Added to my Technical Search engine, the new dedicated Krita Scripting site for Python. The Technical Search now indexes 45 useful technical pages, sites and forums likely to interest Poser and DAZ scripters and seekers of technical tips. To be used in conjunction with a local keyword search of an unpacking of the Smith Micro Forums complete and the archive of the old Runtime DNA forums.
Monthly Archives: August 2021
Poser 12 Early Access - 12.0.617
There’s a new Poser 12 Early Access version, available now. The last one looked at here was Poser 12.0.498 (dated 29th April). It’s now 12.0.617 (dated 3rd August 2021). The latest Poser 12 is still in Early Access, but the changelog shows a lot of activity and I also know there’s been even more behind the scenes.
So, looking at the Changelog, what do users have…?
Startup:
A number of fixes for quicker and smoother startup and “Fixed startup select to ‘Body’ when a main figure is loaded”. The default factory launch-state figure is now clothed… “Default scene launches La Femme figure with clothes.”
Library:
Lots of fixes and tweaks, things like “Library Search no longer returns duplicate results” and “Crash avoided on launch when library search set to NONE”.
Materials:
“Material Room significant speed improvements when displaying texture previews.” Nice, probably especially so if you’re developing clothing or materials makeover sets for Poser.
Real-time Comic Book:
Looks like some unspecified back-end change slightly dinged Comic Book Preview, but it’s now been fixed…
“OpenGL Comic Book Preview no longer clips to black [when] adjusting the camera hither/yon parameter.” and “Comic Book Preview’s Geometric Edge Line is no longer turned off, when Draw Last is checked.”
Plus many repairs of temporarily broken bits (some broken by Windows 10 updates, rather than the developers). One small Mac fix. More tweaks on the “Poser 12 Japanese localization”, no doubt useful for the large cohort of Japanese users.
Ajax Spaceman
I forgot to mention this freebie in my monthly survey post. Ajax Spacemen were apparently the 1940s pulp space-opera figures that George Lucas played with as a kid on his carpet. The freebie is for Poser, designed for the free 3D&D Klingon standalone for Poser.
I did a little research on the copyright status. The line of toy figures was apparently introduced to the U.S. market in 1947 and then the Ajax Spacemen design in 1951, with “patent pending” noted on the boxes. A U.S. Design Patent then lasted 15 years. Thus I would suspect this design is now public domain, and has been since the 1970s, but don’t take my word for it if making commercial renders.
New for Poser and DAZ in July 2021
It’s that time of the month again. What new items did I notice for DAZ Studio and Poser, in July 2021? Mostly DAZ and Poser, though this month there’s also a few Vue, Carrara and Blender items.
The DAZ Store is still giving problems even when paginated and with only the one tab open — ‘out-of-memory’ crashes on a workstation with masses of RAM. No other site acts like this. There came a point where I had to give up on browsing back through the store, so a few items may have missed consideration this month. Maybe the problem is the Opera browser, but it shouldn’t be as that runs on a standard Chrome base.
Science-fiction:
Stonemason’s Core.
A holo-stimbed for Poser and DAZ.
A synthwave scene maker for Poser and DAZ. Unusual, and presumably you could make your own extender kits.
1971’s new Sci-Fi Modular Hangar for Poser and also separately for DAZ.
RaffyRaffy’s new Martian surface for Blender.
Tigaer’s free Abstract Organic Alien 3D Shapes and you can also buy commercial-use.
SY Liminal Pools, suitable for sci-fi scenes.
Steampunk:
A free Love Seat for DAZ Studio.
A free Steampunk unicycle, possibly fan-art.
A mid 19th century period Stockroom.
Halloween:
Android Mummies in .FBX format.
Fantasy:
TheAntFarm’s new Fantasy Tents set and Textures.
Yee-haw… T-Rex with a saddle for Poser.
A Feligalodon, a fantasy flying-fish to accompany your travellers on a sea voyage to the Nethermost Rim of Yaan.
Toon:
A new 3D Universe figure Stylized ’21 Character and Hair. There’s also a larger male/female bundle.
16 quality free poses for Darkseal’s Fire Sprite Demon.
Storybook:
Child fashion magazine poses and expressions for G8F. Requires the ‘Growing Up’ pack(s) for G8F.
Fairy Tale Props including a gingerbread house.
A free Travel Snail for DAZ Studio.
Landscape:
Flinks Rolling Hills - Translucent Grass for Poser, and he has several similar packs this month. Also ShaaraMuse3D’s Photo Props: Baseplant Construction Set with 75 Poser plant props at a very reasonable price.
Captain Jack’s Little Island, with hammock. You may also be wanting Martin J. Frost’s Vue Seaweed Bundle for Vue, for this.
AppleJack’s AJ Abandoned Place 5.
Ancient Stones - Rock and Moss Shaders.
