The Poser developer team are looking for a Product Manager.
Virtual apartment tour in real-time
Tour a 3D apartment rendered in real-time with the Unreal Engine 4 videogame engine…
GeForce GTX 960
This is interesting, especially if you were looking at buying Reality 4 because you can’t run Octane with Daz Studio. NVIDIA has released a powerful new GeForce GTX 960 slot-in graphics card (review) that should run Octane, and at an ideal $200 price vs. power point. But before you whip out your credit card, just remember to factor in:
* The probable need to upgrade your PC’s power supply unit. Even a new PC probably only came fitted with a wimpy PSU, unless you have a hardcore gaming PC.
* The electric bills that these graphics card beasts run up, once you slot them into a domestic ‘always on’ PC.
* Do you actually have the space and the correct type of slots in the PC case, so you can fit the card in?
Those fans are going to make a fair bit of noise, too, if you pride yourself on how quiet your PC runs.
Stock wig cutouts for Daz and Poser renders
It seems that no-one has ever taken a range of realistic wigs, photographed them pin-sharp and hanging from different angles against a good greenscreen, then used the pictures to create a royalty-free stock library of cut-out hair? With no stands, manniquin heads or other elements showing. Just the hair, looking as though it’s actually sitting on a head and not slumped on a desk. I just can’t find anything like that. A search for “wig” on Thinkstock finds only one suitable ‘isolated’ (cut-out) image, on Shutterstock there’s two, and even those have the shadows and highlights too stark…
In the age of Reality 4, is the ‘bad hair day’ hair we usually have to put up with in 3D renders holding back our art? While also massively boosting the render times, I might add, even if you have software that can ‘grow’ and ‘style’ its own hair. Wouldn’t it be easier for many portrait picture makers to ‘Photoshop on’ some quality hair afterwards, from a good stock collection? And ideally one slanted toward sci-fi and fantasy hair, rather than middle America blow-dry styles taken from the 1977 Hairstylists’ Guide, of the sort that painted stock hair collections seem to favour?
Post-Christmas new content survey: 2015
It’s still a little early in the month, but I’m taking my monthly look at some of most eye-catching content released on the Poser and Daz stores since Christmas:
Steel Town Blast Furnace is large and unusual. Often the sort of setting used at the end of 1980s gangster and cop movies, and some types of superhero movies (Wolverine, Spiderman). Which shows that the pro’s have found it to be a usefully generic setting…
Want the Hulk to come along and “SMASSHHH!!!” your Blast Furnace? Well, just slip the new Ogora the Orc HD into the nearest phone booth for a superhero quick-change and… you might get Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk character. Even as an Orc, he has more character than many of the generic orcs available for Poser and Daz…
The Wild West seems to be deeply unfashionable these days, killed off by self-indulgent dross like the dire Lone Ranger movie and rubbish ‘comedies’ like A Million Ways to Die in the West. But Western Outlaw for Genesis 2 Male looks like a fine outfit, and could fit nicely in a historical scene alongside last month’s DAZ release of the American Bison…
An equally cool new wilderness outfit is for V4, the Pulp Heroes: The Explorer for V4…
Songbird ReMix: Birds of Prey Vol 3, Hawks of the New World offers American Hawks for Poser-only, to the usual superb standard of the Songbird ReMix series…
The toon character Pink is not at all well-served by his initial promo picture on the store. Nor by his ‘search-engine unfriendly’ name. But behind that there’s an interesting-looking aquatic sprogling character from new developer Chk2033, just crying out for immersion in a sparkling Spore-like pond…
Pagan Throne seems a suitable setting for the Winter Birds masked fantasy characters (requires The Owls for V4 and M4)…
If I were making a Doctor Who 3d comic and I wanted a cool new-look Tardis that hadn’t yet been used by anyone else, I might try to adapt and retexture the pods of the new retro-style Cryogenic Chamber from BlueTreeStudio…
Steam Outpost is another in 1971s’s extensive fantasy-architecture series. Nicely Morrowind-meets-Myst. Equally nice is his new steampunk Diesel Daisy…
Also in steampunk, Cybertenko has a rigged Poser Turtle Submersible, a copy of the first submarine in America. This is available free as a static mesh elsewhere, but Cybertenko has obviously done a great job of fully rigging it…
That’s it for now!
Comic Life 3 - for Windows desktop
A new version 3 of Comic Life software has been released, and it’s a desktop Windows version. Comic Life aids you in layout out and lettering a comic book page. Sure you can do this with Photoshop, but it’s much more fiddly and will probably take most people about twice as long. You can also do it with Manga Studio, but that’s software for professional comics artists and there’s a bigger cost and a learning curve. So it’s good to see Comic Life back in the game and on Windows desktop again with a fresh version that works on Windows 8.x.
