Renderosity now has an official Christmas Advent Calendar. Each day, with download links active for ‘one day only’, leading vendors give away Poser / DAZ content as an open download. A new cumulative post each day, and the list is currently on the third day.
Blender 3.0 lands
Blender 3.0 stable is out, and there’s also a 3.1 alpha. Mostly 3.0 seems to be about speed/performance, UI changes, and the new Asset Browser. The multipage changelog for 3.0 is big and techie enough to stun a charging rhino, but here are some highlights I spotted…
* Faster rendering on Cycles, “rendering between 2x and 8x faster in real-world scenes.” If… you have a hefty RTX graphics card. (That sounds like very good news for Poser 12, if it can be plugged in any time soon. Poser uses Cycles, but there it’s re-branded as SuperFly).
* Auto tile-tweaking. This is about the tile-size that gets rendered when rendering. e.g. 128 pixels. “Previously tweaking tile size was important for maximizing CPU and GPU performance. Now this is mostly automated.”
* Faster hair curves (not ribbons), but again only if… you have a fast NVIDIA OptiX card.
* A less laggy viewport, and again… I suspect that having a fast shiny new graphics card will help there.
* For the overall UI “the default theme got a refresh” and various changes.
* It’s now faster to work with the UI, which is good because Blender needs a lot of clicky-clicky work. The speed is due to things like faster text rendering, as panels spring into existence.
* Not much this time around for Eevee, but… “Performance when editing a huge mesh is improved.”
* New GreasePencil abilities with some new line modifiers (dashes, wiggles etc), and thus expanded lineart possibilities.
* A major rework of the UI layout for Freestyle. I hear elsewhere that it’s a bit quicker now to load a previous set of lines.
* .USD files can now be imported into Blender. This is the Pixar Universal Scene Description format.
* AMD GPUs are now supported.
* OpenCL rendering is removed. So is Branched Path Tracing. And the Rigify Legacy Mode is gone.
* A new Asset Browser for: Objects; Materials; Poses and Expressions; Worlds. I assume it’s drag-and-drop.
Blender 2.93 portable could run on Windows 7 with a small workaround. I assume there will also be enough demand to fix 3.0 for Windows 7. But until then, 3.0 is officially Windows 8 or higher. It will also refuse to install unless you have a sufficiently powerful graphics card.
Update: Blender 3.51 for Windows 7 (early May 2023). Needing no installer, it will now launch! Hurrah.
Release: Poser 12 Early Access 12.0.752
Update: new directory page for free Poser 12 scripts.
‘Tis the merry season of releases. Blender 3.0 tomorrow, Rebelle 5.0 on the 15th, and probably more to come as the various dev teams steam toward their Christmas deadlines.
Poser 12 Early Access also has a new version online today. 12.0.752 (24th November) is ready for download.
The last version noted here was 12.0.703 in October, so there have been four internal updates since then, and now this public release. There’s a full changelog on the download page, but here’s my digestion of the highlights. There were three broad areas of focus this time around: general Library and UI usability; the PDF manual and Python documentation; and some tweaks to get ready for unimesh.
* The Poser 12 manual now documents new features in 12.x, and a handy 108Mb PDF version is newly available here. Here’s how to get the PDF downloading for you.
* “Pydoc browsing for Python developers” (see the PDF manual). It appears that Poser 12 users can go to the Python console within the software, from there get a browser-list of modules and then click on the poser module in the list. I could be wrong but it seems that this then lists all the other Python modules currently available under poser and that a Python 3 script can run in Poser 12. Also other Python items.
* Fixes for the drag dock option in the UI.
* Various Content Library palette fixes, including “Content Library search/locate feature now jumps to selected item so the user no longer needs to scroll for it”.
* Various Hierarchy Editor usability fixes.
PzDB no longer sold
I see that the third-party Poser Library software PzDB is currently in the ‘no longer sold’ category. The Payloadz payment system refuses. The software’s ‘ping’ server is still working though, the ‘ping’ being required on loading the software. My installed 1.3 version is thus still working. So there’s hope that the problem may just be with the payment processor.
