The "Animators Assemble!" thread for Daz animation WIPs, clips, and tips

Dartanbeck

The Cubic Interpolation Tweener (I can't recall what it's called internally within Daz Studio) is already present in the software, but not accessible to users, which is a vlauable type of tweener. It's a bezier which is "clamped" from going above the highest value and below the lowest. This is the tweener that aniMate 2 uses when we do our animation work in it, rather than in the timeline. I believe one needs the paid version of aniMate 2 for this sort of work. I've had the paid version since my first Daz 3D purchases, so I'm still a bit unclear as to what the free version excludes.

Dartanbeck

I'm in the position that: I love Daz Studio for what it gives me as an artist - the compatibility with the store assets (which are perfect for me) with a wonderful set of options for the final render.

Since I've started collecting Daz 3D assets, there has always been two major players in helping me to take this content from Still images to fun videos - GoFigure and Posermocap (now Reisormocap).

 

Whether using aniMate 2 simply to stitch multiple motions together, edit them with partial aniBlocks, or to use any of the other amazing beneficial tools... aniMate 2 has been the glue that keeps my Daz Studio experience (as an animator) happy!

 

Yes, it could be argued that - since I'm using other people's 'canned' motions, that I'm not actually an animator at all. And if anyone takes that stand with me, I'm fine with it. I consider myself to be "Part of the Animation Team Pipeline" anyway, because I am never leaving the results of these animations as they are 'out-of-the-box'. I do an awful lot of additional animating to these motions - using the motions themselves as The Starting Point of my work - the original motion-capture data provided by the motion-capture team. I am the one responsible for completing the animations for their final scenes.

 

Facial expressions including involuntary facial musculature movements and eye focus, hand animations, integrating with the scene. And before that takes place, being responsible for the choreography of the scene's animation for that character. "Are the arms doing what they're supposed to be doing?" Most of the time... no. So I edit all of that myself.

Well, with topics mentioned just earlier regarding tweeners and shortcomings of working within Daz Studio's timeline, I've developed my own methods of bypassing the need for most graph editor work (though I still use the graph editor as the helpful tool that it is) - having to drill down into the hierarchy and working back and forth between the three rotation axis to finally get close.

 

Instead, I'm using my own simple dials that I use to edit any rotation of any joint of the figure. These dials take literally seconds to create after we're accustomed to making them. And since I save them as morph assets for the Genesis base figure, I only have to create them once. They're always there for me after that!

 

If I have a correction to make for several joint rotations that's always cropping up, I make a dial with those corrections on for all joints involved - so I can make the corrections with one dial throughout the timeline.

 

Now, since these dials are never used by original motion capture data, they're Always blank along the timeline until I use them to make a change. So the tweeners and groups of tweeners of my own work is easily spotted on the timeline compared to the blur of having a key on every frame (like we get from motion-captured data).

 

So now I'm free to set those interpolation methods to best suit how they affect the outcome of the animation. 

 

This last fact makes is incredibly easy for me to completely alter the original motion capture into something very different. So nearly every animation you see from me truly is my own work, with the help of several motion-capture teams (animation providers) who provide me the raw data to begin with.

 

BoneTech3D, Havanalibere, Mocap Online, SKAmotion, GoFigure, Reisormocap, SimonWM, and ThreeDigital, here at Daz 3D (I feel that I'm missing someone), have excellent offerings - so I collect them all. Also incorporating Mixamo animations has also become an important part of it all. 

 

Utilizing aniMate 2 is a big part of what makes Animating in Daz Studio such a doable thing. So much so that I can't imagine myself doing it any other way. So I would Love to see GoFigure provide updates for this amazing tool, but even as it is now... I love it!

 

Many of the things we do with it can also be done in the DS timeline (except for the excellent option of previewing animations before committing) but with a Lot more time and effort. 

 

The link in The Power of aniMate 2 image on the right is a rather nice page for discovering the multitudes of benefits it gives us - including the User's Manual and official "Show Me" videos of many of the available functions. The course itself, available at Daz 3D, is a recording of myself going through many of these benefits for practical examples within our animation workflow, but the page, along with its several sub-pages and links to the forum thread, is an invaluable resource all in its own right.

Dartanbeck

This month's The Creative Cart (date yet to be established) I'll be demonstrating some creative ways to work with Linday's dForce hair products. Along with that topic it's very fitting that I show off some of my Havanalibere animation collection, and we'll also see a bit of my custom dials in action. Since I've already made a course describing in detail how I actually make them, the making of the dials is not covered. But their use is undeniably the Cat's Meow when it comes to fine-tuning. I mean... it's so second nature to me as you can see if you ever see my workflow in progress. Simple - Fast!

