Animation for surface tab timeline not working

xXQuatroXx

HI all,

I was wondering if it's possible to animate on the timeline with stuff from the surface tab.

Here is what I'm doing, currently working with Star Trek's U.S.S. Voyager from http://www.foundation3d.com/index.php?categoryid=38&p13_sectionid=307&p13_fileid=1556

There are navigation lights on the ship (as a normal plane has too) I want then to blink during my animation flyby.

Was trying to do it a simple a setting a frame with lumination on 8000 and turning it too 0 on another keyframe.... and then back again on another ket frame.

See the attached print screen.

But those keyframes aren't set or active. not even when I do it manually.

 

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? or isn't it possible at all?

The light is a surface texture only it's not on the scene itself

Like if you could blink eyes of a model, select the yes... do open close on the parameters tab. this can't be done here.

The model ship is from a poser.

 

Thanks in advance.

Cheers 

 

Sven Dullah

Normal lights like spots would work, but since you use emissive surfaces it's not straight forward. I believe you need to use a script to be able to animate surface properties in DS. You might want to check the forums freebie section, IIRC mcCasual has made one, don't have a link at hand though. Or as a simple workaround, use two copies of the ship, one with emissives on, one with emissives off. For lights on, scale down the copy with emissives off to 0%, for lights off, do it the opposite way etc.
Not very elegant solution, but should work.

Syrus_Dante

Found the link to MCasuals script https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/matanim.

Not shure if it will work with emissive shader values. This screenshot looks promising I've never tried it.

xXQuatroXx

Ok, can anyone help me out here on how this script should work?

Maybe someone can try something similar to my case and tell me if it works?

And then a step by step description? that would be great.

Thanks

Syrus_Dante

I've tried this on a primitive plane that got the Iray Uber Base Shader applied. It should work like this if I get it right.

1. select the object/figure on the left
2. select the surface on the left
3. select the surface property / emissive surface setting on the right
4. press the Make Property Animatable button in the middle
5. press the Set Tweening For Current frame
6. press Exit
7. change the frame and change the emissive surface settings Emission Temperature (K) in the Surfaces pane
8. open the script again
9. press the Set Tweening For Current frame again
10. press Exit
11. scrup the timeline to see if the Emission Temperature (K) changes

This was working for me I don't know if those material animations will get saved in the scene file. There is also mcjAniMatSave to deal with that issue.

If anything else failes create a Point Light, the Light Intensity slider is animatable by default. Parent the Point Light to the USS Voyager and position it to match the navigation lights. Turn off the emissive surface settings.

There will be keyframes showing up in the timeline for the Point Light to animate. I would first create the lights on keyframe then some frames later the lights off keyframe. Then select the lights on keyframe go to Edit>Object>Menorize Selected Item now you can use the memorized state, go to another frame to create a pulsing light and place a new key frame with Edit>Object>Restore Selected Item the item will restore to the memorized state. Edit>Object>Clear Item will remove all keyframes fom this object.

Sven Dullah

Syrus_Dante said:

I've tried this on a primitive plane that got the Iray Uber Base Shader applied. It should work like this if I get it right.

1. select the object/figure on the left
2. select the surface on the left
3. select the surface property / emissive surface setting on the right
4. press the Make Property Animatable button in the middle
5. press the Set Tweening For Current frame
6. press Exit
7. change the frame and change the emissive surface settings Emission Temperature (K) in the Surfaces pane
8. open the script again
9. press the Set Tweening For Current frame again
10. press Exit
11. scrup the timeline to see if the Emission Temperature (K) changes

This was working for me I don't know if those material animations will get saved in the scene file. There is also mcjAniMatSave to deal with that issue.

If anything else failes create a Point Light, the Light Intensity slider is animatable by default. Parent the Point Light to the USS Voyager and position it to match the navigation lights. Turn off the emissive surface settings.

