There’s to be a free Poser 2014 webinar with Steve Cooper, Senior Product Manager at Smith Micro Software. The one-hour live webinar will walk you though the new features in Poser 10 and Poser Pro 2014, on 23rd May 2013.
Goth girls for DAZ and Poser: survey
Here’s a survey of contemporary modern goth girls for Daz Studio and Poser. No medieval armour, fantasy vampires, s&m lingerie, or Victorian-era frumpery — just a focus on a more contemporary look…
Characters for V4:
Emily Gothic expansion for Emily
Lilah for V4 and A4…
Clothing:
Vast amounts to choose from, but here’s a core starter pack.
Goth Chick for Genesis (DAZ Studio 4.5) is flexible dance-club style goth outfit…
For a scene in colder climes, or perhaps a visit to a chilly crypt in search of cultists, try Bunny Fashion (requires Victoria 4.2 Morphs++). There are now a variety of texture addons for this…
Gothic Lilipop outfit for V4 and A4 is a little more cosplay…
As is the Delerium outfit for V4 and A4, which has some quality free gothic textures…
Lots of fine textures and details in the new Gothic Texture Expansion for Ooh La La…
Dark Rose for V4 and A4 is a bit quirky and has a variety of texture expansions…
Hoodlum for V4 and A4 is purrfect for exploring the catacombs…
Set two in the Urban Fae pack is goth…
… and there’s a free texture makeover for Urban Fae which has a cool lower set (swop out the pink for grey or white)…
Hair:
Chilli Hair is a convincing contemporary street goth look.
Piercings:
Dead World Piercings for Genesis (DAZ Studio 4.5)
Boots:
Overknee Lace-up Boots and the Hot Boots expansion…
Teodora and Saraid Boots for V4 A4 are more your standard shoe-shop style goth boots…
That’s it!
Famous faces in 3D
FoRender is starting a series of complete Victoria 4 characters for Daz and Poser who look like famous actresses. The first is Restless for V4. I don’t recognise her, but apparently she is modelled after a Hollywood actress who many will know. You can suggest/vote for further V4 “famous” characters to be created in 3D by FoRender, here.
Poser Pro 2014 announced, priced and dated
Smith Micro have just officially announced Poser Pro 2014, and they’ve even priced and dated it: 21st May 2013!
Here are the new features, with my comments on each:
* There’s a new Pro-version only “Fitting Room”… “to convert your existing clothing and props to fit any figure”. Useful, although third-party software such as CrossDresser (my review) already does that quite well and also works seamlessly for DAZ Studio too. Plus a related… “Morph Brush now supports Sag, Tighten and Loosen so clothing works better”. Poke-through, begone! Maybe.
* “Pixar Subdivision Surfaces for fast and efficient scene building” This means you can change the density of the surfaces on your model, by making the mesh looser or tighter. Looks like an on-the-fly polygon-reduction system, and one you can apply to any bit of a 3D model. Nice. Not sure how many times I’d use it. If I ever had a scene that heavy then I’d break it into background, foreground, character, and then composite their multiple renders together in Photoshop.
* “Bullet Physics for Soft Body Dynamics, Rigid Body and Hair.” Nice, for the small handful of serious Poser animators.
* A new “Comic Book Preview Mode” for color and B&W cartoon illustration and animation. A bit more on this one: “This feature will enable you to create comic art with fantastic line control and color, or clean black and white outlines with persistent shading even when rotating or animating your point of view.” Plus some new semi-toon characters which will ship with the software.
Sounds cool, especially if we can tweak it and can make share-able presets. The existing sketch mode in Poser can be made to produce rather nice effects. But I’ve yet to see a useful straight comic-book filter from any software, and I’ll be surprised if Poser 2014 manages to finally get it right.
* “Interactive Raytrace Preview.” Grainy real-time preview in a tiny window, but it looks really useful in terms of seeing what your render is actually going to look like, and as such could save a lot of time. Reducing the amount of wasted “fiddle-about-with-it time” can only be good, since that’s a real drawback in using Poser and DAZ Studio compared to iClone.
* “OpenGL Speed Optimization.” Nice. It was a bit sticky and slow, for me, so improvements are welcome. Not sure it’ll be as lovely-looking and responsive as DAZ Studio 3′s implementation of real-time Open GL, but we can hope.
