from a fresh launch of Comfy, then go to the workflow and don’t tinker or change anything before starting your output.

Update: It seems a Poser .PNG render with transparency is the best to drop in as the seed image. Rather than needing to first place it onto a white background. Also, “filter” rather than “convert” seems a better choice of words for the prompt.

Microsoft’s New Ray Tracing AI, now at 16 fps

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Microsoft’s New Ray Tracing AI (YouTube Video, six minutes with hardcoded ad at the end). They ingested 16 million ray traced 3D images, to make an AI that simply infers (from its past knowledge) what the play of real light in a 3D scene should be. Then the AI applies it and ‘renders’ the scene in a microsecond. You can tweak materials, and it updates instantly.

Animated? Yup, their pseudo-raytracing currently clocks in at 16 frames per second (on MS’s research labs hardware, admittedly). Quite respectable, and there are also frame-interpolation AIs out there that might boost it to 30FPS.

Physics? Yup, they even added that too. Even dynamic water.

Generative AI overlay? Not yet. But if this gets a general open-source release and isn’t locked away as an exclusive for Microsoft Flight Simulator, someone will add generative AI imaging to the mix. Imagine not only AI raytracing, but AI raytracing + a layer of SD ‘style change’ based off the 3D scene (but still faithful to it). The ‘Hollywood-real look’ for your 3D scene, in near real-time and beautifully lit.

What a time to be alive. Indeed, what a time to have a huge Poser runtime. Poser has such massive possibilities ahead, if only it can shrug off the AI-haters. The devs don’t even have to develop for it, I would imagine. Just open up some general hooks in Python, to let users hook into whatever local AI they choose to run.

Tyler GND for Poser – works with an eyetarget

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Just confirming that Tyler GND for Poser appears to work fine with an eye-target script (free here in ‘More Poser 12 helpers’). This one-click Python script gives the figure what’s otherwise lacking, an easy way to move both eyes together and have them sync. Just grab and move the non-rendering cube, and the eyes move to follow it.

Tyler GND was a highly advanced male figure, with masses of morphs, built on top of Ryan 2 which was the flagship figure which shipped (only) with Poser 9 / Poser Pro 2012. Reminds me a little of Roger Moore (who played James Bond, at one time).

As you can see he looks very good with his default head, in real-time Preview in Poser. He never caught on (awkwardly caught between M4 and Genesis 1) and thus had hardly any clothing made for him, but a Crossdresser 4 converter module is still available for $3.99 and will convert most M4 etc clothing.

Contest: 2025 3D Steampunk Universe Contest

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The Renderosity 2025 3D Steampunk Universe Contest is open.

Some “AI postprocessing” of a Poser render is acceptable, though apparently this actually only means AI used for “(color correction, tone, saturation, or special effects)”. So I think they’re considering Photoshop’s tools there, which I guess might conceivably now entail AI use. They don’t seem to want a Poser render sent through Stable Diffusion Img2Img.

Limited to 1200px at 72dpi.

Nice prizes, although not including Poser licences, unless they’re to be included in an unspecified “Humble Bundle Software Collection” which it seems has yet to be released. Save your pennies for that one, I’d suggest, presumably to be released in July.

Deadline is 4th July 2025.

Script completed

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I’ve now completed an automated Python script for the bulk of the Poser to Stable Diffusion workflow…

The one-click automated output is the .PNG files, plus the same .PNGs automatically stacked into a Photoshop .PSD file and saved.

For later work in Photoshop: Firefly AO (Ambient Occlusion pass, adds subtle shadows if needed), a real-time Preview faux ‘clown pass’ (aka ToonID) (easy masking, though the Meshbox HP Lovecraft figure doesn’t have much to mask here), and a Preview colour render (for blending back colours, so they’re consistent from panel-to-panel in a comic, and for dropping in a backdrop). Their folder is datestamped and also has the name of the Poser scene file. Then the Poser scene is reverted to where it started, safe and sound.

The Comic-Book Preview and the Firefly lineart layers are then merged in Photoshop, with an Action, and the result is then dropped to the desktop and from there manually dragged over to be used as the Img2Img source in SD.

The SD result then gets saved and manually opened in Photoshop, and an automated Action takes over and restores the Poser Preview render colours. After that it’s optional to add a holding line, mask areas, add very subtle 3D shading of the ligne claire (clear line) comic style, or cut out the plain backdrop and add a new one.

Had to go back to Poser 11 for this script, because Poser 13 doesn’t appear to support options.BucketSize(256) in Python. Without having Firefly set a big bucket size, the three passes of Firefly rendering are rather slow.

