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@wolf359
Thank you for your reply, Does your work flow you use increase your productivity? I just can't seem to grasp Blender even the newer version seems complicated, Though I did assign hot key to match my zbrush so that has kind of helped. do you feel you can get more done or is more for getting around technical issues? you do still hand keyframe animation too right?
I use a few free software as well so i get where your coming from,
I edited to add .. Graphic cards and new Ram chips need to be replaceed often. they are like tires on a car the car being a PC which you only buy a new one every 15 years..lol
Earlier this thread, I detailed the vicissitudes of creating lipsynch with various Genesis figures for Galactus Rising.
Moving all animation (facial & body) to iclone consolidates all character animation into one program where I have REALTIME feedback in the viewport and of course the Maya human IK solver and other motion building mixing and editing tools tool numerous to mention in this thread.
As for Blender, for me it was a "no brainer" when they introduced the realtime EEVEE engine And I dont have to worship at the alter of NIVIDIA to get results I want
And I have moved all of my custom clothing creation from C4D over to Blender and the Blender community is so open minded about the use of external solutions that one of the major Pro Blender Websites even did a feature article on my Blender/Daz /Iclone/ workflow after seeing some custom armor I made for the Daz G2 male.
https://www.blendernation.com/2020/04/29/behind-the-scenes-sci-fi-armor/
and Yes I still hand key neccesary adjustments to motion layers iclone to get the final result I need but it much different than handkeying in Daz studio.
An 800+ frame lipsynch animation at about 1.2 seconds per frame in EEVEE.
Thank you @wolf359
I have tried blender many times I can make a plane that is about it...lol I guess I am one of those old dogs that don't learn new tricks very well.
Your lipsynch works is awesome. I have always admired your animation skills i have told you that many time. I never have access to any actors and Ai bot voices are just not there yet so I use very little duologue in my videos, which seems to work for the type of stuff i make. maybe someday I will need to explore that. As you are aware good character actors are hard to come by though with out a price. I seen some great animations done with Blender but most of them were done by teams or groups I haven't seen to many individual projects being done. I still follow the animation forum there.
Did you make anything from "Galactus Rising" or was that more going to be a demonstration of your work. I already have told in you PM what I thought of it . only time i make anything from animation projects in daz is if someone commissions me to make some animated presets or aniblocks for them , which I hand keyframe them by their story board. Rarely I have been commisioned for stright up complete animated projects I think I have had 2 in the last year but its mostly aniblocks and presets.
thank your for you reply
Thanks Wolf - that's exactly what I needed to know. So now I can go back to promising myself I will learn Blender ... some day. By the way - the comment above from @Ivy is a little out of date when it comes to the Blender interface. It is now much better than it was. Everything has a keboard shortcut (like most programs) but there's also clickable alternatives. My problem with Blender is that there are just so many tools and adjustments that it will take a long time to learn what a fraction of them do or how to use them. I am still finding new things about the DAZ Studio interface and tools after 15 years. And DAZ Studio is nowhere near as complex as Blender.
Still, some day.
"Galactus Rising" was personal pet project/Fan film with no commercial ambitions,or Youtube monetization schemes which gave me alot of Creative "freedom" to proceed without having to worry about seeking all kinds of permissions from Marvel/ Disney etc al.
However the experience was invaluable in terms of the forced "trial by fire" Education I received during its production.
There is a wise old saying:
"If you think education is expensive, consider the prevailing costs of ignorance" :-/
When I started Galactus Rising, I had no modeling skills.. at all and was completely dependant on having to buy my content.
The Storyline of the project forced me to acquire modeling skills to re-design the ShareCG Freebie Galactus Armor set for the latter action scenes of the film as well as create the very specific Marvel Characters like "The Celestials" and "The Living Tribunal ".
This ultimately resulted in my being completely liberated from the $$Daz/Renderosity content stores$$ ...forever as I now make all of my own clothing and custom Character morphs which gives me the luxury of indefinately supporting the versions of Genesis without the crippling twist bones (G1-2)
And the Visual effects & compositing skills I acquired will be invaluable in future commercial endeavours.
