AniMate: How do I pause animation and advance one frame at a time?

EightiesIsEnough

I purchased some animation files through Renderosity last night, and regarding the AniMate plug-in that I already have access to, I am wondering how to pause each frame in the animation and advance to the next frame one at a time so I could create a render of each frame?

Ken OBanion

You actually wouldn't use AniMate for something like that; use DAZ Studio's built-in timeline, which has the frame-stepping controls you want.

If the files you're using are aniBlocks, you need to bake them into the timeline, and control the animation from there.  You can also render the animation as an image sequence, as opposed to a video clip (which is generally the preferred approach; that way, if something goes awry, you don't have to re-render the entire animation, just the frames that got goobered up).

EightiesIsEnough

I think they are aniBlocks.  How do I bake them onto the timeline?

Ken OBanion

jonsea31gsn_008b1b42a1 said:

I think they are aniBlocks.  How do I bake them onto the timeline?

I'm going to assume that you are at least somewhat familiar with AniMate.  If not, there are lots of tutorials out there (and some here in the DAZ store).

Once you have an animation sequence put together in AniMate, move the cursor to the space above the AniMate timeline and right-click; a pop-up menu will appear.  The first item on that menu (at least, on my instance) is 'Bake to Studio Keyframes'.  Select that, and everything in the AniMate timeline will be imported into the DAZ timeline.  The process takes a while, and there isn't a lot of feedback; not even a swirly 'Wait' cursor.  About the only way you'll know when it's done is that animation will jump to the final frame.  Then, switch to the DAZ timeline, and you'll see a small black triangle under the scrubber at each frame in the animation.

In the control panel at the bottom-center of the timeline pane, on either side of the Play/Stop button, are the frame stepping controls.  Those are the ones you're after, and which AniMate doesn't have.  They allow you to step through each frame of your animation sequence.

EightiesIsEnough

So my question is, if the aniBlocks are activated via green button, i could click them or hover the mouse pointer over it, and it plays the single animation once without looping.  Could I control the same aniBlock animation by pressing stop, and moving the slider in the time line to get the pose?

Also, I purchased the AniMate 2 add-on this morning.  Could this add-on play more smooth aniBlocks with a more realistic animation instead of looking choppy?

EightiesIsEnough

Any tutorials on how to export each of the poses in an aniBlocks animation in AniMate Lite?

Ken OBanion

jonsea31gsn_008b1b42a1 said:

So my question is, if the aniBlocks are activated via green button, i could click them or hover the mouse pointer over it, and it plays the single animation once without looping.  Could I control the same aniBlock animation by pressing stop, and moving the slider in the time line to get the pose?

Also, I purchased the AniMate 2 add-on this morning.  Could this add-on play more smooth aniBlocks with a more realistic animation instead of looking choppy?

As long as the aniBlock is in the timeline, yes, although that method lacks precision.  But it does have to be in the AniMate timeline to be manipulated. 

I prefer to use the DAZ Timeline pane for things like that, though.  It gives me better control over the exact position on the timeline that I want to render.  (Although you can also use the 'Sub-second Frame Counter' on the AniMate pane for fine-tuning the frame position, but that's a lot of clicks.  Remember that AniMate is time-based, and not inherently frame-based, as the DAZ Timeline is.  You'd have to move the scrubber to the approximate second in the animation, and then click the Frame Counter's forward- and back-arrows to select the specific frame.)  I can also tweak the poses a bit, because every joint/bone on the figure has its own, individual timeline data, that appears when you select it on the Scene tab.

If you have the GraphMate and KeyMate add-ons for AniMate, you can use those to navigate among keyframes, also.  If you don't, then the Timeline is the best way to go.

Syrus_Dante

@ jonsea31gsn_008b1b42a1

Hi, I also have the AniMate2, KeyMate & AniMate plugins and as far as I know by default there are no keyboard shortcuts for eighter the timeline scrubbing nor the plugins to jump over the frames.

Just recently as I start using the Customize settings more often and add/change my keyboard shortcuts (search the list for the Action and right-click then choose Change Keyboard Shortcut) I also found there is a Animation section in the left side Action list.

See the screenshot for how I setup my shortcuts for Animation - maybe it has been added there after some update I'm using DazStudio v 4.10.0.107 - but the best is it works not just for the Timeline but also for all animation plugins. You may also want to take a look at the other shortcuts for the plugins to work more efficiently with them.

 

For to render just the poses from the AniBlock your can skip to the frames select the figure and save pose presets to your library. Then open up a new scene load your figure and apply the pose presets one after another maybe with a few frames in between to tweek or blend over the poses. With this you can avoid hving too much trouble with the cameras, lights and animation on them. Before you add the next KeyFrame / pose from the library make shure to create a keyframe not just for the body (root node) of the figure but also for all joints/bones of the figure like the limbs - to avoid having the pose before changed / destroyed by the pose preset you add after. Therefor select the figure in the Scene pane, right-click on it and choose Select>Select Children. After that add a KeyFrame eigther with the timeline button or with your custom keyboard shortcut.

 

@ Ken OBanion

As long as the aniBlock is in the timeline, yes, although that method lacks precision.

Hi, you are talking about the precission and that the AniBolcks are time based and the timele framebased. I just checked store for some AniBocks and searched for Porduct Informations that says how many frames per second the AniBlocks have. I couldnt find any information on that - so I gues they are offered with 30 or 60 frames per second and I would bet they are just 30fps.

This should also be equal to the FPS settings on the timeline - but maybe its the best to set the FPS to 60 by default - as I remember there was / or still is a bug with the timeline fps settings that it gets reset to 30 fps everytime you open up the scene file again after once closing DazStudio.

Paulh50_50

Thanks people this help me a lot, it explain alot of things /bugs I been wondering about.

Paulh

junk_6a2c7e98

FPS is set on the Timeline-Tab, bottom right corner.