Animate 2 has no documentation, Daz manual is incomplete, what gives?

dga8787

Straight to the point, I am hoping there is something that breaks down the features of Animate2, which I purchased to find absolutely no instructions on how to use effectively, even after purchasing what i thought was a substitute for it's nonexistent manual.

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end: question, begin: well-meaning exhasperation

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I ask frustrated that, while the program is clearly capable of so much more than what i mean to use it for, I feel a little salty at the experience of being continuously duped into purchases in effort to learn how to make it work for my purposes. I'm hoping to create animations of specific techniques to then string into rhythmic patterns to study the motions involved, as a music person using Daz to study violin technique in new ways. But I make progress seemingly by accident moreso than because i'm finding the info i need to know how to do my thing. Even this forum is a little unweildy, ate my paragraph breaks my last (and first) post. I can't seem to get a lay of the land enough to even spare details because i don't know what is relevant, don't know what questions to ask.

Given there are no comments/reviews on product pages themselves, I find it misleadingly easy to buy junk or have the nasty surprise that my purchase won't work without some other purchase because there are relevant details that are easy to overlook unless you are familiar with the terminology and how the program works. Learning the program seems almost like a series of walls behind which may or may not lead somewhere than a learning 'curve'... and i see this is a very active forum, but I wonder if this is a reflection of the deficiencies in clear/concise/accessible instructions.

Frustrated that an instruction manual is somehow an optional feature upon purchase, i nevertheless bit my tongue and purchased aniMate 2 Mastery - Complete when it was still $30, seeing the word 'complete' and assuming it must contain a detailed explaination of all features in technical terms. Instead, I find I've paid for a haphazard set of slow-paced, seemingly improvised video 'lessons' (NO actual manual-style documentation) that are more demonstrations of simple cases than explainations of it's potential capabilities, often filled with stretches of struggling and frustrations similar to what i run into (which i intended to avoid by making this purchase) and could have at least been edited out for the cost, left wondering if even my initial purchase was something i needed in the first place or if I've fallen for the consequences of this apparent pay-to-understand business model. Not even the Daz manual (at least the current iteration) has an explaination of its features in any apparent official capacity, while the program is incredibly in-depth and deserving of one. Even if the argument was that it is a free program, and there needs to be a way to maintain operations etc, doesn't it deter 3d beginners like me who arrive at it hoping it might be the solution i'm looking for, but find it holding up the works at this point.

The online wiki style doc almost looks like it has been dismantled? Old versions of the Daz manual appear to be way more in-depth? What gives? Why shroud the program's functionality in all this rigmarole to figure out what "IK" and "bake" mean and why exactly i converted my bow into a figure from a prop, why the joint editor seems like an impossible mental puzzle til you find the correct sub-menu? Why my figure's hand explodes and limits get turned off frequently with no clear cause (mousing over aniblocks maybe?), why a straight bowstroke took me weeks to figure out and still occasionally crashes the program how i've managed to do it... i'm not saying answer all these questions (by all means, do if you want) but just want to enter my vote for better ways for new arrivals to avoid having to ask long convoluted rambles like this. 

I'm really looking forward to making use of the program but nothing is intuitive and I'm just wondering if this is how it feels to be a new user or if I'm doing it wrong.

Chohole

If you purchased the Animate Mastery product within the last 30 days you could take advantage of the famous Daz 3D Refund Policy

Catherine3678ab

Chohole said:

If you purchased the Animate Mastery product within the last 30 days you could take advantage of the famous Daz 3D Refund Policy

+1

The company that ever first made AniMate used to have a website and something of a manual and instructions. However there have been some updates and changes made and indeed the newer D/S editions have things like Keymate now incorporated into the program. There are a number of [usually rather old] videos on YouTube.com that can provide some tips and tricks. Like a lot of things about 3D, tutorials or not one learns by actually doing.

One can use an aniblock, stop it at a pose position one likes, add that pose to the Puppeteer Panel ... doing that a few times, one can then use the Puppeteer Panel to make an animation for the timeline.

One can make new aniblocks also [rather convoluted process but it is possible].

When scrubbing [moving the position line to see what it does] through any of the existing aniblocks placed on the animate action {? whatever it is called} line, one then goes over to the Timeline. Once there one can make additional tweaks, add poses, whatever, and then render out animated scenes as stills [.pngs for example] or as motion files of sometype [I don't use this option]. Stills can be stitched together in a video editing software program [some are free, some are pricey]. If D/S hiccups during a motion file render, the entire render is lost. If it hiccups while rendering stills, stills already rendered are safe.

Also at any time one has the figure in a particular pose wherein said pose is wanted on its own, File > Save As > Pose Preset ... unselect the figure in the popup dialog, then right-click in dialog to select everything that was changed, check over the list editing as desired and then accept it. [sometimes one selects transitions only, sometimes one unchecks "y" anything - concept being to save the pose, not reposition the entire figure nor reshape the entire figure with every pose].

 

Catherine3678ab

Here's a thread for animators - questions and idea sharing are welcome there.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/358051/the-animators-assemble-thread-for-daz-animation-wips-clips-and-tips

Something free to snag, tutorial to watch. And while it is outdated may have some helpful ideas ... and there are more too. n.b. Keymate is now included in with D/S.

https://www.daz3d.com/sultry-walk-tutorial-content

 

macj_tx

To revive this thread, I just came across an AniMate 2 manual on archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/ani-mate-2-user-guide

Hope it will be useful for others out there.

christianluj

 

macj_tx said:

To revive this thread, I just came across an AniMate 2 manual on archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/ani-mate-2-user-guide

Hope it will be useful for others out there.

You're a life saver. Thanks!