@wolf359
I know where your coming from exactly. I never make anything off the animations I post either. even YouTube has cut my monetization. 2 years ago when they revamped the platform. But with each animated film I make with daz it presents a new challenge for each film is unique and have their own issues , from what I learn from making my silly animations is more valuable for my future use when I run into those issues again.. So I know exactly where your coming from.
You are one of the very few Animators that also model their own content. That is a ton of work Kudo's. Even big production companies have teams of people that model and do the textures etc. so a 1 person job doing all portions of the films is a grand task.
That is properly the main reason why I stick with daz studio. The assets are expensive but are great quality so they are worth the expense to me, I have a number of options on how I want to render my projects I do not have to use Iray I am pretty good using 3dlight too & I have access to 2 affordable render farms now that accept RIB batch rendering.
Thankfully I have been using Daz software long enough to know the software well enough that third party tool are not necessary any more for me to accomplish the goal I set out to achieve for my films. Hand keyframing is time consuming But done right has many advantages over mocaps
what people call Hard is really relative to what your use to working with. I seen people make films with some rather expensive 3d software and once they put the work through the film editor their final results didn't look any better or different than what I can achieve in daz studio. Most good FX are done in post processing. some of the newer game engines and high end software like Veu can do FX in the software but look at the cost of those programs I would need to be making money with them to justify the cloud cost of them.
I am not saying that this software is better than that software .. But I am saying it all relative to what your goals are. that is why I asked my questions on how may animations do people make a year with the software they choose to use , do they feel the higher end software increases their productivity. I only manage to get 4 or 5 animations a year done. where Wendy talent she can produce films weekly I admire that greatly
10 years later & this is still all a huge learning curve for me as a "Small Hobbyist Animator" I am always looking for that pot of gold standard to making animations. But if I want automatic animations tool where I d not have to think on how to make animation.Steams offers that option.
Thank you very much for your honest reply.
I had a commercial store selling custom Ragdoll/action motions for the genesis figures at a site called Flipbook market until they suddenly shuttered the site last year.
The reality is that there is ZERO market for Canned animation Data these days unless it is in large 100+ item packs and DEFINATELY captured from live human mocap actors.
There are many such packages available for Iclone in the Reallusion market place and they are very..very expensiveand targeting the gaming industry.
I am in the early planning/development stages of weekly web series based on the lore of the popular Xbox game francise "Halo"
I will be using the realtime EEVEE engine and if I can get enough of a regular following on youtube I will set up a Patreon to monetize it.
Given the New reality of human society ATM people are looking for home entertainment.. Netflix and other streaming services are thriving
The Packed hollywood movie theater business model may never recover.
Competition for online viewers is feirceand lay people's standards have risen, so any production tools that offer production speed and high quality (Iclone,EEVEE,unity UE4) will win the Dayif you have a intersting Ideas/narratives.
Daz studio's toolset alone has just too many major short commings(Lipsync,IK solving, IRay) to be competitive in this new paradigm IMHO.
Opinion, Yes?
Good Luck with your endeavors, I know they will be successful. Let me know when your ready to hire some help
this.
With many cable/dish franchises: 600 channels with 3 worth watching - the story will always matter.
Figuring out how to separate yourself from the noise will be a large part of the challenge too - assuming the story is 'good' - regardless the medium.
(obviously 'good' is both subjective and context-dependent - e.g. romance vs sci-fi can both be 'good', but the consistent ability to keep audience intrigue and attention in any genre is hardly a trivial task, and it's a constantly moving target in today's fickle and A.D.D. riddled media frenzy - and I'm not immune, just identifying the effect... :)
--ms
Those type media require teams or groups of people to generate the film out put that is need for that accomplishment, even south park as basic as animation that is uses a teams of people to deliver the out put required to makeall their episodes in a season. and the internet is a little more demanding Netflix series run about 20-24 episodes a season.. Disney plus has a 2d Star War series called rebels its awesome but its just 2d & you see in the end credits how many people are involed.in making that kind of 2d production.most would call cartoons. I think there were 75 episodes in Rebls. Having a team is what gets the job done for that kind of scale out put. Heck I am lucky i get 4 or 5 done a year...lol
How many animations do you get done in a year MS?
Yes... My s.o. repeatedly highlights how *many* names scroll by at the end of Shrek or any Harry Potter film. sigh. Then I see folks like you, wolf359, Wendy, SteveK (Carrara), and others pulling off your productions and am re-inspired. Fortunately, I enjoy the puzzle too, so if getting there is fun, having something at the end is icing.
