It’s sad to hear that Phil Cooke (‘Phil C’), the PoserPython expert and Python teacher among his many other talents, has passed away. Renderosity has a memorial page, and HiveWire has a forum thread.
Category Archives: Spotted in the News
Release: Clip Studio 2.0
Clip Studio 2.0 has been released. New features include…
* A new “3D head model” on which the user can adjust “eyes, nose, and mouth” to get a stylised look. Meant for reference, for hand-drawn over-sketching/painting… not iRay-like production rendering.
* A “hand pose scanner”. Scan a live hand pose, via a webcam and some reasonable softbox lighting. The hand pose is (more or less) applied ‘live’ to the 3D dummy’s hand in Clip Studio. I assume only those with specialist hand requirements need this, as there must surely be packs of 100s of organised hand-poses already available for Clip Studio’s generic 3D dummies?
* “Automatic shading” for flats, applying shadows based on your lineart and use of colours. A somewhat uninformative video demo is available, but it looks like it does work and has quick presets. If it can stay completely consistent from panel to panel is another matter.
* The flexible ruler now works with scenes that have a fisheye camera perspective.
* Depth-fogging cameras. “Enable Fog, to add a fog-like effect that expresses depth in 3D space”.
* “Spin blur” effect (e.g. semi-blur a speeding spinning missile, or a bouncing ball). I’m amazed they didn’t have this before.
* Import… “It is now faster to import posable 3D files with a large number of bones and meshes.”
Release: Clavicula 0.9.9.5
Clavicula 0.9.9.5, a new release for the free and innovative modelling software.
And in the comments, “export renders with a given screen resolution” may be coming by the end of 2023.
Release: Curvy 3D 5.0
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The Windows desktop sculpting software Aartform Curvy 3D 5.0 final is now available, having been in beta since November 2020. Cost is $99 (around £92 in the UK), and there are further discounts available if you purchased an earlier version (check your email).
An important new feature in 5.0 is adaptive subdivision on the meshes. There’s no video trailer yet for 5.0, but the YouTube channel will likely have one soon.
More news about Poser 13
More official details about Poser 13, due for release soon.
* The Poser 13’s SuperFly rendering will use “Cycles X” from Blender.
* New “robust light bloom” option in the PostFX module.
* New “tools for morph and weight mapping transfer between figures”, for content creators.
* Unspecified “improvements to Talk Designer and Walk Designer”.
* Newly “added support for HDRI domes”.
Last I heard, in April 2021, Blender’s Cycles X was “NVIDIA-only”. On looking into this again, I see that AMD (HIP) support was added November 2021.
Release: Dust3D 1.0 rc7
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The open source Dust3D is alive again, after a long hiatus during the Covid years. The 1.0.0 release candidate 7 is now available. Dust3D is a…
“cross-platform 3D modeling software that makes it easy to create low poly 3D models for videogames, 3D printing, and more.”
Relatively easy, free, and under a full MIT open licence. Training Playlist on YouTube.
Release: GMic v3.2.1
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A new release for GMic, aka G’Mic as GMic v3.2.1. Changelog. Highlights I noted are…
1) A new 3D handling feature, though possibly command-line only?
Command | extract_textures3d
“This will help you extracting textures from 3D objects directly as 2D images, that you can save or process and remap on the object.”
Probably not a replacement for dedicated tools used to get a texture atlas and/or seam templates, but it may be of interest to some.
In Poser Pro, a FBX or Collada export can also get you a single texture map (a ‘texture atlas’), output alongside the FBX output. The problem with a ‘texture atlas’ is that it then prevents drag-and-drop re-texturing of parts. It’s all or nothing. DAZ Studio also has a ‘texture atlas’ output command somewhere or other, with the location depending on which UI layout you use.
2) Better voxelisation of 3D…
“Improved the triangle voxelization algorithm even more. G’MIC is now really a quite nice tool to voxelize 3D meshes!”
Could be useful if you want to have your OBJ export from DAZ/Poser look like a hologram and, once it’s back on Poser or DAZ, put on transparency and glow? But don’t expect to animate afterwards.