And of course, the ever-present promise of faster rendering…
* “The Firefly render engine has been optimized for faster performance when Raytracing.”
So for me, the new version boils down to: it may render a bit faster, it has a useful real-time preview, and the comic-book filter might be cool. The real-time preview window looks like the must-have “killer feature”.
Anyway, judge for yourself. Here’s the official video for the new features of Poser Pro 2014…
Cure Drosell – free robo character
New free robo character over at FoRender, for Poser and Daz…
Keep in mind that this is based off a famous Japanese cartoon character owned by Disney/Toei Animation Co., so can’t be used commercially unless you want Disney lawyers knocking on your door.
Free interface plugin Look At My Hair
The slick new DAZ Studio 4.5 hair-growth plugin Look At My Hair now has a new free player that integrates right into DAZ 4.5…
“integrated in the DAZ Studio interface, the Look at my Hair Player allows you to load most pre-made Look at my Hair presets or .duf scenes, modify color and shader properties, hair count, thickness and render!”
Quality new sci-fi content
Lots of great SF 3D content appearing at the moment. Perhaps it’s something to do with the massive comet that’s headed our way later this year! Stonemason has just released the latest addition to his superb set of sci-fi environments. The latest is a set of SF consoles…
Looks great, but I do wish that DAZ and Poser could do glowing objects more easily, spilling light into the air around them. You can add glow after the render, in Photoshop + a few filters, of course. But it would be nice to make a prop or fabric glow as easily as you can in iClone.
The new consoles complement Stonemason’s recent Sector 15 interior, his Cryotube, and his Cryo Environment deck…
I also note that DarioFish has a nice new set of Mass Effect -style aliens for DAZ Genesis, the “HFS Races”, which keep on getting better. The latest Iradian species looks especially professional…
Iridian Poser materials free here.
ArtFarm’s recent Zorn alien would complement the Iradian nicely.
Talking of comets, in advance of the huge interest there’s going to be in comets later this year, someone like Stonemason needs to do a quality “comet rider” sci-fi kit, with an awesome comet, and a mission craft to investigate it.
Poser vs. Vue
3d fantasy artist DeeDee has a very interesting real-world comparison between Poser and Vue as a render…
Free official Poser webinar
Smith Micro is putting on a free online seminar (or ‘webinar’) on 11th April 2013. It’s part two of Steve Cooper’s “Getting Started in 3D with Poser“, and looks at the real basics…
* what’s in the included free content and how to find it
* how to pose and dress both Miki and Tyler, and customize them
* the basics of rendering, turning your 3D scene into a 2D picture.
You can get a feel for the webinar format by looking at the archived webinars, including part one of “Getting Started in 3D with Poser”.
Reality 3 released – discounts, podcast
There’s a new 3D Art magazine podcast: an interview with Paolo Ciccone, author of the new Reality 3 rendering plugin for Poser, which links Poser to the free LuxRender rendering engine.
Reality 3 + Poser image.
After a long wait Reality 3 for Poser is actually available to buy now, with a $20 discount until the 5th of May 2013!
DAZ Studio users already have Reality 2 available now, with Reality 3 for DAZ Studio announced but not yet dated as far as I know. I’m guessing possibly August 2013?
Kimberly – new semi-toon character from 3DU
A super new semi-toon character from toon specialists 3D Universe, Kimberly for Genesis (DAZ Studio only), available now.
Vue 11: Renderosity review
A Renderosity staffer reviews Vue Xtream 11, the top version of the natural landscape rendering software. The blurb for the lesser Vue 11 Studio version ($399) claims… “extended Poser/DAZ integration” and that it will “Load and render Poser characters”. Hopefully that latter feature isn’t limited to the 64-bit version, as it was in Vue 10.
Imploo Explorer spacesuit
A very nice new semi-toon spacesuit, Imploo Explorer, for the new Imploo character. Personally I’m not keen on the Imploo, it lacks something when compared to the appeal of Nursoda’s creations and the skin textures are Poser-only. The developer obviously has great hopes of it, but I can’t see it catching on if neither the textures nor the poses work in DAZ.
But this is a great suit, and it should hopefully be adaptable to other Poser and DAZ Studio characters with Crossdresser if there’s an Imploo licence or a close preset…
I’d love to see it officially made available for other semi-toon characters too.