You are actually very prolific. As your quality improves (and it does with each clip), I have to mention that your stories are consistently fun and always maintain my interest. Not an easy task (did I mention A.D.D. somewhere up above? - squirrel!).
Complete animations? heh...
Well - let's just say I have a lot of 'proof-of-concept' clips going.
cheers,
--ms
@mindsong
yes i so agree there is much to learn and technology is rapidly always changing its almost impossible to keep up with it all anymore,.
I seen ome very good animations done with the iclone 7 pipeline its a very exciting software suite. for the $600+ you have to shell out for it ought to be right.
silviu caraba at sharecg.com posted this animation created in iclone 7 https://sharecg.com/v/95853/browse/2/YouTube-Video/THE-SHADOW-FAMILY-DIED its very well done and the final output is almost comparable to a daz final render so I am encouraged by that output improvement Iclone usually looks very boxy like a 80 video game.
One thing i can say about daz & hand keyframing a animation, is that when you need a certain motions. hand key framing animations really frees you from that feeling you need to have bhv or motions preset But admittingly I do cheat and still use aniblocks or motion presets for repetitive motions like walking or running. and I love the walkit plugin http://www.pilning.net/ you place the foots step your character follows them even over uneven terrain & it works for gensisis8 most of the time . sometimes its seems to skip a step in the cycle. other wise great animations tool it was made for daz 4.10 but i've been using it in 4.12.0.85 with little issues
I guess I look at creating animation with daz like drawing a old fashion animations page by page. like you had said a puzzle .put all the pieces together and you have a final product. how you get those pieces really does matter on production time if your doing it commercially. properly why so many films are done in teams But i could be wrong like i said I only make money by selling daz animated presets or aniblocks I have hand keyframed. Because once you tell someone how much a finished animated film will cost to produce they scream turn and run away with hands flying in the air....lol
I look forward to seeing one of your projects one day . Good luck
& Thank you for your reply
:
I scooped the Iclone V7 suite as an upgrade/deal at Christmas, so I appreciate your cost comment. I'm still running a GTX760 card because of it though, so we makes our choices... lol. I hope the new Curve-editor addon is up to my expectations. That was really what sold me on that direction, and I can't do the motionbuilder subscription. Using 3DXchange for my mocaps and that curve-editor with mocap cleanup - maybe I can finally make all of this work for me, rather than the other way around. Not a silver bullet, but perhaps a copper BB... :)
I'll go look for silviu's vid. I must have missed it. I agree with your general sense of blockiness in Iclone animations. Perhaps time is working for them. My big draw there is pretty much *only* the animation refinement for now. I don't think their community or marketplace are as good or as good a value as the DAZ world. The warlord fellow who does the tutorials is solid though Good info and knows his stuff. Perhaps I'll get seduced into their ecosystem, but Blender is still competing for some of that crown (realtime preview and generally good/growing animation support from a variety of sources - some quite big/long-term). The animations done there are proof of the potential, but like UE5, there's a lot of setup before you see the sparkle. That's never shown in the demo... :)
Your 'pilning' tool looks really interesting! It looks like they've come a long way since the last time I even thought about them (5 years back, maybe, a link/product popped up and I poked at their site to see). So you generally like that tool? hmmm.
Your running banana dude was a kick - did you use that tool there?
re: old-school... 6 years for 93 minutes (wolf), and he's clearly busting-butt to keep efficient - yeah, all of those names are on the movie credits for a reason, methinks. It's a good thing we enjoy this, eh? I recently commented that it would be great to "trip over" a living doing this. Probably the only way it'll happen.
best,
--ms
Reallusion is a confusing MONEY PIT!!
Yes there is a basic $200 version that comes with the free base CC3 Characters with all of the animation tools( except the curve editor) but you cannot import or export anything and can only use your own morph dialed CC3 Characters and render with the native Iclone Engine (that cannot even do Raytraced or screen space reflections!!) unless you buy the same Slow arsed IRay plugin that Daz inc. gives us for no Money
It would be a good alternative to Poser just for the animation & lipsynch tools for a total newbie with no existing hoard of legacy Daz/poser content.
