I can't possibly be the only one
andykarta
Posts: 84
I've been a little curious why I'm not getting a lot of responses when I ask about intergrating Daz with ship of the line 3d animation software like Maya or Cinema 4d. Nor is there an abundance of tutorials on the subject on the web. And I'm like, 'what's up with that?' I can't be the only one doing this.
Granted, Daz is a fully functional 3d application with a lot of plugins and its own vibrant community. Daz was my first 3d application. Daz created my addiction. But Daz has limitations. And those limitations made me learn Cinema and Maya and a bunch of other programs.
Price may be an issue with Cinema. But pretty much anyone can get a student version of Maya.
From the Cinema 4d and Maya perspective, I can't see why new animators wouldn't use Daz if for no other reason than that hands down, Genesis are the most beautiful and perfect body meshes in the world. And they're weighted beautifully. And they got great rigging. And the bodies have presaved selections so its easy to put textures on them. And the control rig is awesome. Plus with Facegen pro you can make them look like actual people. And yet even the Cinema 4d people who love making tutorials on EVERYTHING barely touch the subject. I think I've found ten tutorials and blogs on the subject of integrating Genesis with the big guys. It doesn't make sense.
And from the Daz perspective, there's got to be a bunch of you who have come across limitations and didn't want to just go to a bridge program like Hex or buy a plugin. There's got to be tons of Daz users with Maya and Cinema on your systems (who have forgotten more than I've learned in my paultry 8 months) who've noticed that for example, you can put cameras on splines or control F curves or use cloners in the big battlewagons. I mean animation blocks are okay. But they're nothing compared to the take system and dopesheet and animation layers in Cinema. And its not like its that hard to learn. IMHO, the basic controls of Daz are harder. But I'm not seeing a lot of wisdom on the web from you either. Is Daz and Maya, for example, like putting mayo in pepsi. They just don't go together?
I'm not complaining. But I am curious.
Plus, I'm kind of curious what the response to this discussion would be. No one replying would answer my question as much as a million posts.
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Comments
I'm not a student. I can't get any student version of any program like Maya or whatever. And I bet a lot of people have the same issue.
In addition, a good deal of people don't do animations, but stills.
Just some thoughts to add to your discussion. Also, you might be better of moving this to Commons, where the users who might use your pipeline are more likely to frequent.
Even if you're not a student, you can get it. My friend got an autodesk membership for free for joining a Maya meetup group. Certain free online classes also make you eligible. The bottem line, if you want it, you can (legally) get it. Might take a little looking. And you're not allowed to make money off of it. But you'll have friggin MAYA.
No, I think most people you read posts from talking about Maya, C4D, 3DS Max and so on how getting it free for some reason or another. For me Blender, DAZ, and Unity is enough to learn.
There are a few people around. @wolf359 uses C4D. @drzap uses Maya.
https://www.daz3d.com/daz-to-maya
It's probably that there are enough tutorials that are generic enough to describe the basic process that DAZ probably doesn't see the need to do any.
DAZ is running commercials on YouTube for the DAZ Studio to Maya plugin that was recently released. I need a commercial release of Maya to use it otherwise it's worthless for me and I just can't afford it.
I'm not certain, but from what I've seen the DAZ content characters like Genesis aren't anywhere near what most professionals would want or need to make the stuff they make. I mean if you look at videos of how they produce feature films and stuff they do some incredibly complex and custom modelling from scratch and rigging that is far beyond the simple rigs in the DAZ characters. As nice as the Genesis characters are, the face morphs are nowhere near what you'd want if you want to do some real expressions. I saw some videos of the rigging they do with CG characters and it's freakin' amazing. I think they really want custom stuff that they can develop from scratch exactly how they want rather than use what the DAZ characters give you. I assume if you're really gonna animate characters in a film or whatever you have to do a whole lot more than just use a Genesis character. So I'm guessing that there aren't that many people who want to move DAZ stuff into Maya. Of course there are some, but I think it's two different audiences. And I'm assuming Maya allows you to do some really amazing custom rigging and stuff? Anyone know if that's true, or do the use something else for all of that?
I suspect a lot of the rigging for bipeds is going to be similar no matter what you're animating, which is why some folks didn't especially care for the addition of the twist bones in the arms and legs when Genesis 3 came out. The same with quadrupeds and other multiple limbed creatures like ants, spiders and such. In fact, I've heard that many animators actually prefer working with low poly figures to get the movements, then retarget the motions to a higher poly mesh for the final rendering pass.
Makes total sense to me. Most here don't have access to or even want or know about high end software outside of DS. Also most here are not into animation which is where other software really outshines DS. I am a Max user and use it primarily for modeling since setting up a scene and materials is a tedious process when DS does it all quickly and efficiently.