There will be keyframes showing up in the timeline for the Point Light to animate. I would first create the lights on keyframe then some frames later the lights off keyframe. Then select the lights on keyframe go to Edit>Object>Menorize Selected Item now you can use the memorized state, go to another frame to create a pulsing light and place a new key frame with Edit>Object>Restore Selected Item the item will restore to the memorized state. Edit>Object>Clear Item will remove all keyframes fom this object.

I installed the script to give it a go, tks for the link:) It worked, except for the "set tweening for current frame". It always used the splined model. However, the "set tweening for all keys" worked as expected.

xXQuatroXx

SO im trying to create this blinking navigation light but this is done with luminance and not with emission temp.

Now... i got the time line to animate, the light stays on... but flashes bright for 1 second after ever 3 seconds, although this is the intent.

So at 60 fps 1 sec = 60 frames and 3 sec = 180 frames.

So the first 60 are ok... i go from frame 0 (15000 lumen) to frame 30 (320000 lumen) to frame 60 (15000 lumen) but now here it come... when adden at frame 240  another key frame at 15000 lumen and then at frame 270 320000 lumen and at frame 300 15000 lumen the animation work between frames 0 to 60 and 240 to 300. But between 60 and 240 which should stay steady ad 15000 it also animates,,,,go from 15000 to -15000 and back to 15000 (see attached picture)

So what am i doing wrong?

Sven Dullah

The key at frame 60 needs to be set to constant or linear. Only, I mentioned in my previous post that I couldn't get it to work, only the "set tweenning for all keys" worked for me. Try setting all keys to linear and see if it works for you.

xXQuatroXx

Thanks i will look in to that

WendyLuvsCatz

DAZ really are behind everything else not implementing animated textures and even just animated procedural surfaces natively 

all the Dforce and strand hairs in the world won’t make up for this basic render software omission 

understood maybe it was a limitation of 3Delight yet Casual and a couple PA’s too managed to create scripts which apparently work on iray too so it’s a pretty basic function they chose to ignore.

WendyLuvsCatz

BTW I hate using scripts so I just do multiple render passes and animate it in Hitfilm if forced to used DAZ studio 

xXQuatroXx

Aaah wendy, thanks for the tip thats also a possibility ad a last resort. But if the tools are there then i would first try to use them

xXQuatroXx

But then again with a light like this making 2 renders with normal light and a high pitch light and then in a movie editor assemble them would be that great. Because when the light blinks it has a slight increase and decrease. You wont see that in the editor as it would just plop on your screen and playing with filters also wouldnt realy work as you put the filters on the whole overlayed picture set but not only the light but the whole ship aswell. So unless you ca focus at a certain point in the movie editor this wont realy look like a very smooth transition in the light

WendyLuvsCatz

xXQuatroXx said:

But then again with a light like this making 2 renders with normal light and a high pitch light and then in a movie editor assemble them would be that great. Because when the light blinks it has a slight increase and decrease. You wont see that in the editor as it would just plop on your screen and playing with filters also wouldnt realy work as you put the filters on the whole overlayed picture set but not only the light but the whole ship aswell. So unless you ca focus at a certain point in the movie editor this wont realy look like a very smooth transition in the light

well I would render the whole thing with light on and off and layer the the two in a composite shot and animate the blending

xXQuatroXx

Im gonna check this soon tonight but if it works any chance of saving this to an ani block so dont have to manually input it every time?

Sven Dullah

xXQuatroXx said:

Im gonna check this soon tonight but if it works any chance of saving this to an ani block so dont have to manually input it every time?

Did you try this? mcjAniMatSave

xXQuatroXx

Ok so did as you said. I've made them all linear. Then made keyframe 60 constant. And that made key frame 60 till 240 stay at 15000 luminance but the next key frame at 240 (15000) to 270..(320000) doesnt want to move at all not matter what i put in there. But frame 270 (320000) till 310 (15000) do animate. And from 310 to 490 its constant again. So what am i missing here?

