There’s a new 70-minute series on YouTube from Tony Vilters, Poser2Blender. It appears to be of use to figure-based content-makers, rather than those wanting to get a scene to Blender for NPR rendering. But there are also some interesting observations on how Poser exports .OBJs files for figures.
The “Poser 11 Pro for $80” offer has been rolled over for a fourth week, and now has six days left to run. Worth it, I would say, even if you only want the mega-bundle of free content. SAK Robokitty alone is worth $35. To be found in the ZLegacyContent_Poser-Cartoons.zip freebies and once installed is found hidden away under “Toys”.
Not finished. Some additional manual inking, to fix bits of broken or missing lineart, would obviously be needed here.
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There’s some interesting movement from AKVIS, makers of rather over-priced but robust single-purpose graphics plugins.
1) Their AKVIS Decorator 8.0 is now finally ready for prime-time, having introduced a 3x speed boost with version 7.0 just before Christmas 2019, and their version 8.0 in early 2020 polished that up even further. It works as a Photoshop plugin and replaces clothing and wallpaper while retaining shadows, folds etc…
I’ve given the Photoshop plugin version a good test in PhotoLine, and it now works fine and fast, having previously been very slow. It can now take only seven seconds to replace a dress at 2400px, compared to many minutes before. Just remember to tweak your material scaling up to 150% or above, for a huge speed boost. The higher the scaling, the faster it runs.
2) Their AKVIS Charcoal 5.0, which I’ve not been impressed with in the past, now runs on a completely “new photo-to-drawing conversion algorithm” as of the new 5.0 (29th July 2020) version. A change which kind of confirms my feeling that previous versions were lacking something. Again, I’ve tested the latest version, since they have ten-day demos. As you’d expect from the name, it tries to convert your cute cat / boyfriend / selfie photo etc into a mixed charcoal/chalk drawing. It’s fast and on my test Poser comic-book render I found a few of the thirty or so presets that I could just about imagine making a stylised horror comic with. Most were too scribbly and the scribbles had no respect for the eyes, though, and did little better than the free G’MIC. AKVIS needs a “detect and partly protect the eyes” module in the algorithm, I’d suggest. Still, I was able to brew a pleasing custom preset fairly quickly…
…and I like the software far more than before. This picture is still sharp at the edges, because Charcoal was running on a masked PNG render. Provided you want heavily ‘smudged and gauzy’, with a little work it could give you a style that could work for a Halloween ghost tale. There may also be some potential for hatching into shadows, but I didn’t immediately see it other than in some promisingly-labelled sliders. Otherwise, for charcoal also look at the free G’MIC plugins before you spend $50 to buy this. The only drawback there is that, last time I heard, the G’MIC suite is for Krita, GIMP, Paint.NET… but not for Photoshop. G’MIC for Photoshop will likely happen, but it could be a while yet.
The cost is the main drawback with AKVIS, with each plugin costing around $50. $49 for Charcoal, and $54 for Decorator. And even at that price, neither are commercial-use and amazingly they’re feature-restricted unless you go for the even more expensive Business version. For example, the $49 standard version of Charcoal won’t let you select an earlier frame unless you have the $89 Business version.
It’ll be interesting to see if AKVIS Watercolor gets the overhaul treatment next, as the February 2020 changelog suggests it’s about where Decorator and Charcoal’s changelogs were a while back.
The real-time engine U-Render can now run in the Cinema 4D viewport. Just released, U-Render 2020.07.6 is a “really real-time” WYSIWYG render engine for Cinema 4D and runs on OpenGL. It costs around $350.
With 2020.07.6… “it is no longer necessary to install the Windows-only standalone renderer” as everything is integrated into Cinema 4D as “a viewport renderer, making it possible to see a live render directly within Cinema 4D”.
This change apparently also makes U-Render accessible to Mac users, at least for now — Apple is widely said to be set to ditch OpenGL entirely from Macs. However, Windows users should also note a problem — U-Render only appears to work on the toxic tangle that is Windows 10. Which means I can’t test it, even though there’s a demo available. But I wonder if the viewport integration has now solved this Windows problem for Windows 8.1 users?
All this is theoretically interesting to me as there’s still a way to get Poser 11 scenes to Cinema 4D, via the free PoserFusion plugin. That still works fine, for those who have the required bits to hand. The other question is, will the latest U-Render run in the older version of Cinema 4D required by PoserFusion (which was R19, when last heard about).
The other question is… how much extra the U-Render’s OpenGL real-time would actually add to an imported Poser scene… who knows? By that time the materials would have been through two conversion processes: Poser to C4D (automatic) and then C4D to U-Render (automatic). It might then be more trouble and cost than it’s worth to fiddle about for hours fixing skin and eyes and the like.