3) Basic subdivision of 3D object meshes. Again, you can do this natively in Poser and DAZ.
4) A new filter, to be found in ‘Testing’…
Garagecoder | Upscale [Recursive2x]
Appears to be a sort of ‘intelligent sharpening’ that preserves details better on low-res images? Again, you’d probably do this with AI Gigapixel or online with Base Ten or SWIN, though perhaps this (I’m guessing) is optimised for low-res images?
As always, beware of updating. Because if someone changed the name of their filter, then that breaks your custom preset. For instance, last summer GMic’s long-standing Artistic | Comic Book filter had its functionality updated and the name changed to Comicbook. All my custom presets based on this filter were gone in a flash, and some of the filter’s needed switches and sliders had also been removed. Filter makers really need to be told: “If you’re going to tinker to that extent, then keep the old filter the same and call your new one Comicbook_2″.
Release: 3DCoat 2023
3DCoat 2023 has been released. Not a mega whopper-topper-wow! release, it seems. More of a ‘lots of smaller improvements and bug fixes’ release…
* Much quicker when doing booleans and manipulating really big meshes.
* Various topology, UI and viewing improvements and bugfixes.
* Much easier drag-drop linking into Blender, with the Blender AppLink…
“just install 3DCoat and Blender, follow what 3DCoat tells you… and then you may easily drop assets to Blender”
Their front page is still on 3DCoat 2022.x, so I don’t yet know if the system specs have changed.
Marketplace changes are rolling out at Renderosity
The Marketplace changes are rolling out at Renderosity. Quite subtle so far, but some nice ones. For instance it’s now easier to tell if a coupon won’t apply to an item. There’s a little red block indicating “no coupons”. If it’s green, coupons are good. Very useful.
The WishList feels nicer and less cramped, but I already created a UserScript to remove the dangerous “Clear List” button (I never want to clear the entire 760-item list), and to make the ‘% discount’ font much larger. It’s a pity you have to scroll back to the top of the WishList page, to move to the next page. Logically, the ‘advance to next page’ option should be at both the bottom and top. There still no way to save a single-file backup of the list.
Gone is the WishList’s eye-boggling total of what it would cost to buy the entire list at one go. Which is a pity. It might have been kept when I filter by Vendor, so I could see what it would cost me to buy all of my missing stuff for that one vendor.
My Wishlist – lowest price has a different URL now. It would be nice to filter the WishList by: On Sale / Coupon Accepted / Lowest Price first. But that can’t be done. Instead you do Lowest Price and then scan by eye for the ‘Coupon Accepted’ icon. Yes, I know… I’m cheap, and I like it cheap when I buy.
Various Marketplace URLs have changed at Renderosity, along with the new store improvements. Some will redirect, some only redirect to the home page. The Marketplace item and Vendor store URLs have all changed, but have re-directs. Vendors are now at ../marketplace/vendors/NAME. The address for the general Lowest price page has also changed. Always worth a look to see what’s slipped under $3, even if it’s not on your WishList.
The URL to buy Poser 11 is still the same. Still $52, a bargain for the power and unique/quick Comic Book and Sketch non-photoreal rendering. And you’re getting what was Poser 11 Pro.
Vital Python add-ons for Poser 11 such as XA – Toolbar are still there and for sale, but the seller Dimension3D seems to have lost the store images on many of his utilities.
Freestuff and Forums URLs appear unaffected by the URL changes.
Daz to Blender Bridge updated and fixed
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Butaixianran has kindly created a free DazToBlender: Daz to Blender Bridge updated fork…
“I updated the official Daz To Blender Bridge, now Daz model can be exported from Blender with morphs and textures, so you can use Blender as a Daz Bridge to other 3D tools.”
It’s already had a number of bug-fixes, and animation import has been added. Normal maps can be saved to .JPG to reduce bloat. Also supports Genesis 8.1 and 9.
No texture or base mesh resolution changes are involved with the conversion, and the user is left to do that in Blender. Or just use Blender as a pass-through to other software. As always, geografts and complex geoshell and similar overlay things many not convert well.
