Animation presets and Aniblocks
jaxtone
Posts: 73
I completly do not understand how come there are no options for Aniblocks or animated preset products for the new generation DAZ models.
It really sucks and definitely made me less interested in DAZ as a software to easy put up animations and scenes that easily could be exported to a program with a much faster render engine than DAZ own that seems to be pre-historical when talking of speed and quality in the same box.
I bought an animation transform product that were extremely slow and contained some errors that left the transformed animation with gaps, dead frames and strange behavior. Didn´t work in a production line.
How do you solve the problem that generation 8 miss the aniblocks etc?
P.S. To create my own animation in DAZ isn´t an option since I only looking for fast ways to create sceneries etc.
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Comments
Yeah it's kind of irritating when you ask this and people say to make your own animations. Like it isn't the most complicated and difficult thing you can do. xD
There used to be packs full of animations you could buy back in the v4m4/Genesis1 days. I don't know why they don't make them anymore, the most you can get these days is a single walkcycle animation. I bought the animation converter for Gen2>Gen3 and it kind of works but the results really aren't very good. Maybe because Daz kept changing the pose structure on the figures the animation creators just gave up.
Maybe that, but the general lack of interest on the forums may be a larger factor. I can count maybe a dozen people who post things about animation. GoFigure would probably still be doing them if they had sold. GoFigure would have to make changes in aniMate or completely rework what they had done. At least SKAmotion and PoserMocap have upated (but slowly) some of theirs. Still need a fix for the SKAmotion G8 walk, though. Still doesn't work where the previous ones always worked.
Probably because they didn't sell enough for the PAs to consider them worth making again.
..............................and the inability of the last two generations Genesis 3 and 8 to load BVH animations
I also bought the animation converter for Gen2>Gen3 and found it really slow and with loads of drop frames in the final converted animation!
I was a frequent buyer of both objects and animated Ani-Blocks but not DAZ feels like a dead end to me. Thinking of either develope my CA-skills in my version of Lightwave 3D or invest in 3D-Max or Maya!
But DAZ feels like a real downpitch to me nowadays!
You are definitely right in your point of view! It is of course a lot of work for the external developers to update all animations each time DAZ release a new generation of old characters. Totally respectless to both customers and developers by DAZ to not create new characters that fits in to the old Aniblocks. I mean that they would rather sell the updated animations for a higher rate that kill the interest for using DAZ for more than stills.
Personally I throw up on all "poses" stuff that easily can be done by yourself by tweaking and changing the already IK-setup character.
Sometimes it feels like the resposible persons at DAZ do not give a damn as long they make easy bucks on easy solutions!
Here are two fastly done scenes by using DAZ and aniblocks!
...
well genesis 3 and 8 animate quite well outside of DAZ studio, I use iClone, others use Motionbuilder or various mocap softwares but the issue is one cannot reimport those motions back into DAZ studio easily
a person using MoBu did get stuff back in via FBX somehow but I could not follow his steps for iClone FBX export, maybe it is a different type of FBX
point is you may have more success in Max or Maya if you can afford either.
what I can tell you there is a commercial bridge from DAZ studio to some of those programs you may need to google a bit
Hi Kevin,
The files have been fixed now. Please try downloading the Flat Foot Walk again. you should be fine now
Cheers
SKA
Thank you, SKA!! I'll download when I get home later this evening.
Yay! The updated file works!!
I bought a license for a version of iClone years ago, I guess its (5).
But I thought the animation process workled the other way. That the only option was to import the character from DAZ into iClone and do the job there.
I´d prefer to work in Lightwave since the render engine is so much faster than in iClone and DAZ.
Now I wonder if its possible to export the preset animation sets from iClone directly into DAZ before I export the character as an FBX that I import in Lightwave?