Still, if we could get a direct Poser 12 to U-Render plugin, ideally at a sub $100 price, that could be an interesting thing to have in terms of making Poser 12 work more like iClone. I haven’t heard anything about that happening, it’s just my complete guess. The less expensive route to WYSIWYG full-viewport real-time might be to plug some sort of stable ‘Eevee port’ from Blender into Poser 12. It would presumably be no use to ‘send Poser scene to Blender, for real-time display in Eevee’, since Blender is such a fast-moving target and the UI is still very daunting even now.
But judging by the recent call for Poser 12 beta-testers, it’s Unity that’ll be the real-time destination, not Blender. Unity is also free. It remains to be seen if Poser 12 users will be sent into a full “OMG, I have to learn to drive yet another nuclear submarine!” Unity UI, or into a “we’ve cunningly hidden all the complex bits” Poser-friendly Unity viewport.
Currently on a modest 30% sale at the Blender Marketplace, the third-party Sketch Style add-on for Blender. Basically, it can turn Blender into a sort of basic ‘home-brew SketchUp’ and $16 seems quite reasonable for that functionality. Especially as it’s apparently relatively easy to use…
You basically press a SINGLE button and BAMM! You’re ready to render. All the materials in your objects have just been overridden by the SKETCH STYLE material.
That’s what I like to hear from software. No need to fiddle around with nodes and Freestyle. Though the add-ons styles are rather CAD-ish and limited. Certainly far more limited than if you had SketchUp and undertook a thorough scouring of the Web looking for free Sketch Style presets…
Of course the problem with SketchUp is that it doesn’t play at all nicely with Poser or DAZ, which is why you won’t see any such bridges for that — despite the quite nice sketched-line and ink-wash effects that can be had from 3D in SketchUp. These quick and client-pleasing effects are why the architects use it.
Apparently there may be something like the Sketch Style add-on coming natively in a future Blender but, judging by the demo I’ve seen, it appears to be very early days on that.
BEER is now moving ahead again, having moved past the half-way point on its crowdfunding journey. BEER aims to make a relatively easy-to-use Blender plugin for stylised rendering output. That means render types that emulate hand-drawn and hand-painted art, ultimately. They’re now into week 8 of a 10 week development cycle, after a long period of fund-raising. The drooling masses want photo-real babes and few people are interested in arty rendering, so it appears to have been a long-haul for the BEER team. But to reach the half-way mark is a good sign. They hope that the other ten weeks of work can be input when BEER is fully funded at $20k. Instead of nodes, in BEER there are building blocks that make sense to artists…
BEER runs with NPR features as the building block of a material. Diffuse [basic material] is a feature, hatching is a feature, rim light is a feature. We stack these NPR features to make a final material.
Time for another survey of new content for Poser and DAZ Studio, and also to see if there’s also anything interesting for Vue, Unity, Blender, Cartoon Animator and suchlike. The last such survey here was 15th June, so it’s been nearly eight weeks. What goodies have those weeks brought? Read on…
As usual, freebies are only covered here if they’re commercial use, or are such obvious fan-art (e.g. Star Trek) that no-one would accidentally slip them into a comic or suchlike.
Science-fiction:
Sci-Fi Abandoned Outpost and Sci-Fi Reactor Room.
Container Houses Set from 1971s.
Coflek-Gnorg’s free Vac U Bot.
A free Cyberchair.
Landtrak Explorer Transportation for Poser. Verging on the ridiculous, but at the same time believable.
Sci-Fi Industrial Complex for SketchUp.
Nibir Auditorium. I’m fairly sure this is a re-listing. But a good place to observe your herd of Elder Gods from.
GP Elder God HD. Definitely not a Lovecraftian Elder God, but a pretty good monster or alien herd-beast.
Steampunk:
A free Prohibition Corner. A 1930s gangster distillery, but also useful “clutter props” for a steampunk mad scientist lab.
MS20F Tower of Time. Also available for Vue.
Mercer 1911 for Poser.
Toon:
Ronk Aednik. Gardening addons and a cute snail, for Nursoda’s Ronk. Also free from Nursoda, his Brom Blackberry.
Need strange alien intruders in Ronk’s garden? Alien Toon Plants for Unity. I have no idea if it’s possible to get these out of Unity and into Poser or DAZ, but they’re cute enough to try.
SVs Whimsical Mushrooms, now also for DAZ iRay.
A Moon Modern Bus Stop and bus, in a 60s retro toon style. See also the matching Moon Modern Astrial Glider and Moon Modern Skypads.
All Stars Prospector and All Stars Hunter for CrazyTalk Animator.
Poncho, a toon donkey for Poser and DAZ. Also has an animations pack.
