Now on, Renderosity’s community 2023 Halloween Contest. Has an open theme, other than “Halloween”. Prizes include Poser 13 and store gift certificates. Deadline: 7th November 2023.
Category Archives: Spotted in the News
Fixing Google’s .webp mess
Google’s .webP security debacle: how to fix it, or just block .webP as much as possible. Includes links for the fixed libwebp.dll for various software, and the fixed WebP.dll required by the popular IrfanView image viewer.
A glasses-free 3D monitor
Coming in the new year, the glasses-free 3D screen called the Lenovo Thinkvision P27h-30. February 2024 is pencilled in. The monitor’s proprietary eye-tracking cameras nudge the lenticular lenses in the monitor, to seamlessly maintain a 3D view for one user.
I wonder what sort of depth you’ll get with that? Will it be like a ‘3D software viewport, seen in deep real-time 3D’? Or shallow, more like those lenticular 3D panels you see on the side of children’s lunchboxes?
The first model to launch, it seems, will be the 27″ one. At 1920 × 2160px. You’ll sit back at the sticker price ($3,000), and also when you see the actual monitor. Apparently the effect only works for a user with eyes at 24″ to 39″ from the screen. I’m used to having my eyes about 17″ from the monitor.
Release: Cartoon Animator 5.2
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Posted in Automation, Companion software, Real-time animation, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry
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Posted in Automation, Companion software, Real-time animation, Spotted in the News, The Animation Industry
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Reallusion’s Cartoon Animator (formerly CrazyTalk Animator) has a new Motion Pilot feature. Seems to be a motion-damped mouse-cursor, so you can easily draw an editable motion path. But it has adjustable settings, as you can see here…
For full details see the Motion Pilot demo video.
ElevenLabs is out of beta
The leader in AI text-to-speech voice, Poland’s ElevenLabs, is now out of beta. Now supporting 28 languages in ‘Eleven Multilingual v2’. Can be paired with Professional Voice Cloning, which should mean that those with the correct intonations in the input can also get these in the output in another language. They also have a ‘Voice Styles’ library.
The newly added languages are…
Chinese, Korean, Dutch, Turkish, Swedish, Indonesian, Filipino, Japanese, Ukrainian, Greek, Czech, Finnish, Romanian, Danish, Bulgarian, Malay, Slovak, Croatian, Classic Arabic and Tamil.
The Pricing is nice, though no PayPal. Someone making a short 90 minute audiobook per month would need the $22 a month subscription, but the free and starter tiers are very reasonable. Especially so for those making short 12-20 minute animations with Poser and DAZ.
Auto Effects
AI-powered auto sound-effects for a video. Finds… “the right sound-effects (SFX) to match moments in a video”. A task which can take a day or more of finding, for a long video. Plus the trimming, volume balancing, and slotting in to the video.
Of course it’s not going to do much for Tom & Jerry style animation SFX, compared to the real thing. But I guess for regular normal Powerpoint things (“that’s a dog, it barks, get bark-sound”) it could be useful for those making a ‘holiday-photos slideshow’ presentation.
And it may also save time for creatives. For instance this could interface in interesting ways with the giant Freesound library’s new simple taxonomy. (“That’s a dog, it barks, get links to top-12 bark sounds on Freesound”). That would save some time. Not so much a new ‘recommender’ system (they’re always dim-witted), but more a new creative ‘options bundler’ system. Likely to find a place within the emerging and more complex AI-powered script-flow workflow software.
Renderosity Animation Contest 2023
A reminder of the Renderosity Animation Contest. The deadline is a bit close now, but a fast worker could do it: 30th August 2023. And don’t forget that Renderosity’s Poser software does real-time rendering of toons, via the easy-to-use Comic Book Preview feature.
Gift certificate prizes, no Poser 13 licences.
The featured artwork makes the mistake of ‘black on black’, a fundamental mistake which is beloved of 3D people trying to do a comic look (I blame Batman and Catwoman). Try to keep your character as ‘readable’ by the eye as much as possible. If you look at how a master like Brian Haberlin does it in his comics, he’ll often have a faint ‘fog layer’ across the whole background, as well as a ‘holding line’ around the character.
The left pigtail cannot be distinguished from the scenery.
Release: Poser 13.1, inc. Mac version
Poser 13.1 is now available, and includes the new Mac version alongside the Windows version. It’s a free update for Poser 13 licence holders. Lots of rendering quality improvements for SuperFly (Poser’s version of the latest Blender Cycles). See the linked page for the full list.
No mention of changes to the Windows OS spec, so you should be able to run it back to Windows 7 (though without access to store-purchased third-party scripts on Windows , and likely with no helpdesk support).
No changes to PostFX on Windows, to OIDN de-noising, or to Poser’s unique abilities with real-time comic-book line-art, Firefly line-art, and Sketch rendering.
The current released version is 13.1.449.
Howler gets 9x faster
The latest PD Howler 2024.2 is available. It has an interesting new way of rendering 3D, via an innovative CPU/GPU mix. The CPU handles the grunt-work on the render, then the GPU does the final shading. 9x faster rendering than before, apparently! Supports PBR materials, tone-map and gamma. 16x anti-aliasing.
Now also includes a full word-processor! Also .GIF animation loading. And the previous .point iteration had “Dark mode support in Windows 11”.
Hr-213
The sci-fi friendly Hr-213 hair has mysteriously become unavailable on Renderosity, and has been removed from WishLists with no warning. I hope it’s not been removed due to some movie producer saying it’s too close to a sci-fi movie or TV series haircut (UFO, etc).
However, I still see it for sale at Mankahoo.
We’ve also mysteriously lost the excellent ‘dForce Space Jumpsuit’ for G8F, which has likewise vanished from my WishList.
1971s retiring products sale
The great 1971s has a “Retiring Products” sale on Renderosity. Personally I’d perhaps sell the items as a $10 bundle on another store, or even give the best of them away free as a ‘free trial’ for his content. Rather than delete forever. But there you go.
Some beautiful Poser stuff at 70% off, and his models toon very well in Poser 11+’s real-time Comic Book line-art. As you can see here from the sci-fi Angelfish, one of the models set to be deleted…
You may especially want the Crane (set for retirement), a useful accessory for 1971’s many airships and potentially also for boats.
The Jetbee (set for retirement) is also a nice Dieselpunk craft…
And the SteamBoat (set for retirement) is a useful generic small steam-powered two-man harbour launch.
Poser 11 to Poser 13 for under $100
You can now go from Poser 11 to Poser 13 for $95.70…
Upgrades to Poser 13 are available for $95.70 until 11:59pm Monday, 31st July with coupon code POSERUPG13 at the checkout.” Valid Poser 11 serial numbers are now also being accepted for the upgrade… “… will accept Poser 11 or Poser 12 serial numbers for upgrade validation”. This wasn’t the case before.
Apparently the Poser 13 serial will be valid for the Mac Poser 13 Early Access, due for release very soon.
Big dummies
Want to cuddle your custom Poser or DAZ character? Or just make a shop-window ready ‘life-sized monster’ to attract customers? Giant 3D Printer Can Print Life-Sized Human Statues. Or creatures, presumably.
Tom Jantol’s entry for Animation at Work
Tom Jantol’s entry for the Animation at Work 2023 contest, “Unleash the Butterflies” and also a Making of video. He used Cartoon Animator (formerly CrazyTalk Animator), iClone, and After Effects.
DAZ AI image generator
DAZ’s AI image generator, apparently character-based. Private beta sign-up, hint, hint…
Interesting. Hopefully it’s not another “me too” Stable Diffusion clone like that DeviantArt no-hoper. I’m guessing it may have been trained on 12 x 360-degree iRay renders from each their best figures and various outfits? Then the picture that results would have links back to the DAZ store, so you can buy the character and the clothes. So, kind of a fancy 3D avatar version of a “try on the clothes, virtually” system that you might find in an upmarket clothing store.
Of course one can add AI to the DAZ Studio (or Poser) process already. Load, dress, pose, neutral lighting, render… then upload the render to an Img2Img AI image generator, for the prompt-driven variants and the ‘AI gloss’ and perfect lighting. This should also work for animation, once the much-touted Wonder Studio launches. This service can track and replace a ‘dummy actor’ in the footage, overlaying it with a full AI generated (and apparently face-stable) 3D avatar that retains the original head movement, expression etc.