News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Category Archives: Special Offers and Discounts

Two art tools for DAZ – on sale

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Currently on a 50% sale at DAZ, two of the illustration-making tools that are worth having. There’s no guarantee that utilities like this will go to 70%+ on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Keep in mind that some of the folders for Lineart9000 need to be installed under your C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\.. and you can’t just idly plonk it all into your main content runtime and expect it to work.

The next issue of VisNews (September 2021) will have a four-page survey/test of such DAZ tools, and these two are picked out as two of the most useful / easiest to use. That said, the Lineart9000 3Delight line render is a bit CAD-like, and conversely the somewhat blobbly base linework from Sketchy is not likely to please a regular comics reader or an editor at a children’s book publishing house. Sketchy actually shows up in DAZ as Shader Presets | DimensionTheory | iRayToon Shader, if you need to check if you already have it or not.

With both you could perhaps make some interesting Photoshop composites from the same scene, layering and blending multiple renders from each utility.

Release: QuarkXPress 2021

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QuarkXPress? Isn’t that the ancient crumbly DTP software that your grandpa once used, and which vanished long ago?

Oh, my… how times have changed. The DTP desktop software QuarkXPress is still here and still venerable, yes, but their sprightly annual releases have been playing ‘the tortoise and the hare’ with Adobe since 2015. Six years later it’s catching up in numerous ways, and even surpasses InDesign in many features. Their polished 2021 version is now out, and has .SVG support among other things. I recently took a look at the free trial and was pleased to find it very mature and with annual updates at a one-time purchase of £362 (an annual subscription, but if you cancel then it appears you get to keep the software). Expensive but not the silly prices of yesteryear, and within reach of many. Oh, wait… 50% off for August which puts it about £180…

It’s no longer just for laying out PDFs for magazines, books and academic journal articles. A key feature is support from absolute reproduction of a DTP print layout in Web browser-friendly HTML5, plus support within that for animated elements (slide-in banners, slow zooms into pictures) and looping animated GIFs (v.2020) and now SVGs (v.2021). Also video and 360-video. Its scripts are standard javascript. The increasing range of creative possibilities are thus obvious, and you can also leave a gap in the layout then hack the HTML to add whatever unsupported Web do-dah you want to display in a browser. Although in the latest version you can also insert snippets of HTML.

The cheap and relatively friendly Affinity Publisher and Microsoft Publisher don’t offer HTML5 export at all. Adobe’s equivalent DTP software InDesign still requires a third-party plugin to export an HTML5 layout, and both are monthly subscriptions.

So I’m pleased to find that QuarkXPress seems a viable Adobe-alternative for DTP and the WYSIWYG Web. It is now sitting at a quite nice point in the market, in terms of a reasonable price, superb export features, and having a perpetual licence version. There’s a QuarkXPress 2021 free-trial (Windows 8 and up, v.2018 being the last Windows 7 version). One to look at if you want to make a device-responsive online magazine with creative interactivity that goes beyond page-curls and a few clickable Web links.

That said, it may not be what some will need for making motion-comics or basic 2D interactive Web ‘visual novels’. There is now software dedicated to such things.

As with all major software these days, there has to be a warning as it’s being newly mentioned here: Windows 10 and Mac OS desktop updates may bjork your favourite feature or break the software totally. But that doesn’t appear to be the case here.

All fired up

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Darkseal’s Fire Sprite Demon is currently on a heavy discount at $4 at the DAZ Store and, though it’s lacking in poses, there are now 16 quality free poses for it. It toons quite nicely in colour, and has some impressive morphs for a custom figure.

Note that tests show that these do not work well with Darkseal’s similar Lynx cat figure. I think that was perhaps made by someone else (Versus, who did a few standalones back in the day) and then Darkseal bought him out and he put a new rig in the Lynx and reshaped it to become his own Fire Sprite Demon. Thus the rigs are not the same, though the figures are similar.

A custom painterly Poser Sketch preset render, with Poser’s standard real-time Comic Book lineart dropped on top, then the lineart filtered with a custom G’MIC preset. Only the top-right arm has had a few strokes of extra manual inking, to firm the holding-line…

Release: 3DCoat 2021 / and the budget 3DCoatTextura

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3DCoat 2021 has been released, with the all-important UI makeover. For those who don’t know it, I guess it could be described as: ‘ZBrush without the mad interface, combined with Substance Painter without the Adobe shackle’. At least one beta tester appears to have been running it successfully with Windows 7, thus it appears not to be ‘Windows 10 only’ software.