Here's what one of those amazing Maya plugins can do http://zivadynamics.com
I'm talking about stuff like this....
I agree that custom models and morph targets and rigs are best. But they're sooooooooooo much work. Of the body meshes out there, I've tried pretty much everything except iclone and none compare to even genesis 2 which I'm using. Most bodies are optimized for gaming. And not all work with Facegen Pro which takes genesis to a whole new level IMHO. Then there's the weighting. I could spend a week weighting a character and not get it even close to as good as the daz weightmap. Gen 2 doesn't have a roll bone and I agree more facial rigging would be nice. But that's kind of like pointing out how little luggage room a lamborghini has. For someone like me who doesn't have Pixar's resources, I need all the help I can get. And Gen2 brings it. Its other things that fall short.
As for the Maya plugin, my wife would kick my butt if I told her I wanted to spend another 30 bucks on a Daz plugin after telling her how Maya can do everything besides bake bread for the last six months. Plus it scares me how unspecific the video and the readme was. But here, I'll save everyone thirty bucks right now.
https://toyen-art.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Using-Daz-figures-for-animation-in-Maya-585078140
This is the exception that proves the rule. There are few sources of pure spiritual knowledge out there like Toyen's journal entry. I guess it makes more sense to @ebergerly than me. With nearly 2000 posts he's probably a lot more familiar with Daz (and probably 3d graphics in general) than me. But still, you get so much for just a little extra learning. I still don't get why its not more common to take gen 2 into the battlecrusier programs.
That's very cool
Gen 3 and 8 have improved face rigging.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p3QxXYo3cQ
Typically you go into Maya and Max to make your own figures that you can make unrestricted profit from. Daz figures are owned property and have limits to what you can do with them. Daz rents (licenses) the figures to end-users, complete with a EULA. When you grow your own, it's yours.
If one did score a "not really a student taking a related course but I got it through a simple cheat" Maya license, and tried to make a buck with a Daz figure, I'm sure there'd be trouble out the wazoo for them. Most of the people who got Maya that way that I've met online are using it for ripped game models anyway so they can do Lara Croft and Tifa Lockheart futanari scenes, so Daz figures are "nobodys" that take a lot of work to make look like famous faces.
And then there's V4, with her endless library.
And then there's the Poser-to-Max plugin that gives you pretty much the same control in Max that you have in Poser.
As for Genesis not having face rigging, it's my understanding that once you export the figure in a format that Max/Maya will read, it comes in without a skeleton anyway, and since you're linking figures and toes, you may as well link the cheeks and nose.
Back before Autodesk was Autodesk, Max and Maya were semi-competing products that did almost the same thing. When Discreet bought Alias (makers of Wavefront, which was their direct-competition modeler, and who established the OBJ standard everyone adheres to to this day), and their Big Money Dog Maya, rather than merging the two programs together, which would have been the smart thing to do, they merely refined the things they already did well, which means Max is the modeler and Maya does everything else - figure rigging, water and other particle sims, lighting, etc. The one area they directly compete is rendering, prticularly with Mental Ray and other such systems which gave birth to the comparatively less-featured Iray.
I love looking at the gen3 face rig. Its like a bouquet of posies. Unfortunately for me, Gen 3 doesn't take the facegen textures as well as Gen2 does. Theres this line around the lips I can't get rid of. Plus I prefer the, god I don't know what Daz calls them but in Maya they're blendshapes. Basically the face morph deformer thingiebobs in Gen 2. That's really at the heart of the question that led to the post that led to this post. I want to use maya controls for the facial deformer thingies (again, blendshapes) so I can control them effectively. I'm not thrilled with the Cinema 4d controls and I wanted to know if someone had a good workflow. I got crickets so I started wondering if anyone else was using Daz, Cinema, and Maya.
And Gen 8 won't work with my version of Facegen Pro.
Can you tell I'm a fan of facegen pro by now?
I think this thread here in the forum here may be of interest. IIRC, one user has been able to export/import a fully functional Genesis 8 figure from DS to Maya, including all JCM's, rigging and morphs (blend shapes).
Okay, I got to page 3 and then the dog came in. This confirms my initial suspicion about the plugin kinda unless on page 10 or whatever someone said something different. Not all textures always transfer, no subdivided mesh. Facial controls won't transfer so you have to rerig the faces. You might as well set up your own facial morphs in Maya if you can't use the awesome Daz controls. Also, people who had no trouble.