New for Poser and DAZ – May 2025

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Welcome again. Here’s my pick of what was new for Poser and DAZ in May 2025, plus links to selected other useful software and tutorials.

Science-fiction:

dForce Elite Squadron for DAZ. Motorcycle, outfit and poses.

SE Animal Osa, a space insect. Also a less convincing but cuter SE Animal Strubyn.

Moonbase Alpha Uniform for G8M. I’m guessing this is Space 1999 fan-art, or close to it. Thus only for use in non-commercial renders.

A free 1953: War of the Worlds Martian for Poser. Fan-art from the 1950s movie.

A Stargate-like Cosmic Gate for DAZ. Again, probably risky to use in commercials renders.

A futuristic Spider Chair with GF8 poses. So far as I know, not fan-art.

Steampunk:

With the new Renderosity Steampunk Contest in view, you may be wanting an Antique Bicycle (a ‘Penny Farthing’ type).

Useful for cycling to the Steampunk Lab, perhaps.

Halloween:

A high-res cemetery for Poser.

The Cemetery Keeper probably lives in Ash’s Cabin for DAZ Studio, a creepy olde wooden cabin.

And perhaps he turns out to really look like EArkham’s ZWorld Otherworldly Abomination.

Fantasy:

Monster Tree for DAZ Studio.

Monster Tree likely to be walking through the new Gate Of The Ancients.

Naga, a Harry Harryhausen style snake-monster for DAZ Studio. See also the new Medusae for Genesis 9.

A Tom Bombadil-like Father Mushroom – Character and separate clothing pack. The blurb on the Character page is misleading, implying he comes complete with clothing. It seems he doesn’t, and it’s a paid extra?

Storybook:

1971s’s Quiet pier for Poser, and there’s also a separate DAZ version.

Modular 3D Kits: Overgrown Mansion Garden for Poser.

The mansion possibly surrounded by the new High-res Hedge Maze for Poser.

Animals:

Nature’s Wonders. Moths of the World Vol. 4 for Poser and DAZ. Includes delicate white ‘plume moths’. I never knew what they were called, before now.

Deer for DAZ Horse 3

Mammoth 2 by AM.

SY The Constrictor 2.

Felidae by AM – Tiger.

Interiors:

FG Packing Warehouse Bundle, possibly useful for making training videos.

Historical:

Babylonian Houses 1

Another MD Greek Warriors Bundle for DAZ. Plus Props and Poses.

GNBD Indian Wooden Masks Props, from India.

Tutorials:

New YouTube videos on Changing Poser’s interface scale and How to create a simple looping animation in Poser.

Also on YouTube, a look back at 12 Months of The Creative Cart.

The UK’s Art Squirrel blog has a new in-depth review of the TourBox Elite Plus, a hardware controller device aimed at digital creatives. The review is so in-depth that it counts as a tutorial.

Stable Diffusion:

Free, CRM Preprocessor For Poser, a node for ComfyUI. Not for our Poser, but seemingly for use with general 3D posing applications (there are several ‘car-crash dummy’ -type posers for Android, for instance) which produce 3D renders destined as source images in AI image generators. This pre-processes them by making sure they’re the right size etc.

On YouTube, “We Asked a Skeptical Illustrator to try Invoke. Here’s his honest take”.

An official Invoke video on how to Fix the “CUDA Error” on Invoke AI. This has been happening with some of the brand-new 50 series NVIDIA graphics cards, which Invoke supports from 5.12 onwards.

C4D to ComfyUI, a video trailer for new Cinema 4D generative AI plugin. Appears to be available here, though with very uncertain pricing (what does “$13, 4 per month” mean?).

Software:

LowPi PathTool Extension for DAZ. Send your Low-poly Crowd Generator people along paths you lay out for them.

Easy Geometry Hider for DAZ.

Another Pose Transfer Manager for DAZ Studio.

Maxon has discontinued ZBrushCore and ZBrushCore Mini, their free ZBrush ‘digital sculpting’ offerings. To be removed today, 30th May 2025.

A free Userscript for your browser, to backup all your Reddit comments to a local .TXT or .CSV file. Tested, and it works well. The GitHub is here.

The UK’s Linux Format magazine (July 2025) has a vital and detailed multi-page tutorial for those planning to move from Windows to Linux Mint (or its variant Winux7) in the near future.

That’s all for now, more next time!

Source DPI, SD controlnet, and the ‘jaggies’

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More on my devising of a Poser to SD workflow. I was happy with the look I had got. But I took time to look into the ‘jaggies’ in my Poser to Stable Diffusion success. The relatively small 786px input .PNG, used for both Img2Img and the Controlnet was thought to be the problem. The output is too jaggy on many lines, despite Poser’s real-time Comic Book Preview render being anti-aliased. How to fix it?