Now if you are in the Daz ecosystem (which I still am for base Characters& clothing dev), the $600 USD Pipeline version with import export capability only makes financial sense if you make your own clothing and are experienced with one of the major Pro Apps/engines Like Blender,C4D, or Unity&UE4x for import& rendering.
If you do NOT make your own clothing, you still have to either buy the expensive Iclone store clothing, which is nowhere near the quality of Daz content, and pay an even HIGHER price for the "export versions" if you plan to send it out to any of the major Pro Apps/engines Like Blender,C4D, or Unity&UE4x.
Or buy Daz clothing and convert it with CC3 pipeline which is even more money. :-/
Now you see why people like myself (and perhaps wendy) put the brakes on at version 6.5 pipeline.
In my case, my 10 year old Maxon C4D software was too OLD to accept modern FBX & Alembic imports from Iclone, snd I even had to use( now defunct) paid third party plugins( Riptide&interposer) to get my animated ,lipsynced Poser& Daz figures into C4D for "Galactus Rising".
My ancient C4D is the only reason I was still using Daz studio,KeyMate ,GraphMate, optitex and two versions of Mimic to produce pre-animated Genesis Characters that could be rendered in C4D.
With Blender 2.8x supplanting C4D as the final scene rendering environment, I am finally able to consolidate All of the Character animation & Lipsync/Face puppet into Iclone that does these functions better than Daz studio even with imported Daz genesis figures
Create all of the clothing and props in Blender and fit them in Daz studio and import my Iclone animated customized Genesis 1-2 people from Iclone to blender via FBX or Alembic if Iclone cloth sims are used.
For someone like you however I can easily see why Iclone Pipeline cannot be justfied pricewise, just to import the limited BVH format into DAZ studio .
I have always been well behind on versions of iClone
for years I was on iC3 standard with 3DX2 that only imported props
then moved to 4 standard, was so limited especially the timeline I had to edit LUA scripts in notepad to get stuff to loop/repeat
I got 5 free by beta testing but that came with its own issues not the least bullying from people who considered themselves more worthy who missed out once we went public, will never do that again
@wolf359
That was a well thought out and informative reply , Thank you for taking the time to go into indepth of it. . Once you master Blender perhaps you can teach the rest of us. :)
I tend to get my software as Awards as prizes in animations contest I submit too . I won poser pro 11.2 & the upgrade to 11.3 in a animation contest at renderosity even though i had older versions of poser I bought in 2006 so I have a pretty good grasp of poser and I like the python script for the different things, its great for dynamics and sequencing animation motions presets. Poser will use mixamo & BVH and motions files pretty seemlessly and I save the animations i create with poser as PZ3 file and load them into daz studio ..lol
But the final of poser renders just never looked right to me. I use it for converting things so I can use it in daz more than anything same for carrara . Though I do use carrara to make some nice sky domes with for daz. I never could never figure out the texture room part of carrara though. I got zbrush 2020 awarded to me back in January this year, it comes with a super great video tutorial center I really seem to have picked it up prettty good so far. and have been really having fun sculpturing models now if I ever can figure out how daz zbridge works I'll be in business .
Hi All. Some of the heat in this topic but also how it remained civil enticed me in perhaps helping since I was/am in a similar conundrum. This is a honest, by experience result (from 2014-2020). Currently our animations are over 2800 clips (and growing) from different Walking/Running Styles to sword swings and gun play. Mostly ArchViz right now in UE4 but actual realistic game play is the end result. It took us about 3 months to fully adapt and convert to using Blender 2.81. We will be updating to 2.83 soon....testing is almost complete.
DAZ as an Animation Tool
- 4.10 (and earlier) is better than the new 4.12. G2 Animates the very best in DAZ. G2 also exports the best closely followed by G1. Again this is from experimenting with al DS figures from 4/G1/G2/G3/G8.
- Animation in DAZ is fine if and only if you are willing to put in the tedious effort of getting it done (GraphMate & KeyMate). Then making small AniBlocks then sequencing them together to make larger animations. Works well. There is No IK Solver so all of that has to be manually done. If one is willing to work around this then it works really well. Also using animations between the DS Figures is troublesome....even G3<->G8 has its frustrations! Don't even get me started on the G1 hack work around!