Regrettably Blender 3.1 or higher is required, so you need a powerful enough PC to pass Blender 3.x’s “install or not?” test and get Blender to install. Update: Blender 3.51 for Windows 7 (early May 2023). Needing no installer, it will now launch on Windows 7! Hurrah.
Made with Blender – the new movie showcase website
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Blend.Stream, a new showcase and aggregator site for all movies made with Blender. This means more than just the official open movies sponsored by the Blender Foundation, and the site is open to all quality films made with the software. Also keep in mind that they’re not all under Creative Commons, though they are all free to view.
3D room in CSS
Impressive, a 3D isometric room created purely in CSS, and Ricardo has kindly supplied source-code.
Poser 13 dated, new Cycles
Some official news of the Poser 13 Release.
* Aiming for a March 2023 release.
* Queue Manager will now support the PostFX processing panel, and also GPU rendering. Useful for animators.
* “Both CPU and GPU-based renders will be significantly faster using the updated SuperFly render engine.”
So that latter point means the newer Blender Cycles render-engine, of which Superfly is a re-branded version. Cycles has “a massive performance boost” back in April 2021, and I’d assume that’s the version Poser 13 will be upgrading to.
I would imagine that the very under-powered PostFX processing panel will also get some care and attention. It’s the obvious and logical thing to enhance, in terms of building on Poser’s unique market niche in fast and commercially-useful non-photoreal rendering from 3D (e.g. real-time Comic-book mode and Sketch rendering).
Release: ZBrush 2023
ZBrush 2023 has been released. I think this is the first release after they were purchased by the Cinema4D owners Maxon. The last ZBrush I looked at here was ZBrush 2021. But I know that some in the Poser and DAZ crowd use ZBrush as a round-trip software, so the new 2023 version seems worth a quick look.
The big news is that the Redshift renderer is now integrated into ZBrush. But only for CPU rendering, not the GPUs that Redshift runs best on (GPU rendering is only unlocked if you pay a subscription). This ‘integrated Redshift’ comes with the required materials and PBR controls. It also supports bucket rendering.
Things I’m not sure about:
i) if it’s just for final renders or is also able to power the Viewport in near real-time (if you have good enough hardware for that) like iRay can in DAZ Studio;
ii) and if Redshift will render the many comic/toon non-photoreal presets (BPR/NPR) that ship with ZBrush. I suspect not, since those will be highly tuned for the existing BPR (“Best Preview Render”) in ZBrush.
There are also some updates to the bundled Sculptris Pro. Sculptris gets what’s said to be a new SubDivide slider control, and the ability to restore areas of higher polygons by painting the back onto the mesh.
There are still perpetual one-time payment ZBrush licences, but these are expensive and you no longer get free upgrades from earlier versions. I imagine that many users are going to be thinking that there are not enough benefits to upgrading to 2023. It doesn’t look like an incredibly feature-rich whizz-bang ‘no-brainer’ upgrade to me, especially given the high price.
Many will be sticking with what they have, and thinking of switching. For that there’s:
* Blender 3.2 or higher, if you can stomach the UI and have a suitable graphic card;
* the hugely-improved and relatively user-friendly 3DCoat 2022 (it’ll be very interesting to see what 3DCoat 2023 looks like), a nicely priced one-time purchase and works back to Windows 7;
* and everyone seems to have forgotten about Autodesk’s Mudbox, but it’s still out there and apparently many students still pass through it briefly at university;
* there are a few others in either OpenGL browser form or mobile app, such as the popular Nomad Sculpt with its real-time lighting.
Release: Vue 2023
E-on has released their landscape software Vue in the 2023 version. This offers “feature parity between Creator and Professional” and unlimited render-size for Creator. Creator is now “personal non-commercial use only”, but that really shouldn’t affect most hobbyists and students.
Vue still has easy automatic Poser integration / import, on which see the recent test in Digital Art Live magazine #71…
Which means this new unified 2023 version now offers an easy Poser export route to…
3D Studio Max 2016 to 2023
Maya 2015 to 2023
Cinema4D R20 to 2023
Creator 2023 users now have access to these export options, since they are no longer locked away in the more costly version of Vue.