Daz! pls why no usefull Posingtool in studio??

Ruphuss

the demo to Carrara 8 that is available on CNet says Trial has expired

Taoz

daveleitz68 said:

@ Taozen-

Animation, even in a program that makes it easier to do, takes a long time. I spent many hours on the Tai Chi animation (and still more to do when I get around to finishing it) using the pose to pose method. I made the extreme poses and then worked out the in-betweens starting from the torso and working outwards. The legs are IK, and the arms are FK. I was using a video reference from YouTube, but that doesn't help with depth in a scene. Once the overall motions were blocked out in the dopesheet, I used the graph editor to clean up the curves which is important to add more fluid, natural motion.

The Cookie Flexrig is a free download for anyone. Just sign up at Blend Swap, which is a web site for free content made for Blender. (Much of Blend Swap is crap, but there are some really nice things too.) The Blender Animation Toolkit is a video course available from Blender.org and CG Cookie. I recommend it for anyone who wants to know how to make animations in Blender. I like Blender, but if Carrara can do the same high quality animation using Genesis figures, I would buy it and learn how to use it. I guess I don't see DAZ Studio being improved much beyond being a content display tool. And that's fine since it is free, after all.

Yea I know animation takes time if it has to look good - I tried to do an experimental one a while ago in Cararra and it was troublesome and the result wasn't very good. I watched a video once demonstrating the Puppeteer in DS and that looked fairly easy though, but I haven't tried it yet.

Have you tried GoFigure's animation tools for DS (aniMate2, grahpMate, keyMate)? I bought them on a sale some time ago but haven't had the time to try them out yet.

As for Blender I think I'll wait and see if the new GUI that someone has suggested will be implemented - don't want to waste time on learning to know the current GUI if it's going to be replaced with something better and simpler anyway.

daveleitz

@ Taozen,

I put a lot of time into learning the current Blender interface, but I would still welcome the changes recommended by Andrew Price. However, that could take a while. In the mean time, the way I see it, CG skills like animation are largely software independent. People are very fortunate today to have so much free instruction on using Blender. When I first found out about it back in 2000, there was one (or two) tutorial books that had to be bought from Europe. In 2010, I finally dove into Blender. It wasn't until this year that I got to know the animation part of the program.

Dopesheet? Graph Editor? NLA? Okay, well now I know what they are and how to change poses and add keyframes. I think with just a little more effort I could apply my knowledge to another program, since I've got the basic CG knowledge under my belt. The problem I have with DS is that it has no steering wheel, um, I mean, no FK/IK switching (that works in a predictable fashion). If posing in DS is such a chore (at least to me it is), then I have ZERO motivation to buy animation tools for it.

I would spend the money on Carrara for good posing and animation. I'm not a Blender fan boy by any means, but I'm not a 'man of means' either. I'm not going to spend money on software and just hope that it does what I think it should do.

Fixme12

If i was you, i just report another future/bug request about the IK/FK problems in dazstudio....
https://helpdaz.zendesk.com/forums
with examples like how it's done in Blender or other software,

the more people that report this problems, the more change we finally have such things workable in dazstudio

daveleitz

The first image is AM's Ultimo Paradiso rendered in DAZ Studio with 3Delight and post processed with painterly effects in Corel Painter 12.

And then I thought, wouldn't it be cool to pose a character walking up that coconut palm on the left. So, I tried to pose, got frustrated with the lack of IK and almost useless pins, and gave up. Posing in DAZ Studio sux! (The figures on the beach use preset poses.)

Well, I had converted the Ultimo Paradiso scene to render in Blender's Cycles earlier this year, so I figured I would try to pose a character made in Blender with the Cookie Flexrig walking up the tree. The screenshot shows the posed character including controls, and then there is a render of the final result.

I would really, really like to be able to do this pose with Genesis in DAZ Studio.

daveleitz

I finally got my Genesis character posed on a tree. The pins work, except sometimes they slip when attempting to adjust some other part of the body. Then I had to re-pose the slipped hand or foot all over again. This is not how an IK rig should work. I guess the automatic way that the torso adjusts in posing was designed with the intention of helping amatuer CG artists, but I find the unpredictable nature of it very frustrating. Of course, since I'm posing a body part and not a 'target,' I'll tend to have these kinds of problems.

Maybe the average DAZ Studio and Poser users don't know what they're missing. To that end, I put together a short video demonstrating what a control rig can look like and how it can work. In the video I show: https://vimeo.com/78820622

1. Root control. Click on this and you can move your character to any part of the scene.

2. IK foot control. In this video only the IK foot is visible for clarity. The FK foot control is posable separately, and a slider (parameter dial) is used to move the foot and leg between either position. The important thing to remember about the IK foot (and hand) control is that it is just a target. If it moves too far, the limb will just go to its maximum extention. Unlike a pin, though, it won't 'slip' out of its location if the torso pulls the leg (or arm) straight. Accurate placement shouldn't be a matter of guess work.

3. Foot roll control. This provides extra posing control for heel and toe interaction. Very useful for walk cycles in animation.

4. Torso controls. As shown in the video, pretty much self explanatory. Note: Blender does use manipulator tools like DAZ Studio, but I turned them off for clarity in this video. It's easier for me to cancel a pose move by right clicking without using the manipulator.

5. Pivot slide. A nice feature of the Cookie Flexrig that make it easier to control the position of the pivot point of the spine from the hips to the shoulders.

6. IK hand. Just like the IK foot.

7. IK target. So, once you've got that foot or hand location locked in place, how do you point the knee or elbow in the right direction without FK? Use the IK target control.

The Cookie Flexrig is FREE. Why doesn't someone who knows how to code for DAZ Studio copy how it works?