ShareCG has re-opened new-account registration, after being hit by a wave of spam-bot sign-ups.
Category Archives: Spotted in the News
Digital Compositing with DAZ Studio and Photoshop – mentoring course
Digital Compositing with DAZ Studio and Photoshop, an eight-week one-to-one group mentoring course led by Vladimir Chopine. It’s a re-run of the longer course he did a while ago, but this one is shorter. Booking now, starts on 4th June 2022.
Sketch Master 2018
Posted on
by
Posted in Comics, Companion software, Natural media emulation, Spotted in the News, Tutorials
Leave a comment
Posted in Comics, Companion software, Natural media emulation, Spotted in the News, Tutorials
Leave a comment
Redfield Sketch Master, aka Sketchmaster, now in 2018 (v19.01, January 2019). Who knew?
* Still affordable at $40.
* Windows only. I expect it would not be flummoxed by anything back to Windows XP, but that’s just my guess.
* Now multi-core and with a far bigger preview window (and thus slower than before for previews, about on a par with G’MIC). But much faster at 1000px to actually render a preset to your final image, due to the multi-core support. Not so much faster at 3600px, though… maybe 40% faster. But worth having.
* Ships with wholly new presets. Also appears to have a different or more advanced or canvas-scaled engine, but keeps a very similar UI.
* Installs and runs alongside your old 3.3x version. Does not inherit the old custom presets.
* The new version’s engine is no good for humanising 3D line-art, and for that you need the old 3.3x.
* Requires standard 8-bit images (“Last Draw” save-renders from DAZ are 16-bit, and thus require downsampling before filtering).
* Backup and restore of your saved custom presets is done by the same method. They’re stored in the registry, so you save out a Windows .reg file, thus…
If you’re upgrading your PC to a new one, or a new OS, this is how you transfer your Sketch Master presets.
Fiber Shop 2, now perpetual-licence
Fiber Shop 2 is a standalone real-time 3D hair creator, with export to .FBX as strands or ‘cards’. Version 2.2 is now available on a perpetual licence (it had been subscription) and at a reasonable $120 at present. There is a free non-commercial version which restricts the resolution of the texture-map exports and you don’t get things like the gradiated root-to-tip textures. Windows only.
What you don’t appear to get is a real-time “on the head’ view on a showroom-dummy head, it’s just the hair-cards that are previewing in real-time. You need to be able to round-trip to some 3D software that has actually built the hair mesh, so far as I can tell. I’m not sure if such round-tripping is possible with DAZ or Poser. Though it is with ZBrush and suchlike.
As for an art-AI to ‘add hair to a bald 2D render’ from DAZ or Poser, that’s still at the level of academic research papers so far as I can tell. But it’s doubtless coming soon.
Presenter wanted
Become a regular webinar tutorial presenter on DAZ Studio topics. Details at the Digital Art Live STUDIO forum.
Release: Storyboarder 3.0
Release: Storyboarder 3.0 slipped out at the end of March 2022, with almost no-one noticing. It’s a bit sad that those with the biggest and slickest marketing hog all the attention, when there’s so much fine software around these days.
Free and open-source, for movie storyboarding but also possibly useful for figuring out the flow of comics. Especially a comic that is likely to be viewed in reader apps that offer ‘Panel View’ (one panel at a time, filling the screen) or scrolling formats.
Among other changes…
* Shot Generator: Insert Image via Drag/Drop or Paste.
* Storyboarder: Video Export fixed.
FurMark
An unusual bit of Windows freeware. FurMark will give your graphics-card a furry stress-test…
“FurMark OpenGL benchmark test will accurately measure the performance of the graphics card using fur rendering algorithms.”
Material zones in DAZ
Coming in early/mid June 2022, a two-part webinar on working with material zones in DAZ Studio.
Release: DAP 7
Dynamic Auto Painter 7 has been released. Will still run on Windows 7 and 8. The price remains at $89 + local tax. The key new feature is Feature Follow in which brushes can be set up to follow the direction of the picture’s structure. This gives a more believable look to the result. Some of the new DAP presets have this already enabled.
