Is there a Walk Designer for DAZ Studio?
M Sconti
Posts: 2
Is there a walk designer for DAZ Studio yet, like in Poser and iClone etc?
It would be very beneficial to animation in DS if such a feature were available. I know we can assign motions and animation blocks, but that's not as intuative as being able to design a walk using a walk or motion designer.
Marc
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No, there isn't - there are various aniBlocks that can be used to build a walk-cycle but not a gernal walk-builder.
Thank you, Richard. I know about aniBlocks, and they're great. I would still love to have a walk designer of some sort. Coming back to 3D after many years away from it, both DAZ Studio and Poser appear to have stood still as far as animation features go. It's like Doctor Who put the animation development teams of both these programs, into suspended animation.
The figures themselves look absolutely amazing. I don't think they can get much better,, but I'm not so enthusiastic about the animation tools.
A walk cycle generator would be pretty far down the priority list if you ask me, better to implement an IK stop feature so the rigs can be made to stop the IK chains at the hip and collar bones, just that little change would make a huge difference and actually make the rigs usable, the fact it's an old part time IK system is not so bad, but the pinning feature is rubbish and does not make any one happy, even with pinning at both ends and pinning translation and rotation it still moves.
Ooo, yes improved IK pls. Poser's animations tools are still quite preferable to those in DAZ, I find.
Sorry, I wasn't aware of the IK limitations. I'm currently playing catch-up, so I'm not fully versed with the whole 3D situation. I've been researching for about a week now, and it seems DAZ Studio and Poser have fallen way behind the competition in the animation department. I can hardly believe it. Unless I missed something, DAZ Studio still has no particles, no physics, no walk designer, no custom dynamic cloth. It does at least have some nice hair systems to choose from now. And Poser doesn't fair much better, in fact it fairs worse in some cases. I'm convinced the animation developers of these programs have been stuck in suspended animation since the year 2000.
I don't wish to sound crass. There's notable improvement in the quality of the figures and interface. But they don't seem to care about animation, a folly, considering these are technically tools for animating figures. I'll have to do some more research before I settle on a program. I'm quite disgruntled at the lack of progress on the animation front.
Poser animation tools have not been effectively updated since the late 1990's its IK solver is actually worse than the primitive IK"pins"in Daz studio,
This is because posers IK is All or nothing
in that if you use IK at the begining of your animtion to pin the characters feet for a stoop or squat motion, later down the timeline when you turn off IK it will ruin any lower body animation by tryin to repin the figures feet later in the animation. This fatal malfunction still exists in poser "pro" 2014& poser 11
The real issue here is development costs and ultimately the cost
vs feature set for the aspiring animator.
Daz studio: -$0 USD
Keymate (Dopesheet):-$20 USD
Graphmate:-$20 USD
aniMate 2 (Full version)-$60 USD
and assuming a person insists on using Genesis 3 lets throw in Dragonstorms G2 to G3 retargeting
script for experienced users who have invested in Graph& keymate as you will need them to fix those frames where G3 inevitably refuses to obey the Dragonstorm script:-$25 USD
Also lets throw in the very basic, but usable ,Cloth dynamics script from" rendo" that allows us to use our own non"optitex"meshes for basic draping and work for animated characters in DS-$10 USD.
DAZ studio has basic lipsinc for speaking characters but its 32 bit version only and no phoneme editing options so lets add Mimic live for -$50 USD
So for $185 USD total we have basic Character animation with decent motion creation and nonlinear motion mixing,key frame editing, a spline graph with auto clamping, basic cloth dynamics and export to major industry standard formats such as MDD+.obj and FBX.
But alas you have no actual character physics options or dynamic hair and the foot pinning Ik system in Daz studio alone is basicly rubbish for animation purposes
ALL of the above mentioned THIRD PARTY additions can easily be made USELESS by updating your Free Daz studio Core application or even moving to the next genration figure just as the aniMate2 is not usable for genesis 3
Still ,consider that you do not have to model or rig anything
and could theoreticly get started on your animated visual story telling with the included "starter essentials" and whatever freebies you harvest from "ShareCG" and other sources.
Poser 11: $500 USD(non sale price)
Spline graph editor included but not updated since 1996 has no Clamping function requiring manual solutions to correct splinegraph "over shoot"
Keyframe pallet or "dopesheet" included but again not updated since 1996 and very poorly designed for access to mutiple animation channels
Animation "layering" system very primitive for adding motion on top of existing motion
but not useful for true nonlinear motion clip creation and reordering.
Includes a rigid body bullet physics engine for destruction& object collapse types of animation.
Includes a soft body Simulation solver for "jiggly part" animations
Includes a Cloth dynamic engine with Constraints for pinning parts of clothing and can Do hybrid Dynamic/conformed clothing items.
Includes Dynamic hair but IMHO not very realistic when animated.
