Currently free on the DAZ Store today. Three Genesis 3 figure pose packs, the Boyd character for the Freak 4 base, and two outfits for the Poser toon figure Cookie (a female Cowboy and Lara Croft / Tomb Raider).
Z800
A very nicely spec’d HP Z800 with “2x Xeon X5670@2.93GHz, 96GB DDR3, 400GB SSD + 9TB, Quadro K620, W10Pro”. Reputable UK refurbisher (I’ve purchased there in the past) and 29 bids. Bidding just ended at a touch under £360, which seems about right — and sets a fair benchmark for future pricing of such a Poser/Vue-friendly budget-behemoth.
Same Xeons as a well-spec’d HP Z600, but otherwise much better specs and a Win 7 serial on the case (because you don’t want to run Windows 10 on an HP Z.., unless you just want a cheap gaming PC — which would be a criminal waste of such a machine).
Freestuff update
The Renderosity Store has updated the ‘Freestuff Upload’ rules page.
Blender 3.0 release date
Blender 3.0 now has an official release-date, 1st December 2021. This will bring its asset browser, aka a Content Library. It will also have many Freestyle and Grease Pencil improvements nailed down (as much as anything ever can be, in Blender), and the new Cycles X renderer. “X-what?”. Think normal Cycles but…
* 2 to 7 times faster
* apparently gets faster with the complexity of the scene
* works like iRay, the speckled complete scene pops in and then the speckles are progressively refined. No more tiling squares running across the screen.
* it overhauls the underlying render architecture, which should lead to further advances in the future.
Poser 11 and 12 use Cycles (branded as ‘SuperFly’), and thus Cycles X seems likely in Poser at some point in the years to come.
But I’m guessing Cycles X is probably not going to be CPU / GPU agnostic, like iRay is. Contrary to all the NVIDIA marketing ra-raa, any recent version of iRay will run perfectly well on CPUs alone. If you have enough CPU cores/threads for it. But it sounds to me like Cycles X will need a hefty and expensive GPU / graphics card.
“We’re going to need a bigger bucket, Doreen!”
In Poser 11, you may have long relied on your trusty old CPU-rendering Firefly custom render-presets. But they may not have kept up with what your PC can do.
For instance I have a 12-core PC, and so in Edit / Preferences I tell Poser 11 I have 24 threads available for its use (12 cores = 24 threads) when CPU rendering with Firefly.
To speed Firefly up enormously in such a case, I switch the Bucket Size on an old Firefly render preset up to 512. Most likely you have some old presets hanging around too and they are a decade or more old and are perhaps running at a Bucket Size of 32. Or you followed some advice that was that old. 32 was a good safe setting for the days when most people had only 1 or 2 threads available for rendering. Think of it as the size of each bucket of paint that Poser ‘throws’ onto the render canvas, in order to render your picture. Small processing power = small buckets each time.
If your PC can’t handle a big fast Bucket size of 512, I’m guessing you could perhaps try 256 for a 6-core / 12-thread PC with enough RAM. 256 also works well for a modern post-2010 graphics-card render. But beware of setting 512 for a graphics card, as it may well crash your driver on older cards.
“But I use SuperFly now”, you may say. Ah, but can SuperFly do the old-school Firefly lines, or the Firefly ambient occlusion? Here are two presets made very fast on a 12-core PC. Obviously you’re going to choose CPU not GPU on your render settings panel, for these.
Lines:
Ambient Occlusion (turn AO on for scene lights, first):
“Fast” as in… two or three seconds at 1800 pixels. For lines or AO. Obviously if it’s a character with hair and complex bits and inefficient lighting, then it’s going to be a lot slower. But still quicker than otherwise.
The probably applies to other software such as MojoWorld. Make the ancient default bucket-size bigger.
Update: Poser 12 is a bit different, with the move to Cycles 2. CPU users of “adaptive sampling” rendering with SuperFly will apparently paradoxically see better results from quite small bucket sizes.
Technical Search Engine expanded
Expanded coverage of the Renderosity forum, on my Technical Search Engine.
Had been indexing just…
../mod/forumpro/
Now also indexing…
../mod/forumpro?thread_id=*
Note the subtle difference in the URL. No / but a ? in the second URL. Such things matter to Google.
Now indexing 58 sites, pages and forums.
The Thing in Poser
Digging around in PZDB for aliens and monsters I stumbled on JoeQuick’s ‘The Thing’ morph and materials for Freak 4. Still available, free as ‘Rock Man for F4‘. Though in my runtime it shows as…
Readers will recall I had tried to recreate the famous Fantastic Four comic-book character ‘The Thing’ in DAZ Studio, and had only got so far and it was not very satisfactory.