I get what you want. 8 months or so ago, I came to this forum all bright-eyed and ambitious because I saw the wonderful DAZ figures and I was thinking they would be great animated. (I was not an animator, I am a filmmaker). Then reality set in and I realized how limited Daz Studio was. So I cried and cried and cursed Daz3D for spoiling my dreams. Then I hunkered down and went to work because you can't get what you want unless you do the work. First, I think DaztoMaya is a good product. It won't work miracles, it's not magic, but it allowed a novice like myself to get my toes wet in Maya. In fact, it is the only reason why I initially went with Maya as opposed to C4D. Since that time, I have been learning the software, solving the technical and creative problems that exist in the pipeline between Daz and Maya, and doing a lot of crying.
You are right. Genesis figures are weighted beautifully, are easy to texture and its many morphs make things so convenient. But like other's have mentioned, people who are most likely to use Maya (CGI professionals) are not looking for generic creatures that they have to negotiate licenses for. Daz figures aren't much use to them, except maybe for storyboarding and previz. We, on the other hand, us poor one man studios, us wannabe animator dreamers, see Genesis figures as an answer to our problems. No, you are not alone.
But in order to get to the place you want, you need to be willing to do your own shading and texturing face rigging, and problem solver for the bumps that lie ahead. Everyone's workflow is different, but DaztoMaya is a good start. I have learned so much these last nine months. I swore I would never do these things and one by one, I broke down and learned rigging, texturing, mocap, multiple renderers, and even a little scripting. I don't regret it. Now I have 99% Daz Studio functionality inside Maya. And you will find Maya is a ton easier to animate in than Daz Studio. I remember seeing your work before. Don't give up. There is a light at the end. Feel free to send me a PM if you have any questions. I'm not a seasoned pro, but if it has to do with bringing Daz to Maya, I have probably experienced it.
Words to live by good sir.
As to the thread topic Maya is the top Character animation
program on Earth google:
Game of thrones battle of the B*stards
that epic battle scene was Autodesk Maya.
The overwhelming majority of users here are one framers and have little need
for a powerful Character animation tool like Maya.
The people outside this user community simply are not as impressed with
the genesis figures as they come from a different perspective.
The CG world is replete with pretty ,Ideal BMI, White women
Daz has nothing special in their iterations.
Also many times the production companies for films, expect to
own all the assets created by the animation/vfx
houses the they hire so Daz licensing is "problematic" in this area
However the big Advantage for me in genesis is the insant versatility
and its ability to accept motion from outside source like Iclone.
I hate rigging in C4D
And to their WELL DESERVED CREDIT.
Daz inc. has made an extraordinarly effort to make their content
exporatable /usable in other program environments.
Anyone how who is serious about using Daz content in other program has little excuse
to complain.
My pipeline is seamless:
Create major bodymotion in Iclone/Endorphin
import motion to Daz genesis 2
Tweak as needed with graphmate/keymate adding facial expressions
add lipsinch with mimic3 pro.
render open GL test clip from DS for review
Export .obj/MDD with any prefered subD level and JCM fidelity
intact to Maxon C4D for rendering.
once In C4D new MDD data can be exported continuously to existing meshes
in C4D.
I have a main character in my film that was exported from DS two years ago
that I have been animating his scenes& Dialog by exporting new MDD files from DS.
I bought it, I own Maya, trust me when I say: It's still worthless. Don't waste your money. I've used it once or twice to quickly transfer a mesh to Maya for editing, but I tear the mesh out and delete everything else, saving a few seconds tops. If you're intending to properly transfer characters rigging, textures and all, this addon will either not help you whatsoever or make your life more difficult because it will hide problems from you, or do a generally piss poor job and you will not know enough to understand that it did.
I'm not allowed to buy iclone. Evidently the juxtiposition of me spending 750 bucks on zbrush and then my wife hearing me complain how much I hate it has led to the conclusion that I have 'all the damn graphics software I need.'
Boy you really don't like rigging in Cinema, huh. It looks like your whole workflow is built around avoiding it. If you're just exporting motion files you can put them directly into Cinema and just export the figure from from Daz into Cinema. Add the mocap or whatever to the animation layer and there you go. But that means you got to deal with Cinema rigs and character tags and those teeny weenie little sliders. I'm like that with zbrush. I'm actually using Mudbox instead of that handy bridge because zbrush makes me want to hurt myself. Its got the best UV creation plugin I know though. You can actually draw the seams and stuff which is amazing. But I hate zbrush. Though its boolean system is awesome. Still it's stupid. Fixes holes in mesh better than anything else.... See what my family has to deal with?
By the way, where are all these models out there that are as good as genesis for animation? Adobe fusion, nope. Mixamo, nope. Make Human, nope. Poser, nope. I only tried the iclone demo once but it wasn't as pretty as genesis 2. The models in Cinema don't do it for me and they're not rigged and weighted. Plus I don't think I've mentioned Facegen Pro in the last couple paragraphs so there's that.
Anyway thanks for the advice. I'm going to try that MDD file thing. I didn't ever think of updating it with new textures like that.