Also a new ‘True Mosaic’ maker which (while slow) gives nice results.
No UI makeover.
No introductory discount, but apparently the coupon code NEWYEAR2022 still works for now.
Release: iClone 8 and Character Creator
iClone 8 and its companion Character Creator are now out of beta and officially released. The vital additional and expensive importer/exporter 3DXChange is no longer needed, as its functions have been ‘mostly’ integrated. As is the animation Curve Editor. Static non-animating objects apparently now render twice as quickly in the real-time renderer, and there have been engine improvements such as volumetrics and the ability to tweak shadow strength. I took a look at other features on the v8 beta back in November.
Nothing in terms non-photoreal features, akin to Poser 11’s comic-book mode or Sketch rendering, so far as I can see. No mention of automation, akin to Photoshop’s record / replay Actions.
There’s a been a huge price hike. Together, even the entry-level iC 8 and CC will together now cost you a hefty $900, and that’s before any further costly add-on packs such as mo-cap or canned animation or 3D content. Both still work on Windows 7+, which is nice to see given the trend toward ‘Windows 10 only’ software. The free edition of Character Creator is reportedly being ditched.
U-Render goes subscription-only
The latest U-Render 2022.4 plugin is available for Cinema 4D. Think of it as the equivalent of Blender’s Eevee for C4D, a realtime “what you see is what you get” viewport. Sadly it’s now subscription only though, so it probably won’t be getting much attention here in the future.
Manta-rays vs. flying lama-taxis
The next version of the G’MIC Photoshop plugin will have the filter ‘Rendering / Generate Random Portrait’ to create a picture of a person who doesn’t exist…
Now if only the AI could also do alien flying manta-rays firing sci-fi ray guns, in pitched battle against a fleet of flying lama-taxis. Oh, wait, there’s DALL.E 2 now…
Release: 3DCoat 2022
3DCoat 2022 has shipped as a stable version. Among other things, it’s a more logical alternative to ZBrush for sculpting. 2022 brings…
* “Bevel tool and an Inflate modifier” in the brushes.
* Automated decimation of a 3D sculpt to lower-res mesh.
* New clay shaders and “created by a leading concept artist” no less.
But the main thing is a new…
“Core API which lets users customise the software at the ‘speed of C++’”
Still supports Windows 7, apparently.
Some highlights from 2021
Some highlights from 2021.
The good:
Poser 12 Early Access ended the year with its new Manual completed. Now available not only in HTML, but also in a free PDF. Ghostship shipped his Poser 12 Materials, which those who used them on Poser 11 will know are a key enhancement for Poser SuperFly users. Various useful scripts, including those by Snarlygribbly continued to be updated for Poser 12. Also, Poser 12 can now be snail-mailed to you if you live out in the wilds.
NeoWin Deals continued with their great offer of Poser Pro 11 for $80, and this can co-exist alongside Poser 12. Mac Poser users now have an equivalent of the must-have ‘Snap To’ mover script, working on both Poser 11 and 12. There were many other new Poser 11 scripts, including an automated Blender to Poser conversion script for free Blender assets.
DAZ ended the year by announcing a new integrated iRay render-farm service in the Cloud, Infinite-Compute’s “Boost for DAZ”.
Of course the year saw lots of great new Poser/DAZ content and freebies released, with the picks being covered here in my monthly round-ups. 300 game-ready DAZ figure conversions were officially added by Tafi to the Unity Store.
Redeye Cat retired in May and kindly gave away her stuff for free — now safely archived as a 500Mb mega-bundle archive on Archive.org. Cage’s Loop and Chain-making Poser scripts were likewise saved. Wootha also retired and kindly gave away his brushes, concept art etc as public domain (he’s not to be confused with the Wolthera who works on Krita).
Another year of free magazines from Digital Art Live, and the Digital Art Live STUDIO forum is also working well.
Renderosity finally made it possible to paste nicely formatted and coloured code in the Python Scripting forums, though only from proper editors such as the free Microsoft Visual Studio Code and PyCharm.