Frogol HD which requires Bullwarg HD for Genesis 8 Male and you’ll probably also want Bullwarg’s Alternate Skins.
Gand for Hiro 3. Brother of Dody for Aiko 3.
A free Basic Pure Shader Pack for Poser. “Color shades are resourced from searches to make sure they were as pure as I could find.” These look like they might be useful for the Poser Comic Book mode. Open Source, so you can tinker and release your own variants.
EasyPose spring and hand for DAZ Studio.
Storybook:
HiveWire Unicorn for the HiveWire Horse.
DForce Moon Harlequin for G8F.
Free EA Balloons for G8F.
Historical:
A photoreal Railway Coaling Stage from DryJack. Also useful for mines, and perhaps for re-fuelling your giant steampunk airship.
Jacobean English Dining Table Set for DAZ Studio.
Architectural Glass Shader Presets for iRay.
Victorian and Edwardian Staffordshire-style tile pattern shaders.
The restored Poserworld store has the Anglo Saxon Warrior for Michael 3 back on sale again, and at a mere $5.
dForce Tundra Wanderer for Genesis 8 Male.
Oktoberfest Waitress for G8F, a Bavarian beer-cellar type outfit.
A free Deutscher Fischkutter (Small German fishing trawler) for Poser. And ze secret spy radio.
First World War listening platform. Because it was kind of useful to know when there was a fleet of Zeppelin airships on the way.
1930s Ford Rat Rod and Buggy for SketchUp.
MS20F Lost City in OBJ by London224.
Animals:
iREAL Animated Flocks of Birds.
Rainbow Trout Fish Model for Poser.
A prehistoric trilobite set for Unity.
Stylised Ice Age Rhinoceros in OBJ. Said to be “game-ready”, but no mention of being rigged. I guess game-makers want to rig their own way.
Gopher hills for Poser, with detailed spoil heaps.
Nature’s Wonders Beekeeping and Nature’s Wonders Bee. Need a place for your beehives? Simply Grass – Grass Plants and Clumps.
Cockatoos of the World and there are also three other packs.
Appaloosa Overlays for the HiveWire Horse and Appaloosa Overlays 2.
Figures:
A free Ball Joint Doll for G8F.
Skydive M4 V4 poses. Not easy to motion-capture!
Free new face shapes for La Femme and L’Homme, the base figures that ship with Poser 11.
Also loads of Chinese wrestling, and yet more pirates, on the DAZ Store.
Scripts:
Toggle Visibility All Lights for Poser. Instantly make any guide-wires for lights invisible in Preview, without actually turning any lights off.
Poser to Clip Studio – the solution. Send a posed clothed figure from Poser to Clip Studio, with no hassle at all.
The free FreeBass MAT Palette. “A tool to catalog / compare up to 36 individual MATs on a single prop”.
Render Doctor for DAZ Studio. Very confusingly explained, but at its core it appears to be for those times when you have a big scene with 50+ cameras set up all over it. Then you want a script to automatically make a render from each camera in turn. Not for animation, and perhaps most useful for comics makers?
Tutorial:
Building Poses To Market, a 30 minute tutorial on making poses that will pass inspection on the stores. For DAZ Studio.
Poses That Stand Out : Posing in DAZ Studio.
HAIR : Community Workshop Tutorial.
Visual Storytelling : Essential Building Blocks.
That’s all my picks for now, more in due course. Possibly at the start of September.
Adobe Research has given online demos of a possible new Adobe application called Structure. It’s working now in a basic way and is generative iterative software that works directly on a 3D model. Take a 3D model of a sofa, and randomise it — plumper cushions, more cushions, make it wider, less cushions, curvier arm rests. There is no need to edit the mesh directly. The user selects which of the new random variants they like, then runs the process again. Thus they can more or less work toward generating their “ideal sofa”. Sounds fun, like some of the old generative Kai-type tools but for 3D, though currently it’s still an R&D project from the labs.
They’re also experimenting with rendering from 3D straight to vector graphics, for Adobe Illustrator to then apply a line-stroke to it. But why not just do the lineart in the 3D application, in real-time, like Poser 11 does? I guess the answer is that Illustrator gives you more line-type choices. This would be most interesting to me if I never had to see/learn the Illustrator UI, and instead Illustrator’s line-stroking services were just called in to the 3D software. To be exposed there as a little user-friendly panel — Illustrator as just another possible render-engine.
Line stroke types would be an interesting thing to add to Poser 12, actually — allow the user to make basic changes to the type of line being used by Comic Book Preview mode to “ink” the 3D figure. One can sort of do that already, by using the sketch render on lineart in Poser, and it can get so fast that it is almost real-time. But it would be nice to have a choice of line-types for inking, from within a neat drop-down placed on the Comic Book Preview mini-panel. Perhaps: plain black ink; dotted line; coloured ink (red, blue, rainbow); fat and curvy; basic rough pencil; and basic rough charcoal.
