The Aurelia Institute has launched the $20,000 Aurelia Prize in Design for Space Urbanism seeking ‘bold and creative” best space base, moonbase, Martian colony, or other space-based human settlement. Deadline: 30th January 2026. 3D and AI acceptable, but you have to specify exactly what was done.
Category Archives: Spotted in the News
Contest: Internet Archive’s Public Domain Film Contest 2026
The copyright release season approaches. The Internet Archive is running a contest for creative short films that use public domain material, especially the releases due on 1st January 2026.
Make a 2-3 minute short film, and add an equally open soundtrack. No ban on the use of AI, which is especially notable since good-quality local AI Video2Video generation has become accessible/affordable in the last year. But I’d image that the original footage is what the judges will be looking out for. The 1930 date suggests obvious linkages with early pulp science-fiction. Deadline: 7th January 2026.
Here’s a survey of what’s entering the public domain in 2026, with a focus on fantasy, science-fiction and horror.
E-on Vue, now free, could go open-source
E-on Vue, now wholly free, has a further opportunity. There’s the option to make it open-source and with some backing… “making the source code of these products available under a free software license, sponsored by the Academy Software Foundation”. Input from potential developers is welcomed. Recall that it runs Python, so simply adding in the ability to do quick seamless “AI rendering” would be a great addition.
Release: Poser 14.0
Poser 14 is now available.
Price-cut: $100 upgrade or $175 new, which effectively means a round $200 after you’ve added one of Ken’s vital scripts from the Renderosity store. Though bear in mind that going to a new version usually means that the old version pops up at Graphixly (Clip Studio’s store) for sub $30 after Christmas. Graphixly still have Poser 12 for $29 there at present, but it’ll be interesting to see if that’s replaced by Poser 13 in 2026.
No ‘3D to AI rendering’ integration, sadly. And also, it’s not a big “wow-gosh!!” feature-packed release. But, let’s give the devs credit for what they have done. Looking down the release notes for 14.0, this is what catches my eye…
* A “new Render default”, and new matching startup scenes for beginners. (A nice touch, for newbies).
* A load of fixes and updates for the Background picture / sphere / video / dome features. (Apparently it’s much easier now, to deal with backgrounds).
* A bunch of problems fixed in the Materials Room, and several workflow improvements there.
* “Removed Cloth Room until we can replace with modern, open-source alternative lib”. (So it sounds like that was removed for licence expiration reasons? No great loss for me, and I guess people on Windows can always use the Room in an earlier version. Though presumably older “dynamic clothing” now won’t work in Poser 14? Not that there was much of it, compared to the mass of dForce stuff for DAZ Studio). (Update: Poser Cloth returns with version 14.0.227, 6th Feb 2026).
* SuperFly PostFX Denoise is now set to “On” by default. (This is the excellent Intel OIDN denoiser, which effectively cuts render times. I assume this is now the latest version of OIDN?).
* FBX and Collada [export] added back to the File Import/Export menus. (A copy of Poser 11 is still required for integration with the free E-on Vue, and thus access to Vue’s wealth of robust export options for imported Poser scenes).
* GLTF format added to Import/Export. (GLTF is yet another attempt at a universal 3D scene export-import package. Possibly useful if it makes it easier to load a GLTF in ComfyUI, for AI ‘rendering’? By “easier” I mean easier to load it into a large viewport and easily navigate the scene. Though sadly everyone in AI-land seems utterly bedazzled by “2D Img to 3D”, and the huge value in doing precise “3D to Img” is all but ignored).
* “Optix now requires Nvidia RTX 581.” (Don’t panic, they mean the 581.xx Nvidia graphics driver, not that Poser 14’s Optix only works with 50-series cards).
* “Tkinter fixed and now available in included version of Python.” (Sounds good, as this is used to make easy graphical user-interfaces for Python scripts. Possibly this is one of the benefits of ditching Mac support, as I seem to recall that Tkinter was banned from Macs?).