That last quote from me was from Wolf359. I always do that.....
Maxon Cinema4D does NOT have a humanIK control rig that retargets motion to native
C4D Character rigs Like Iclone,Motionbuilder, Ikinema,Max,Maya, Houdini even lightwave and MODO.
We recently had this discussion over at the C4D forum on Cgcociety.org
and even the most die hard maxon loyalists over there, concede that they
use some other application to create their character animation as the C4D
"retarget tag" requires manual
bone remapping/renamimg and still produces rubbish results..
also An FBX Export from Daz 3D will come into C4D at base SubD resolution
No JCM or hi-res morphs.
Now I am given to understand that the JCM's can be loaded in C4D via a
complicated"Expresso" scripting set up which to me is just more tedious labor getting the
character to look as good they did in Daz studio.
A Daz exported .obj file driven by MDD data wont need any of this
extra labor and I can get on with rendering the next scene of my story.
And then there is the matter of lipsinc.
C4D has no native option create lipsinc
from audio files again C4D users are either using some external solution or creating
Cute little Cartoon creature animations with little to no speaking.
and what about dynamic cloth?
As you know,by now the aging single threaded "Clothilde" in C4D, is only good for
draping bedsheets, table cloths,window curtains and flags.
it does not solve on moving Characters rigs period.
This BTW is the state of maxon Cinema4D R19 studio in 2018
at over $3000 USD
I am still using maxon Cinema4D R 11.5 that was released in 2009
when I was all Mac OS based
before I retired and before Maxon implemented
an Adobe/Autodesk style payment system.
Maxon has made it Clear that their target demographic
is not Character based animators but broadcast Motion graphic artists
and in that arena C4D has no rivals..period.
I love the scene mangement
Lighting and camera. fast rendering system,
mograph and my link to nextlimits realflow
fluid sysem.
and the ability to send camera and lighting Data to Adobe After effects
where I do ALOT of VFX compositing.
Changing an established 3D animation VFX pipeline is like moving to
another nation/culture..;
people will avoid it unless absolutely forced to do so.
However I am never buying another Apple computer
as Apple in my opinion is a consumer tech toy maker not a
3D/CG production hardware company
I already have lightwave 2015 on windows and
LW 2018 looks to be a major "back from obscurity" update.
Lightwave supports .obj/MDDand FBX...and is $995 USD
so my Iclone animated Daz people& Dyn Cloth work in lightwave as they
Do in in C4D
And Lightwave has a volumetric particle smoke/fire system that puts
even the current C4D and Blender to utter shame.
Visit Artstation( dot com) if you want to see the pretty,ideal BMI, white chicks
being made for Maya, Max, Houdini,MODO etc.
You are aware that the current C4D
only natively imports Alembic
Cache files and you would have to buy the Alembic Exporter
fromDaz to send Animated character mesh Data to C4D
For MDD you need Daz animate 2 full version
and will have to buy the Riptide pro
plugin for C4D by keith young(aka spanky)
he just updated it for R19 according to his recent post on
the Cgsociety forums.
Until DAZ fixes two major outstanding bugs in the Alembic exporter I would not recommend anyone trying to use it. FBX, DAE, and OBJ/MDD are really your best bet depending on which workflow you're going for. I really wish DAZ's Alembic implementation didn't have the problems it does since that seems to be one of the major formats of choice for professional tools.
Hi Just curious.. what are the problems with the Alembic
Exporter plugin for studio??
The DAZ Alembic exporter will fail to export scenes if there are two of one object. So for example if you have attempt to export a scene that has two of the same chair or tree or whatever it will fail. This also means if you attempt to export two characters in the same .abc it will fail since you can't have two Genesis or whatever. Even if you just wanted to export a character that might have two copies of one item (a bracelet left and a bracelet right or sword left sword right) it fails. The other issue is the normals are reversed. This of course means extra work in the destination program to flip the normals and even then, I've noticed really really odd behavior of the geomertry with DAZ abc that goes away when using DAZ obj. If you don't fix the reversed normals SSS calculations will be wrong and so will any dynamic simulations since it will think the objects are inside out. I have only tested abc imported into Houdini but I would expect similar from Maya, C4D, Lightwave and any other tool reading a DAZ exported .abc.
I see... those are major issues to be sure.
Even my Daz .obj exports are "mirrored"
(guy looking to the right in the DS
animation will be looking left in C4D)
However I simply change my import scale
value to an opposite negative value
in the riptide pro MDD deformer object
and flip the obj 90 degrees on the y axis.
This of course reverses my normals which makes any C4D
spline based hair grow inward instead of outward.
not a show stopper as I simply select all faces with polygon tool and choose
"reverse normals" and All works fine even simple cloth
collisions.