Sven Dullah

xXQuatroXx said:

Ok so did as you said. I've made them all linear. Then made keyframe 60 constant. And that made key frame 60 till 240 stay at 15000 luminance but the next key frame at 240 (15000) to 270..(320000) doesnt want to move at all not matter what i put in there. But frame 270 (320000) till 310 (15000) do animate. And from 310 to 490 its constant again. So what am i missing here?

Not sure...maybe you made the key at frame 240 constant by accident? Should be linear. Btw if you have added keyframes for 15000 luminance at frame 60 and 240 you could use linear for those. Infact for all the keys. If that doesn't work either the script is broken or something else is messed up. You shouldn't need to do it, but if there's a bug around, try adding another keyframe at 241 with 15001 luminance, set it to linear. That's all I can come up with atm;)

You probably grasped it already, but just to be sure: Constant means the value stays the same till the next keyframe then jumping to the next value. Linear means...well linear transition between keys, so going from 15000 to 15000 is practically the same as constant.

xXQuatroXx

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah thanks Sven, that did the trick adding an extra key frame at 239 (constant from 60 to 239) and key frame at 240 linear... that did the trick..... now all is moving.

Going to render that over night 600 frames, daz studio 4.11 with denoiser on at 8 itterations, 300 itterations per picture and quality off. at 1080P this setting gives me no grain and is the best setting to render for. lowest render time is around 30 sec and highest just above 1 min. looking forward to wake up tomorrow and putting it quickly adobe premiere and play the animation ;)

Thanks again Sven and yes the save animation tool comes in handy too ;)   

xXQuatroXx

Ok so how does that " mcjAniMatSave" actually work. I've tried to save it, it saves to a *.dsa file. So when Daz studio is closed and I reopen Daz with my normal *.duf safe file how would I implement that *.dsa file to get the animation working again?

Sven Dullah

xXQuatroXx said:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah thanks Sven, that did the trick adding an extra key frame at 239 (constant from 60 to 239) and key frame at 240 linear... that did the trick..... now all is moving.

Going to render that over night 600 frames, daz studio 4.11 with denoiser on at 8 itterations, 300 itterations per picture and quality off. at 1080P this setting gives me no grain and is the best setting to render for. lowest render time is around 30 sec and highest just above 1 min. looking forward to wake up tomorrow and putting it quickly adobe premiere and play the animation ;)

Thanks again Sven and yes the save animation tool comes in handy too ;)   

Happy to hear it's working:)

xXQuatroXx said:

Ok so how does that " mcjAniMatSave" actually work. I've tried to save it, it saves to a *.dsa file. So when Daz studio is closed and I reopen Daz with my normal *.duf safe file how would I implement that *.dsa file to get the animation working again?

Actually...no idea! Do you select teh object(s) with the animated surfaces and launch the script file? I haven't had the time to play with it yet, let me know if this works, if not I'll have a look at it soonish:)

M-C

xXQuatroXx said:

Ok so how does that " mcjAniMatSave" actually work. I've tried to save it, it saves to a *.dsa file. So when Daz studio is closed and I reopen Daz with my normal *.duf safe file how would I implement that *.dsa file to get the animation working again?

 

It saves like kind of a material preset. 

After loading your scene just select the object you saved the animation for and apply the .dsa file to it. That‘s all you have to do. 

xXQuatroXx

Just drag and drop it on to the scene when this object have been selected ? Drag and drop from explorer to daz?

Syrus_Dante

@xXQuatroXx

Great that you figured it out. I also must have pressed "set tweening for all keys" once before it was working for me. Getting the interpolation between the keyframes right is something you have to deal with all time while animating. It's hard enougth with regular object/figure properties where you can see the keyframes on the timeline but with material animations it seems you can only guess how the value change curve will look like.

In case you don't know DS got the keyMate and graphMate plugins for animating, the later is for working with animation curves but not with material settings. I think I heared somwhere that there is a ainmate material node in the ShaderBulder somwhere.

Here is another great script for those situations where you don't want to have your materials animating. mcjFreezeMaterials Happen to me sometimes in scenes where I'm at some keyframe where my figures are propably posed and then I start to make test renders and tweak the skin shader settings for example and then they start to change over time.

