Fantasy Attic’s Annual Community Christmas Gifts advent calendar has started to open. Gifts for this can still be donated…
“I do accept more [gifts for the calendar] all month long, right up to the last day of the month”.
Blender map
Everything you need to memorise for Blender operation, in one crazy-monkey visual map for keyboard bashers. Now updated for the latest Blender.
Release: Krakatoa
Amazon has open-sourced its Krakatoa VFX particle renderer and the associated shader system. Appears to be Maya focused, so I guess they were/are using this for the Amazon TV VFX. The VFX world has many particle-generators / particle-renderers by now, but this one is said to be especially “fast”. That’s the only claim made for it, at least on the GitHub. Still, if you were looking to plug a fast particle system into Poser 13, I see lots of .PY scripts in the Krakatoa GitHub and it might be something to consider.
Release: Stable Diffusion 2.0
The ‘text prompt to image generating’ AI Stable Diffusion 2.0 has released. 1.4 was the first public release back in summer 2022, and 1.5 was the previous version.
Along other new features, a shape-sensing and shape-preserving model…
It also has a few other nice features such as better in-painting and built in up-scaling. But note that the new 2.0 version is now censored, so some may consider it as effectively no longer open-source. They’ve “removed ability to copy artist styles”. This means 2.0 now ignores popular user prompts such as “in the style of [name]…”. It also refuses to create what is described as “NSFW” images, though how widely that’s defined is unknown.
Release: Clavicula 0.9.9.1
The free Clavicula has released 0.9.9.1, with new features such as “custom shader layers” among other changes. It’s the successor to Neobarok and an innovative way of 3D modelling, completely free for desktops. The YouTube channel is here, and there was a Digital Art Live magazine interview with the maker in Digital Art Live Issue 64 (Christmas 2021).
Fantasy Attic’s Advent Calendar
Fantasy Attic’s Christmas Advent Calendar, now live. Accepting donations of giveaway Poser or DAZ gifts for the Calendar until 30th November 2022. Renderosity mail (see link) seems the best way to contact with a donation, although the organiser is also somewhat active on Twitter and DeviantArt.
Empty at the moment, but filling in due course for ‘one per day’ opening during December.
New for Poser and DAZ, October/November 2022
Time for another round-up of selected new items which have recent appeared for Poser and DAZ. As usual freebies are only linked if they’re commercial use for renders, unless obvious fan-art. I’m also not covering every item in the G9 tidal-wave, just a few selected items.
Fantasy:
Fantasy Helmet Alpha, a G8 fantasy helmet with styling morphs.
HF Blyzzard for Genesis 8 Male. An ice-man makeover.
Steampunk:
Mad Scientist Helmet and Spectacles for Poser. Now updated for DAZ.
RetroFutur Car, a three-wheeler for DAZ.
MJ Nautilus, a fishlike steampunk submarine from Cybertenko. For Poser and DAZ. Some nice detailing, up-close.
Halloween:
Better late than never, FPE Faceless for Genesis 8, a demon pied-piper with band.
Toon:
Nola toon for Genesis 2 Female. Free.
A free Aubrie Morph Preset for A4, a semi-toon for Poser, and the maker has several others. The maker notes the morph packs, skin and hair needed for the full look.
A free Chicken costume.
Free G9 Toon Eyes. I’m guessing these could also fit other Genesis base figures.
Storybook:
Tipol’s Judith for La Femme Anime and Flossie. Clothing in a Nordic fairy-tale style.
V4\A4 Platform Sandals for Poser. See also Cozy HomeBooties for G8.
Free Crayons for DAZ Studio, and a free Cardboard box prop, for playroom make-believe.
Enclosed Side Garden Winter Add-On, with Narnia style lamp-post. Seems suitable for a storybook setting in which a garden magically changes to summer when it’s winter. You may be needing your K4’s in the new V4/A4 SnowBoots.
SY dForce Rain iRay. Rain and ripples, apparently quick to set up. Also… “you can make droplets bounce from any character or creature in your scene”.
People and poses:
The free Mary for La Femme for Poser, to take La Femme away from the default look.
La Femme Cirque Props and poses for circus scenes.
Double Bass and Poses for Genesis 8.
12 Poses for Antonia, this being the latest free Antonia version which was released last month for Poser.
Transfer Morphs Genesis,2,3,8 to G9. Maybe. Not all will work.
Animals / humanimals:
Animal Juck, ‘alien planet’ wild animals. Might also enliven a prehistoric Earth scene, for those not fussy about authenticity.
Mr Pigle, will apparently take G8 poses with some adjustments.
Nekomata Bundle for G8M. A sci-fi kitty with a Japanese influence.
