Cast your vote now now, for one of the 148 3D entries for the Renderosity Halloween 2012 Contest…
Tutorial: Hexagon to Poser
New ten-minute video tutorial by Gary Miller. He makes a simple streetlamp in DAZ’s Hexagon 3.0 modelling software, then shows how to export it to Poser. Finally he uses Poser to texture and light the streetlamp…
Tutorial: elevate your cuteness
Vladimir Chopine (GeekAtPlay) has a new free 25-minute video tutorial, on using Poser with Vue and Photoshop/Filterforge to create a painterly final picture…
DeviantArt’s new Dreamup commissioning service
Can you make money with your digital art? The well-known fantasy and sci-fi art website DeviantArt thinks you can, via its new (beta) commercial commissioning service, Dreamup.com. It’s nice to see them set a price threshold, of a decent $200 (about £130) for a finished picture — so there should be no eLance-style “race to the bottom” in pricing, no ‘ten illustrations for $10’ done by slave-style workshops in India or China. Dreamup keeps the cash in secure escrow until project stages are hit. Per-stage payments are available. One of the benefits should be that the artist’s payment arrives very promptly after the work is done, rather than the artist having to wait for months for a seemingly semi-mythical payment that’ll be… “in the mail soon now, dude, really…”
Reel Science animation contest
Yet another cool space contest. This one is NASA’s Reel Science. It’s for animations made by 13-18 year olds. Simply use your 3D software of choice to make a 2 minute video, aimed at middle-school kids. It has to be on one of three given topics, such as “Ozone in the Stratosphere”. Deadline is 15th February 2013.
Above: NASA’s Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite.
New Poser tutorial videos for figure-creation
Darkseal has just launched an interesting-looking new multi-hour/6Gb set of video tutorials, “Poser Figure Creation with Darkseal”…
“In this series of videos we will take an in depth look at what it takes to create a figure for Poser.”
Here’s the preview video…
Digital Art Masters 8
Entries are now invited for 3DTotal magazine’s prestigious and weighty Digital Art Masters book (volume 8). Send in your works via this web page. Accepted works must be available at 300dpi. Deadline: 26th November 2012.
$4 feast at Poser World
A very generous special offer from Poser 3D content specialist Poser World. To get full access to their huge library of 2,300+ items, simply…
1. register at the website.
2. then donate just $4 by PayPal (or more, if you’re feeling rich).
3. open the email with a password for one month’s full access to the content library.
If you want a second month of access, just donate another $4+ when your initial access expires. A very nice offer! Here are just a few of the goodies I downloaded…
Above: Poser World’s standalone “Evil Keeper” Poser character.
Above: Wizard Master for M3.
Above: Victorian-era hearse.
Above: Authentic Anglo-Saxon Warrior outfit for M3.
Sidebar links checked
All the sidebar Web links on this blog were checked by hand today. Dead links were removed, and broken ones repaired. Enjoy!
Free “Board of Souls”
A super free “Board of Souls”, a DAZ Studio and Poser prop, over at the Runtime DNA store…
BioLight for free
“BioLight” is currently free on the DAZ Store…
It’s a Poser-only set of special glow MATs for the Terrors of the Deep: Jellyfish pack. It only works in Poser / Poser Pro 2014, and then only with “IDL/Raytracing enabled” activated in your render settings.
One of the things I love about iClone is that glow can be applied incredibly easily and quickly (like, one second). It can be applied to any object, and the glow realistically floods outside the boundaries of the object geometry. By comparison, a similar glow in DAZ Studio or Poser is usually either almost impossible or just a complete chore to achieve. It can be done in Carrara, but it’s a very convoluted set of fiddly steps to get it working. And even if you can get it to work, it increases render times exponentially. Whereas iClone just gives you the glow effect in real-time.
Free importer takes Genesis characters into Poser
DAZ have a nice time-limited freebie for Poser users. A free importer that allows DAZ Genesis characters to be imported into Poser…
“DSON Importer for Poser empowers you to bring Genesis models directly into Poser.”