But in Poser and the Comic Book mode… it’s looking better. The skin is still far from ideal, and probably needs geometry made rather than a photoreal texture. A bodysuit with a geometry ‘crust’ might do it. There are also the ‘short shirtsleeves’ visible in Preview, but not in a render. (Update: Will Shetterly kindly points out the arm fix required).
Here’s a quick real-time Comic Book view in the viewport…
He’s a generation 4, so the three finger M4 Creature Creator morph will work…
This does not give the three squarish fingers + thumb, but is better than a normal hand. The toes are more difficult and the alien two-toes Creature Creator morph doesn’t do it. Freak does come with a Foot Width morph though (needs to be applied), which helps a bit. The neck also needs to be shorter. The Thing basically has no neck to speak of.
So, that’s as good as it gets at present. Poser, Freak 4 and JoeQuick’s morphs. Plenty of superhero poses for Freak 4, too.
Survey: Unusual K4
Here’s a quick survey of the unusual and quality fantasy makeovers for the original DAZ Kids 4 (aka K4). Being the same generation, they should also be able to take your older V4/M4 poses and expressions.
The Forestals, now at Renderosity. Hair not included.
K4 Alien Force Characters (no longer sold – update, available free here) and their free spacesuit base (still available).
K4 Elf henchmen and a leader-character Yodkin.
There was also Grimlens, a more fishy looking K4 gremlin.
O Sole Mio is a steampunk urchin K4 outfit. Note that this does NOT include the full-body toon morphs, including good toony hands and feet, which are shown in the store previews. The required pack to do these body shapes was the Morphlet K4 morphs from Capsces, which appear to be no longer available.
Nordic Trolls (dress and hat only).
Kids 4: CrossDresser License for converting clothes to K4.
K4 will also take .BVH files for V4/M4, of which there are thousands free.
Will also take the V4/M4 Creature Creator morph injections, and the M4 Faces of Fantasy head morphs (Orc, Nosferatu, Villain etc).
K4’s default INJ morphs (standard and ++) appear to be confusing, in that they are apparently not like those of M4 and V4. Those give you gazillions of morphs. The K4 bundles only give you five additional ‘body shape’ morphs, but the expected lots of default and ++ head morphs load fine. However, I find that even when some body dials do load, they do absolutely nothing (e.g. foot size). I gave up on getting such useful body morphs to load, such as ‘foot size’. But thankfully, the Creature Creator and Faces of Fantasy morphs don’t appear to need the default morphs at all. Faces of Fantasy also has one very useful ‘chunky gnome’ type full-body morph, which you see in action in the picture above.
Known to work without Morphs ++:
After some error messages I had success in loading Berserker for M4 and got head-dials for Old, Monstrous Head and Ogre.
Amducias M4 (horse head) and Rana (frog head / hands feet) works. Most likely other packs from this maker will also work (see Lepus rabbit Web link, above).
G Insectoid Morph works, as does its MAT. It works so well I suspect it was designed for K4.
The M4 Forestals Head INJ works, and gets you a characterful old man face. Could be good for making a garden gnome.
Sparky’s Moulder M4 works fine, except for one bit of texture mis-fit on the front. You could probably cover this by cloning the texture, or by adding a bandage.
BAT’s The Gobblers works fine, at least for the mediocre heads. Not the bodies. Don’t stress if you can’t find it, it doesn’t look all that great.
Trekkieggrrl’s M4 Claws Injection works fine.
Certain V4 items, such as “V4 conforming fingernails” (long / sharp nails) will also prove useful for K4 kit-bashing.
I assume Character Randomizer for K4 will work on all these, though it may be assuming its dealing with a default K4 + Kids 4 Morphs++.
Report From the Ghooric Zone
If H.P. Lovecraft had lived to write The Clangers… the new Report From the Ghooric Zone (2021)…
Now with a long “making of” post with detailed pictures of the monsters.
Redeye Cat freebie .ZIPs
Redeye Cat retired in May and on her blog kindly gave permission to freely redistribute the .ZIP files and documentation for her freebies. The .ZIP file links on her blog have now gone at September 2021, and the Archive.org’s Wayback service did not catch them.
As a result, there is now a 500Mb mega-bundle archive on Archive.org. This is mostly of interest for Poser storybook and steampunk people, but also has some items of DAZ use such as the V4/M4 sci-fi poses. Those who still value Genesis 1 for its dynamic flexibility and Poser-import will also especially value the freebies here.