Animated figures can be exported to FBX but no viable option for dynamic cloth and hair exportnot sure if Bullet or soft body simulation can be baked for export
to other programs.( citation needed)
Includes "talk designer" lipsinc program for speaking poser native Characters
There was an optional Ragdoll physic plugin for poser
( p6-p2012 era) it is quite good and I still use it for my work today- $50 USD.
Advantage; ALL of the above features of poser(excluding the ragdoll physics plugin )
will never become nonfunctional by updating poser, as they are part of the poser core application.
Consider that you do not have to model or rig anything
and could theoreticly get started on your animated visual story telling with the included poser content and whatever freebies you harvest from "ShareCG" and other sources.
wolf359, those plugins do make DAZ Studio quite attractive to animators and potential animators, it has to be said. The only problem I have with it is that walking is something figures tend to do a lot of. I could take ready made walks, tweak them, and do it that way. But I expect more than that after all this time. I can see where each one of those plugins have thier place, and I'm sure I'd make use of each one of them. But why has no one had the idea to create a walk and motion designer for a figure program?
It does not make sense at all. DAZ Studio is clearly all about figures, and figures walk!
@wolf359, I read through your post expecting to come to the part where you say that Blender has all the animation features we need for free. Or is that the next installment?
By the way, I've never attempted to animate anything in Blender so I don't even know if it is possible to export a scene from DS and animate in Blender.
Well, if he'd said that, he would be right. Blender can do anything, it's clearly amazing once it's been learnt. And actually, I doubt it's possible to learn everything in Blender anyway. I've never seen anything in 3D evolve at the rate Blender is doing. Can't go wrong with Blender as long as you can get your head around it.
Maybe if Poser or DAZ Studio doesn't get better animation tools next major release, I should crowdfund a walk or motion designer plugin for Blender
Well Blender has a lot of nice things, but it has it's fair share of rubbish also, it has an FBX importer that does not work and instead of fixing it people try to invent new ways to get animations into Blender, people start to implement things like Cycles and then move on and leave it haging there, with some luck other people will take over but that may not happen, the UI is much better today, but I still can't use it, I even bought a book to give it a chance but I gave up after a week, I simply can't lean to use it (I can't live with Z up anyway), and it still open that silly box every time I start it I have to remove the box and there does not look like there is any way to turn it off why!!!!!!!!!
I have tried to make Blender import an FBX without any hands on Magic for the last 3 years or so, I try every time there is a new release of Blender and so far I have never got a working FBX in there.
Of course Blender can do all of the things I mentioned at Zero entry cost to the user (not sure about a walk designer).
I tend not to invoke the Blender name in these Daz /poser threads
because people in these communities respond as though you are expecting them to learn
Quantum Physics just to produce thier hobbiest renders.
A walk designer is a nice start
However Visual Story telling through Character animation, at some point will require figure to reach his/her destination and sit or have a conversation ,get in a fist fight etc.
This requires a nonlinear motion mixing system like the ones we have in Iclone and Daz Studio.
Now if all one wishes to do is have Figures walk in a straight line,
The simply use a walk aniblock and loop it continuously.
This cool little studio created a plugin called "Walk It" that gives you footprint based locomotion. Only a few bucks, it looks like.
http://pilning.net
never heard about this in this forums
some experiences anybody ?
I have used it is very good, I recommend it. It has many options of types of walking.
wolf359 telling it like it is again. I also don't understand why many think Blender is difficult. Different? Yes. Difficult? No. Ultimately better and faster? That too. It's as if someone is offering you a Ferrari, but you have to learn to drive a manual transmission, first. I wrote an Alembic exporter that a tually works, but I know how people will react if I tell them that they have to install the Blender, the DAZ SDK, Visual Studio, and press a few buttons.
Instead of incessantly complaining about the state of animation tools in Daz, I've directed my energy towards getting my characters into Blender.
The Diffeomorphic DAZ Importer works flawlessly for me, with the only hiccup being that it imports the moodel at base resolution and so the model doesn't look exactly like it does in Daz, after you apply SubD. It's minor, but enough to trigger my OCD. So the fact that FBX import doesn't work is irrelevant to me.
After doing so, it's a repetitive but trivial task to add IK controls. There are a number of gret tutorials on Youtube about how to do this. There are a number of great tutorials on Udemy about character design in Blender in general. A particular one shows how to set it up the bone constraints in two parts so that IK and FK work together, much how wold359 was lamenting that aniMate2 doesn't do.
If you need a full feautured animation toolkit, Blender is there, but the entry price in learning how to use it. I think it is worth it, given the results. At the rate each is going, it is not realistic to imagine a future where Daz in anywhere close to Blender. But like the girlfriend you can't leave because of that one thing you couldn't live without :), Daz content is head and shoulders above anyone else, the price is right, and autofit is the 8th wonder of the world.