It’s the Renderosity Christmas Give-away! Lots of wholly free items, with direct-downloads. Here’s a sampling of just a few of them…
Category Archives: Spotted in the News
“Two Doctors! Blimey, time paradoxes will start to form…”
A new free David Tennant for G8M, slightly stylised but in a nice semi-toon way and with The Hair reasonably well done. Released a week ago, but the maker has just today fixed something possibly a bit vital and the .zip file… “now has the character .duf file.”
In this regeneration the Doctor does however have a large amount of dependencies. The underlying base is a… “morph with a Character Preset that uses a Skin Material found in Edward 8”. Then there’s The Hair. So the full list of dependencies are…
Edward 8 for G8M, and you may also want the Edward 8 HD Add-On though the latter is not required.
Super Natural Brows Merchant Resource for Genesis 8 and 3 Male, “with the Shape Preset of Super Natural Brows | Style 33”.
CC Beard Boss for Genesis 8 Male, “with the Brown Material and ‘Shaping -> Sides’ preset of CC Beard Boss ‘Short Burns’ with Materials 02 Brunettes -> CC Beard Boss – 02 Brunettes – 02”.
Tousled Hair for Genesis 3 and 8, “with the Brown Materials set.”
Phew. Quite a haul, but worth it for the Hair of Awesomeness, and the Sideburns of Sublimity. Or the best you can get for those in DAZ, without actually having David Tennant land inside the software with the TARDIS. Now there’s a plot idea, for one of the continuing Tennant audiobooks (10th Doctor Adventures from Big Finish)…
You’ll be wanting suitable Daleks and other Doctor Who items too, for which see my Doctor Who: DAZ and Poser content survey.
Releases: Neobarok 2.0 and Curvy 3D 4.0
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Two modelling tools that take unconventional and relatively easy approaches have been released, within a few days of each other. Both are from solo developers who are doing good work at the coal-face of digital content production.
Neobarok 2.0
It appears that Neobarok 2.0 is available. While the site’s headline banner still has this as “Coming soon!”, below the banner are now links to a “Neobarok 2.0.g for Windows” and Linux download, and “The guide and tutorials for 2.0 are online.” So, at a guess, this 2.0.g seems to be some sort of final pre-released late-beta? It’s totally free open source software, offering intuitive modelling and sculpting and paint, plus it appears to make complex boolean operations simple to do.
Curvy 3D 4.0
The second is the easy-to-use Aartform Curvy 3D 4.0, just released. Designed for artists it’s lathe-based, which means you just sketch lines on the screen, and the software auto-lathes them up into 3D shapes. You then merge and blend these shapes together to make your mesh. Also note that… “Curvy 3D objects are created with ready-made UV maps, so you can just select a brush and start painting.”
The front-page still has a link to the old 3.0 press-release, but delving into the forum shows that for the new 4.0 some of the new items are…
* Adaptive Subdivision (i.e.: as you add detail, it automatically makes the mesh finer to accommodate the added detail)
* A new range of Primitive shapes to start working on.
* Now adds a full set of digital clay tools, and a stamp tool.
* Cleaner user-interface and nicer-looking wireframes.
* Improved OBJ export.
* Save hi-resolution screenshots with alpha masks.
* SVG import.
Looks good, with a 30-day demo to try. It’s a perpetual licence and is currently discounted to £68 inc. sales tax in the UK. That’s roughly $80. If you purchased Curvy 3D way back in version 3.0, then try this 75%-off upgrade code for 4.0: CURVY-BONUS-75
Release: Clip Studio for iPhone
Japanese comics production software Clip Studio Paint has released its new iPhone app version via Apple, “free to use” for up to one hour per day. The new app supposedly…
offers all of the features and functionality of the desktop original in a mobile package, without the usual mobile compromises.
They are also running their 22nd International Illustration Contest for Christmas, with the theme of “Festival”. The deadline is 8th January 2020.