 

how would I implement that *.dsa file to get the animation working again?

For some reason maybe securety related you can't "execute" a script directly by double clicking the icons in the Content Library pane. You have to right-click and choose "Open in script IDE" that will open the scripting pane with the big Execute button on the top right to run the script. Well that is one oddity with scripts in DS, I tried as you did with drag and drop both from the Content Library into the Viewport and into the Script IDE pane but nothing of this works.

It's common to use those *.dsa scripts even for loading additional things with the content *.duf asset files. As far as I know there is only one save option with the Character Preset that offers you to select a so called Post Load script. It somehow writes a reference to that dsa file into the duf preset file. I found this option could be an iteresting way to load contet but I didn't made use of it yet. Uncheck the Compress File at the bottom to have a look at the duf file lateron in a tex editor where you could see the additional Post load script reference somewhere if you search for your script file name.

 

Post-Load Data Items

[PS]: Lately I had a look at the script examples in the documentation center and found those script examples under "Post-Load Data Items". I'm not shure what they do but as I understand the script code they have something to do with creating a proxy object like a null node and "link" some animateable properties of this object like translate y for example with some shader related property. If I think further this would enable you to animate the curves of those proxy object in graphMate and control shader settings with this.

[quote]: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/elements/callbacks_element_post_load_create/start

Overview

The sample on this page is one in a set that are designed to be used together to achieve a particular goal; to connect properties on a sphere (DzNode) and on that node's material (DzMaterial) when they are loaded into the scene to another set of properties on the NVIDIA Iray renderer (DzIrayRenderer) that control the orientation of the Environment Dome and the map assigned to said dome. This is accomplished using a DzCallBack, instead of a DzERCLink (which does not allow circular references), in order to demonstrate how pairs of properties can be bidirectionally “linked” to one another and scripts can be used to implement logic that breaks out of what would otherwise constitute an infinite loop.

The purpose of this particular script in the set is to execute when specific elements (i.e., node, material) load; to locate the other scripts involved and to create callbacks that incorporate/invoke said scripts.

---

[quote]: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/start

Elements

Post-Load Data Items

• post_load_file_data_item_add - Stores data on an element and causes a file to be loaded after that element has been loaded.

• Post-Load Script Data Item Add - A script that stores data on an element in the scene, which when re-loaded causes a script to be executed, and uses settings embedded in the data item to control how.

• Post-Load Script Data Item Read - A companion script to the script above that executes after the element has been loaded and uses settings embedded in the data item to control its execution.

• Post-Load View Proxy Create - A script that creates proxy nodes in the scene for each of the predefined view cameras, creates several properties on the proxy nodes that correspond with properties on the view cameras and links the properties on the view cameras to the corresponding properties on the proxy nodes. The script also embeds post-load data on each proxy node which causes a script to be executed after that node has been loaded into the scene in order to re-establish the links between the properties which are not otherwise saved.

• Post-Load View Proxy Link Properties - A companion script to the script above that executes when a proxy node has been loaded and uses settings embedded in the post-load data item to re-establish links between its properties and the corresponding properties on the corresponding view camera.

• Post-Load Material Proxy Create - A script that creates proxy properties on a node for a given set of properties on a surface and links the properties on the surface to the corresponding properties on the node, so that the surface properties can be animated. The script also embeds post-load data on the node node which causes a script to be executed after that node has been loaded into the scene in order to re-establish the links between the properties which are not otherwise saved.

• Post-Load Material Proxy Link Properties - A companion script to the script above that executes when a node has been loaded and uses settings embedded in the post-load data item to re-establish links between proxy properties on the node and the corresponding properties on the surface.