Renderosity Autumn/Fall Sale
Renderosity’s “Fall into Savings” sale of DAZ Studio or Poser content is underway. The sale ends 21st October 2012.
I found about a third of my 48 ‘Wish List’ items have a $ sign against them. Some are just 15% off, but I did find a few that had cut prices by 50%. Nothing has gone down below the $5 mark, though. Certainly tempting, but coming so soon after the big DAZ sale means… I only have $10 left in my PayPal… /sobs into hankie/
Incidentally, the Renderosity Wish List icons are a bit cryptic, but — for the benefit of newcomers — a “$” sign against your item means it’s Discounted. “R” just means it’s Exclusive to Renderosity, and the “B” means it’s also available in a discounted Bundle Offer…
Poser and DAZ content survey: Autumn / Fall content
Here’s my new 3D content survey, for DAZ Studio or Poser. All things “Autumn”, except for Halloween freebies (which I covered in my previous survey). These are all 3D:
Autumn/Fall gourds are abundant and nicely textured in Pixelharbor’s Gourds… Was at RuntimeDNA, now appears to be lost.
Need a Cornucopia Horn to have all your 3D goodies tumbling out of? Cornucopias for Poser is free…
Flink’s items…
OBJ dead leaves are available in the free Scattered Fall Leaves pack…
Note that ‘dead leaves around the base of a tree’ are also available in Meshbox’s Haunted House 2010.
Transpond’s Fern Pack has an autumn fern in it…
Need animated leaves? Have a look at Falling Leaves Dynamic Prop for Poser…
Scattering maple (sycamore) seeds for Poser are available in Modualz Scatters Vol 7 – MapleSeeds…
And the trees these seeds are scattering off are available in the Modualz WildWood Vol 1 — Autumn Maples pack…
Need vines? Have a look at Modualz Autumn Vines Texture Expansion for the RDNA Vines Megapack…
Fogs are tricky and are probably best added later in Photoshop. Poser/DAZ plugins like Fog Tool Deluxe III send render times through the roof, in my experience, and can’t really be recommended unless you have a render farm or three tucked under your desk.
What Poser users might use for a basic Vue-like hazy distance is Oskarsson’s Add Fog tool, which is a set of simple OBJs.
To get a depth haze with DAZ 3 and plugins, see my tutorial.
I’m not going to delve too far into the thousand-and-one character textures sets and their dependencies. But I’d just note that there is a superb Nouveau autumn set which requires you have DAZ’s Elfin for V4…
A character wearing this dress might work nicely with the Forest Elf set which requires Nursoda’s standalone character Gosha…
Also have a look at the Autumnal Robin Goodfellow (which requires Puck for M4 and of course Michael 4 himself)…
Animals? The squirrel scampering about after the abundant season’s nuts is of course a classic visual motif of early Autumn. DAZ has the best looking 3d squirrel, although sadly I’ve yet to find a “red squirrel” morphs/texture set for it.
The best 3D woodland nuts that I’ve yet found are the sweet chestnut and the acorn available in the Gnome’s House set…
What’s an autumn scene without some fungi, toadstools and mushrooms? Traveller’s excellent three Mushroomz sets are worth having…
… and he also has a set of the more exotic woodland funghi — although I thought the textures on some of these were a little blurry (which perhaps explains why they’re on a fixed heavy discount)…
Nursoda used to have some very nice freebie ‘shrooms on his website, but sadly his site mysteriously vanished into the electro-smog in summer 2012.
That’s it! Enjoy your mellow and fruitful renderings!
$30,000 3D Environment Competition
The makers of the landscape software Vue have a new 3D Environment Competition 2012. They’re lined up $30,000 in prizes, a waggon-load of 3D VIPs, the CG Society, and 3D World magazine, among others.
Competition categories are:
* 3D Environment
* Character Rendering
* Architectural Visualization
They say that…
“Judging will be based solely on the quality, realism and artistic merit of the entries, not on the application used to create them.”
Although that’s not quite true. Since you have to use at least one E-on product (such as Vue or their Lumen real-time architectural software), if only in part, to make your picture.
Deadline: 16th December 2012.