Black Friday: the Sunday roast
More additions to the deals already noted here…
* Wacom are said to have some nice discounts on their graphics pads and pens.
* Otoy’s Octane Renderer is 25% off a perpetual licence until Monday. Note that it’s now free of users of DAZ Studio, though.
* $100 off ZBrush 2020 perpetual licence.
* And, my favourite game after Morrowind… Unreal Tournament 2004 Editor’s Choice Edition for just $1 on GOG. Because… Most Fun Game Everrrr….
Black Friday: more weekenders
Even more Black Friday weekend additions:
* At last, Comic Life 3 for Mac & Windows, $14.99.
* 10% off on Cinema 4D, today only.
* Reallusion has Cartoon Animator 4 for $129.00, CrazyTalk 8 for $99.
Black Friday: the weekend newbs
Black Friday weekend update:
* Richard Rosenman has 40% off his fine Photoshop plugins, many suitable for science-fiction pictures, with a coupon code: BLK40
* Quadspinner has 25% off their Gaea landscape software, until 2nd December.
* The Blender Market has 25% discounts.
Black Friday: further additions
* The ArtStation Marketplace now has its sale on. Seems to be around 50% off on most items, although huge landscapes are only about 10% off.
* Topaz Labs has 50% off bundles, today only. Not including Topaz Clean 3, regrettably.
* 50% off Vue subscriptions, including annual.
No sign of any price movement from Comic Life.
News on Poser 11.3
A new official post today on “What’s planned for Poser Pro 11.3?”. The gist of it is…
* Wizards, to help ensure that your render settings are efficiently set up.
* In-software help for newbies to install new content in the runtime.
* The L’Homme male character, as a partner for the new flagship female La Femme.
* Improvements to the clothing fitting tools.
* “You’ll be able to buy Poser on DVD through Amazon” before Christmas.
* A key maker of the early Poser software, Larry Weinberg, has returned as a senior developer on Poser.
Sounds good, and the DVD will be good news for those in places such as the wilds of Australia or Canada with slow broadband or only metered connectivity. Good for gifting, too.
On the new render Wizards, I’d suggest that the Sketch Designer render Wizard should offer a one-click button to… “Turn off all sketching into the scene’s Background”. Since that’s the thing that either makes Sketch rendering very slow and/or crashes Poser.
Black Friday: a few more additions
A few more additions for the Black Friday list…
* PoserWorld.com has 30% – 50% discounts via a coupon.
“50% off sale on Black Friday which lasts 24 hours! 50% off Muvizu [software] and all content packs.”
* Keyshot have announced unspecified discounts for Friday.
* The OpenGL real-time U-Render for Cinema 4D, 33% off.
* 3D-Coat. Unspecified discounts on Friday.
* 40% off HitFilm (the “poor man’s After Effects”). Just keep in mind that, as with all video editing, you’ll need a beast of a PC.
Black Friday 2019 – the round-up
The DAZ Store and Xurge 3D, maker of top-quality armour and uniforms for M4 and V4.
Heavy discounts and a $59 ‘all-you-can-download lifetime offer’, at Teknology3d. Sadly they have a new-look site and my old log-in from a few years ago no longer works.
A small sale at Hivewire including AniBlocks for the HiveWire House Cat. Also ‘Ants of the World’ for Poser, which I don’t think I knew even existed. They can presumably be scaled up into house-sized 1950s atomic-mutant ants…
CGTrader has lots of 30-50% off items (but keep in mind that they add local Sales Tax at the Checkout!):
Poser & DAZ | Sort by Lowest Price
KitBash3d has 50% off its store.
The XFrog store has 60% off. Contrary to the name, they make quality realistic 3D trees and plants not frogs.
An “up to 70%” sale on around 5,000 game assets in the Unreal Marketplace. There may well be some stuff that can be got out to .OBJ, of interest to those who need large lightweight landscapes done in geometry rather than as domes / backdrops.