The problem may be…
1) the Payloadz payment system is kaput for PzDB and other items too, for some reason;
2) that the hefty monthly PayLoadz seller’s account payment of $29 (!) has somehow ceased, and the maker of PzDb hasn’t yet noticed;
3) the maker has turned off purchases because his MS Access reseller licence (PzDB is build on MS Access) doesn’t support the latest Windows 11. However, that is unlikely, since I read that…
“MS Access database can be sold as a standalone [custom] application with a runtime edition of Access which is licence free, if you have Developers edition of the Access/Office”.
Which was what was happening with the back-end of PzDB. However it’s said that Microsoft does not love Access and that it becomes more and more difficult to run Access on newer versions of Windows. One user of the 60-day trial (still available) reports crashes with PzDB on Windows 10, but he also has the full MS Access installed, so there might be conflicts.
Anyway, just my guesses. Let’s hope it’s just a payment system problem and that sales processing can be easily switched to Gumroad instead.
On the other hand, if it is to become abandonware then I’d suggest that perhaps what’s needed first is a small crowdfunder to raise enough to unlock the ‘ping’ and make it free + charity-ware. Even as freeware for Windows 7 and 8, it might help raise some money for charity — perhaps especially if it ran a discreet banner ad and a link inside the UI.
What are the alternatives?
1) There’s the affordable P3DO Explorer, but I find that’s impossibly slow on searches (eight minutes for a simple search for the Pitterbill keyword). Results are then mediocre. I can’t see any way, in the utterly confusing and labyrinthine interface, to speed it up.
2) There’s the native Poser 11 Library interface, which is far better than it was. It’s now reasonably fast, but still very far from ideal in terms of the UI or triggering of indexing. The Search over in DAZ is not much better or faster on a large runtime. Poser 2012 users may be able to bypass the loss of Flash and use Air instead. There was apparently a Service Release for 2012 Pro that added the ability to set “Library Launch Behaviour to External”, and then if Adobe Air was installed that would be used for the Library.
The main drawback for Poser 11 (and now Poser 12) is that the Library feature “Show Folder Thumbnails: When checked, a thumbnail of the first item in the selected folder will appear on the folder” has never worked. This often leaves you looking at a wall of grey identical folders in the search results.
In contrast PzDB just finds so much more stuff, and shows everything individually. For instance try a search for Aiko 3 in Poses. PzDB just finds more, presumably because of the character-based cross-referencing and clustering it does on initial indexing of the runtime. It can also show you just what you just installed. The difference is not because Poser’s indexing is set to Shallow or Full.
3) Everything is free and useful for quick searches, when set to Large Thumbnails / View By Path / Search for Picture. It’s lightning fast because it builds an index first, and as such it’s probably the best sort-of substitute for PzDB for casual Poser users, in combination with RSR to PNG and the native Poser Library. It can sort by Date Created in the latest 1.4 but this needs to be manually turned on. Yet Everything is still not ideal, because you then still need to open the likely folder in Windows Explorer, and find the non-picture Poser file that can be dragged and dropped to Poser. You thus need to know what you’re looking at and the difference between your .MT5s and your .PZ2s etc. Ideally the makers of Everything would add a half-dozen features geared for Poser and DAZ content discovery.
4) If you have it, then Semideu’s Shaderworks Library Manager 2.6 still works in Poser 11, including drag-and-drop from the search results. It’s abandonware from circa 2016 and Semideu (often mis-spelled as Semidue) has long departed the scene following the closure of the RDNA store. But it searches quickly and elegantly on a large runtime. A few seconds longer than PzDB perhaps, but quite bearable. Or, it does when it doesn’t crash. It’s very unstable on Poser 2014, and iffy on Poser 11. Good results though, once you puzzle it out in the very cryptic interface. It may need the free AVfix on some iterations of Poser 11.x. Library Manager itself doesn’t like to be run at startup of Poser 11, so you need to manually start it each session. It’s ‘all Python’, so can dock with the Poser 11 UI (also Python) and replace the Library. If docked you may also need to close it before closing Poser, and return to the normal Library. There’s no Python Tkinter being used in it, so I guess it should theoretically run on a Mac. The PDF manual is here, but the software is currently unavailable unless you can dig it out of an old backup drive or DVD-r. Useful to have as a backup for when (if) PzDB dies, and you find it’s stable for you.