It’s also very nice to see a simultaneous release of the new budget-priced version of 2021 just for painting and texturing of 3D, no sculpting. This is called 3DCoatTextura and currently has a nice introductory one-time purchase price of 79 Euros. I think that’s meant to be a Euro symbol…

Sadly YouTube knows nothing of something called “3DcoatTextura” and assumes you’ve made a typing mistake, but I’m sure there must already be previews and even tutorials on the software out there.

The other one-time purchase alternative would be the new Marmoset Toolbag 4, but that’s $300 and so rather out of the range of most hobbyists. Marmoset 4 also took an absolute age to load a test scene, was less than stable in my testing, had a very unlikable UI and then fell at the first hurdle — simple framing of a figure with the viewport camera… how? Where the heck are the camera controls? I gave up. Uninstalled.

Blender Content Creation for Daz Studio – discounted bundle

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New on the DAZ Store, Blender Content Creation for Daz Studio Bundle. Currently in the sale at $88, this bundle of three gives you nearly ten hours of friendly and DAZ-friendly learning. It’s also keyword searchable, and has subtitles.

While you’re there don’t miss the Platinum Club Anniversary 2020 Bundle 10. A mega-bundle that appears to have been created for the Platinum Club members… but which is now available to all at $6.

By the way, thanks to Kevin M. I’ve solved my problem with the infinite scrolling on the DAZ Store, which going back more than about two weeks causes the thumbnail loading to freeze up. Setting “Items Per Page” to 60 (rather than All) brings back the old paginated or ‘per page’ browsing. It’s still a bit sticky, even now, but is much more workable.

Vue scenes sale

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Raffy Raffy has a 50% sale at ArtStation. I picked up three big Vue scenes I didn’t yet have. 430Mb in total, for the three. They all populate their ecosystems with items that should be standard library items for most Vue users.

Incidentally I discovered there are obviously two types of store on ArtStation, and for the same vendor. Click on the vendor name in a product, and you go to…

1. https://www.artstation.com/raffyraffy/store

Raffy has his older Vue scenes missing here. I did some tests and the missing items are not due to ArtStation removing my already-purchased items (I purchased them when he was on CGTrader) or because my Web browser’s uBlock was blocking a further page of the store. To see the full range, the URL then needs to be…

2. https://raffyraffy.artstation.com/store

At this version of the store URL you see no sale discounts, but you do see the full range, including Raffy’s older Vue items. Half are missing from version 1 of the store, in favour of Blender scenes.

Click through on one of these and… hmm, still no discounts…

But… if you copy-paste the desired product title into the main Marketplace search, it will then reveal the page for the same product… but this time it will have the sale discount.

It appears that ArtStation gives two versions of the store to a vendor. I’d suspect that one is search-engine friendly and shows up in Google etc, while the more dynamic one with sale discounts does not. Just a guess.

Thus, if you discover a vendor you really like and want to wishlist from their full range, it’s worth trying both store URLs and playing spot-the-difference. I’ve now been able to wishlist at ArtStation two further Vue scenes, that I thought had not made it across from the old CGTrader store. These are Path Forest in Vue and Dangerous Canyon in Vue, and will be picked up on Black Friday.

45% off the full Corel Painter 2021

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The full Corel Painter 2021, currently with a healthy 45% discount and seemingly not a subscription…

It’s still a contender for natural media, since no other software yet provides a full ‘all in one’ natural-media painting software with fast brushes on a desktop PC. Best for those who want the full range of paint and ink types in one well-developed software, and who intend to get heavy with oils, impasto, textures etc. Painter 2019 could still load and replay Poser Sketch scripts, and I assume 2021 can also. Bear in mind it’s now “Windows 10 only” (ugh). Corel Painter 2020 seems to have been the last version to support older Windows, back to Windows 7.

The alternatives:

SAI 2 has incredible speed for speed-painting with big blending brushes on a big 7000px canvas, but… an antique UI that even lacks basic things such as a ‘dark mode’.

Paintstorm is not far behind SAI 2 in big-brush speed and has lovely blending. Its sister software Realistic Paint Studio does much the same, and has a charming UI that will appeal to many. See the recent review for the latter, in Digital Art Live magazine.