And “up to 50% off” at the similar Unity store. The Diesel machines constructor kitbash kit apparently has 220 items, for instance.
No sign of anything happening at the ArtStation store.
GarageFarm.NET has “up to 40% extra” render credits for its render farm. They support Vue 2015 and 2016, but not the new subscription Vue.
The similar RebusFarm also has extra render credits.
Blambot comics lettering fonts have a 30% off Cyber Monday sale coming up. No sign of anything happening at ComicCraft.
Slight discounting on PzDB with 1.2 down to $32. Highly recommended if you have a huge Poser runtime.
Corel has 15% off Corel Painter 2019.
Serif / Affinity has 30% off its budget “Adobe-killer” products, including Publisher and Designer.
Marvelous Designer’s “personal perpetual” licences are reduced to $340 until 31st December.
No signs of any movement on the price of Comic Life 3 or JitBit Macro. But Clip Studio Paint is now 50% off. Keep in mind that only the EX version has multi-page support, and that Comic Life has multi-page and is far easier to use.
And lastly, completely free… the new Krita 4.2.8! Krita is also good for comics production, if you jiggle it a bit.
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Dante78 70% sale
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Posted in Poser, Special Offers and Discounts, Spotted in the News, Vue
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It’s the Dante78 70% sale at Renderosity. While you may think that your bulging Runtime can’t take any more medieval stuff, this is top quality and the prices are very low.
Advice from FSMCDesigns on the forums for DAZ users of these Poser models, re: iRay rendering of these in DAZ Studio…
With Dante78 products, turn down the Specular and change the color in the Diffuse channel to white” for iRay.
BodyPix 2.0
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Posted in 3D Utilities, Automation, Companion software, Freebies, Real-time animation, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry
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Posted in 3D Utilities, Automation, Companion software, Freebies, Real-time animation, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry
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Google has released the free BodyPix 2.0. This offers automatic identification of people against a relatively noisy background, and then spots and tracks each person’s twenty-four body parts. It then segments, ID’s and colours each body-part. It can do this even while being fed around 20-25 frames per second, on fairly standard hardware such as an iPhone.
Version 2.0 adds “multi-person support and improved accuracy”.
They also offer the sister-software PoseNet, enabling a basic emulation of what a Kinect does but via standard Webcams…
both BodyPix and PoseNet can be used without installation and just a few lines of code. You don’t need any specialized lenses to use these models — they work with any basic webcam or mobile camera. And finally users can access these applications by just opening a url. Since all computing is done on device, the data stays private. For all these reasons, we think BodyPix is easily accessible as a tool for artists, creative coders, and those new to programming.
So… how to plug this stuff into a nice little DAZ/Poser-friendly Webcam utility? One that, at the flick of a drop-down menu, will happily real-time puppet and animate any stock figure from an Aiko 3 up to a G8 or La Femme?
“Meanwhile, in another part of town…”
Comic Life 3.5.12 update for Windows and Mac, released a week ago.
I see that Packt have a pretty good free chapter from one of their how-to-books that goes in-depth on how advanced users can get the most out of setting up Comic Life 3. Unfortunately the PDF utterly lacks metadata or footers/headers, but the number in the file-name reveals it to have been part of their Manga Studio 5 Beginner’s Guide book. Only the expensive Manga Studio EX version has multi-page documents, so presumably that’s why they were suggesting the need to use Comic Life with the budget version of Manga Studio (now Clip Studio).
RTX for Poser?
News today…
“Nvidia has announced NVIDIA Studio Driver that supports RTX-accelerated ray tracing in … Blender Cycles …”
Interesting. Poser runs Blender Cycles under the name “SuperFly”, so I can imagine a Poser 12 that plugs in the latest RTX-supporting version of Cycles… and thus supports RTX graphics cards? Or would it be automatically detected as being Cycles, and supported, if the correct NVIDIA Studio Driver was installed?
DAZ Studio already supports RTX.