Animation for surface tab timeline not working

Sven Dullah

Wendy_Carrara said:

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.

I think animated texture features are depending on the design of the shader, not so much DS, but the save issue is definitely DS related:) Haven't tested the AoA shaders for a while but IIRC they are animatable out of the box. Also aweSurface that I use is totally animatable without having to use scripts. The save issue still exists though. I think there is a (tedious) workaround for the save issue, it involves saving shader presets for every frame and using puppeteer, so if that mat save script works, it looks like the easiest way out IMHO.

Richard Haseltine

Syrus_Dante said:

 

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.

scripts can be run by double-click in the content pane/drag-and-drop/making them custom actions

WendyLuvsCatz

I was discussing the topic of people not wanting to do post production outside of DAZ studio on Facebook and actually realised a way you might be able to do this in DAZ studio without any other software and remain a purist.

You can animate the scale of objects 

you can create primitive  spheres that are ghost lights

you can add emissions to match your lights on those spheres with zero cutout opacity  and scale them from zero to the desired size to emit light along the timeline

Syrus_Dante

@Wendy

Great seems you found another workaround to animate emissive lights never thought of scaling to control the light intensety. Especialy interesting is the idea of using it with a cutout opacity. So you made half of the ghost light sphere not emitting light, do you have a render available?

Richard Haseltine said:

scripts can be run by double-click in the content pane/drag-and-drop/making them custom actions

Sorry somehow I got confused by some scripts that seems to do nothing with double-click in the content library, that may be the case if nothing was selected and the script dosn't show any warning.

I usualy run scripts as custom actions from the main menu. I never used drag and drop for loading content or running scripts. This got me thinking of the question can a script that was droped into the viewport detect which item in the scene was under the cursor as you released the mousebutton? Or does the script always have to work with the "primary selection" that is currently selected in the scene hierarchy?

I still try to get my head around that concept of post-load scripts. It seems to offer solutions for all kinds of use cases when you want to link property sliders of different scene items, while the ERC-Freeze links you may have tried before don't get saved into the scene file.

The post-load scripts also support material / shader properties to get linked to a "proxy". Maybe I will try to animate a few shader settings with a bunch of "proxy" null nodes named by the shader settings they should control, added somewhere parented to a group in my scene, then maybe also adding a plane with a grid texture. Then making the plane unselectable, define some limits for the null nodes translations, locking one translation axis so they stick to the planes x/y coordinates and dimension. With this you would get an animateable x/y slider, with the nulls as indicator and manipulator of the current shader values, just sitting there in your 3D scene. You could even parent the whole x/y slider group to the item that it controls and turn it to be invisible in render. This would be an easy to understand demonstration scene of the scripting features. I may try to get that working with the help of those Post-Load Material script examples if I find the time.

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

Elements

Post-Load Data Items

• 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.

Sven Dullah

Sven Dullah said:

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.

I suggested using scale in my first post, still think that's easiest to handle;)

WendyLuvsCatz

Well I have not actually tried it yet and sorry Sven overlooked the second part of your post but yes it makes sense if the OP only wishes to use DAZ studio 

Ivy

I read over this thread I have a question that has not been mentioned .   my question is do you save your final render of your animations in AVI or .PNG image series?

I like to save in AVI when possible for reasons of film editing is quicker.. but when it comes to adding in light atmospheric effects and other types of FX in a  iray rendered animation. i found it quicker and easier to just save in PNG, series and go back and post work in the effects i need into each frame as needed.  it gives you much better results and you can add tons fx to the png's & fix any errors you might have got during rendering,  then drop the whole series of images into the film editor. most film editors other than windows movie maker can import image series..and if you want to take it a step father and you have adobe after effects  for post work. you'll find all the big animation studio  like Pixar and dreamworks create films as i described.