It has the following…
Clothing retextures
– dirty dress retexture for Rococo
– for the Harper Beanie hat
– for the Bossy Boots
– for the Sensible Shoes DS
Materials
– steampunk materials pack (merchant resource)
V4
– variety poses
– pulp retro sci-fi poses (several packs)
Dano
– Cardboard Box Boy, a standalone figure
Toon Tones
– toon hair shades
– Sam & Sadie toon tones MATs
Kids 4
– a wealth of Poser-friendly face expressions and pose presets made for K4
– winter fun sets, kids sledging, snowballing etc
Halloween
– texture makeovers for Patches the stuffed cat, Nursoda’s Bonga
M4
– Tragic Poet poses
– a half dozen male characters for M4
– a “motley collection of toonish dial morph characters for V4/A4 and M4/H4”
DAZ Genesis 1 – the first Genesis release
– statue poses
– art-doll makeover for Genesis
– pulp sci-fi poses pack
– parasol holding poses
Squee Dragon
– set of poses for the little semi-toon dragon
Baby Luna
– a couple of face dial presets to give a more realistic baby look
Scary Cherry (a girl’s toy doll figure)
– dirt masks, for ‘abandoned doll in the dirt’ type pictures
Hair fits
– a wide collection for many figures, in one .ZIP file
PDF page archives
– some of the more substantial content investigation-surveys, e.g. steampunk
– the relevant page for each .ZIP file
– details of the redistribution permissions
DAZ Studio 4.15.0.30
After being totally bjorked for a while by an unexpected Mac OS upgrade, today sees the official news of the release of the DAZ Studio Update for Big Sur…
The Daz Studio team is pleased to announce […] Mac compatibility to include macOS Big Sur and all previously supported Mac operating systems. The new [v 4.15.0.30] includes a handful of bug fixes and scripting updates for both Mac and Windows operating systems in anticipation of the future Daz Studio 5 upgrade.
No mention of scripts and plugins breaking, for 4.15.0.30 on a Mac. There’s also a new Windows version for 4.15.0.30. Well done to the devs and managers, who must have worked very hard on the Mac fix. Hopefully Apple will give DAZ a bit of warning before their next Mac OS update.
Two art tools for DAZ – on sale
Currently on a 50% sale at DAZ, two of the illustration-making tools that are worth having. There’s no guarantee that utilities like this will go to 70%+ on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
Keep in mind that some of the folders for Lineart9000 need to be installed under your C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\.. and you can’t just idly plonk it all into your main content runtime and expect it to work.
The next issue of VisNews (September 2021) will have a four-page survey/test of such DAZ tools, and these two are picked out as two of the most useful / easiest to use. That said, the Lineart9000 3Delight line render is a bit CAD-like, and conversely the somewhat blobbly base linework from Sketchy is not likely to please a regular comics reader or an editor at a children’s book publishing house. Sketchy actually shows up in DAZ as Shader Presets | DimensionTheory | iRayToon Shader, if you need to check if you already have it or not.
With both you could perhaps make some interesting Photoshop composites from the same scene, layering and blending multiple renders from each utility.
Color codes for PoserPython coders
A useful Poser colour-code chart for Python coders, at LaTeX Color Definitions. You can see how the colour chart allows you to translate a colour to the three RGB values in a format needed for a PoserPython script. For instance, the chart’s Amethyst purple…
{amethyst}{rgb}{0.6, 0.4, 0.8}
This becomes in PoserPython, with spaces removed…
nodeInput = root.InputByInternalName(‘AlternateDiffuse’)
nodeInput.SetColor(0.60,0.40,0.80)
A mid grey, useful in toning down neon-like Preview colours arising due to a Scatter node plugged into the Alternate_Diffuse, would then be…
nodeInput = root.InputByInternalName(‘AlternateDiffuse’)
nodeInput.SetColor(0.70,0.70,0.70)
Note that some nodes need a _ and some don’t. I’ve no idea exactly why, but perhaps it’s the ‘internal/external name thing’ that Poser has. Thus you’ll see Alternate_Diffuse in the Material room, but it has to be AlternateDiffuse in the script. If one such name doesn’t work in a script, just add or remove the _ and try again.
Possibly there is some colour-wheel freeware somewhere that offers something similar to the chart, but the chart is a nice friendly solution. If saved out as a PDF it can be indexed by your PC’s local keyword search.
New for DAZ and Poser in August 2021
Right, nearly the end of the month… and thus time for another survey of interesting new items for Poser and DAZ Studio. I may have missed one or two, as I could only get so far back on the DAZ Store, as usual.
Science fiction:
Not much original sci-fi this month, but there’s a nice pack with sci-fi alternatives to the usual stock Primitives, FM Glowing Things. Also useful for Synthwave scenes and suchlike.
Robot X95A, a late 1940s sci-fi pulp robot.
A free Sonic Screwdriver for DAZ Carrara, from the British TV series Doctor Who. I don’t recall what era this is from. There’s also a Tennant-era DrTen Sonic Screwdriver Prop for Poser. Obviously these are fan-art so can’t be used commercially.
Also from Doctor Who, an Alpha Centaurian for Poser. It looks a bit stagey because the original was a man-in-a-suit costume on a 1970s TV show.