Something Brewing…
Cartoon Brew Seeks An Associate Editor…
“the animation industry’s most visible news source” seeks “a key member in the website’s development, someone who understands both the practice and business of animation inside-out”.
Renderosity Holiday Giveaway Goodies
Cool nomads
Giant, flocking and interlocking exploration-habitat vehicles. For Antarctica. Presumably they’d basically drive themselves, like the Google Car. A cool concept, visualised in 3D by Henry McKenzie and Artur Kupriichuk.
Sketchup-to-Vue plugin for Sketchup
I see that Vue users have a $50 plugin for Sketchup-to-Vue…
The Sketchup Vue Exporter Plugin (Version 2015) is a Ruby-based script application for Sketchup 7 and later which exports Sketchup models, sun direction, cameras, and animations into Vue format. The Plugin is accessed directly inside of Sketchup under the Plugins menu. When invoked, it will create a Vue .VOB model file complete with full Sketchup model geometries, components, groups and materials along with a Vue Scene Loader file for automatically importing the model, sun direction, camera and animation paths.”
Although bear in mind that, most of the time, a simple .OBJ + textures export from Sketchup will be good enough — and is free.
My December 2014 survey of new DAZ and Poser content
Well, I hope that readers had a Merry Christmas! If Santa only brought you the traditional orange, wooden horse and new pair of socks, then fear not! Because there are plenty of 3D toys to be had online. So here’s my survey of the new 3D content for DAZ Studio and Poser in December. There have recently been plenty of quality Vikings, Minotaurs, Reptilians and more, if you like that sort of character — but these are just the other quality items that caught my eye this month:
Come home to a roaring fire with the Simple Living: Fireplace, a useful freebie for anyone making medieval or Victorian era scenes…
MeMoo HD is a new older woman character for the Genesis 2 Female…
MeMoo HD will also work with the FWSA Keshi Indian Hindu girl character, to age her into an Indian MeMoo character…
And the new Big Beautiful Genesis 2 Female morphs may also be useful for use with completing your full MeMoo HD character…
Alessandro has a new American Bison for DAZ, which works with his popular Look At My Hair plugin for DAZ Studio…
And for your buffalo round-up, stampede scene or even an ecological science survey scene, you might look at the new Indiana Jones Outfit for Genesis 2 Male and Female to fit the bill…
Faverel’s complete Lake Village also includes the dhow-style boat, lake, skydome and a set of night-lights. Larger than than the initial promo picture suggests. This could serve as a fantasy Laketown, a pirate enclave, an offshore trading post, or the raggle-taggle of fishermen’s huts that fringe a city dockside…
Dante 78 has another of his finely made medieval buildings, this time a Medieval Tavern that looks like something out of a Samuel Prout engraving…
The ever-popular Stonemason has a new DAZ interior with his new Contemporary Living…
WhiteMagus has Park Avenue Set III, which could serve as an exterior balcony scene for Stonemason’s Contemporary Living interior…
Jack Tomalin’s Classic Deco Eclectic 2 is the latest in his growing series of Art Deco style 1920/30s interiors…
There’s also a new V4 outfit from the same era as Classic Deco Eclectic, Glad Rags for Victoria 4…
New contemporary street attire is MMCutie Coat and Shorts Set For V4. Although you’ll probably want to swop out the rather basic boots with the much better (and also new) Hot Booties for V4…
Navarian Hair for Genesis is noteable for being an unusual hi-tech sci-fi hair. Not so good for close-up portraits, perhaps, but it looks rather good when you pull the camera out by a few feet…
AntFarm’s Cryptozoic Worm seems like a usefully generic sci-fi standby, a welcome addition to the small range of DAZ/Poser alien planet flora and fauna…
Poisen pays tribute to Lovecraft with his new Cthulhu Dreaming Prop Set in Poser and .obj…
DM’s Eclectica is an elegant retro / steampunk scene with props and lights, with DM’s usual very high level of attention to detail, and to getting the matching light presets right…
Extraordinary League is a set of four new steampunk accessories…
And here’s a nicely whimsical bit of Poser steampunk that I’d overlooked in previous surveys, the Steam DoDo…
Finally, iClone users have a fine new low-poly Devil Cat for iClone, by 3dFoin, along with a basic set of animations. I spent some hard-earned iClone points on this one…
That’s it, look out for more in 2015!
iClone 6 Pro released
iClone 6 Pro is now available via Reallusion (not the DAZ Store, yet). The cheaper Standard version is due in Jan 2015. I see a $109 price for the new Pro 6 version, when I’m logged in to my iClone dashboard.
Cranky Christmas freebies
Meshlab 1.34 beta
Meshlab 1.34 beta is now available. Especially useful for those who need to convert a 3d model from an obscure or unusual format.