Post-Load Callbacks

• Element Post-Load Create Callbacks (« start here)

• Callback - Renderer Property Current Value Changed, Update Element Property

• Callback - Renderer Property Map Changed, Update Element Property

• Callback - Element Current Value Changed, Update Renderer Property

• Callback - Element Property Map Changed, Update Renderer Property

• Callback - Active Renderer Changed, Signal Property Value Changed

• Callback - Active Renderer Changed, Signal Property Map Changed

• Callback - Element Destroyed

xXQuatroXx

this is a bit too acadabra hocuspocus too me ;) LOL i hope you can find some time to figure out on how to save it ;) thanks for all the time you have spend on this already.

Syrus_Dante

Sorry I forget all those scripting API References I've posted dosn't realy belong into the New Users section. Usualy if you ask here in the forum for a scripting solution for a complicated task eventualy they simply post an url like this: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/start

I actualy wanted to give you the advice to save your voyager space ship as a Character Preset to your Content Library and select the dsa script that you saved with mcjAniMatSave as the Post Load script in the save dialog to load the material animation you made so far with the ship into any scene. I am thinking of how you could loop the currently keyframed lights blinking material animation maybe you could bake it to an aniBlock.

Create Your Own aniBlock - YouTube

You know animation gets alot easier if you have seperate layers with aniblocks in the aniMate2 pane. Move the ship in one layer and repeate the short blinking material aniBlock on a seperate layer - if that is even possible - to have a blinking light during the full Play Range in the timeline.

[Edit1]: That is how to loop aniBlocks: Applying Animations in Daz Studio's aniMate2

[Edit2]: Here is MCasuals curve editor mcjSceneGraf for DS4.5

xXQuatroXx

So there is no normal way with the save script to save those keyframes?

WendyLuvsCatz

This is why I never bother with it 

my softwares of choice all do animated textures out the box, anything I do in DAZ studio only because I have no choice it’s a software specific item gets composited into something else or used in Carrara, iClone or Poser or even Blender as an animated texture on a plane!

DAZ studio has two things going for it, it is free and all DAZ content works with it so not knocking it just accepted long ago it’s limitations.

There is nothing wrong with composition, Weta does it, watch their YouTube videos, only DAZ hobbyists try to do everything in the one program.

xXQuatroXx

Hmmmm wendy...hmmmm. i try to do it on 1 program because if my time. I am a single father of 2 young kids (3 & 6) so in the evenings when i have time for my 3D hobby i try to do it on 1 single program and save me time in the end. It's just a way of figuring things out on how. We already have the stuf working. Now its only the question on how to save it. The thing im working on has no uv mapping and all build out of vertisies. So im glad its working like this at all. Your way of doing things is certainly a nice work around but loses a bit of touch and flair for me... and sure i can render it out over night batching 2 saved animations 1 with light and one without and let a batch tool within daz do the work. But still i like to make use of whats out there and learning something more then 1 already know how to do. And thats what it is mostly about isn't it... getting out of your comfort zone once a while and learn new technoqiues. I have all that i need with tools. Zbrush, marvelous designer, most of all adobe products. But no carrara and there is a choice for that as i dont want to go through all the issues carrara has of not beeing able to work with genesis 8 where i do most of my work with. So the old program has no purpose for me. Until they update it. As it is a strong good program but extreemly outdated

WendyLuvsCatz

Is fine you are not alone there, I find most DAZ studio users don’t like to venture out of their program 

Those that do (especially to Blender which I admit is too difficult for me) wonder why they didn’t sooner.

I did not of course start with DAZ studio, I was an iClone 3 user back in 2009 then Carrara and Poser user so I never felt the safety of being in the box 

Was not suggesting you get Carrara as that’s more of an all round modelling software with physical particles, terrain and tree generators not a content load pose and render studio.

As you said if sticking to buying and rendering DAZ content not your best choice, if importing FBX figures etc from other softwares it blows DAZ Studio out of the water as that simply cannot.

The Enterprise model of course would also work perfectly in Carrara and countless other softwares, why when you have no DAZ figures outside you want to fight to do your space scene even in it is beyond me TBH.

xXQuatroXx

Well maya still to exspensive aswell as the new iclone. So sticking with daz for now. As its a good setup to move on from to other software. Lets get back on to topic pls ????