The ArtStation Marketplace grew and thrived, and though very crowded becomes a useful place once you start to build a judicious wishlist.
The new G’MIC 3.0 for Photoshop version added AI-powered de-noising. This does not need NVIDIA, and can even be done on CPUs.
XP-Pen produced and shipped even better budget ‘draw on the screen’ pen-monitors.
The bad:
On the DAZ Store all the old Poser .ZIPs have been re-labelled as “DAZ Studio”. But it’s pretty easy to tell the difference, once you know how. Just download all the .ZIPs, and if there’s a ‘data’ folder inside then it’s for DAZ.
The Poser-friendly Hivewire store closed down. But on the bright side, they eventually moved most items to Renderosity. The lively and friendly Hivewire forums remain.
We lost the excellent third-party Poser library PzDB (still working, but can no longer be purchased); Topaz Clean (but I showed how to use G’MIC as a very close if slower replacement); and the tooning plugin pwToon for DAZ Studio (no longer for sale).
The enforced removal of the Flash Player from PCs caused a bit of confusion, as ancient Poser Library systems stopped working for a few. But people found workarounds.
Several big VR painting tools were killed off.
The venerable free audio-editor Audacity was bjorked. Audacity 2.4 became ‘the last good version’, but there is now a safer fork called Audacium 1.0.
Adobe completely killed 3D in Photoshop, for rather murky reasons.
The graphics-card drought / price-gouging continued. There were also other tech shortages.
The latest OS upgrades and patches became a very dangerous game of Russian Roulette for both Mac and Windows, likely to cause the sudden death of much-loved and mission-critical software. Some people sensibly told the OS makers to stuff it, and went back to good old Windows 7.
NFTs. Evil incarnate.
The soft:
PD Howler 2020 was given away free in the summer then heavily-discounted at the end of the year, and as a consequence was positively reviewed in Digital Art Live. I worked out how to remove white (white to transparency) in PD Howler. Since that’s not a thing it can do ‘one click’, like you can in Rebelle or Clip Studio or Photoshop (with an Action).
In other painting software, someone invented a great free Lasso colour-autofill script for Photoshop (like Clip Studio has) but sadly no-one noticed. The free Krita 5 went through five betas and is due for final release in a few days. The excellent $20 Realistic Paint Studio had a new version 2.0, and the free Paint.NET also had a substantial release. Escape Motions released Rebelle 5, but effectively put the price up. Corel Painter 2022 was apparently (according to Boro) an outstanding move forward for the venerable software.
The free G’MIC for Photoshop plugin added useful support for recording G’MIC in Photoshop Actions, among other new features.
In 3D painting software we had the excellent 3DCoat 2021, and the budget 3DCoatTextura. The budget-priced ArmorPaint 0.8 appeared, and has made good progress as a Substance Designer competitor.
Blender 3.0 stable landed in December, with many Freestyle and Grease Pencil improvements. BEER for Blender is due in final in early 2022, offering even better NPR and lineart. Blender also now has a basic Assets Browser, at long last. Blender’s main Cycles renderer had big speed boosts, which should filter through to Poser 12 in due course (Poser’s SuperFly renderer is a slightly tweaked Cycles).
Software we nearly lost included DAZ on a Mac, totally bjorked by the OS Big Sur update for many months… until it was fixed by a huge effort in September. Vue was also fixed for Big Sur. Scatter for Poser 11 was lost for a while in the Hivewire-Renderosity transfer. But it’s also back now. The free abandonware Microsoft ICE 2.0 seemed to vanish, but popped up again on Archive.org.
Software we ‘might have lost, but kept’ included Moho (aka Smith Micro’s Anime Studio), now back with its original developers and with new features in a new release (20% off for Xmas and New Year, with code: HOLIDAYS). The subscription VUE R6 (not to be confused with the old Vue 2016 R6) has so far kept easy import of Poser scenes, thus offering a way to port Poser to big-beast 3D software like Maya, Lightwave etc. Effectively Vue now replaces the PoserFusion plugins for studio pipeline work, although of course it is not free like the plugins were.