- A bonus to using DAZ 4/G1/G2/G3/G8 is that you don't have to mess about with retargetting and bone mapping since everything is done right inside DS. Carrara is an inexpensive tool that has great support for G2 and is capable of really solid animations. Carrara, GraphMate, and KeyMate combo is very good.....if sticking to G2 (G1 also but G2 is better in my opinion). DAZtoMaya is a very nice cross over and there is some nice tools that make getting all your DS figures into Maya to do the animation work there. (we went this route but the Maya expense compared to Blender as explained below just did not make sense!).
- Exporting out of DS as FBX with animations to UE4 or Unity Game Engines for high performance Real Time Rendering is a flawless process (not using the Epic Rig!). There is a little learning how to get passed the small gotcha/qwerks but once known it is flawless and super high quality. Again, G2 works best and with Morph Targets (Blendshapes) doing facial animations (G3 can be solid as well! More work is needed though for same results). It is really easy to control these via script (UE4 Visual Script, or Unity C#) and tie Teest To Speech (Visemes) to Analog Audio Data. Videos out there to show the process....super easy once you understand it.
iClone 7 (I had iClone 5 but skipped iClone 6)
- Converting DAZ Characters to iClone 6/7 will require 3DXchange 6/7 Pro....exporting back out requires Pipeline. So essentially.....if doing Real Time Animation Rendering you will need to invest in Pipeline.
- iClone 7 3DX does a 90% job on getting animations cleanly mapped and converted to the RL iAvatar format. There are a few bones in DS figures that are not mapped over in this process which these animations from DS are simply tossed out. And there is no access to these bones in iClone so to animate them they need to be redone. Not to mention all the face bones are gone from G3/G8 figures during this process. Remember that Reallusion has their own facial animation system in place......so this conversion to iAvatar is simply body bone mapping to their figures. Also....CC2 figures animate better than CC3 figures which are very slightly different. So in fact it is better to convert to CC2 via 3DX then use that animation on CC3 figures if you will use them.
- iClone 7 has CC3 which directly competes with DS figures. If using iClone 7 for animation you may as well get your DS outfits out as OBJ then into CC3 in lieu of using DS figures. Reallusion knows this and pushes this.
- There were a number of glaring bugs in the 3DX import process of DS figures. Most have been resolved but you WILL need to fix a number of issues in iClone after import.....mainly feet, hands, and posture.
- Animating in iClone 7 (again...not sure about 6) is really easy. So much LESS tedious than animating in DS. Seriously it is so eye opening! Side by side test in fully animating 10 animations iClone 7 took 25% of the time to do it in DS. Amazing. There is no mirroring of animations in either so getting walk cycles is tediuos/painful in both DS and iClone.
- Exporting from iClone in FBX has good results. Exporting in BVH to return to DS can be done and works perfectly in 4.10 (had issues in 4.12....might be resolved....not sure). Since G2 seems to work the best for the round trip getting BVH animation from iClone 7 has great results! Very minor tweaks in DS but the animations work great.....and this is on DAZ G2 Bone Mapping in DS....not iAvatar!
- iClone can be used as a great animation tool but you are HIGHLY recommended to stick inside this eco-system. There are changes coming since Reallusion does understand that UE4 & Unity are far more powerful Real Time Rendering solutions. RL is making software changes to make crossing over easier (less painful).
Blender 2.8# (The New Definition of Awesome)
- Blender 2.79 (was my personal fav for modelling with custom UI) and earler was a real head ache in getting any external animation into Blender, Bone Mapped, and working. Painful. This has changed in 2.8.
- Blender 2.81+ is a rendering powerhouse and very high end animation software suite. It models like a pro and even almost competes with sculpting in ZBrush....close enough for most. For Rigging and Animation there a couple options.
- The legacy option is the in-built Rigify. It works and is what Blender was using. It is complicated to work with and is very Blender. Don't use it.
- The best option is => Auto-Rig Pro (Blender Market $40 version).....you can search for it on your own. Lots of videos and great documention. Even an idiot like me can use it. My animator LOVES it!
- Weight Mapping (Skinning) you will absolutely want/need Voxel Heat Diffuse Skinning (Blender Market $30).....and fully working with Auto-Rig Pro!