First I ran the source through Vector Magic at medium detail level, which includes smoothing along with the vectorisation.

Much better linework from SD with this as the source, and the dotted suit-lapels vanish. Though it’s lost definition on the suit buttons, and there’s a weird long fingernail. Also the sleeve is a little rough. There are other glitches elsewhere.

Though the edges – such as that sleeve – are not a problem — just add a centered ‘holding-line’ outline stroke in Photoshop and the bobbliness is covered up. But things changing shape and glitching is not good for replacing the colour, via a full Poser Preview render used as a blending-layer in Photoshop. So vectorisation of 768px is perhaps not the way to go. Though it did at least seem to confirm that it’s not some inherent limitation in the Img2Img or Controlnet process that causes the problem.

Nor was the free anti-aliasing filter for Photoshop, Japan’s OLM Smoother, found to do anything. It’s quite subtle and there’s very little difference in the end result.

What about the G’MIC Repair / Smooth options? Nope. Though there is a way to use a G’MIC custom filter on the SD output, to get an anti-aliased ‘inked’ layer that might overlay the SD output lines, in Photoshop. Nice, but it’s not consistent across images and moves things further way from replicability across different images on a comic-book page.

A custom variant of FXEngrave.

In the end, after further tests, I appear to have discovered that… source DPI affects style in Stable Diffusion 1.5. Who knew? 72dpi source and Img2Img = roughly drawn comic book (seen at the start of this post). Exactly the same settings with a 300dpi source give a far more refined and also smoother-lined style. I guess the added DPI gives SD even more ‘wiggle room’ to add the style, in an Img2Img process that moves the source from 768px to 1024px?

Next step, then, is to experiment with 120dpi and 150dpi to find a balance point. But even before that, a Python script to automate the testing and save time/gruntwork.

Final Lovecraft

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I think I’ve hit the final balance in my Poser to Stable Diffusion workflow. The H.P. Lovecraft head, formerly too shaded and photoreal looking, now better matches the rough drawn style of the suit and body. Without getting too sketchy or losing the likeness. The lovely expressive eyes are kept. The result is 1024px and replicable.

Lovecraft hails a New York taxi-cab, or something…

As before, I should state that this was a deliberately bad pose and hands, to test the styling capabilities of SD 1.5 in Img2Img. Thumbs are obviously a problem at this level of denoising, and would ideally be artfully hidden.

The result can have colour consistency from panel to panel. It can be greyscaled, overlaid in Photoshop with a colour Poser render, and then colour-blended. The suit will thus darken down, so the crease-lines and dotted-line lapels won’t be so obvious.

Details, details…

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More progress with my experiments with style changing from a basic Poser real-time render. Up the CFG to 9, up the Embedding strength to 1.2, up the Img2Img Denoising to 7. Keep Canny at 87%. Specify dotted_line in negative, and change Steps to 42, with together remove some of the granulation of the lines that would otherwise occur.

Apart from the thumbs and a stray line below the buttons, the layer registration with the original is exact. Meaning easy re-colouring in Photoshop, via a normal Poser render and the ‘Color’ layer blending-mode.

The face is now too chiselled, and a H.P. Lovecraft character LoRA may be called for. But worth the extra work, since the eyes now especially benefit. There is a slight painterly smudge on the white, which you may be able to see here on a good monitor. But the original outline should be able to be selected in Photoshop. If not, one could use a mask from Poser. Or just do the scene with a backdrop straight from Poser.

The subtle 3D shading being auto-added could interfere with any light-direction shading you wanted to add later (perhaps by dropping a Smooth Shaded Poser render into the layer stack, in Photoshop).

Poser 14?

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Email from Bondware and the Poser dev team, 17th May 2025….

Something HUGE is on the horizon! We’re working on something game-changing, and you’ll hear it here first! Keep an eye on this newsletter — you won’t want to miss what’s next!

This alongside a 30%-off coupon (now expired) for Poser 13, which kind of suggests Poser 14 is coming? It would make sense to launch in midsummer, and have it bug-fixed and ready for the ‘back to school / university’ crowd in September. Just my guess.

Hopefully the “HUGE” is something really game-changing like Poser 14 with a local-&-free AI ‘style change’ module to render Poser scenes in different styles. And not just another base figure such as La Femme 3. I know they’re concerned about copyright in terms of the back-in-the-day training of the Stable Diffusion AI image-generators, but ‘style makeover’ options are emerging which would presumably bypass such concerns.