Various bits of software updated as usual, including KeyShot 10.2 which apparently fixed the ‘butterfly-wing eyelashes’ problem on DAZ figure imports. In unusual or niche software VRoid Studio 1.0 came out of beta; Clavicula superseded Neobarok; and Movmi pointed the way to AI-powered mo-cap from video clips.
The bleeding edge:
A slick Metahuman demo caused a moment’s “DAZ is doooommed!” panic in April, then everyone forgot about it.
Worthy AI designers Deep AI are training their new Zendo AI to locate and mask the edges of multiple objects in images. Auto-masking that works perfectly and precisely every time would certainly be something worth having. I mean here the accurate object-aware segmentation of an entire complex picture with lost-edges, not just ‘mask that easy-to-isolate shape there’.
Several interesting technical papers appeared on auto-inking, promising much for the future. Autocomplete for inking artists, i.e. ‘making several short curves to form a longer one’. And an AI that can autotrace your rough sketch in inks.
Here:
I discovered a basic de-grunging Matcap-like method for Poser 11 materials, useful for making comics flats. Also a new way to remove the speckles from Poser’s Firefly lineart renders (Vextractor 7.x). I realised in tests that the 25 year-old default bucket sizes, used when rendering, may now be out-of-date on many fast PCs. I discovered an interesting way to consistently get a partial silhouette in Poser. My on-off work on several Poser scripts continued, and I learned a good deal more about Python and automation on a PC.
My blog’s Poser/DAZ Technical Search engine is now exponentially more useful than when first launched. It now also covers Vue, motion capture, and a few other useful topics. I undertook the annual overhaul of the blog in the summer, doing things like checking and fixing all the sidebar links by hand.
Elsewhere, there was further taming of my YouTube and DeviantArt experiences by use of UserScripts and other addons. Both are now somewhat bearable. Likewise fixed are the Google Doodle and many other small annoyances scattered around the Web.
Top of the pops in 2021
So, what are the top items on Renderosity? Rendo provides a page where you can find such things out. The top four are pretty much as you might expect.
Followed by a superstore’s-worth of skimpies and silkies, page after page, and just a couple of other quality G8 female characters. You have to scroll a long way down to get to something like “STZ Cleaning accessories”. It takes a while to puzzle that one out, but then the penny drops: hardware accessories for the maid costumes.
Way way down after many pages you start to see occasional other things, like “Photo Props: Fire Effect Maker” and the “Poser 12 – Upgrade”. Eventually, after a very long time of scrolling the first male item appears. G8M realistic body-hair strips, and then after another few pages another in “Karl for Genesis 8 Male”. Hurrah for Karl, but… he has no other mates down there.
Eventually we start to get a couple of animals, with the HiveWire Horse, Songbird ReMix Corvus (crows). Also a few very scattered sci-fi sets. Even further down up pops La Femme Pro V.2, along with more Hivewive Big Cats, Hivewire Housecat. Also Poser 11 at the Renderosity price.
So basically it seems that if you want to sell to the masses, G3F and G8F is where it’s at. Specifically clothing and the slinkier and more enticing the better. However, it’s obviously a very crowded market. I’m guessing the ‘work to hit product’ ratio might be high, and you could have to produce and shout about twenty or more items of new clothing to get one breakthrough product that sells well. The rest are likely to be lost in the tidal waves of similar items, because back of these best-sellers must be thousands of others that didn’t get the traction.
Hair obviously has to be really really good to make it up the charts. I guess many people already have their favourite go-to hairs. Also, hair is a risky buy, so buyers may be averse.
There’s a surprisingly lack of scripts and add-ons, but I guess such things are beyond the ability of the mass market and so don’t sell a lot.
Of course, all this does not necessarily mean that the kind of stuff that sold twenty years ago is no longer selling. It probably is. It’s just that such things are being drowned out in the charts by the new mass market.
What of the DAZ Store? So far as I can tell the DAZ Store’s “sort by most popular” is not an all-time or yearly tally, and only seems to give you the most popular this week.