On ArtStation the free and nicely-made Small work 1 comms tower, which can be easily exported from Blender to .OBJ or .FBX format. See the ‘Scripts’ section at the end of this post for a new free Blender-to-Poser automated script.
Steampunk:
Over-the-top Crazy Arsenal of Weapons, and one fine steampunk pistol that’s a bit more restrained.
B.E.T.T.Y. Adjustable Floor Lamps.
Helmet 043 by MightMight. A kit-bashing base, for G3M.
Fantasy:
Geirrod the Giant for Genesis 8.1 Male. Not HD, which is good.
Anemone Hair for G8F. Looks like sea-anemone filaments. See also the tail-end of last month’s vast Mermaid surge, which is continuing this month on the DAZ Store.
Free fantasy-style Metal Claws for G8F.
House with interior for Poser, from 1971s. Also for DAZ. Morrowind fan-art, so be wary of using it in a commercial graphic-novel etc. He has enough of these now that you could effectively recreate Balmora for a Morrowind fan-comic or animation. Someone should make stilt-striders and pack-guars, and it would be complete.
Photo Props: Wizard Effect Maker 2. More in-scene wizarding effects from ShaaraMuse3D.
Halloween:
Zlamoosk: Standalone Character for DAZ Studio.
Expressive Milkman Andy INJ for Poser. Andy2 is a stock figure that ships with Poser 11. Definitely a bit scary, so it’s in the Halloween category.
Toon:
Pudgy the Corgi, a toon corgi dog with “dForce fur options”.
Oso Newt for Genesis 8.1 Male and Alternate Textures which also fit other lizardy and froggy figures.
On ArtStation, a toony Bio-lab factory. For Cinema 4D, but presumably easily exported.
A free ballet Tutu for Noname Doll, which is a free cartoon figure.
Storybook:
Not much this month, which is surprising just before the ‘back to school’ mania kicks in, but there is a dForce Petite Style Soft Salopette and Sketch Set. For pre-schoolers who like to draw and chalk.
Historical:
An Ancient Roman Patrician estate-house.
Abandoned Abbey for DAZ Studio.
A v176 Desert Tribe Hut of a vaguely Timbuktu / Mali cast.
Free Rococo Hair for GM8 and GF8.
A Classic Wooden Bathtub in the Old West style, for Poser and DAZ. With MATs.
A bath is just what your dForce Mountain Trapper will be needing after a long day’s bear-hunting.
There is yet more Pirate themed content going through the DAZ store, this month. Way too much to cover here.
GWR U4 Composite Coach by DryJack, a Victorian railway coach including interior.
A free MarkV WW1 Tank for Poser, with simple texture.
A 1970s Deep Diving Suit by Cybertenko, for M4 and Poser.
Vehicles:
A later 1930s Greyhound cross-country U.S. passenger coach.
Car Rapide for DAZ, a local runabout bus of the sort seen in the Caribbean and Thailand and elsewhere.
Nature and animals:
DA Clydesdale for DAZ Horse 2. Big British working horses of the Midlands and North.
Baxter the British Bulldog for Dog 8 and Bulldog Poses.
Two Track in the Woods for DAZ Studio. This looks usefully generic, handy for everything from hobbit walking-parties to Bigfoot hunters to bird-watching.
Figure addons and helpers:
Free Fine Mesh Eyebrows for La Femme in Poser.
A free Cigarette and holder for iRay. Also a free Lit cigarette and a Lit Cigar for Poser.
A free yard stick Poser prop. Poser Pro has good measurement tools, used by the forensics ‘crime-scene reconstruction’ crowd who use the software, but this offers users a visible alternative.
A pack of Spanish/South American Latin Head Morphs for G8F.
Jog Motions for G3M and the AniMate plugin.
Skate Or DAZ! Pro Skater AniBlocks, for skateboarding characters.
AniBlocks Talking LipSync System & Conversation Generator.
Scripts:
Fix-A-File Script for Poser 12 Early Access, on Windows only it seems. Does useful things like… “Fix absolute file paths, to turn all absolute references inside the file into relative ones, so it’ll open in other machines”.
Materials:
Ghostship2 – Poser 12 Materials. If you had the Poser 11 version of this, then you know how useful these materials from Ghostship will be in Poser 12 Early Access. 311 quality procedural Superfly materials for Poser 12. Superfly is Poser’s implementation of Blender’s Cycles.
Tutorials:
Digital Nature with Ken Gilliland. Three hours with the master of 3D animals.
Textures Universe: Creating and Editing Textures for DAZ Studio and Poser, with Fain.
How to get a bigger Sketch Designer in Poser 11.
Ok, that’s it for August. More picks next month.
NeoWin still winning…
NeoWin Deals still has Poser Pro 11 for $80. It’s starting to look like it’s a perpetual offer from Bondware, the new top-level owners of Poser. You buy the licence there, then take it over here for the downloads.
