FBX Import - Animation lost upon re-import into DAZ Studio 4 Pro?

Artman009

Due to the lack of Genesis support for Mimic Pro, I'm attempting to export Genesis as an FBX file with all of the facial morphs and animate them in Maya with the end goal of bringing the model back into DAZ Studio for rendering.

The model exports fine, along with all of the facial morphs and opens in Maya perfectly. I animate the face morphs with keyframes then re-export to another FBX, go back into DAZ Studio, import the new file and it looks fine but it does NOT animate. So, my next thought was, "maybe Maya is using a different FBX format."

To test this, I started a brand new scene in DAZ Studio, applied a simple aniMate aniBlock animation to Genesis (Kick-A, if anyone is curious), baked the animation to keyframes and exported to FBX. I quit DAZ Studio then re-opened. In a new scene, I imported the FBX and Genesis appears... but NO animation. The model is just frozen in its default T-Pose.

So does DAZ Studio strip all FBXs of animation upon importing? Is anyone else experiencing this?

Running DAZ Studio 4.5.1.56 Pro Edition (32 bit and 64 bit) on a Windows 7 machine. According to the "About Installed Plugins..." window in Studio, I have FBX Exporter version 2.2.1.56 and DzFbxImporter version 0.1.1.56.

Anyone else experiencing this?

WendyLuvsCatz

I have yet to get anything workable into Daz studio via FBX
why not just install DS4.5 32 bit as well and use the lipsync, you can still render in 64bit
or use Mimic live if you don't mind buying it (I never bothered)

I myself use Carrara
Carrara 8.5 beta FBX is import quite good (though not so much from Daz studio but not needed for that) and it's Mimic plugin handles Genesis.

Artman009

The reason I wanted to do facial animation in an external program like Maya is to have greater control when animating. The results from the built-in Lip Sync plugin are pretty subpar when compared to professional, handcraft facial animation, and without access to a robust keyframe graph editor (sorry, graphMate just isn't good enough) or and dopesheet, this level of detail is just not possible in DAZ Studio. Keyframe animating in Studio is extremely limited and can be a real nightmare. Also, having the ability to record facial animation with another program like Faceshift that can later be brought into Maya as a solid first pass would be immensely helpful.

However, without the ability to import FBX animation at all, this not an option at all.

As for Mimic Live, I have bought it previously but did not find it useful at all. It's not made very clear on it's product page or video but Mimic Live only lip syncs live audio being recording to the computer. You cannot choose a previously recorded audio file. I found this useless for my purposes, so I obtained a refund on the software.

bigh

Artman009 said:

The reason I wanted to do facial animation in an external program like Maya is to have greater control when animating. The results from the built-in Lip Sync plugin are pretty subpar when compared to professional, handcraft facial animation, and without access to a robust keyframe graph editor (sorry, graphMate just isn't good enough) or and dopesheet, this level of detail is just not possible in DAZ Studio. Keyframe animating in Studio is extremely limited and can be a real nightmare. Also, having the ability to record facial animation with another program like Faceshift that can later be brought into Maya as a solid first pass would be immensely helpful.

However, without the ability to import FBX animation at all, this not an option at all.

As for Mimic Live, I have bought it previously but did not find it useful at all. It's not made very clear on it's product page or video but Mimic Live only lip syncs live audio being recording to the computer. You cannot choose a previously recorded audio file. I found this useless for my purposes, so I obtained a refund on the software.

she is not talking about mimic live .
Carrara has a mimic plugin .
also Carrara can render all your scenes from DS much faster .
wondering why you don't render in Maya ?

Artman009

bigh said:

she is not talking about mimic live .

Well, wendy♥catz wrote the words "Mimic live", so I assumed she was referring to Mimic Live because it is the only other DAZ Studio plugin that supports the Genesis model aside from the built-in 32bit lip sync plugin.

bigh said:

Carrara has a mimic plugin. also Carrara can render all your scenes from DS much faster .

After having purchased DAZ Studio, I'm not interested in purchasing Carrara and its Mimic Pro plugin. I've seen both Carrara's interface and rendertime and felt both were not impressive (your mileage may vary.) I prefer DAZ Studio. Aside from it's animation tools being lacking (if not non-existent in certain parts), it can do everything I require and with ease.

According to the "What's New" page for DAZ Studio 4.5 (link), FBX Import with animation is a feature: The exact language reads:

"FBX files generated by DAZ Studio 4.5 can now be re-imported in FBX format, allowing you to export a figure to certain 3rd party applications for texturing or animation purposes and then import that figure back into DAZ Studio."

So it is not like I'm doing some crazy, backward process. It's just NOT working for me, period.

wondering why you don't render in Maya ?

As for Maya, I don't own a copy of the software--my friend who works in the motion graphics industry does, and he and I were going to experiment with seeing if facial animation could be done externally then brought back into Studio via a FBX pipeline.

WendyLuvsCatz

I was refering to Mimic live and have no interest in it for pretty much the same reason you do not.
Carrara is a smidgen closer to Maya than Daz studio in that it is a full modelling, animation, terrain creation etc software suite.
and yes the Mimic plugin can use Non-linear animation clips created from poses and morphs on your own Carrara rigged figures too so is a very versatile piece of kit.
Not suggesting you get it but it is the reason I love it and use it, I cannot afford Maya
You can try importing a linear sequence of morph targets using a script made by Casual that does sequenced obj imports in morph loader, you will find plenty of posts by him in the freepositry, go to his Google site in his sig line and have a look.

ckalan1

Here is a link to a bunch of Tutorials about FBX, BVH and how to import and export to and from various 3d programs.

http://www.youtube.com/user/truebones

Here are few that you might want to check out.

http://www.youtube.com/user/truebones/search?query=daz

You can also download all the Autodesk programs for free at http://usa.autodesk.com/products/free-product-trials

I hope this helps.

Craig

Artman009

Just an update for everyone: I submitted a ticket to the DAZ Bug Tracker (https://bugs.daz3d.com/view.php?id=49809) the other day and it's status has been updated to Confirmed on the site. So it would appear this is indeed an issue with the FBX Import feature at the moment.

I'll keep everyone posted.