Krita is free and now sort-of has watercolour and oils, and Krita 5 may or may not bring the full caboodle in that respect. But aspects of the UI such as brush-handling, and especially the obtuse naming conventions, are difficult to love — especially if you’re coming from Photoshop.

Rebelle 4 has recently added realistic oils to its superb watercolour effects. Great if you’re scanning in lineart and then adding digital watercolour, but it is expensive for what it is and almost never discounts. But it’s so realistic that you basically need to learn to paint in watercolour like you would in real-life. Which is not as easy as it sounds. The software also develops very slowly.

Clip Studio is good for inking line-art, but it’s horribly complex and fiddly and that will constantly get in the way of your creativity. There are now inking options that are just-as-good. The $20 Paintstorm, for instance, does very nice inking, and also has adjustable gap-fill on colouring line-art.

Darkseal un-sealed

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Of interest to comics-maker using Poser, Darkseal now has stuff on the DAZ Store that I’ve not seen before, or which I assumed had vanished along with Content Paradise. He also has a sale on, right now.

Sadly no Neo Navigator or Rift Guardian, but we do get Rift Walker and Boon. His Boon toons reasonably well and takes M4 poses. Quite possibly Warframe, so think twice about commercial use of either. Also, the Rift Walker is vaguely similar to a Warhammer Genestealer, so commercial use in a comic etc could also be iffy.

Bugboy is even better in terms of tooning, although… you need to manually remove the eye-catching nipples and other distracting tackle that he loads with. But this is easily done, just make them invisible.

I never purchased the matching female version, as the megaboob-iness is a bit naff and I can’t think where I might use the figure. But I assume it toons to lineart in Poser 11 Smooth Shaded + Comic Book B&W just as nicely. I assume both BugBoy and Girl are original characters, and so could be used commercially?

Frye can toon reasonably well, but is more of a cartoonists’ aid for overdrawing. Probably best not to make him a flame-creature though, re: Howl’s Moving Castle. He comes with an additional ‘ice’ MAT.

Be warned that Darkseal’s Alien Podz don’t toon at all well in lineart, because they have few edges, and I recall I was also disappointed with his BioSkin series for tooning too. Painted details, rather than geometry.

No NearMe outfits or Cherry, or Squiddy. I’m fairly sure they’re all off the market now. On DAZ is one I’ve never seen before, though. There’s a ChupacabraP8Dog MAT for Stonemason’s Poser 8 Dog, a base animal figure which shipped free with Poser way back. As it was a flagship figure it has masses of morphs and dials.

He toons surprisingly nicely and has an expressive face. I’d always assumed he was just an old Poser Doberman. He can take DAZ sheep and pig poses, though not all that well. ChupacabraP8Dog is just the useful “ghost-dog” skin, and also note that CG Bytes has a Dalmatian skin and possibly some additional posing morphs.

Of the Space Bugs trio I only have the Drone, and it toons fairly well. Good for background decoration in big sci-fi scenes, and it doesn’t appear to be from Warhammer, Warframe etc. You could probably fit a saddle to it for a spaceport scene…

No poses but the Drone will take poses for the old DAZ Sheep, Pig etc very nicely.

Zulaynear for Cookie is also on the Store, though under a different vendor name.

“It’s clobberin’ time!”

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When Oskarsson had a big sale at the DAZ Store, I picked up a Genesis 3 starting-point for making Thing from The Fantastic Four.

He’s HD though, so expect heavy render times in 3Delight. Fine in iRay, though those without workstations may want to lower the HD figure SubDivision levels down to 2 in both instances.

In Shaping, adding 45% ‘Barbaric’ give you the extra body bulk, then ‘HFS Brows’ gets you a bit nearer the Kirby uni-brow, etc.

You of course make your own orange version of the texture and could optionally ‘ink in’ the crack lines. Adding ‘Superhero Underpants’ gets the basic clothing look (though I think longer ‘swimming trunks’ is the current look). Still not great, even then (see below) but it provides a starting point that’s better than any other I’ve seen. The legs and feet need more work and widening, the mouth needs to be wider and the chin rounder, and Thing only has three thick fingers and a thumb.