He probably wants to take over the universe, rather than snuggle and scratch on the new Cat Tree for DAZ.
Landscapes:
Metal Detecting Props and detectorist hand poses, for G8.
Floating Worlds from ShaaraMuse3D.
Sub Aquatic Landscape by ShaaraMuse3D. Looks suitable for river-beds as well as oceanic scenes, and may thus be of interest to fresh-water fishermen who want to create 3D illustrations of the fish.
Fallen Leaves Tileable Ground Prop Set, Looks useful in many circumstances.
Mega Terrain: Scottish Highlands for DAZ.
Predatron African Trees and Bushes for DAZ.
Road Markings and Potholes for DAZ.
Historical:
Ancient Egyptian Furniture for DAZ. Also painted pillars.
Wolmol is starting to roll out his Wild West / Old West railroad construction kit and trains. Also a freebie RCK_SidingTrackPoses for rail positioning of sidings.
Currently free at DAZ, Vintage Aviator Textures for the G2 Vintage Aviator outfit, circa the 1930s.
Ken Gilliland’s 1920-30s Safari Camp. Likely to go well with the new free Bush Walking Track and the slighly older Jungle Props set.
Bamboo Swamp Houses, which at one time were also part of the landscape in Florida.
Free 1940’s style Oxford heels for G8F
A 1950s Vintage Projector for a James Bond / 50s noir type briefing-room.
A 1950s/60s Swiss ‘Mountain’ Train for Poser and DAZ.
Scripts and Utilities:
Spinaround for Poser 11. Automated turntable animation setup helper for figures and props.
Animated demo:
Loops three times. Click here to replay
A free Poser 11 script to tell you where you need to install your Python scripts. If you don’t install scripts frequently, it’s quite possible to forget where they have to go. There’s also a simple Windows .BAT file. Pop it into the folder with the scripts, and it will automatically detect the correct path and install any .PY scripts.
A demo of the new Runtime Scavenger for Poser 12, available at Renderosity.
A script for bigger fonts on some parts of the DAZ user interface.
Fisio: Physics Simulator, new for DAZ.
NVIDIA graphics card drivers are reported to have been fixed for most, as of 20th November, re: the problem that was causing dForce not to work in DAZ Studio. Though there may still be problems with RTX 3060 cards, according to some.
Tutorials:
Making Genesis 9 Auto-Fit Clones for G8. Also useful here may be the new freebie Genesis 9 Marvelous Designer Avatar.
Neural Networks in G’MIC: An introduction to the API. It appears you can now plug an AI into the free G’MIC filter, via its API module.
That’s the pick, expect another survey before Christmas.
Tasty Olive
Olive is a new “free, portable, non-linear video editor built to compete with high-end professional video editing software”. Interestingly, it “reminded us a little of Camtasia Studio without the big price tag”, states MajorGeeks, testing the more stable 0.1 alpha. There’s also a nightly build 0.2 alpha as portable or installer, which is likely to be unstable for now.
The MajorGeeks comment about Camtasia was enough to make me test it. I could not get 0.2 working, and I found the 0.1 alpha did not have any Camtasia-like screen capture and annotation features. Still, it looks like a good basic no-nonsense free video editor, and works back to Windows 7.
“Worth having” discounts, starting to appear ahead of Black Friday
Not much sign of “worth having” new discounts ahead of Black Friday (25th November), other than the usual year-round perma-discounts. But I noticed…
* The XPPen Store has discounts on its ‘draw on the screen’ monitors. The XPPen Artist 22 (2nd gen) is probably the target model for most people, and has a nice discount. I have one, and am pleased with it.
* Serif’s Affinity 2.0 bundle continues with its launch discounts. Try before you buy, as the fixed and squinty user interfaces don’t suit everyone.
* E-on has large 45% discounts on the subscriptions for its Vue landscape software. Subscriptions, but… worthy software that can still talk to Poser 11 and 12.
* Reallusion’s Cartoon Animator 5 has a good introductory discount, and all versions are now effectively the Pipeline version. Which makes it bargain if you’re looking for a friendly but powerful 2D animator.
* “Courses from £10.99 until 25th Nov” at Udemy. A nice $10 price on Udemy’s Make Motion Comics video tutorial. Sadly it’s all Adobe software though. Also a $10 price on Poser Pro Game Dev Fundamentals, which may be of interest to those who never moved to Poser 11.
* No discounts on Clip Studio EX (the proper multi-page version of the comics production software), but there is a “get 2.0 free when it appears” flash…
It appears that Clip Studio 2.0 is set for Spring 2023. It’ll be interesting to see if it includes AIs, and if they can make the software less fiddly and annoying to use.