Ah, so the $15 Japanese DAZtoBlender8 plugin is the new official DAZ Blender plugin.
It’s been taken off sale at Gumroad, and the maker states there that… “DazToBlender is now available for free in DAZ 3D.” He also reports that there’s been a slight change due to the swop-over and name-change, and… “Props from Renderotica cannot be [used with] the version published on the DAZ 3D site.” The trade-off is that in DAZ’s hands the plugin appears to have been quickly extended to supporting transfer of Genesis 3 as well as 8.
The last non-DAZ developer version was 2020-07-01 | Version 1.9.3.4, then newly supporting Blender 2.83.
Another interesting item to note is that, now this is with DAZ… “This project is open source.” That’s from the DAZ Store page.
I was pleased to find a new YouTube video from the 3D Comic Creator, “DAZ Studio To Blender To Freestyle For Inking Your Comic”. He shares an in-depth 90-minute workflow for taking a DAZ Studio character into Blender and wrangling Freestyle lineart onto it. It’s clearly explained and he’s a good presenter.
I’m not sure I’d want to go through all that pain and intense fiddly-ness, though. Just to get what Poser 11’s Comic Book mode / Sketch Designer can output ‘at the drop of a hat’ in real-time. But it’s interesting to see how the most advanced DAZ users are trying to make artwork for comics. And as Freestyle is currently something of a “moving target”, along with the rest of Blender, there’s always the possibility that Freestyle and other NPR aspects of Blender will start to become easier and more automatic to use, in future. But for now the problem with Freestyle is that it’s old, and thus can only use one CPU thread. It’s not multi-threaded. Nor can it work with alpha-channels.
It’s very early days, but a better option might be a project called BEER/Malt that intends to try making NPR easier to get from Blender. Another hopes to add an easy SketchUp-like ‘sketched outlines’ capability to the default install of Blender (something you can only do with a paid plugin at present). Although both have very primitive demos at present.
The Poser Pro 11 for $80 offer has been extended another seven days. It currently has six days left to run. A bargain, even if you only want the incredible bundle of free royalty-free content that comes with it.
Phew! I’ve just added to final touches to the update and refresh of this blog, checking and fixing this blog’s pages titled “Poser: the missing training DVD” and “DAZ Studio : the missing training DVD”, which have video and other vital tutorial links for newcomers.
The whole blog has thus now been overhauled and link-checked. The Technical Search and another page have also been newly added. The blog should now be good for another 18 months or so, before it needs another check-up, though of course the links in the many posts can’t be checked. You may still find broken links in old posts. And of course, a release of Poser 12 (September 2020, for the back-to-school crowd?) might require a whole new Poser 12 scripts page relatively soon.
Don’t forget, I’m on Patreon and am happy to see any new patrons there.
This blog’s “Stuff for free” page has had its download links updated. The three main free models are now together in a master .ZIP file, which is on Dropbox. This .ZIP should be operating in ‘shared’ mode, and thus be downloadable for anyone who follows the link.
Here’s a quick demo for Tom, who asked about the automatic hatch-shading of Poser imports in MotionArtist…
This is my new “Captain Bromley” M3 head, and you can see that MotionArtist has added hatching in the right places, but it’s not very convincing. Here is a screenshot of the basic controls you have on import…
Basically, you make a 2048px screenshot from this rather clunky little Poser scene mini-viewer. There appears to be zero control over lighting. The screenshot gets inserted into the timeline and.ore the current comics panel, and then you exit the mini-viewer. Fine for making up a quick ‘motion storyboard’ to a deadline, as a guide for filming a scene with human actors, but not for a finished motion-comic. For that you would render in Poser, and import the render, not the raw scene.
DAZ now has a new open-source DAZ to Cinema 4D Bridge, and it’s free. It transfers “Genesis 8 and 3 content” from DAZ 4.10 onwards, into seemingly any version of Cinema 4D from R15 onwards. It will also “Transfer Figures/Props/Environments”, but judging by the description it sounds like the poses don’t get sent. Facial morphs do, though. With the Poser equivalent, the whole scene is sent to C4D, poses and all.
Scrolling down the page a bit reveals a family of such plugins, also free. Maya, Blender, 3DS Max.
The Blender one is interesting, potentially making a DAZ figure real-time in Eevee? Yes, it seems so…
“Supported Blender Render Engines: Eevee …”
There’s no manual download of these new Bridge plugins, and the install has to be done through the DAZ Install Manager. Once installed they’re then found under: Scripts > Bridges. YouTube has new tutorials on their use.