Easy don't use Genesis 8 , everything you want to do with genesis 8 can be done much easier with genesis2 or genesis or generation 4 characters. V8 and genesis 8 IMO is broken with the animate 2 timeline and the offered aniblocks in the store and I do not see a schule of them being updated anytime soon. . There are some sites that offer genesis3 aniblocks" not allowed to post comptetive websites on daz forums sorry" and they do work fairly well with genesis 8 but not with any other characters but the generation 8 ones. IMHO and some of the other users that create animation using daz may agree. G8/v8 not worth the effort you have to put into them to animate them use genesis 2 or genesis. you'll get much better results
on the brightside there is a werebearman for G2M in the store today so maybe a glimmer of hope DAZ will let PA’s continue to support the figures that work.
yes I'll keep my fingures crossed. it was a instant buy when i seen werebear set today for g2 . I also got the Construction worker too :)
I thought I'd throw my own two cents here.
@jaxtone I wish I had a satisfying answer for this one. Believe me, it would have been nice to tell people "Hey, our G3 aniblocks work with G8 no problem!" Sadly, the honest answer is to wait for people to figure out the pipeplines to get things to work with G8, or use something else.
And aniMate does work with G8 ... so long as the motion applied is meant for G8.
@jjglvz256 you forgot time consuming. Actually, it's mostly time cosuming.
Apparently this is a little noticed fact: all our packs include BVH files. This is by design; we wanted to be able to at least have some support for characters not specificly optimized for in our packs. Do they work with the G3/G8 series? Nope, the skeleton is too different there, but they do work with V4/M4/G1/G2 with some tweaking.
@Kevin Sanderson The animators are out there, but they may not necessarily be popping up on the forums. Of course, this is only based on my own anecodotal experiences.
GoFigure would have needed to have completely redone their aniBlocks for later characters. aniMate itself, could have used some user interface tweaks and better Daz integration, but the core of it still works.
As for speed ... I did mention time cosuming, didn't I, Kevin?
@Ivy For some reason I'm reminded of the phrase "dance with the one who brung you" when thinking of using earlier generation characters for animations rather than the latest.
Anyhow, I do think there's potential for G8 for animation, but if it's not working for you, then I agree, stick with something that works. In the meantime, I will try to get what G8 optimized animations I can out for people.
@th3Digit Excellent, we need more werebears that can be animated!
I'll jump in on this too..
If you have access to motionbuilder, the fbx import into daz studio is quite easy and works well, both for older Genesis gen2, gen3 and gen8, I've seen no real difference, but as Posermocap mentioned, the animation does need to be targeted to the character you are using, or at least to similarly rigged characters (and even then, you have to make allowances for differences in size, etc, etc).. , and they can be very time consuming to create, especially if tweaking with keyframed animation and you are aiming for realism. Even with programs specifically designed for animation, such as motionbuilder and using motion capture, you have to keep this in mind. I can just imagine the amount of work that has to go into making aniblocks that work relatively well within a generation class, needless to say to port them to other characters that are completely different.
What would be nice, is if Daz studio would incorporate some better animation tools.. even Poser has better animation pipeline..
For those interested, here's my pipeline: https://vimeo.com/227139373, basifcally I export fbx from studio, with morphs, characterize in mobu, apply the motion from mocap or keyframed.. and save.. then bring in the fbx exactly as is back into studio with all and mesh (and don't worry about what it looks like when it comes in.. there will be a skeleton for each piece of clothing, hair, etc and looks awful) and save the animation from the main character as a .duf file (pose preset for just body mocap or properties preset for facial mocap and body together), then edit the .duf file with a text editor to remove the prefix that studio appends when exporting the file to fbx (for example, head morphs are usually named "head__#morph.. so remove the head__ and save) All the videos on my vimeo page were done this way
@jaxstone.. this process might work for you too, it would be a matter to see how studio brings it in.. if it comes in with the mesh the same name, you should be able to save the motion as a .duf file. Some fbx exports from other programs are "motion only" and don't include the mesh, which Daz Studio doesn't know what to do with.
Hi
Our Dear Ivy is quite correct
There are presently tools available that will enable you to retarget
motion from the Mil4& G1-2 iteration figures all the way up to G8
Most notably the FREE retargeting script from Zaz777
I have used it as a pure academic excercise as well as to create
the commercial motion Product for the G3 female in my
signature link below everyone of my posts.