 

These Creative Cart webinars are free. So if you're interested in seeing how I work in Studio, come on in. They're fun little two-hour shows that are Packed with fun Daz Studio workflow content! :)

Dartanbeck

Dartanbeck said:

This month's The Creative Cart (date yet to be established) I'll be demonstrating some creative ways to work with Linday's dForce hair products. Along with that topic it's very fitting that I show off some of my Havanalibere animation collection, and we'll also see a bit of my custom dials in action. Since I've already made a course describing in detail how I actually make them, the making of the dials is not covered. But their use is undeniably the Cat's Meow when it comes to fine-tuning. I mean... it's so second nature to me as you can see if you ever see my workflow in progress. Simple - Fast!

 

These Creative Cart webinars are free. So if you're interested in seeing how I work in Studio, come on in. They're fun little two-hour shows that are Packed with fun Daz Studio workflow content! :)

Looks like it'll be Saturday, November 23rd

The Creative Cart - Episode 009 - dForce with Linday in the Urban Future

Space Jingoroh

Imago said:

Dartanbeck said:

I agree. While it's nice to have some control over the TCB using numeric fields, it's hardly an efficient way to work. 

Yes, I really hope the Devs will finally give us animators some more attention, now that FilaToon opened new roads.

If they really give us the bezier handles, the need for more tweener would be mitigated if not fullfilled.

After all we already have good tweeners (as I said before "our" overshooting TBC is the best I tried for biological animations) if we get easier control over the Tension, Bias and Continuity would be awesome.

　My biggest problem is that DazStudio has default overshoots and undershoots on all keys when motion is applied.
　First, I have to manually erase all of them.
　For long motions, this can be a daunting task.

　In Adobe's After Effect, if I create a key in the middle of a motion curve, the curve does not change.
　This is because the length of the control handle is not specified by itself just by creating a key.
　However, in DazStudio, if I create a key in the middle of a motion curve, the curve will be changed by default by inputting the value TCB=0,0,0.
　This must be adjusted one by one to restore the curve to its original state before the next operation can begin.

　Overshoot and undershoot are fine as long as I can put them on arbitrarily when I want them.
　Currently, all keys have it by default, which is a big stress.
　Moreover, the values are not usable as they are, and must be readjusted.
　This is a very complicated hassle that has nothing to do with creativity.

Dartanbeck

That's where I really miss being in Carrara.

In preferences, we can set our default tweener used on new key frames.

Daz isn't wrong in that the Bezier curve (TCB) is a popular default for many purposes. But I always preferred my default to be linear, then I'd change the keys I wanted to become Bezier or any of the other many tweener choices it has.

Also in Carrara, even the Linear tweener has ease-in and out options. 

Dartanbeck

For the Carrara 8.5 Upgrade, it was Daz 3D devs who put a lot of sophisticated changes into the animation tools. 

It would be really cool if they could put some of that love into the DS timeline tools!!!

Dartanbeck

Dartanbeck said:

For the Carrara 8.5 Upgrade, it was Daz 3D devs who put a lot of sophisticated changes into the animation tools. 

It would be really cool if they could put some of that love into the DS timeline tools!!!

...or if they'd give us an "Export as DUF" option in Carrara

Dartanbeck

Carrara has a built-in NLA (non-linear animation) system.

When coming from Carrara to DS, it feels a lot like what GoFigure was doing when they made aniMate 2, is that they were putting a simplified version of Carrara's NLA system into DS.

CoXComics

These are 360/VR renderings of Sci-Fi HDRI product.

Dartanbeck

Very cool!

CoXComics

360 Animation - ATVE Mods SIV Dragon with Genesis 8 Female wearing Nanosense Cyber Suit. Exterior:Terradome 3 IRAY.
 

Dartanbeck

Awesome! But 360 is awkward for viewing something like that,  think. I wonder if it's worth all of the extra time it must take to make it 360?

Just wondering

CoXComics

Dartanbeck said:

Awesome! But 360 is awkward for viewing something like that,  think. I wonder if it's worth all of the extra time it must take to make it 360?

Just wondering

Part of it is to experiment with the format, part is to streamline the process. I'm not sure how much extra time is involved with the process I've worked out. The biggest extra time culprits at this point I think are rendering at 8k and building the scene with no fourth wall. It might be informative to take what I've learned from the 360 work and apply it to standard animation..

Dartanbeck

Just the sort of answer one hopes to hear! Very cool!

So, the time it takes is just what it is, and you're launching your workflow - learning and growing as you go, as am I.

 

Isn't it a Blast?!!!

So you must be rendering animations using a spherical camera. I render my characters on their own, individual pass - nothing else in the scene but a really nice HDR dome for lighting. I bet that combining some of my stuff with some of your stuff could have a really fun result!

 

I finished collecting the entire iReal collection from ThePhilosopher, and use these to render additional passes for VFX layers. 

 

I even usually render the sky as its own layer, using the character's film camera to render only an HDRI sky. 

 

 this was done very quickly, but does a pretty good job of showing what I do: