Question regarding aniMate Lite

takanuinuva_40f6ab6ae5

I've starting working on an animations with the aniMate Lite toolbar and I have 2 questions

1. Is it possible to lock frames? By that i mean when editing in frame 2. the poses in frame 1 won't move.

An example is a figure blinking. How I have it is each frame increases by .20. But if frames 1-5 have 0 in eye movement and I start with frame 6 having .20. Suddenly frames 1-5 have movement that is between 0 and .20. Is there any way to lock the animation in frames 1-5 so that frame 6 doesn't affect them when animating frame 6

 

2. I plan on rendering each frame and editing them in windows movie maker so I can adjust the speed of certain parts. Is there a way to mass render all the frames at once?

Arnold C

1. The aniMate plugin is more for playing and adjusting prefabricated aniBlocks then to "create" animations. It would be more easier if in this case you'd use the DAZ Timeline and start to create a "blink" animation from scratch. That's easy to do:

- on the Timeline, choose a frame where you want your motion to start, and set a Keyframe there. (In my example, I chose frame 11).

- choose a frame 3 or 4 frames forward from that, and set the "Eyes Closed" Pose Control  (name depends on the figure you use) to "1.0".

- choose a frame 3 or 4 frames forward from that, and set the "Eyes Closed" Pose Control back to "0.0".

- change to the aniMate2 Tab, rightclick somewhere on it and select the "Create aniBlock from Studio Keyframes" option. Choose "Transform to Object's POV". I always tag the "Scale" and "Morphs/Values" options, too. Just to make sure, when it's rather a moph than a pose, that it will be included.

- leftclick into the aniBlock, choose "Save New aniBlock" and save it, giving it a name like "blink", "blinking", whatever...

Then you got yourself a nice custom "blink" aniBlock. To use it, select your figure's main track and click on the white "Plus" icon on the aniMate2 Tab to create a sub track. Place your main aniBlock into the main track, and a "blink" aniBlock every 3 of 4 seconds on the sub track. That's it.

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2. Not really at once, but one after another. Studio isn't able to "mass render" at once. On your Render Settings Tab, choose the "Image Series" Render Type option. This will get you a seperate render for each frame. Those you can then import into your Movie Maker to make a nice movie from.

It's recommended to always use the "Image Series" over the "Movie" option. That way, if Studio will crash for whatever reason, your work won't be completely lost. Just resume at the next frame from the last where Studio did crash.

For training purposes, to see how different motions will fit together, etc., you could switch to the "Basic OpenGL" Render Engine. You won't get "pretty" renders using it, but it renders really fast.

DrNewcenstein

Keyframes are markers that state where a given action in a given animation is going to start or stop. You have to begin the Blink animation cycle with a Keyframe, otherwise if you advance to Frame 6 and begin the cycle, the automatically-generated Keyframe at Frame 0 will automatically fill in the blanks, which is what you're experiencing.

Frame 0/Frame 1 is always a Keyframe. It denotes the start of the animation sequence, whether you start in T-pose or not.

So, set a Keyframe on the EyeBlink parameter on Frame 6 and set that parameter to whatever you want the EyeBlink to be (0 is best since it's going to start there), then another Keyframe on whatever Frame you want the EyeBlink to be "Eyes 100% Closed" (whatever the parameter value is for that - 1, 100, etc). Lastly, set a Keyframe on the Frame in which you want the EyeBlink paramter to return to the value it was at Frame 6 (0, .20, etc). This will create one blink. A typical blink cycle takes 0.3 to 0.4 of a second, so if you're working on 30 Frames Per Second, a realistic blink should take between 3-4 frames to appear natural, and the eyeballs should move slightly after the blink.

KA1

Windows movie maker used to do my head in!! I would recommend having a look at Hitfilm 4 Express for video editing. It's free so nothing to lose having a look.

takanuinuva_40f6ab6ae5

Thanks. I've gone and figured out how to use the program better since this post and have found how to render all the frames. Now I can create animations a lot easier.