- You also will want/need => Better Fbx Importer & Exporter (Blender Market $25). Excellent FBX support for Blender. Simply disable the built in version, you will not need it any more.
- So essentially to make Blender a 100% Animation Suite it will cost $95....in fact....you essentially have a modelling solution that completely replaces the expensive solutions!
- Blender 2.8# User Interface got a heavy revamp and is really nice out of the box.
- DS to Blender should be done via OBJ.....yes that means any Morphs will need to be exported out as separate OBJs. Once the base figure is done through Auto-Rig Pro and Voxel Skinning (save as a Blender File) you simply add the morphs to this figure (Voxel Skin each Morph). Essentially you are building a Blender Version of a DS Figure. This can be done but is your choice and may be against certains terms of use (licensing).
- A better way is to make your character as a shape and Auto-Rig Pro it and Voxel Skin it. Blender/Zbrush for the meshes then.....Magic! Seriously....it takes less than 2 minutes to Auto-Rig and Voxel Skin a DS figure in Blender (after practicing workflow of course). Less time than 3DX in my testing.....and zero errors.
- Now do all your animation right in Blender.....full IK full animation.....full Keys.....easy sequencing of Animation Blocks (like AniBlocks or RLClips) as a library to make larger sequences. Re-targetting animations in Blender with/to Auto-Rig Pro is also really easy! There are a couple videos to show how to do it.
- To be brutally honest there is absolutely no need for iClone unless the end intent is to stay within the Reallusion Eco-System (very expensive).
Bottom Line in My Opinion
DS is awesome! I still use it for the nifty shaping tools for clothing. I use DS more like a tool instead of character software...and has quick 3D Renders built in. I make 100% my own clothing in Blender on a base figure....say G2 Male as example. Then export as OBJ then import to DS G2 Male then shape to how it needs to shape on a morphed figure that is shaped to match this new humanoid character.....very amazingly with all the morphs available......save as a DUF.....then export back out to Auto-Rig and Voxel Skin to the actual figure in Blender. Remember that G1/G2/G3/G8 can be shaped to match some unrigged OBJ import....very closely. Close enough in fact that almost no rework needs to be done in Blender. We do all of the cloth sim in UE4 so zero bones need to be added to cloth. Perfect!
Using the Blender Rendering (EEVEE mainly) you can make absolutely amazing movies/films without having to even leave it for something like UE4 which is on a different level entirely for real time but comes at the cost of learning UE4. Currently Unity can be used but is buggy and far too many extra tools needed to purchase from the Unity Asset Store to be a viable solution. Blender is simply awesome at frame captures. GamersNexus and other performance tools also use Blender Rendering Tests as analytical tools for CPU & GPU testing. The quality of Blender is amazing.
At less than $100 and some time to build your library you will have a tool that simply does everything. Sure it takes some time to 'get to know' but this is the same for any software. The good news is that once you come to know Blender 2.81+ you basically get really comfy knowing how to do things and really fast. It becomes second nature. I am a really good modeller in Blender (from 2.4)....in Maya/Maya LT trying to do the same is confusing and way more frustrating. 2.81+ is just so much easier....even for new comers. So if you want to animate DS Figures or better your own.....save yourself the hassle and just use Blender.
Great Post !!
I agree completely on the superiority of the G2 figures for animation in Daz studio, which is why they were the primary figures I used on my old Iclone3DX-BVH-DAZ-MDD-Cinema4D ,Pipeline.
However now that my six year Feature film project is over and done I have upgraded from 6.5 to 7.x and simplified my pipeline considerably,
I also agree that to get the best of Iclone ,as a Character animation solution, you need to do as much as possible within the Reallusion Eco-system-EXCEPT FINAL RENDERING!!
This is why I have left the Daz genesis figure eco-system completely and now model my custom clothing/accessory content for the CC3 base avatars in Blender 2.83, animate them in Iclone 7 and export them from CC3 pipeline ( with Imotion) as FBX to Blender for final renders.
For me the Primary motivation to leave Daz studio( for Characters) was not only just the lack of a true realtime IK Foot/floor contact solver, but the limited options for NATIVE lipsync& facial animation. ( I know about "facemojo" and am not interested in third party, G8 only ,single point of failure, plugins that require buying back into the $$Apple hardware market$$)
Some very interesting Info, in your post, on alternative Character riggin in Blender.