* Various fixes for Cycles Principled BSDF, Cycles. Easier setup of PBR materials. CUDA updated to v12.9.1. Apparently includes the latest LTS Blender Cycles (aka Poser SuperFly), though not the very-very latest Blender 5.0 cycles. Because Blender 5.0 and Poser 14.0 were released in the same week.
* SuperFly rendering can now output a Z-depth pass, which had been broken. (A useful fix).
* Animation render no longer freezes after opening a .PZ3 file. (Another useful fix).
* Added the ‘Perspective’ dial to Dolly Camera. Dolly Camera fixes. (The Perspective dial being very useful for comic-book style foreshortening effects, so some may welcome this).
* Support for the new Intel ARC graphic-cards.
* From third-party developers, I see that EZSkin is already updated to support Poser 14.
* One forum report suggests that the ability to do a no-fuss Windows 7 install has finally gone, with this new version. Previous versions installed fine on Windows 7, though 7 lacks the encryption modules needed to run paid-for scripts from the Renderosity store.
So…. just barely enough to justify the leap to 14.0, if you also consider the price drop. But it could have been so much more, especially in terms of seamless and reliable AI rendering.
Yet I guess we should be thankful they didn’t transition to a naff Web-only version with Firefly ripped out, backwards compatibility thrown overboard, and a doomed pitch for an annual subscription. It could have been so much worse.
As usual, there’s a free 21-day trial so you can test it out for yourself.
Renderosity 2025 3D Halloween Contest – $600 in prizes
Renderosity 2025 3D Halloween Contest, now open. This year there’s a fat-as-a-pumpkin $300 first prize. Nice. Then $200, then $100 for third place. Surprisingly, no Poser licenses are on offer.
Release: ZBrush 2026
ZBrush 2026 has been released, and the big change is that it now supports Python scripting. Coming soon is a total makeover of the horrible and infernal UI.
New Poser comic from Brian Haberlin
Brian Haberlin has a produced a Faster That Light 3D Treasury Edition. 3D here means ‘red-blue glasses’ 3D. It’s actually two new stories from his Faster Then Light sci-fi world, not a collection of the old Faster That Light series converted to stereoscopic 3D.
Presumably Brian’s sophisticated ‘Poser to comic-book’ method is used here as before, but now the Poser 3D models + scenes + a PoserPython script all give the ability to produce a stereoscopic (red and blue glasses) ‘3D view’. Aka ‘stereo anaglyph’.
Basically to get this effect you lower the camera dolly X value to something quite low (0.020) and then make a ‘right eye’ and ‘left eye’ render, then combine in software for making stereo anaglyphs. World of Paul has the details and the free PoserPython scripts.
UK users should change their DeviantArt settings to ‘United States’
Just a thought. Given the fast-growing climate of censorship here in the UK, it’s probably best for a UK user to change their DeviantArt setting to read ‘United States’, ASAP. Ideally you’d do that once you have your VPN set up, and you appear to be surfing from the USA.
This is because DeviantArt are bound to be next in terms of having to block/remove all their UK users.
I find I can get to DeviantArt with the Mullvad VPN without any problems at all. Changing my region setting, while using VPN USA connection, didn’t trigger an email challenge.
AVFix fixed – now at Archive.org
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AVFix is now at the Internet Archive, following the demise of the PoserLounge domain in the Netherlands. The little fix was a vital one for Poser 11 users, and loading it then allowed a number of older Python scripts to also load. I’ve also gone through the MyClone blog and fixed all the URLs that were pointing to the now domain-expired poserlounge.nl site.
Not needed for Poser 12 or 13.
iClone goes full AI, with robust ComfyUI integration
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Reallusion’s iClone embraces AI image rendering, with a new official ComfyUI integration. It looks like they’re going all-in for AI, regardless of the AI doom-moaners. Good for them.
We’re excited to launch the Open Beta of AI Render plugin, a powerful and completely free tool that bridges real-time 3D animation with AI-powered rendering, seamlessly integrated into the ComfyUI workflow. … AI Render uses custom nodes that connect Reallusion’s 3D environments directly into the ComfyUI ecosystem.
