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My goal is to animate in Blender. I've tried appending a few animation files, but the bones have different names. For static, I tend to import the character in the proper pose from Studio.
This is also something I would like to do eventually. First question I have though is where do you start? For example, do you import a fully rigged character using Diffeomorphic (or DAZ-To-Blender)? Or do you use FBX or even OBJ or Alembic and add your own rigging? If so, what kind of rigging because I believe there are at least three options.
I can find several YouTube tutorials on how to make animations in Blender, or import Mixamo or BVH animations but I'm not clear on how this relates to our DAZ Studio exports. I watched a quick tutorial on creating a walk cycle in Blender but these tutorials usually assume we know all about rigging and posing. That's one of the problems I have with learning Blender - no matter what I read or watch, I can't seem to hit that sweet spot where I know just enough to understand how the instructor got to the point from where the tutorial gets going.
I wouldn't bother with animations in studio; just create them in Blender
happens to me all the time when i'm reading computer skill teaching books. forces me to go refer to other books to get me up to speed. actually we're pretty blessed to have video tutorials on youtube that teach you everything in a fairly straightforward manner. you just need a little motiviation for it.
That's what I'm trying to do.
I agree on Blender tutorials. Most of them are quite bad and then the next version of Blender breaks them completely. Some keyboard shortcuts only work on a Windows machine and don't carry over either. If you ever find a good Blender tutorial, bookmark it.
Although I have technically left the Daz/Genesis Character eco system for Iclone/CC3/Blender,I have decided that a mixed approach is better than rigidly locking yourself into one approach.
Some people may want to create dialog driven narratives with a lot of lipsync/facial animation.
AFAIK Diffeo does not even export the facial phoneme morphs(from G8 figures) to Blender and even if so, Should people be expected to hand key every syllable of a characters two minute monologue in Blender when there are automated options in Daz studio?
what about background idlers/crowds..should thay all be Converted to rigify and handkeyed manually by a single artist working alone? The primary speaking /front camera Characters in my current Web series will be imported from CC3 with body and facial already baked in from Iclone, via FBX, and have the ability to replace that body/facial animation with new stored animation Data via the Blender action editor
However Most of the background "enemy combatants" might be vestigial low res/decimated Daz Mike3 figures(attached pic) imported via Standard FBX from Daz studio already animated with motions from my vast library of legacy motion files or retargeted from Iclone or Ragdoll dynamics from Endorphin
Others may have different priorities (perfect joint deformations or skins that emulate IRay)
In that case perhaps the Sagan Alembic exporter of a pre-animated genesis 8 figure is a better approach
Of course Blender has an industry standard professional animation system, if you are using blender native rigs from the very beginning however for those of you importing Character rigs from other programs I would wary of "expert"advice Stating "just animate everything in blender because Daz studio lacks this & that etc", unless the "advisor" can show example videos of how they themselves are animating their Daz imported Characters in Blender.
@wolf359 daz studio is good for animation as far as mocap is used, it is original animation that's better in blender. We can import daz animations with diffeo though, either body or face or whatever, they just need to be baked to the timeline since diffeo can't import aniblocks.
Yes. This is the point that I have been going over in my own mind. One the one hand, Blender has this sophisticated animation system. On the other hand, we start with a DAZ Studio rigged figure which I, for one, find much easier to pose in DAZ Studio than in Blender. Additionally, I have a huge library of poses that I can use as the basis for any still or animation. What I have been looking at is whether it is worth the effort to learn the various methods of rigging in Blender in order to hand keyframe actions. All the tutorials I can find start with a figure rigged in Blender and there is precious little to walk us through exporting from DAZ Studio for animation purposes.
@marble
As for diffeo the daz "rig" is imported by default, then you can also import daz poses and animations. Or you can convert the figure to the mhx rig that's powerful enough for original animation in blender, it also has the benefit that's fully compatible to import daz poses and animations. Or you can convert the figure to rigify, that's more advanced than mhx and more powerful for original animation in blender, but it is less compatible to import daz poses and animations so some may not work fine.
Hope this helps to better understand your options.
@Padone,Our FBX exporter from CC3 will export our lipsynch phonemes as animated blend shapes into blender with after the fact new motion retargets from Iclone via appending to the action editor...... I have my solution.
Are you saying that a person can use the Iphone based
facial capture on G8 figure and Diffeo will import that facial performance into Blender??
Are there any videos of a speaking/emoting G8 character rendered in Blender ,via Diffeo,(link please)
Because @Benniewoodell
has indicated that his Iphone facial performance capture wont transfer to Blender thus he renders in Iray and composites/motion tracks onto Blender backgrounds IIRC.
@Marble that was the point of my earlier post.
This is not a "true" Blender community forum but a "Daz content in Blender" forum.
it is not helpful to simply tell Daz people to "animate their Daz figure in blender" without explaining a pipeline to do so.
Convert to rigify/MHX and handkey everything???
because that method is very "old school" Blender and frankly SUCKS!!
Great for a studio team with alot of animators on staff though
and what about those Daz users with huge libraries of Daz motion files for idlers & background walkers.??
invest in the ROKKO system or a PN suit?? or some other mocap based approach for Blender??
The still render/portrait Daz people have a a clear set of options for external rendering at this point
but aspiring animators need more detailed advice on external pipelines because their are several that will vary greatly depending on your objectives.