Release: Goo Blender
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Goo Blender, also known as the “Goo Engine”, is a new non-photoreal toon Blender version for Windows (only)…
“our custom build of Blender that was made specifically to our team’s needs. Our team specializes in making 3D anime in Blender”
Goo Engine still seems to involve the usual head-banging wrangling of big node chains in order to get simple tooning done in the viewport.
I haven’t had time to look at the 30 minute intro tutorial and am currently uncertain if it’s real-time Eevee or Cycles rendered? Anyway, it’s available via a Patreon subscription if you want to download and try. I assume it’s a build for the latest Blender, which now has certain graphics-card requirements before it will even let you install. Note also the Goo Engine GitHub, which presumably means you can get it free if you know how to ‘build’ Blender from a code repository.
This new release reminded me to take a look at the progress of the competitor BEER, the free NPR system plugin for regular Blender. The 1.0 engine was all done, and a user-friendly UI was then being made. A magnificent effort by all concerned, and they’re to be congratulated for getting so far with it. However I see there’s been no public progress with the user UI implementation in the last year and it’s stalled at UI Milestone #2 (November 2021). Possibly they could use a volunteer UI expert, to get it finished and polished?
Release: Material Maker 1.1
Material Maker 1.1 has been released. Though only a .1 update there are lots of new changes and improvements to this great free replacement for Adobe’s Substance.
Middle-earth DEMs
GIS & Middle-earth, plus free DEM files…
“the Center for Geospatial Analysis at William & Mary, has developed an extensive list of GIS layers of Middle-earth, including a 50m elevation model, roads, rivers, realms and many others. … The data shared below include the complete set of vector layers in wither shapefile or Esri geodatabase format and the 50m DEM of Middle-earth as four quadrants (geo tiff format).”
Based on the remains of the old (now offline) Outerra version of Middle-earth terrain, but substantially improved and overhauled. A 50m DEM is only suitable for a high “eagle’s eye view” or a highly zoomed-out isometric map. That said, AI auto-detailing for low-res DEMs is seeing some progress and will likely see more.
There’s no .torrent, just .ZIPs. I downloaded the smallest .ZIP and loaded the .TIF heightmap to Vue. Here’s the Gap of Rohan with the Fords of Isen, and Isengard at the top of the picture and in the centre of a bowl of mountains. Helm’s Deep is at the edge of the mountains on the bottom-left. A basic map is overlaid. You’ll need maps at massive scanned resolution, to looks crisp when overlaid at this scale. Though the ideal is probably just to get the angle and render, and then over-draw your own hand-drawn isometric map in the Middle-earth style. Although I near that pro GIS systems now have various auto-styles that might get you started there.
Release: Affinity suite 2.0
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Serif’s Adobe-killer Affinity 2.0 suite has released. A one-time payment for all the desktop software + mobile apps, and the price is currently discounted. It’s a pretty good no-subscription deal for the equivalent of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, if that’s what you need and you have the required OS (2.0 now appears to require Windows 8 or higher). Personally I’d stick with Photoshop for the extensibility and automation, I have no use for an Illustrator clone, and thus the only one wanted would be the Publisher DTP software. Note that each can be had on its own, at a lower price than the bundle.
Try before you buy, as the UI cannot be scaled up and is too small and poky for many.
Cartoon Animator 5 Demo Video
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The worthy 2D Cartoon Animator 5 has been released (formerly CrazyTalk Animator), and there’s now an official Cartoon Animator 5 Demo Video released today.
* SVG support, templates, import. Round-trip to CorelDraw, InkScape etc.
* Spring dynamics and free-form deformation grid.
* Better library, integrated download of the free bits (scripts etc) that you could only get from the site.
* No cheap “Pro” version any more [the former division was Pro (i.e. Standard) and Pipeline (i.e. proper Pro, expensive)] and it appears there is now just one version. Currently a reasonable $129. This appears to include the After Effects scripts that were in Pipeline. So if you can now effectively get Pipeline for $129 that’s quite a bargain. Though, as always, beware that the paid add-on packs and plug-ins will ramp up the overall price considerably over time.
That said, there’s backwards compatibility for those with old character and prop libraries. You can still use characters back to G1, in Cartoon Animator 5, it’s said.
Not sure if it still supports conversion from .SWF to prop. It used to, because it had its own Flash module under the hood.
Filter for Interactive licences at DAZ
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Here’s an unusual one. A free UserScript for your Web browser’s Tampermonkey or similar, and which interacts with the DAZ site. All it appears to do is filter your purchased Interactive licences. So that you can just see those. Kind of useful, I guess, if you’re a developer who just needs to see your available assets… and not the 569 other things you’ve purchased over the years. It’s open-source and the code looks clean.. it’s not doing anything untoward.