All the buttons in Flowscape 1.3, covered, for the first time in a detailed 43-minute walkthrough of the software, aimed at beginners. Free on YouTube.
Release: MagicTints 1.0
Just released, an interesting new “tint transfer” engine for Photoshop called MagicTints 1.0. I especially like the apparently semi-generative ability to…
“iterate through moods, matte color spaces and ideas”
It needs a later CC 2014+ versions of Photoshop and it works as a Panel. There’s a 15-day demo.
I’d just suggest that someone wanting to save $39 could probably wait six months on this. To find that something very similar has been added to G’MIC, and thus to Krita, for free. G’MIC already has 2D style-transfer, auto-colour of line-art, and automatic greyscale-to-colour (see below)… and thus instant-and-acceptable tint-transfer between 2D pictures can’t be far behind.
Cartoon Animator 4: new 360 head tutorials
Whatever you may think about ‘the ultimate price-tag’ on Reallusion’s software, or the radical UI makeover and new render-engines in iClone, as a company they do provide excellent support and tutorials. And the new Cartoon Animator 4 is fine software which is also useful for comics makers of a certain type. Today Reallusion uploaded an hour of detailed new tutorials on the vital skill of how to set up a “360 head” in their new Cartoon Animator 4 software…
Basics of Head Composition in CTA 4, and Full 360 Degree Head Creation Part 1 and Part 2.
There’s also a new 20 minutes video that dives into the details of all the Face Key Editor Enhancements in CTA4, which offers the user detailed creative control over the resulting frame-by-frame animation.
DAZ Studio 4.11 – new strand hair and a denoiser for iRay
The new DAZ Studio 4.11 is available,. It’s been out a few weeks now, but as usual it seems impossible to find a full official changelog via search. The main new things in 4.11 are…
1) a new and much-needed Denoiser for iRay renders, to remove the speckles, grain and fireflies. Several tests I’ve seen suggest this works fairly well.
2) the new dForce-enabled strand hair. I’ve seen some fiddly-looking tutorials, but as yet no one-click preset packs which offer nice furry makeovers for popular DAZ creatures. I assume it increases render time, and apparently it often doesn’t play nicely with the new Denoiser.
Note that the Denoiser is GPU (graphics card) only. Those who, like me, run their occasional iRay renders with Scene Optimizer + CPU seem unlikely to see the Denoiser in action.
Release: Flowscape 1.3
FlowScape 1.3 is out, and the most stable way for purchasers to get this $10 landscape tool is via the Itch downloader/loader.
New are…
* a basic ‘first draft’ implementation of a terrain-sculpting tool. The maker says “ideally you want to sculpt the terrain before you place anything” on it. “Also if you save and reload, it does weird things if you try and sculpt some more.”
* paint paths, which seems to mean that you can easily lay down footpaths and trackways with a paintbrush.
* 12 new skies.
* a collection of ships.
* six “snowy mountain pieces”, for backdrops.
* “lava and ice options”, as well as water.
* more save slots.
* the overlay grid opacity can be changed, which is useful for RPG map makers.
* water can be made more reflective in top-down-RPG views, so it shows up better.
* “pressing SHIFT will let you rotate”, and this seems to mean rotate a prop with the mouse wheel when placing it on the terrain.
Renderosity Summer Sale: 50% off (nearly) the whole store
Summer sale… “50% off Storewide on Renderosity.com”.
Does this also include Poser 11 Pro, I wondered? No, sadly not. It’s still at the $199 it was lowered to immediately Renderosity purchased Poser. That was a nice discount from its previous price, but it hasn’t now been reduced again by 50% to $99. However, you can get upgrades to 11 Pro from any old version of Poser at $99, which is flagged as “60% off”.
What about other big software? Nope, none that I could see. It seems Renderosity no longer carries Corel Painter, Smith Micro’s Motion Comics software, Clip Studio (Manga Studio) etc.
Down in Clearance, one Poser standalone worth having is the ‘Heavenly Zeppelin 2’ by 1971s at a mere $2.79. I picked it up along with Poisen’s Eyeball Garden 2 (plants with eyes on stalks, and two of the newer Nursoda characters I didn’t yet have.
And I was able to use up some slowly-accumulated store credit, and thus got the cart for free. Nice! Onward to Black Friday!
New for Poser and DAZ in June 2019
It’s time for another survey and picks of the new goodies, released this month for use with DAZ Studio and Poser.
Steampunk:
Ancient Atmospheric Diving Suit by Cybertenko.
AS Nocturne luxury airship.
Steam Powered Dirigible for DAZ Studio.
Xigbar for Genesis 8 Male, a freebie with eyepatch and hair. Seems to suit the steampunk airship-captain style. Perhaps a freebie because he resembles a game character? Check that if you want to use him in a commercial comic.
Science fiction:
Project Eden for DAZ Studio. Shown here without textures so you can see what’s going on…
Lunar Hotel for DAZ Studio.
Historical:
A free British Commando for M3. Since the British Army have ‘prior art’ on this outfit, I doubt even commercial use would be infringing, even if it is from a game — as the uploader’s other Wolfenstein uploads seem to suggest it may be. The saved .ZIP needs to be re-named to the .RAR type.