Now in Open Beta. Officially supports only Stable Diffusion 1.5 and WAN 1.3b video, though node-wranglers may find information about other types of AI image-gen on the Reallusion forums. Likely the new Wan 2.2 relatively lightweight 5B model will be of most interest there.
Seems to have a standard approach. The Comfy nodes appear to take Depth, Pose, Normals and Edge preprocessor data simultaneously from iClone’s real-time viewport, also marrying them with one-click style presets (it’s an IP-adapter) for refinement of output. The two comics presets are manga style, so there’s no western comics style as yet.
Interestingly also… “AI Video Generation models optimized for consistent frame-by-frame results”
How consistent? That would be the worry there. Still images are one thing but, even with four Controlnets working at once, are we still going to get slightly “wobbly” faces? One would also have to worry about shifting colours.
New DAZ to/from Blender plugin
A new DAZ to/from Blender plugin for Windows, and on the DAZ Store.
Import or export complete scenes with full material and lighting setups … automated import/export systems
Sounds good, especially now that Blender has ComfyUI integration for AI image generation. For DAZ Studio 4.23 or higher, Blender 4.0 or higher.
DAZ to Blender Bridge is free, though it turns out it’s still the older version. The new one is actually in a package called FAST Animation Studio Tools: DAZ to Blender Pipeline. Which is $150(!), currently discounted.
The Blender to DAZ plugin is $50, but also currently discounted.
Keep in mind that Blender now has robust new .FBX import for free, so try that before paying $150.
Release: Blender 4.5 final LTS
The Blender 4.5 Long-Term Support (LTS) release is now available in its final version.
Yes, yet another UI makeover. Ugh.
But of special interest to Poser and DAZ users may be the new “robust” .FBX importer. However, note that the new faster importer is still “experimental”. Having moved away from using Python, it apparently doesn’t encounter many of the usual roadblocks encountered when trying to move 3D models + textures from one software to another. It can import “very old” .FBX files which may have been saved a decade or more ago, but can also handle newer OpenPBR textures. Can even handle animations. It’s many times faster. Nice.
Note that the OBJ import-export also gets an overhaul.
Potentially then this could open up a robust and much faster Poser/DAZ -> .FBX -> Blender -> ComfyUI rendering pipeline.
Update: I now find that ComfyUI has native import of .OBJ and .FBX and nodes that can visualise them rotating in 3D space. There is a question-mark over size and robustness, though, for me. Seeing a demo of a simple lightweight mesh of a garden gnome is one thing, but I suspect that displaying and manipulating a La Femme .FBX export is quite another.
Update: Yes, I tested the 3D node in Comfy. It imports fine, but the basic window is obviously not meant for anything big and complex. Thus Blender + Comfy running as an in-UI plugin seems worth exploring. Ideally we could do this with Poser, but the Comfy integration would likely have to be done via a script calling a set of real-time renders, rather than an in-UI window.
3Delight is no longer a delight
DAZ has announced that 3Delight is to be pulled as a renderer in DAZ Studio, due to the expiry of their licensing agreement. The last DAZ Studio to support 3Delight rendering will be 4.24. Not a big deal, since versions of DAZ Studio can co-exist on the same PC. No news on what might replace it, or if we’re now supposed to just use iRay.
Release: Winxvideo AI 4.1
Winxvideo AI 4.1, now greatly improved and speeded up. Basically, it’s a poor man’s Topaz Video AI for the desktop PC, for a reasonable $50. If you just want speedy upscaling from Wan2.1 480p to 720p with detail enhancement, it’s worth a look, though it can do more. There’s a free trial so you can test it out. You need to let it go online and then the AI upscaling models are fairly speedy to download, they’re not like multi-Gb in size. They have two main models, and there’s no hassle with graphic-card detection — it just works.
Microsoft’s New Ray Tracing AI – now in ComfyUI
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Life moves fast in AI-land. Last month I blogged here about Microsoft’s New Ray Tracing AI. This month — courtesy of Paul Hansen of Germany — Microsoft’s new tech is now free in ComfyUI. Along with an outstanding install guide and documentation. All free. Currently, 2 seconds of finished raytraced animation takes 22 seconds on a 4060 card. Import of .FBX is coming soon.