As one can see in my 93 minute Feature film "Galactus Rising", I prefer Dialog & Character Driven Narratives which is why I need a decent Audio to Phoneme based Solution with powerful Phoneme replacement and retiming tools as well as realtime Facial animation/expression system that can be layered on top of the base lip sync track.
These features exists in the base $200 version of Iclone, and right now I see nothing even close for speaking Characters in Blender hence My use of CC3 pipeline However I will have Look at the Better FBX importer add-on even though the native Blender importer is working fine with the Characters I am sending over from CC3 Pipeline.
Thanks for Chiming in!!
Checking my forums and indeed......Yes sir it is me my brother Wolf! Thanks for the compliment. Been a long road since my companies experience in iClone 7 and your great words of wisdom/experience. I think it was the direct thought path that I ended up with now. Congrats finally on your long endeavor of Galactis Rising. Great acheivement. Also really well done! Thanks for sharing!
iClone 7 is a very good eco-system to be in. Even more so if standardizing on CC3 and using DS as more of a shaping tool for clothing. I mean this is a DAZ forum so I am not advertising Reallusion products but to be very honest, and we agree, iClone does a great job at getting DAZ products into its Eco-System. Again, DS is also an awesome software but has its purpose in all of this (DAZ seems to want it do more).
Also good to see another person taking a similar path in content creation. Blender 2.81+ is an absolutely awesome software.
With CC3 this does not really apply to you @Wolf359 but Auto-Rig Pro is basically a G3/G8 type of rig (rigging is done very much like Mixamo did/does). It has full facial animation with easing capability to blend animations (unlike Mixamo). It also has corrective shape keys (like DAZ JCMs) that can be added to your character. Couple that with the Voxel Skinning, which picks up the corrective weights really well, the clothing/outfits also work very well on the character. At the end of the day this Blender method is simply creating what both DAZ and Reallusion are selling.....for less than $100. iClone 7 has the advantage of some really slick tools in their Eco-System to make things work really well....like Facial Animation to Audio connection. Sure it is an added expense but if a person does not want to use the automated power of UE4 (my company does) then 'Hand Syncing' to audio in DS or Blender is an option (the typical Standard Method). I will say from experience that getting the face with emotions synced up to audio is so much better with G2 (yes these are morph animations).
Last note on this Sunday morning over coffee.....for those that are curious at using UE4 for making movies or even very high quality rendering....that is 60 frames per second! Some tips to research.
- Use DAZ G2 (CC3 works well too. G3/G8 are harder) for this since the process is far easier. Optimizing is recommended for ease. (I show the exact process here on my web. http://standsurestudio.com/daz3dinfo/ )
- You will want to make Emotion and Viseme Data Tables in UE4 (Search for UE4 Data Table in Google/Bing). These are spreadsheets in CSV then imported to UE4 based upon a Structure you define (Recipe Table). The idea here is to give Percent Numbers to each Morph Value in the table then call that Recipe by name in UE4 script. The script will fill in the Variable Array you make then in that same frame the Morph Targets tied to those Variables are updated. There is a super nice feature in UE4 called curves (Search for UE4 Curves) which you can make for each Viseme/Emotion that will drive that Variable (tied to Morph Target) over time by just turning it on/off. You define how the curve behaves. So this is great for using the exact same morphs but then even giving 'Personality' to each character then simply drive those via recipes you call from the data table......all 100% at run time. UE4 is 100% free too! The % Net only applies to a game released and not with ArchViz, Film, et al.
Hope that helps getting the curiosity flowing. Of note...we went the route I explained above and the results are amazing. Eventually will be able to share with public (under my own NDA...sorry).
Enjoy the Sunday! Cheers!
What a wealth of information you guys! Thank you!!
Thanks for your write-up & tips. I had never heard of Voxel Heat Diffuse Skinning but I will buy it now.
By the way it's not against license terms to mod the model in the ways you describe if doing only stills or animations or even just personal learning. Also, if you have an interactive license you may mod and publish that mod to an interactive app that protects those mods from being extracted by lay men. Unity & UE4 take reasonable precautions against assets being extracted by lay people so you're safe there.