However the extra layer of labor to first create the animation for G1-2
& Load a G3 female and run the script to retarget from G2 to G3
and manually fix any flaws is not justifiable to me at least
After retargeting from G2-G3 one must save the G3 version as an animated pose file
and apply to G8.
Now use the graphmate plugin in DS and select and globally raise G8's arms
for the animation because of the new G8 default "A" pose offsets them down to into the sides
and this assumes you are only doing a walk cycle.
Something more complex such as a martial arts fight will be even more labor intensive
to fix G8's offset arms for every frame.
Compare this tedious process above
to Creating my animation iclone pro with an Iclone realtime avatar
and save as Imotion file.
Load G1-2 into Iclone 3Dxchange app
Click one button to retarget saved Imotion data to G1-2
Export BVH from 3Dxchange
Load BVH into Daz studio g1-2 ready to render in DS or export to my C4D as animated /MDD mesh
or to My Lightwave 2015 as FBX or animated MDD mesh.
Or just use the animate2 system to create the animation entirely in Daz studio by combining aniblocks
Or harvest a motion from my library of thousands of BVH files from as far back as poser 4 for "Posette" and "Dork"
from the 1990's and have them work on G1-2 with little to no adjustment with graphmate
Or harvest motion from the hundreds of Free files from the carnegie mellon archive
that some kind person has converted to Mil4, G1-2 daz aniblocks.
I get it G1-G2 have been abandoned by the Daz PA's and most people prefer to have
the latest figure so they can use the latest clothing & Characters.
I am a content developer and can support G1-2 indefinately with new content
and I likely own EVERY morph ever made for them and the GENX 2 plugin for any
Classic shapes from the Mil4 era.
For much less than the cost of poser, one could easily purchase the full version of animate2,the graphmate & keymate plugins
and have motion creation & editing option in DS that far
exceed posers aged animation tools that have remained largely unchanged since the late 1990's.
hehe
I was hoping this would work for iClone 3Dxchange as well but sadly it didn't
May I ask if you tried all of the FBX export options from Iclone 3DXchange?
The Different export presets: custom,unity Maya etc etc, will all yeild wildy divergent results
depending on the target import application.
I had to use the "Maya 64 bit" preset with "export animation" checked to get this
G3 male path walk FBX from Iclone 3Dx into lightwave 3D 2015
But he comes in perfectly and I imagine G8 would as well
so I do have the option of using My Iclone with the G3-8 figures in future projects as I make my partial transition
to Lightwave for more VFX heavy films I am planning
Obviously your weak link is Daz studio as even Bryan,s method seems to require manual
editing a file in a text editor.
So in summary the G3-G8 figures are only a good option for animators
who have access to external programs for both motion creation and final rendering.
@wolf359 It only requires manual editing when bringing in facial animation, as Daz studio appends the "head__" prefix to the morphs when exporting the fbx file and selecting all the morphs of the head using "head." in the export rules, or it appends the name of the character or subcharater.
Now I might be transitioning away from Studio for most things, as one of the main reasons of bringing it back in was for rendering in Iray.. and I found Marmoset toolbag that will bring in fbx files directly, with real-time lighting, animation capabilities and other features that I was looking for, and really fast renders even with my dinky 970.
Only if you are using morph animations . Pure bone based animation does not require this from mobu to daz
Yes
@pdr0 That is correct.. I use both most of the time, makes it faster when retargeting in the application that I use for facial mocap
One potential issue is this limits you FBX base mesh, no HD or internal subd . This might be ok for certain projects, but might be unacceptable for others
Other programs have quite different subd results than internal DS subd
True, but most of what I do at this point doesn't require it, such as the picture below.. if I do, then I go ahead and render in ds.. but will probably have to upgrade my gpu for anything really serious
"Toons" probably don't need it, but certainly "HD" facial expressions and some characters/monsters look very different and "smooth" in base resolution .
Iray is it's quite "slow" compared to other 3rd party render engines. Might be ok for stills but it's not as friendly for animations.