5) There’s also the old Advanced Library for Poser standalone freeware, in version 1.9.2.x. Nice but it totally lacks drag-and-drop to the Poser stage (it used the old defunct PRPC method involving scripts and server .exes). It is however a quick finder tool, with full image thumbnails and easy filtering.
6) The best and most stable solution in the event of a PzDB failure might actually be the Adobe AIR Library that officially shipped with Poser Pro 2014. It can drag and drop to Poser 11 and 12, and can run as an external Library on a second monitor (though Poser 2014 does need to be running). It also knows about DAZ folders and can filter for just the Poser-friendly content there. Presentation is simple but effective. Search is fast, perhaps slightly faster than PzDB. Give it a try if you have 2014.
7) From Poser 13 you can also drag-and-drop Library content to older versions of Poser, if running at the same time. For instance, click and drag from Poser 13 and drop onto the Poser Pro 2014 stage.
DAZ-ling romance
“Writing Romance and Relationships for Visual Narratives”, a two-part webinar with Drew Spence on getting ‘the feel’ right for convincing DAZ-rendered relationship stories in comics, storybooks, slideshows, animation storyboards etc. Booking now.
Fantasy Attic’s 2021 Advent Calendar
Fantasy Attic’s 2021 Christmas Advent Calendar page is now online, for a month of Poser and DAZ freebies. Day 1 should be opening today.
Giving Tuesday
I hope readers picked up some nice software and 3D content bargains over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, perhaps with the aid of my numerous posts here. If you have any PayPal left-over after bagging the best savings, please do consider becoming my Patron on Patreon. Even a few dollars each month will be very welcome, and will really encourage and help me out in the present hard times. Many thanks.
Lighthouse now collected in one volume
Brian Haberlin’s Lighthouse is now out in collected trade paperback and Kindle ebook. It’s a fine science-fiction graphic novel when you put all the issues together. The adaptation of Jules Verne’s The Lighthouse At The End of the World (1905) is fairly loose, and transfers the setting into the far-future and remote space. But the story grips right to the end.
A couple of the initial reviews of the first issue, by fly-by comics critics who have not returned to review the full run, were a bit sniffy and grudging. But I found Lighthouse great fun when read together as one completed graphic novel. It’s a little talky near the beginning, and you have to suspend disbelief. But it’s a good story, well told.
The art is made with the aid of Poser, which I suspect may have put a dampener on some reviews of #1.
In contrast, the one amateur reviewer who made it as far as issue #4 noted, in a long and positive review…
The interiors here are mindbogglingly gorgeous. I love seeing how detailed and extraordinary computer artwork can be nowadays. The linework is exquisite, and the varying weights and techniques being used to create this level & quality of detailed work are astonishingly brilliant. The use of backgrounds [and their creation of a] sense of scale and overall sense of size and scope is phenomenal.
That said, be warned that you might be put off by the trade paperback’s half-hearted front-cover. It seems as though the publisher for some reason wanted potential buyers to think it’s set at sea and underwater. On the website the additional background graphic also implies it’s a historical adaptation of Verne. It isn’t either.
There’s currently one short review of the October 2021 trade paperback, from poet Bernie Gourley, and he was pleased with the quality of the story…
I found the story compelling. The source premise of being far from help and at a severe disadvantage is thrilling.
I looked long and hard for proper reviews that stepped beyond a glance at #1. There are none from publications, though the couple of amateur reviewers (see above) are positive. It’s a bit sad that a comic of this scope and quality (not to mention technical innovation) can be all-but ignored by the comics establishment. But that is what seems to have happened here.
New for Poser and DAZ in November 2021
Time for another survey and pick of what was new for Poser and DAZ, in November 2021. As usual, freebies are only noted if the renders can be used commercially.
Science-fiction:
Grounds Add-On 1 and Grounds Add-On 2, both for Flinks Space 2 backgrounds + props set. A range of grounds for ‘moon landing’-type scenes and vignettes.
Wasteland Shop for Poser by 1971s, and there is also a DAZ version.
The Wasteland Shop is probably home to the guy who builds the Racing Cheetah robot NE-10-O. In OBJ, though, which is likely to only be good for static scenes. Still… good robot cats are rare, so I’ll mention it here.
Cyberpunk backstreet by 1971s, and there is also a DAZ version.
AJ Another World by AppleJack. Various useful additions to someone’s ‘alien foliage’ collection.
