News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Category Archives: Spotted in the News

Filter for Interactive licences at DAZ

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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.

Scene Building in Blender

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A new community course for beginners to learn Blender by creating a scene via modelling and texturing, Scene Building in Blender : Winter Wonderland. Starts Saturday 19th November 2022, and then runs Saturdays.

The scene is akin to the famous Narnia fantasy books for children: the wardrobe ‘portal’ into the snowy Narnia, with the lamppost as the first thing to be encountered there.

Terragen 4.6 – a big update

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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.

Text-based AI for mo-cap

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Human Motion Diffusion Model is new text-based AI for generating mo-cap animation for a 3D figure. Still a science-paper + source code at present.

But it can’t be long before you type in a text description to generate a rigged and clothed 3D figure (plus some basic helmet-hair), and can then also generate a set of motions to apply to the figure’s .FBX export file. Useful for games makers needing lots of cheaply-made NPCs, provided they can be game-ready.

But for Poser and DAZ users, the ideal would be to have reliable ‘text to mo-cap’ exist as a module within the software. Even better would be to have an AI build you a custom bespoke AI-model by examining all the mo-cap in your runtime, thus gearing it precisely to the base figure type you intend to target.

YouTube – never click the annoying “See more…” again

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A useful new UserScript for your Web browser. YouTube: expand description and long comments. No more clicking on “See more…”. With this installed, everything below the video is already open, and you just scroll down and cast your eye through it. Tested, and can be used alongside a UserScript that serves as a YouTube Comments Blocker.

Photoshop Action: Cut-out ‘Dream by Wombo’ AI-pictures

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Available now, my $2 Photoshop Action for users of the “Dream by Wombo” AI image generator. It very precisely and automatically cuts the picture out of a standard ‘Dream by Wombo’ AI-generated picture-card. It then auto-heals each of the tiny curved corners, and finally it saves the cut-out as a copy.

It works with the current Wombo output size available to free users. If that output size changes in future, then I’ll update the Action.

Available now on Gumroad.

Published: Digital Comics Creative, Volumes 3 & 4

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New and available now on Gumroad, Digital Comics Creative, Volumes 3 & 4 – Secrets of Poser 11 and Line-art Filters. Both volumes are bundled together as a bumper 100-page magazine-style PDF, great value at the introductory price of $15 (will soon be $18).

The earlier Volume 1 (Introduction) and Volume 2 (focused on DAZ Studio for comics) are also available. Volumes 5 and 6 are set for release in 2023.

Changes at ShareCG

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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.

Changes for Vue creator edition

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Changes for the Vue landscape software.

The more affordable ‘Creator’ Vue now gets many of the Pro and Enterprise features. Cinema 4D and Maya integrations will be the addition that most will be interested in, since that will offer an easy Poser -> Vue -> C4D / Maya export workflow. Also added to Creator are “unlimited render size”, Python scripts, Multipass and G-buffer renders, among others. Nice. See the link for full details.

However, there’s a kicker… ‘Creator’ Vue will now be for “Personal non-commercial use only”. But that shouldn’t affect most hobbyists and students. At the most, it would affect those who pick up a few prints-sales each year from DeviantArt or ArtStation.

And… “starting today, any VUE and PlantFactory legacy licenses (versions 2016 and below) re-activation request will be contingent to a service order.” In other words it seems you’ll pay a small unspecified ‘servicing fee’ to have E-On re-activate an ancient Vue licence. Seems fair enough, as long as it’s a fair price. I believe you can also ask them to restore your old Cornucopia content purchases.

Cartoon Animator 5

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Reallusion’s Cartoon Animator 5 desktop cartoon production software is coming soon, and there are offers in the emails such as ‘buy an upgrade and get version 5 free when it appears’. It’s good software for making that kind of animation, especially for a small studio. Professional, fairly easy to use, very well documented and supported. Though you to be aware that you probably need to budget four times the initial ‘sticker price’, if you’re going to fully get into the expensive Reallusion ecosystem with motion add-ons and expansion packs and suchlike.

ClipDrop

Posted on by Posted in Automation, Companion software, Freebies, Spotted in the News 1 Comment

An interesting new re-lighting service, ClipDrop – Relight. Requires a 2D picture-upload, and you then get “as-if 3D” real-time relighting.


Animated demo:


Click here to replay

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.