Oxford Classroom for DAZ Studio. A pre-1945 English classroom in the University of Oxford style.
A free ramshackle 17th-19th century Raft with barrels.
Goddess Braids For Genesis 3 And 8 Female, in the ancient Mediterranean style.
Ancient building thatched. Northern Iron Age, and low-poly so one could probably build a village of them in the same scene. The modern-looking square brick chimney would need to be removed for authenticity.
Secret Society Room by Coflek-gnorg, for Poser. A classic 1960’s Bond-style lair for scheming plotters. With more Edwardian style chairs, it could also serve for Sherlock Holmes scenes.
Fantasy:
Gruesome Ghoul for Genesis 8 Male. With a nice ‘Frank Frazetta paperback cover’ look, but also a nod to the H.P. Lovecraft of “Pickman’s Model” and the Dreamlands. The body looks to have had as much design attention as the head.
Medieval River Quarry, a freebie, with a hefty 123Mb download due to “detailed UV-Mapping up to 4096×4096 to allow quality textures”. Would probably look good looming up in a Vue atmosphere.
Characters:
Alt Sanjay 8, a useful generic modern Indian Modi-era guy with lots of suitable body morphs. Requires the more Bollywood-hero Sanjay 8 character and the Genesis 8 Male morph packs for body and head.
Also, the flagship Poser figure La Femme is now at version 1.1 with a variety of updates and tweaks.
Clothing and poses:
Blisstopia dForce Cloak and Bodysuit for G3F/G8F. Looks useful for a wide range of scenes and genres.
A free Genesis 8 Male Hawking Pose for the ancient sport of hawking. Not something you see every day.
Toon:
Scampixie Pranx 2 for Poser 11 and DAZ Studio. With a freebie Braid Hair and free Chibi. Also a free American Majorette costumes and American Marching Band pack. Also some free Poses.
Toon Hero for Genesis 8 Male with matching ‘airbrushed toony’ body texture.
Boss Dog for Poser. Requires Bulldog and the Poser 8 Dog. Possibly released a while back, but newly noticed by me at CG Bytes. Should toon well with Poser 11’s comic-book mode.
Animations for Nursoda’s Kelm and Bong. Given that poses for one Nursoda character also often fit another, I’m guessing these may also more-or-less work on his other characters too, such as Dr. Pitterbill?
Storybook:
Flying car/boat, albeit low-poly. Possibly too good to be true, at just $5 on CG Trader. Do some research before you use it in a commercial storybook.
More believable Genesis 8 Young Child Poses from BBarbs, such as this…
Girl’s Clothing Store and Caribbean Village exterior street to serve as an exterior.
A free Duck Buoy for V4, K4, A4.
Animals:
Hedgehog Rigged. I’m pretty sure DAZ Studio already has something very like this. But it may be of interest to some.
European Otter in HD. A ridiculous price of $249, but I’m including this here in the hope someone might be inspired to make a DAZ otter to showcase the new dForce strand hair, perhaps even give it wet/dry looks (it swims underwater).
Songbird ReMix Ostriches, all five species. “Completely updated in June 2019 to include a new file structure with native versions for both Daz Studio and Poser.”
A prehistoric underwater Drepanasis.
Landscapes:
3D Tropical Holiday beach for Vue 7 or higher.
Mountain Set by ShaaraMuse3D. HD micro-landscapes resembling what you’d see on the rocky floor at an old iron foundry, or in the scree of a high volcanic mountain landscape.
Utilities:
RSSY Hair Converter from Victoria 4 to Genesis 8 Female. Appears to be fairly easy and semi-automatic.
Tutorials:
How to Create Sci-fi Special Effects.
How to Make Amazing PBR Materials for DAZ, using Substance Alchemist.
That’s all my picks for this month. More in July!
PoseNet 2.0
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Google has just open sourced its PoseNet 2.0 pose-detection magic. Which suggests we might get a simple affordable “video to Poser/DAZ pose preset” software, in due course. Without having to stick day-glo markers over clothing and faces. I don’t know of any such thing currently, that’s markerless and sub $50 and works without an enormously expensive iPhone or similar kit.
Apparently Disney also has markerless motion-capture for faces that focuses on the jaw. It detects skin deformations around the jaw, as a proxy of jaw bone position.
Release: Moho 13
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Just when you thought Smith Micro was getting out of creative software, with the sale of Poser… “Introducing Moho 13 Animation Software” (YouTube Playlist link). Yes, Smith Micro have just issued a new release of what was formerly Anime Studio, their 2D animation creation software. It’s been three years since the last update. Note that it is not to be confused with the similarly-named 3D modelling software Modo.
I was most interested in the new “Enhanced 3D object support”, though I discovered it to be a “Moho 13 Pro only” feature. Judging by the video for this feature, the user can import and light/shade a simple 3D object in .OBJ, such a soccer ball. But I saw no demo of any exciting real-time automatic application of believable ink lines along the edge line of the ball, akin to Poser’s Comic-book mode or SketchUp. I know there is a Poser import option, but I’ve never seen anyone demo it by giving an imported character more than a very basic line style.