Docking position presets, Dock My Boat for Smugglers Yacht and Two-Boat Dock.
Animals:
Great Horned Owl for DAZ Studio.
Ken Gilliland’s Nature’s Wonders: Cicadas of the World.
Ken Gilliland’s Songbird ReMix Australia Vol. 4.
The Alchemist has released four packs for fly-fishing anglers - poses, clothes, fish and gear.
Historical:
Wolfgang 8.1 Scallywag Bundle for DAZ Studio. Loads of other pirate items on the DAZ Store this month, and also masses of mermaids.
A dForce Priest G8M in full ceremonial robes. They look authentic, though I’m not sure if they are. Also a matching Church interior.
A free 1930’s Microphone for DAZ Studio.
Classic U.S. Army Jeep for Poser and add-ons.
Predatron has new Second World War planes and ground support.
A free 1950s hot-rod Statler V8 8.6 CSC and G8M poses.
A free vintage Gasoline Pump.
The Drunken Crab, a small and rather too shiny British pub interior. Needs a worn makeover texture set.
Characters and clothing:
Standalone Egan with Hair and Outfit and DAZ Carrara files. Also fiber-brows and “built-in anatomical elements”.
A usefully generic modern NM Hair Adam. Anyone know which face preset is being used here?
HD Violin and Poses for Genesis 3 and 8. Also Chinese Erhu and Poses for Genesis 3 and 8.
Emphasized Visemes for G8F. These are the mouth shapes made when speaking, and it looks like this pack would be useful for those who do lip-sync and want more enunciation.
A usefully generic dForce Track Suit outfit for G8F.
Clothing Wrinkles Alphas for ZBrush.
Scripts:
Mac Poser users now have an equivalent of the famous Snap To mover script, and working on both Poser 11 and 12. Ockham’s earlier Snap To script was previously Windows only due to the use of Tkinter in the script (blame Apple, not Poser). Thanks to adp001 for the finished new script, who invites feedback at this forum thread.
Cloth Presets Script for Poser 11 and Poser 12.
At last, a Quick Scripts access addon for Blender.
A fun Cactify cactus-generator for Blender.
Tutorials:
Artbreeder for Visual Storytelling.
Lighting Up the Night: Special Lighting for Dark Scenes in DAZ Studio.
Sci-fi Scene Building: Exploring Sci-fi Art Creation in DAZ Studio.
That’s it for this month, more picks soon!
Release: QuarkXPress 2021
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Posted in Companion software, Special Offers and Discounts, Spotted in the News
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Posted in Companion software, Special Offers and Discounts, Spotted in the News
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QuarkXPress? Isn’t that the ancient crumbly DTP software that your grandpa once used, and which vanished long ago?
Oh, my… how times have changed. The DTP desktop software QuarkXPress is still here and still venerable, yes, but their sprightly annual releases have been playing ‘the tortoise and the hare’ with Adobe since 2015. Six years later it’s catching up in numerous ways, and even surpasses InDesign in many features. Their polished 2021 version is now out, and has .SVG support among other things. I recently took a look at the free trial and was pleased to find it very mature and with annual updates at a one-time purchase of £362 (an annual subscription, but if you cancel then it appears you get to keep the software). Expensive but not the silly prices of yesteryear, and within reach of many. Oh, wait… 50% off for August which puts it about £180…
It’s no longer just for laying out PDFs for magazines, books and academic journal articles. A key feature is support from absolute reproduction of a DTP print layout in Web browser-friendly HTML5, plus support within that for animated elements (slide-in banners, slow zooms into pictures) and looping animated GIFs (v.2020) and now SVGs (v.2021). Also video and 360-video. Its scripts are standard javascript. The increasing range of creative possibilities are thus obvious, and you can also leave a gap in the layout then hack the HTML to add whatever unsupported Web do-dah you want to display in a browser. Although in the latest version you can also insert snippets of HTML.
The cheap and relatively friendly Affinity Publisher and Microsoft Publisher don’t offer HTML5 export at all. Adobe’s equivalent DTP software InDesign still requires a third-party plugin to export an HTML5 layout, and both are monthly subscriptions.
So I’m pleased to find that QuarkXPress seems a viable Adobe-alternative for DTP and the WYSIWYG Web. It is now sitting at a quite nice point in the market, in terms of a reasonable price, superb export features, and having a perpetual licence version. There’s a QuarkXPress 2021 free-trial (Windows 8 and up, v.2018 being the last Windows 7 version). One to look at if you want to make a device-responsive online magazine with creative interactivity that goes beyond page-curls and a few clickable Web links.
That said, it may not be what some will need for making motion-comics or basic 2D interactive Web ‘visual novels’. There is now software dedicated to such things.
As with all major software these days, there has to be a warning as it’s being newly mentioned here: Windows 10 and Mac OS desktop updates may bjork your favourite feature or break the software totally. But that doesn’t appear to be the case here.