The only way to "jailbreak" full resolution out/ all morphs looking normal is with a "baked" format like obj/mdd or sequence or alembic. But it can be quite heavy with longer animations
It's a shame DS doesn't allow this LOD exported in the FBX
Hi posermocap.
I'm a huge fan of your content & I own 98% of your aniblocks . But I think I have a different point of view, than you do when it comes to daz and animation. I just use the Daz Studio software for animation only. I'm a hobby animator story teller user & I have $1000 & 1000's of dollars invested in Daz Studio over 8 years, I have invested in every character generations released from v3 to g2 & every animation tools that was released, which all play very well together with minor bug fixes. plus they played well with other software pipelines like poser.. But when genesis 3 was released. It broke everything. it was just work work work to get genesis3 or g8 to do the same things I can do feasibly easy with older Daz characters already bought and paid for.
I guess if a user is just fooling around making silly test render animations that fine to buy new g3 content that don't work with anything else. but i tend to want my animations to be more entertaining than test animations. My animations don't need to be realistic looking, just believable when being used in a motion story.. which mostly comes from good animation sequences , and motion files.( that is where your content comes in) not newest greatest characters mesh.
So NONE (0) of my 1000's of motions files I have, will work with genesis 3 even after using aniblock & motion script converters. the motion still require hand keyframe bug fixes .At that point I mise well do the animation by hand to begin with . I do agree with you on there is a tremendous lack of animation support for genesis3 or g8, so hopefully with newer release of daz studio that support will improve . but for now until I see something to change my mind. it is my opinion and past experience with using daz studio & its content for my animation software choice for the last 8 years, that if daz developers keeps moving the ball with every new characters released & how can share motions files, making it harder for animators to work with it. then I assume that lack of animation support will always remain a issue., really if you have 1000's invested in stuff that works, its rather pointless reinvesting over and over for the same content already owned just so I can use the newest character design. if people really spend money like that please email me I have some great bottom land for sale
IMO genesis 1 by far the best character design for animation yet.
My silly cartoons
Nicely put, Ivy. A well-articulated and substantiated critique, with just the right pragmatic tone.
I've got a similar financial and time investment, and have also settled on G1 for the forseable future. I do this as a hobby (with the usual bigger dreams), and my target render style outputs don't require the subtle improvements being offered with G3 and above, (even G2 and above for me), especially when considering the additional cost of updated morph-packs and conversion efforts to migrate/update my bloated library to the g2/3/8 specs. While I could cite finances as keeping me from keeping up in the 'latest-thing' game, I actually don't see a viable advantage to upgrading from G1 so far. Again - my outputs may differ from others' in terms of 'forgiveness' of figure bends and more subtle improvements, but G1 works pretty darned well. Heck, in the right hands, V4/M4/K4 and family still shine. I'd probably just go with G8 if starting today, but with the existing DS animation tools that haven't been natively updated since G1, it's still paying me big-time to wait. Esp. since Iclone, and Blender are moving fast and affordable, Poser solves a few of my issues quite nicely and plays well between everything I use,and Carrara is still arguably more sophisticated without an upgrade in years, than DS is today (all comparisons done with the animation yardstick in mind).
A huge part of my equation is my existing framework/workflow - having started w/ Mil4 characters, I still haven't converted all of my libraries to G1 yet. Doing it all again for G2/3/8? There's gotta be more of a 'win' on the other side of that effort than I currently see to start down that path again.
Like Ivy, I'm still optimistic, as I see the dforce release today (cloth sim!) and its potential (and mentioned intention) of physics sims, which all scream of animation, and believe DAZ Inc. may well have a longer-term plan that includes better and contemporary animation tools. I see that they could make real money in this trending industry and can't imagine that they don't see it. We can, and I do, hope so.
Thanks to all above who have shared their workflows and tricks to getting around some of the hurdles we all know and love... These clever techniques are invaluable, and I think all animators thrive on this sort of discussion as we hack through our story-making passions.
cheers,
--ms