How do you animate a character in a dForce outfit?

mavante

I have spent most of the last few days buried in documents and videos trying to come to grips with dForce, and getting it to work on my system without causing program or even system crashes. I've made some progress and managed to get a successful simulation run on a dress, on a figure in a non-default pose, using animation frames.

But I have searched and searched in vain for any video tutorials on how to animate a character in a dForce outfit. Everything I find about "animation" and dForce is talking only about using animation frames just to get a simulation run and draped on a SINGLE pose. But even that just creates its own major problem: The ENDING frame is what I want for a BEGINNING frame, yet there is no way to delete all the frames from frame zero up to the ending frame. It also dosn't work to copy the ENDING frame and paste it to frame zero; the dForce result doesn't transfer with it. Wut?

So here is my question: How in the world do you ANIMATE a CHARACTER in dForce clothes, changing the character from pose to pose across many frames, and have the dForce clothes do their dForce thing? Do you have to re-run the simulation for every pose change?

I think (hope?) I can get the character into the pose I want on frame zero using the dForce "current frame" operation, and having it start from the default pose. But then what? How do I get the character into a completely different pose at frame 15, and yet another different pose at frame 30, and so on?

Does anybody here know of any good spoken word video tutorial on this specific question? Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Richard Haseltine

You may be able to start the figure from a memorsed pose, so that the drape is correct by the time it gets to the frame 0 pose. If not you will need to have some inital frames to get the simulation to itss tarting pose, then your actual animation sequence; when you render you set the play range to skip over those first frames.

mavante

Richard Haseltine said:

You may be able to start the figure from a memorsed pose, so that the drape is correct by the time it gets to the frame 0 pose. If not you will need to have some inital frames to get the simulation to itss tarting pose, then your actual animation sequence; when you render you set the play range to skip over those first frames.

Thanks. Yes, that should solve one of the issues. I think I used (misused?) the phrase "default pose" where you used "memorised pose," but I will look at the documentation tonight and see if we were saying essentially the same solution for that Frame-zero issue.

I still would like to know how to implement dForce when animating the character to different positions throughout the animation sequence.

One of the videos I watched, by esha, "Daz Studio dForce Basics," showed instances of dForce "exploding" when the transition from pose to pose happened to cause an intersection of a body part with any other body part—even incidental contact. Well, that happens all the time when animating with poses, which would seem to make dForce useless, in any practical terms, for animating a character using pose-to-pose animation.

I would really like to hear from someone who has hands-on experience with actually doing it.

WendyLuvsCatz

you need a transitional pose or two to avoid that

and sometimes it still inexplicably explodes

I swear a lot using Dforce

Richard Haseltine

Yes, the need to avoid self-intersection is the reason you might not be able to go from the memorised pose to the pose in the first frame.

mavante

WendyLuvsCatz said:

you need a transitional pose or two to avoid that

and sometimes it still inexplicably explodes

I swear a lot using Dforce

Haha! I have had to resort to making up words to swear with, just to keep from repeating myself.

It's no wonder I can't find a single instructional video anywhere demonstrating a workable answer to my first question: the title of this thread. I need to animate characters. I think I will be abandoning dForce to keep from eroding away even more of my life.

mavante

Richard Haseltine said:

Yes, the need to avoid self-intersection is the reason you might not be able to go from the memorised pose to the pose in the first frame.

You know Richard, if you have any influence at all—and I mean at all—with the powers that be at Daz and their marketing department, I urge you to use all your persuasive powers to have them put that sentence you just wrote on every dForce product's store page, prominently, in 36-point bold type, red. And to add to it, using equal prominence: "It is also the reason why attempts to do pose-to-pose animations using dForce products may be prohibitively difficult or impossible, in practical terms."

God knows that kind of simple honest disclosure alone could save users a great deal of time, money, and emotional distress.

WendyLuvsCatz

you just need to understand how tweening works and use an animated simulation starting with a Tpose on the timeline not the default settings, scrolling the scrubber should reveal any intersections and you must translate those parts out between the poses, also making fingers etc invisible in simulation helps.

and after all that it still often explodes

I have more luck with welded not Dforce clothes and my own modeled clothing myself 

mavante

WendyLuvsCatz said:

you just need to understand how tweening works and use an animated simulation starting with a Tpose on the timeline not the default settings, scrolling the scrubber should reveal any intersections and you must translate those parts out between the poses, also making fingers etc invisible in simulation helps.

and after all that it still often explodes

My head on desk laughing--but with tears.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I have more luck with welded not Dforce clothes and my own modeled clothing myself 

Welded? Where be this wondrous "welded" wardrobe? (I tried to get some info a few days ago about "Dynamic" clothing and its plug-in for Daz, but my thread was summarily executed, without waiting for  dawn and without benefit of blindfold or cigarette, it seems.)

WendyLuvsCatz

I weld clothing for earlier figures in another commercial program that does not destroy UV mapping so when simulated it does not fall apart. 

It needs to be fitted with the transfer utility if zeroing the simulation on close fitting surfaces so has it's limitations 

I usually eliminate rigging on skirts by choosing the shirt option.

Or do it unfitted as a prop.

not everything welds sadly, I tried some Skyrim Yarl clothing meshes exported from Nifskope the other week and the necklace still fell off and it did not look great, it didn't explode though so there is that. 

Being exported from my installed game and belonging to Besthesda cannot show you those either  was done just for my own benefit and boredom.

game mesh has the added difficulty of being solid so have to cut out hand holes neck holes and bottoms with the geometry editor.

Welded means it's all one joined mesh

WendyLuvsCatz

I weld with Ultimate Unwrap 3D

other programes likely do it too without destroying UV mapping but that's the only one I have.

later DAZ clothing is modelled welded, it's mostly Poser legacy stuff that falls apart

mavante

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I weld with Ultimate Unwrap 3D

other programes likely do it too without destroying UV mapping but that's the only one I have.

later DAZ clothing is modelled welded, it's mostly Poser legacy stuff that falls apart

Thanks for all the info in your two posts. It sounds interesting—but from a distance, I regret to say. There are many of these kinds of paths I'd like to wander down—and do at times, and will again, in discretionary hours—but for the most part I am driven by deadlines that I have to meet on a "whatever it takes" basis, which most often means the simplest and straightest line I can travel.

I admire your skills and adventurous spirit, but they are not my skills. Me trying to design and construct 3D clothing, or even alter it in any meaningful way, would be most akin to Huckleberry Finn trying to thread a needle.

Padone

@mavante Though it is possible to do some animation in daz studio and they do work to improve things, if you're seriously interested in animation I'd urge you to go to blender or maya. As for dforce most assets in the shop are not optimized for animation, they're mostly for simulation of still pictures, that is, draping.

http://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/p/daz-importer-version-14.html

Catherine3678ab

Making morphs from simulations might help for animations. Certainly helps for quick seconds without using up those little computer fans ;-)

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5419241/#Comment_5419241

It's very easy.

 

WendyLuvsCatz

Catherine3678ab said:

Making morphs from simulations might help for animations. Certainly helps for quick seconds without using up those little computer fans ;-)

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5419241/#Comment_5419241

It's very easy.

 

I actually have done this, a series of poses with dforce where I exported base  obj's of the clothes then attenuated by surface in morphloader on the skirt to use in an animation of sitting down