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.
Category Archives: Spotted in the News
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.
TurboSquid Free, free
A new UserScript for your Web browser, TurboSquid Paid Asset Tile Remover In Free Sections.
3rd Annual Swimsuit Contest
Renderosity’s 3rd Annual Swimsuit Contest, now on. The theme is, you guessed it… swimsuits! No AI images. Deadline: 25th July 2023. Prizes include Poser 13, store gift certificates etc.
Release: OIDN 2.0
Intel’s excellent Open Image Denoise (OIDN) has been released in version 2.0. OIDN offers a superb free AI model that’s specially trained to clear 3D renders of noise and grain.
This 2.0 release mainly adds GPU acceleration and support for newer GPUs, along with expanded API features. No speed boost in 2.0, so far as I can tell, other than that which might be added by using your NVIDIA CUDA or AMD graphics card to drive the denoising.
I guess it’ll be added to Poser and Vue relatively soon, as they both have OIDN plugged in by default. There’s still no Photoshop plugin for it though, so far as I know.
Update: Now at the 2.01 update, with better speed.
Ka-boom!
A big Hollywood sound FX library lands at Archive.org. Including, magic spells, sci-fi, explosions, fireworks and so on.
Release Blender 3.51 for Windows 7, no installer needed
Blender 3.51 for Windows 7 (early May 2023).
Now needing no installer, it will at last launch for me! Hurrah. Everything works, and it renders to Cycles using 12 CPUs with fair speed… while ignoring my unworthy GPU.
Previously the 3.x installers had decided my graphics card was unworthy, and totally refused to install Blender. Yes… I more than meet the minimum OpenGL 3.3 requirement, having 4.4.
Of course, not really needed now for most people. Since Poser 13 uses the latest Blender Cycles as the photoreal renderer. But still, nice to have it tucked away.
Recent Poser 13 updates
Poser 13 Early Access has had a number of updates since release, which was back at the end of March 2023. Here are some highlights I spotted on the Windows version, since “Poser 13.0.287 – 2023-03-29″…
* Added new Legacy Scatter checkbox to PrincipledBSDF node [aka “the Cycles super-node”] to avoid SSS glow.
Sounds useful for getting SSS skin looking right, at a guess?
* Sped up cancelling of Superfly renders. No longer waits for the whole scene actors and materials to set up.
* Gamma shift no longer shifts at end of SuperFly render.
* Maximum Undo limitation increased to 200.
* Improved render presets based on feedback.
* Light meshes no longer disappear in the preview. Lights property Auto Hide removed and now just stays visible or not visible depending on the visibility check box.
Some people were having problems finding them. Toggling them on and off, vital for Comic Book Preview renders, should not be affected.
* “Make Movie” no longer attempts to apply 2D Motion Blur when it shouldn’t.
* Fixed broken IBL lights. IBL lights now work. IBL correctly turns on ambient occlusion when prompted. Creating an IBL now automatically connects the image map.
* Corrected Post FX Exposure and Saturation – default to 0 instead of -1
Yes, I was seeing that. Fixed now, by the sound of it.
* Fixed Atmosphere so it correctly displays volume in SuperFly.
AI-driven hair movement
As good as dForce? “Helmet-hair” gone, forever? A new AI driven Hair Simulation on the GPU.
Animated demo:
Loops three times.
Click here to replay
Shap-E
Shap-E, a basic ‘prompt to 3D object’ generator. Fast and free. Tested and working.
CodeWhisperer
Possibly interesting for Python-coders who craft Python scripts for Poser, Vue, Blender, and others. The new Amazon CodeWhisperer, a free code-generator from Amazon, that appears to be genuinely free and supposedly “unlimited”. Although you do need an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account.
It’s powered by AI, of course. Be warned that the ‘free’ tier of AWS is only a 12 month trial, last I heard. Then you have to pay to keep the AWS account.
New 3DCoat manual
Slick new documentation for the 3DCoat 3D painting / texturing / sculpting software. Fully updated, translated and pretty-fied.
Get your Mojo on…
AI boffins re-invent Pandromeda’s Mojoworld…
Our method enables simulating long flights through 3D landscapes, while maintaining global scene consistency – for instance, returning to the starting point yields the same view of the scene.
Starship to Mars
SpaceX has released its 4k “Starship: Mission to Mars” video. The Starship, which should launch to orbit later in the spring, is seen making possible a mission to Mars.