As such, Moho is mildly interesting. But a 2D animator should carefully evaluate the $400 Moho Pro 13 against Reallusion’s latest $199 Cartoon Animator 4 Pipeline (i.e.: Pro) version. The latter is much better supported by add-on content packs, including packs of pre-made motions and characters, albeit mostly costly ones. But Moho seems to have a more ‘pro’ feature set for animation, which may appeal more to trained animators who can make their own content and then make it all flow smoothly. And the Poser import may be useful for you, in that respect.
Poser sold to Renderosity
Poser now belongs to Renderosity, according to both Renderosity and a Smith Micro press release…
Bondware Inc., the parent company of Renderosity.com, has announced the acquisition of the Poser software product line … The acquisition is effective immediately.
William W. Smith Jr., President and CEO of Smith Micro, said Poser… “has had a long history with Smith Micro and I am pleased to see it going to a long-term partner in Renderosity.”
One immediate drawback seems to be that the cheaper Poser 11 Standard has been withdrawn from sale at Renderosity.
Adobe Fresco
Interesting news. Adobe is preparing a Krita-killer, “Adobe Fresco” (formerly Project Gemini), a new dedicated painting and drawing software. It’s a very crowded marketplace they’ll be launching it into, possibly later this year. There’s Autodesk Sketchbook (sort-of free), Procreate and Artrage (paid, the last time I looked), and the expensive and overly-complex Clip Studio (Manga Studio), along with many more of that type — and even more if you count the Android apps (I like the Japanese Tayasui Sketches, on the Kindle Fire).
How are Adobe going to compete with Krita’s excellence and its “free” tag? At a $10 per month subscription? Initially Fresco will only be for use on dedicated “stylus and touch devices”. My guess is they’re going to use their muscle to partner with the hardware makers and then optimize the heck out of it to run on specific popular art-creation devices. Perhaps also they’ll assume that a “many cooks spoil the broth” Krita will be made ever more complex to use, thus open the way to a radically simpler and friendlier interface…
StyleBlit
StyleBlit, a new… “style-transfer algorithm that can deliver high-quality stylized renderings in real-time on a single-core CPU [and] does not involve any computationally expensive optimization”.
Stylistically the results are still way too flickery for animation, unless perhaps you have an audience used to that rough style. But it shows the state-of-the-art in NPR, and given Adobe’s involvement it could soon find its way to 3D-to-2D rendering for comics production…
And if the maths is open access / open source then perhaps we may also see it in Krita / G’MIC, at some point.
Blunder
So, with the final-final-really-final honest-it’s-true-at-last Blender 2.8 to launch over the release-horizon in July 2019, I decided to test the 2.8 near-final beta on Windows 8.1 64-bit.
I was looking forward to at least getting a glimpse of the new “complete 2D animation toolset” Grease Pencil module, with 3D interfacing and complete with a dedicated UI workspace template. I don’t care about the animation, but I was interested in comics stills production and how fiddly it might be compared with the ease-of-use with Poser. I was also curious about the Eevee matcap feature, though apparently the Eevee toon shaders are not yet implemented. The simple Sculpting UI workspace template also looked worth a brief try.
But, sadly, the current Blender 2.8 beta crashes my Windows display driver every time it starts to load. Then it refuses to load anything, and just sits there as a blank bare window and loads no UI elements.
Oh well, I guess my system is no longer powerful enough to run Blender. Probably because the… “minimum graphics card requirements for Blender have increased to OpenGL core 3.3.” And the new plugins, such as Toonkit for Cycles 1.3, will only run with Blender 2.8. As I can’t afford a shiny new £500 graphics card + a new PSU to power the new Blender, it looks like Blender is not for me. Despite being free, Blender has now made itself very expensive, both in terms of time-to-learn and its hardware baseline.
Sonata – new comic, made with Poser
Brian Haberlin’s new Sonata comic-book epic, made with the Poser software and content, has the first issue out and is set to rapidly release further issues over the summer. Issue #1 has had many favourable reviews. It’s broadly a sort-of ‘steampunk girl meets Avatar planet’ setting, and if you’re familiar with the Poser fantasy characters and buildings then you’ll recognise many from the likes of 1971s and others being put to good use. The first issue looks great, is nicely paced, and introduces some vivid characters.
Sonata #1 is apparently being reprinted in paper with a better cover, such is the collector demand, and as #2 and #3 gear up for release.
However, you can get them on Amazon Kindle as digital downloads.
Sonata #1 (June 2019).
Sonata #2 (July 2019)
Sonata #3 (August 2019)
Moon miner
Found in a 1992 NASA book on Space Resources, an amusing staff cartoon which makes the point about how the 19th century would have visualised mining on the lunar surface. And thus that the 20th century can’t easily visualise how the late 21st and 22nd century Moon colonies will go about such things.
Since it’s public domain, it might inspire those looking for a starting-point for a ‘steampunk miner’ concept, for realisation in 3D as Poser/DAZ character content?
Here we can also see the difference between the really terrible scans that some of these old books and suchlike get, at the online archives, and a good scan of the same page. We need to start treating our vintage space art with more archival respect.