Sci-fi Desert Portals scene, in .OBJ on ArtStation so also good for Vue. Could be paired with the new Pharaonic Relics set for DAZ. Note also the excellent ‘tall ancient wall’ in the latter.
Fantasy:
Free Anime Slanted Eyebrows, also useful for faeries and Vulcans. These are LIE overlay images only, for the Layered Image Editor. Most people (including me until recently) have never heard of LIE, but it lurks within the Surfaces tab and for things like tattoos can be used as an alternative to a geoshell.
Head Monster for G8M, seven merchant-resource head-shape morphs.
Halloween:
The free OsoS Hulking Horror for DAZ. I assume it’s not fan-art.
MortemVetus has his Ultima Mortis M4 back online at Renderosity.
Christmas:
Happy Holideer for the HiveWire Mule Deer
A free Xmas Roof setting with iced-up chimmney.
Clothing:
A free Nutcracker Hat, also likely to be useful for Moebius-style sci-fi character uniforms.
Related to clothing, a pack of Fashion Catwalk Animations for G8.
Storybook:
A free Zottelchen and Zottel.
A free Inflatable Dolphin.
Toddler – Ginger Outfit, a ‘gingerbread man’ toddler costume.
Fallen Leaves – Scatters and Drifts also seems useful for storybook-type scenes.
History:
Burial Sites: Mound for Poser, an Ancient British style burial mound from Cybertenko. The grass is removable, so you could add Flink’s or take it to Vue as a Poser scene and use an ecosystem on it.
The new Corbelled Stone Hut might serve as a mound interior.
Reed Huts 2 for DAZ Studio. ‘Laketown’ style primitive stilt-huts and fishing platforms.
Stranded Pirate Ship scene.
A Dutch 19th century Wooden Rowing Kubboat, which would also have been seen in the waterlands around New York City until the 1920s.
dForce Victorian Gentleman Outfit for G8 and textures.
Free 1950s room-sized computers for Poser.
A 1990s type Urban Skatepark. Might also match with the new Dynamic Destruction Vol. 1 for DAZ, an abandoned building with Dynamic Destruction morphs.
Animals:
Cat Zeus, a chunky ginger grimalkin or ‘top cat’, with poses and dForce hair.
Songbird ReMix: Hummingbirds of North America pack.
Animations and Still Poses for Woolly Mammoth. There’s a video demo at YouTube.
Prehistoric Amphibian Diplocaulus and Dragonfly Prey for DAZ.
Shaders and textures:
A free body/face Cycles shaders for A3. In Poser, Blender’s Cycles renderer is renamed SuperFly, so it might have been named as ‘SuperFly Shaders for Aiko 3’.
A set of Handmade Textures for Use with G’MIC’s ‘Artistic Stylize’ filter.
Useful scripts:
Blender to Poser automatic converter, a Blender Python script to quickly extract just the content-asset from a Blender .blend file, and nothing else. Also uses Poser-friendly settings. (For Poser only, as the results are not DAZ-friendly).
Chain Control for Poser 12, for flexible/animated tails, whips and suchlike. Note that Poser 12 has Windows OS requirements for downloading scripts from Renderosity. Windows 7 users may not be able to get the script, even if they purchased it.
Copy Dynamic Hair Room Settings now has a Poser 12 version of the script. Scroll down the freestuff page to see the link.
Tutorials:
Mandelbulb 3D : Power Tips for Creating Fractal Worlds. With Scappin Matteo who’s an expert in the free Mandelbulb3D.
That’s it for November, more after Christmas! Please consider keeping a little bit of your Black Friday spend back, to go toward my Patreon instead. Even a few extra dollars a month is a great encouragement and a help with my many different projects. Many thanks.
‘Cyber Monday’: Octane, Lazy Nezumi, Turbosquid, Wacom
A quick look at what’s been added to the discounts, for ‘Cyber Monday’…
* Otoy has a small discount on its Octane renderer, both the annual Studio and Enterprise subscriptions.
* Lazy Nezumi Pro (a well-established brush-stabilizer plugin for Photoshop and others), 50% off. Mostly not needed now, but you may have a much-loved older version and want to upgrade.
* The expensive Turbosquid 3D models have 35-50% off, if you were hankering for something unique there.
