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Saving Animations in Carrara & Import to DAZ

jamesmuia3jamesmuia3 Posts: 0
edited December 1969 in Carrara Discussion

Hi there,

As funny as this might sound, I'm looking for the best way to save my animations created in Carrara, and import them into DAZ.

Right now I find that Carrara is great for animations, but I haven't learned how to use the rest of the program yet. I'd like to build my scenes in DAZ for the time being, and just import my character animations over.

Is there any way to create aniblocks in carrara that I can use for DAZ, or import the textured character + animations over?

Thanks for any help!

Comments

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,583
    edited November 2013

    BVH/PZ2 Exporter for Carrara, by he mighty Fenric!
    It is absolutely the way to do it. You save them to animated or still pose format from Poser. PZ2.
    Edit: Forgot to mention that you can even export NLA information. What ever is driving your pose will come through in the final pose saved. It's perfect for Carrara in that way.

    PZ2export.jpg
    350 x 455 - 37K
    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • jamesmuia3jamesmuia3 Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Dartanbeck, just what I need :)

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,583
    edited December 1969

    jamesmuia3 said:
    Thanks Dartanbeck, just what I need :)
    Me too.
    So, for my own simplicity, this is the one thing that I use in my Carrara Runtime! ;)

    For further fun within this realm, perhaps have a read at this little article I wrote a while back:
    ► AniMating in Carrara
    In there, I talk about the idea (and practice) of loading in one aniBlock for certain body parts and get rid of the rest. Save that as an NLA Clip. Only the animated body parts become locked into the clip. Now load in another aniBlock for another part of the body, and so on. Once you're all done creating something so cool that it just must be saved, good ol' Fenric comes through with a method to save the whole thing.
    While your exporting, you even have the option to make it non-translating. So a walk cycle would remain walking in place, rather than actually cruising along. While I don't use it for that example, the feature is there and very useful.

    Every plugin that I've purchased from Fenric (all except MDD from DAZ Store and some from his den) becomes a very useful list of new features that I prefer to never live without.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,583
    edited December 1969

    Oh... and, if you're reading this, Fenric, I would love to purchase the exact thing that saves Poser format Face poses, for exporting expressions in their own Poser format. This is incredibly useful for wincing, smiling, yelling, etc., on top of any other animation that's going on. No hurry, as we can save this stuff in NLA form, but it would make for a very useful tool.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,583
    edited December 1969

    Wow.
    Here's a great example of useful aniBlocks that can be used in many, many ways!
    BoneTech3D Game Combat aniBlocks
    These things are really cool!

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    Dart,
    I would like to make the reverse.
    Do you know if it's possible to import the path created in Poser into Carrara ?
    When I import a Walkdesigner motion with a path, the character remains in place in Carrara (export in .pz2).

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    Sorry, in .pz3, that work...

  • argus1000argus1000 Posts: 701
    edited December 1969

    DUDU_00001 said:

    When I import a Walkdesigner motion with a path, the character remains in place in Carrara (export in .pz2).

    I haven't used Poser's walk designer in a while. I now prefer iClone's walk designer (called motion puppet), but if I remember correctly I used to be able to export the path by clicking on "Body" in the "save" window that pops up.

  • PGrePGre Posts: 95
    edited December 1969

    I have had success importing the entire Poser Debut scene into Carrara (which preserves the walk path). Check out the results in this video:

    http://youtu.be/p58fwgdmG4w

    For the running scenes I found it necessary to delete every 30th keyframe from the imported poser file to eliminate some horrible knee-popping.

  • DUDUDUDU Posts: 1,945
    edited December 1969

    You exported your scene in .pz3?
    Usually, I have the same problem as you but with .bvh but not with .pz3… Your animation is very well carried out, is there postwork (waves with the feets…) ?

  • FenricFenric Posts: 351
    edited December 1969

    I'm always reading, Dartanbeck... ;)

    I do wish the morphs had just a tiny bit more information, so it was easier to tell which where shaping morphs, which were expressions, and which were odd posing helper dials that I've never really understood the point for.

  • PGrePGre Posts: 95
    edited December 1969

    Yes DUDU, .pz3. Carrara will give you import options and since I was using the mannequin figure I turned off everything but the animation. It imported nicely in its own group called UNIVERSE so that I could adjust placement within the cararra scene without disturbing the animation. And yes, the ripples were done in carrara as a wave modifier on a plane sitting just below the mirror ground plane. Duplicated one for each footstep and staggered in the timeline.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,583
    edited November 2013

    Fenric said:
    I'm always reading, Dartanbeck... ;)

    I do wish the morphs had just a tiny bit more information, so it was easier to tell which where shaping morphs, which were expressions, and which were odd posing helper dials that I've never really understood the point for.

    Ahh.
    Yeah I don't know a thing about coding. Poser uses a FC2 or something like that, as their face poser extension.
    Worry not! What you have already is totally helpful!
    Thanks Fenric!
    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • FenricFenric Posts: 351
    edited November 2013

    Dartanbeck said:
    Ahh.

    Always... everywhere.... ;)


    But no, it's really not a bad idea, and I've been toying with various ways to do such a thing for a little while. Wondering whether it would be better to do something like Wardrobe Wizard or Cross Dresser where I charge for the privilege of doing all the work, or whether I make something that anyone could just hack on randomly... I honestly haven't decided, and my real job keeps being annoyingly demanding.

    Post edited by Fenric on
  • PiratesMoonPiratesMoon Posts: 27
    edited December 1969

    For Carrara, are there any BVH files of zero posed (or otherwise) Genesis and Genesis 2 figures. I'd like to see how the additional architecture and offsets are handled, and I'd like to compare them with the M4-V4 BVH files available from Carnegie Mellon:

    https://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture/daz-friendly-release

    The above files are producing some unusual transformations on Gen and Gen2 figures, which I suspect are mostly because of the JOINT name changes, but there are the additional architecural additions that may need to be massaged as well.

  • PiratesMoonPiratesMoon Posts: 27
    edited December 1969

    Nevermind, I figured it out. Sometimes it just helps to write it down.

    At the moment, I'm testing the Carnegie Mellon (CM) BVH files for compatiblity with Gen 2 in Carrara. Stock, they don't work; it does some really strange things to the figures, but...

    If I load a Gen 2 figure in DAZ Studio 4.6 and apply a CM BVH to it, then export the BVH from the modified Gen 2 figure...

    That new BVH will import into Carrara 8.5 onto a Gen 2 figure with no distortion (at least for the first attempt I just did. It appears though I need to streighten up the abdomen 2 a bit.) In Carrara this actually corrected some small distortion that I saw on the Daz figure's hand.

    There is a caveat: The Carrara Gen 2 figure went up in position about a figure's height from the floor. However, if I group the figure with the BVH applied, I can position and rotate the group anywhere.

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