News about the DAZ Studio and Poser software

Category Archives: Spotted in the News

PzDB upgrades to third generation, now indexes iClone content

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Thinking of replacing the awful content management systems in DAZ Studio and Poser? The third party content database PzDB has just upgraded to version 1.3 with a big overhaul.

The new program is faster, more powerful, more customizable, and supports dozens more file types and applications, including Anime Studio libraries and iClone content. (Full disclosure: I helped out with getting the complex web of iClone file types untangled for the developer).

The new PzDB also has…

* new customizable Launch Buttons
* you can hook PzDB up to almost any program you have
* the database is faster and more accurate
* various bug-fixes
* fixed the product activation system

Hurrah for the new activation system!

“…some users found that their free trial was over long before it should have been, and made others reactivate their products over and over again. “That won’t be a problem anymore,” said Margolis adding, “of course, everyone will need a whole new product activation code, and that will take some doing.”

So it sounds like users who upgrade will simply need to ask for a new serial number. Hopefully for the last time.

There’s a trial version if you’d like to try it out. pzDB is especially useful for those who have accumulated huge 200Gb+ content libraries over the years.

pzDB

3D/2D

Posted on by Posted in 3D Renders, Comics, Natural media emulation, Spotted in the News Leave a comment

This picture is 3D, though 98% of people wouldn’t know that from looking at it. It features in the latest 3D World magazine (Aug 2014), along with a tutorial. It seems to me to be another example of how 3D (in this instance ZBrush, 3ds Max) is increasingly able to successfully mimic 2D illustration, albeit with a little tickling in Photoshop. It’s another example that suggests that 2D and 3D will likely become pretty much indistinguishably mashed up together, at least for stills work, and in the relatively near future.

conan3d-2d

Octane 2.0 released

Posted on by Posted in Carrara, Companion software, DAZ Studio, Lighting, Poser, Special Offers and Discounts, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry Leave a comment

The external render engine Octane 2.0 has been released for various 3D software, and has added…

* Displacement mapping.
* Faster hair and fur rendering.
* Better sky backgrounds.
* Motion blur.
* Region rendering (for making small test renders)
* Network rendering.

…and more.

Octane 2.0 is available for Poser 9 or 2012 or higher, DAZ Studio 4.5. Last I heard, a Carrara version of Octane 2.0 version is being worked on. All Octane users will need a newer CUDA-capable GeForce NVIDIA graphics card slotted into your PC, which for many will require fitting a more powerful Power Supply Unit than the puny one that shipped with the PC.

Free to students with a valid .edu or .ac.uk email address. Note that students are currently limited to the 1.2 version.

Shifter, follow-up to Anomaly

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Remember Anomaly, the really cool graphic novel made with Poser and DAZ Studio and Poser content?

anom

The follow-up, an interactive Android production called Shifter is now available on Amazon, with a free first chapter. This… “murder-mystery with a decadent sci-fi twist” (and dinosaurs, lots of them) consists of digitally overpainted 3D renders, in the form of…

9 Epic Chapters
200 Fully Painted Pages
65 Interactive Touch Points
875 Panels of Art
2½ Hours of Audio

shifter

“Even without the digital features, Shifter is an engaging tale. Kunrong Yap’s illustrations are vivid, and the story, written by Mr. Brittenham, Mr. Haberlin and Brian Holguin, is fast-paced and captivating.” — New York Times review.

Mined out

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As Bitcoin miners sell off their nearly-useless graphics-card stuffed mining PCs, where will those machines go? The miners are either going to be left with awesome videogaming rigs (Skyrim at 8000px on a wall-size HD TV, anyone?), or else the Poser/Daz 3D rendering market is about to see a flood of high-end graphics cards on eBay. Those running a GPU renderer, and in the market for a ninja graphics card or two, may want to keep an eye on eBay in the coming months.

Firefox gets native 3D via bundled Unreal Engine 4

Posted on by Posted in 3D Utilities, Companion software, DAZ Studio, Poser, Real-time animation, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry Leave a comment

A new Firefox feature is rather cool…

“You’ll soon be able to stream and play highly realistic three-dimensional video games from within the Mozilla Firefox [Web] browser. … Firefox’s gaming capabilities don’t even require a Web browser plugin to function … ability to run the Unreal Engine, even the new Unreal Engine 4”

Firefox joins Google Chrome in this, as Chrome has had the same HTML5 3D gaming ability for a while now.

Given the pace that Firefox is developing it can’t be long until we see it in the latest Firefox downloads. In fact, those with the 64-bit developer Nightly build of Firefox can already play Monster Madness. Or, they can if they play it if can get past the dreadfully unintuitive UI interface which serves to hide the buttons that actually starts the gameplay. I clicked the main play button, but was then presented with nothing that would actually start the game. Though the game’s interface elements loaded fine…

madness

Such teething problems aside, we’ve come a long way from those far-off years when a clunky Java browser applet would load… and load… and then… crash and freeze your entire PC.

PzDB updates

Posted on by Posted in 3D Utilities, Companion software, DAZ Studio, Poser, SketchUp, Spotted in the News Leave a comment

I’m pleased to see continuing development on the PzDB DAZ/Poser content library management software. (My review of PzDB). Version 1.3 is currently in public beta testing…

“We’ve expanded to PzDB to work with more of your favorite CGI programs, so many in fact, we have introduced a new File Types window to enable you control which files PzDB indexes for you. You can now index more kinds of bitmaps and CGI Content files from Anime Studio, Corel Creative Suite, Google Sketchup, iClone, Maya, Quindam, Softimage, Wings3D, and even movies and audio files.”

Yep, iClone content indexing, as well as DAZ/Poser! Nice. Plus better indexing of those annoying new-fangled DAZ 4.x file types. It has a new and more polished look, too…

PzDBScreenCars

Decimator plugin now for DAZ Studio 4.5 and higher

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Now available is Decimator for DAZ Studio for DAZ Studio “4.5.0.114 or higher”.

I bought this a few years ago as part of the set of Game Developer Kit suite of plugins for DAZ Studio 3, to get DAZ content to iClone. I used it a lot and it’s excellent, and does the job: reducing huge 3d meshes down to a much lower number of polygons. It’s very flexible and easy to use (once you find how to launch it in the menus), and its great to see it being kept updated to work with the latest versions of DAZ Studio.

decimator