Update: HFS Fantasy Shapes – ‘Hands: Beast’ are also useful morphs for getting more over-sized hands. Similarly for feet. Regrettably there is no three-finger morph for Genesis 3, though there is said to be one in HFS Ultimate Shapes for G8. Shrinking the little-finger down, pinky by pinky (there are three sections) to almost nothing, is a basic substitute but not ideal. It would require some Photoshopping later.

Update: JoeQuick had a Thing morph and MAT for Freak 4.

PzDB – still $21 for now

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I hear that users of some older versions of Poser are finding their Content Library has gone “phut!” They were still running their Poser Library with Flash, and it’s reported that Adobe has officially stopped all Flash code from running. Some Poser Pro users can apparently toggle some settings, and have their Library run on Adobe Air instead. That was a Pro-only feature and Air is still safe for now, or as safe as it can be.

But some may be looking for a new way to run a Content Library. In which case you may be pleased to learn that the PzDB 1.2 sale is still continuing.

Still $21… if you buy via the Store page. Elsewhere on the site it still has its more expensive price, perhaps on a page that has been overlooked for updating. In my opinion it’s still the best Poser content library and wrangler addon for those with very large runtimes. There’s also a version 1.3 which tried to add the newer DAZ formats, but the cheaper 1.2 may well suit the needs of someone who mostly uses the old Poser 10. Also, neither version will blow up in Poser 12… as PzDB doesn’t use any Python code.

There’s also the P3DO Library, as an alternative. I have this, picked up during a sale, but it’s rather baffling and I have never been able to fathom how it’s meant to work.

Realistic Paint Studio 1.2

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One software I had overlooked during all the Black Friday bliffle, because it’s so new…. Realistic Paint Studio 1.2. Still on offer for just $25 all-in, including the VIP brush set and with local sales tax not added. If you’re a digital painter — and even if you think you’d happy with Rebelle or Krita or Clip Studio or Photoshop — you’ll soon be kicking yourself that you didn’t get this unique one-time purchase software at this price. No fiddly labyrinthine menus, just a simple “real-world” UI with “real” tools you can pick up and use. Vibrant LAB-based colour and superb natural blending. Worth $25 for the “paint-along-with-me” built-in interactive tutorials, alone, I’d say.

Ignore the “NVIDIA” requirement in the specs, it runs fine for me on an AMD GPU.

Talking of bargains… it’s the last day of the 40% DAZ Studio sale today. Here’s a useful tip: make sure to always look down under a manual “Low Price” re-sorting of the Store, before you Checkout. There’s often a fleeting one-day high-value freebie to be found there these days, that doesn’t show on the main Freebies page. You’re welcome.

CTA4 at NeoWin Deals

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The discounts keep rolling, as people try to find ways to wiggle those last few dollars out of your precious PayPal balance. I see that Reallusion has followed Renderosity’s lead and are offering their software at a heavy discount via NeoWin Deals. They now have Cartoon Animator 4 Pro of offer there, bundling this starter version (ignore the “Pro” label, the real Pro version is called “Pipeline”) with their 12 Principles of Animation Course, for $49.

CTA 4 is the latest version of their 2D animator software and it’s a fine animation tool in terms of both its ease-of-use and general friendliness. It’s less friendly in terms of the cost of content and add-on packs, so ideally the impoverished hobbyist needs to make or find their own 2D assets and backplates. I have a big bundles of freebies in that regard, to start you off. Also, while their training is always top quality you do need to always check if a paid ‘training DVD’ of theirs is actually also available free online — sometimes it is.

You should also know that iClone motions, if you have any, can be used on the G2 CTA characters via simple drag-and-drop.

PoserWorld sale – 50 items for $50

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PoserWorld has a Christmas coupon-sale on their legacy Poser content, mostly V3 and V4 and with many unique items in military and police, such as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and many historical curiosities such as a Theramin (early electronic musical instrument) or a 1950s cigarette vending machine. 30% off at the Checkout with the Holiday2020 code. Where else will you find items like these…

Note they also have a new Bronze Membership at $100, but… with a 50%-off coupon to take it down to $50. This lets you get any 50 items from the 3,300 items in the Club Classics category. That’s a good deal, at $1 an item, provided you’re not expecting the latest Genesis 8 dial-a-girls and are willing to spend an hour picking from the pages. The 50% off coupon there is: ITSBACK50