* Wacom have good savings on their Intuos Pro drawing tablets, if you prefer a tablet rather than a pen-monitor.
No change at Flaming Pear, for their Flood 2 and Suns and Moon-generator Photoshop plugins. No discounts on the affordable comics production software Comic Life, or at the comics fonts stores. And JitBit Macro Recorder never moves in price.
Black Friday’s final dribbles: BVH to Cartoon Animator, painterly shader packs for Blender, Expressi, Udemy
* BVH to CrazyTalk Animator (now Cartoon Animator), a healthy discount and down to $10. Convert .BVH figure motion capture to animations for the G2 figures (not G3). Such things still work fine with G2 figures in Cartoon Animator.
* The Blender Market sale includes Painterly shader, Inkwood 2.0 – Ink Drawing Shader, and Pastelini 2.0 – Pastel Painting Eevee Shader.
* Expresii, Japanese-style brush-painting software. 30% off until 2nd December. Only at the Microsoft Store, seemingly.
* Udemy’s “Make Motion Comics” with Photoshop and After Effects (2 hours), and Poser Pro Game Dev Fundamentals (4 hours) which may still interest some. Both £10 each.
That’s it for now. I’ll be taking another look on ‘Cyber Monday’.
Black Friday rolls on: Moho animation software, Raffy Raffy, Skin for Keyshot, theHunter is free
* 40% off Lost Marble’s Moho animation software, formerly Smith Micro’s Anime Studio but now back with the original developers. Both 13.5 perpetual-licence versions are discounted, and you don’t get the sort of add-ons escalator cost ride you get with Reallusion. I assume buyers will also get the interesting Live Face update coming with 13.5.2. Though note also that the Poser import was bjorked in Moho after 12.5.
* Raffy Raffy’s fine big/fast Vue and Blender landscapes, half price. (ArtStation is very slow at present, presumably due to all the sale downloaders).
* Realistic Skin Shader for Keyshot, in the ArtStation sale.
* PD Howler 2020 (v13) is now discounted to $23 on ArtStation, should you specifically want 2020 for some reason, rather than 2021. Ideally it’s: 2021.3 (build 85) for Windows 7 and 8, and 2022 for later Windows users.
* Epic is giving away the excellent theHunter: Call of the Wild videogame for free. It’s too slow for many trigger-happy gamers, who expect to be potting bears and elk every 30 seconds. A player may not see anything for an hour or more, until you learn how to be stealthy and judge the wind. But for those who like ‘zen’ games it’s a very fine big open-world wilderness-walking and tracking simulator. You can of course use a camera if you want, rather than a rifle, so you won’t ‘harm’ the furry-ones. Runs on OS’s back to Windows 7.
No discounts yet for Flood 2 and the other Flaming Pear plugins, Keyshot, EvilInnocence, or Comic Life.
Black Friday surges: Realistic Paint Studio, Paintstorm, Rust-Icator for Poser, Transmutr
New today…
* Realistic Paint Studio at 50% off.
* Paintstorm Studio at 50% off.
* Rust-Icator for Poser at 50% off. Overlays without changing the original surface. Works with any texture you care to feed it, though obviously it comes with a set of rust overlay shaders.
* Transmutr, 50% off with BF2021 coupon code. “Convert various 3D formats to SketchUp files”, and there is a poly-reduction option.
Black Friday for Poser and DAZ: Renderosity, DAZ Store
* Black Friday sale at Renderosity. 50% off everything. Except software, obviously.
* DAZ supposedly have “up to” 60% off most items in the Store. Though most in my WishList are 30-50%, and I only see scattered 50%’s after the first page on a lowest-first sort. But they also have an ‘additional 30% off’ coupon-code for existing buyers at the store — click the orange message at the top of the main Store page to see your code.
‘Black Friday’ is here: DeviantArt Core, World Creator, Gaea, 3DCoatTextura
New since yesterday…
* DeviantArt has Core Membership at 50% off, until 1st December 2021.
* The real-time landscape maker World Creator has a 30% discount.
* The advanced landscape creator QuadSpinner Gaea has a 30% discount, until 3rd December 2021.
* 3DCoatTextura has a substantial discount until 29th November. It’s the cut-down version of 3DCoat 2021, the one with the new UI. The main 3DCoat is also on sale.