I don't know how the iphone works. As for diffeo it can import daz animations baked to the timeline, so anything that animates bones and morphs should work. If it is a proprietary plugin inside daz studio using its own animation system then it will not export of course.
Any video links to a Speaking/facial animated G8 figure
rendered in Blender via Diffeo??
either mimic 32 bit basic, mimic live,anilip 2
or papagayo free lipsynch script?? or the new Iphone face capture??.
Understand, I think Thomas Larson has done a steller job!!, far surperior to the Daz "bridge" from what I have seen
however I am sure some people who are being exhorted to Dump Daz animation tools for Blender or bring in DS animation ,via Diffeo, might want to see some actual results from those who are actually creating Blender animation via this route and not speaking theoretically while only rendering stills themselves.
So to be clear, using the MHX rig in Blender will enable us to import "current frame" poses and animated poses without having to rename bones, etc? But for Rigify which, incidentally, is the one that has considerably more tutorials - our DAZ Pose Library might be of little use?
I would really like to understand better what Blender animation tools have that the DAZ Studio timeline with Keymate and Graphmate (or the recent native implementations of those) doesn't have?
@Marble the Current DS timeline/ dope sheet has no ability to reset the view to view all curves/frames
( MAJOR IMPEDIMENT!!)
or easily isloate or lock only the curves of a specific channel.
No ability to veiw the Dope sheet or graph editor in a separate tab or panel , as was possible with the older
graphMate /keyMate plugins,
No bezier handles in spline interpolation mode
No ability to retime an animation by mass scaling of selected keys
No advanced spline curve modifiers like noise , cycle,sine cosine etc( useful for random jiggle effects with dampening)
No native soft body dynamics without buying limted third party addons like "spring physics" that may potentially break with a DS core update or have future support vanish with the retirement/death of the PA.
No rigid body ,collision dynamics (bowling
pins ,collapsing, colliding objects,even poser has bullet physics )
No ability to attach a camera to a spline path/rail.
No native ability to Cull/reduce keyframe count making
editing curves from baked aniblocks/imported BVH extemely diffcult.
no ability to add timeline markers
(like you can in the Davinci resolve timeline)
and jump to specific point in the timeline.
No ability to append animation data from other scene files
only from saved aniblocks/pose presets
Important features of Animate2 such as body part exclusion, restricted to Genesis 2 or earlier.
No ability to acquire an older version of DS to use some legacy animation add-on/ feature that is no longer supported in the new versions,(as you can with every version of blender that has ever existed.)
No native animated particle effects of any kind.
I've had no issue loading poses at all once diffeo converted my rig to Rigify... give it a shot.
Jeff
Good to know, thanks. I will try some poses.
Much of what you say here means very little to me because I have not studied animation at all. Things like collisions and physics would be welcome in DAZ Studio and I've often asked for them myself but they are not specifically related to the timeline even if they are important features for animations. Things like beziers and curves are terms beyond my knowledge right now but I now have a better idea of what to look for.
Have you seen face-it for Blender?
https://blendermarket.com/products/faceit
@jeff_someone @marble
Just tested and I can confirm that rigify has issues with some poses. Try G8F with kneeling b for example. While mhx works fine.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/287/may-be-rigify-bug
@wolf359 If you have any daz studio animation of yours that you can link here I can check if it exports fine. I just need the animation baked to the timeline. If the animation uses custom morphs I'll need them too. As for G3 G8, facial expressions are bones so custom morphs should not be required.
I don't have any facial mocap myself for daz studio or blender. And I don't have a iphone.
Yes it is good to see this type of thing for Blender native rigs.
Personally I am and Android guy who wont be buying an expensive luxury brand product from Apple to serve one purpose.
Thus I will be sticking to the audio based/face puppet tools in Iclone 7 and export my lipsync/facial as animated Blend shapes to Blender from CC3, pipeline via FBX.
@Padone
the attached zip containisan animated pose file(duf) of the G8 female speaking made with Daz own mimic live 64 bit.
it is facial phoneme , morph based not face bone rig animation
I cannot find the original audio
but you should be able to load it into Daz studio
and see her mouth talking.
this facial lipsync does not load ,via Diffeo, as diffeo doe not seem to load the Blend shape keys for her lip movement.
it does not matter if I use import action,import pose or even convert to MHX..no lip synch/facial animation.
give it go and post your findings as I am sure Daz studio animators would like to know their options for speaking Characters exported to Blender.
Now ironically here is the same G8 female exported as FBX from Daz studio 4.12.086.
Her phoneme, morph based lipsync& facial animation
comes in perfectly just as it does for the Iclone/ CC3 Avatars in my FBX to Blender based pipeline.
Note all of the keyframes for her facial morphs in the blender Shape key editor as they should be
But Sadly her body animation is wonky& distored to the point of uslessness ,via FBX from DS, unlike the Avatars from CC3 which come into Blender with perfect ,foot planted Baked FK fidelity and facial animation.
I should note that bone based body animations work pretty good via Diffeo for animations imported after convert to MHX.
If you can suss out the correct way to get facial/lipsync imported, via diffeo, again please share for those who plan to use diffeo for external rendering in Blender cycles /EEVEE
and are being advised to "skip Daz studio" and animate everything in blender.
@wolf359
It seems I can't load your scene, I get an error. Probably because I don't have the mimic addon. Did you bake the animation to the timeline ? Is it possible to convert mimic to a standard daz animation ? If the addon uses a custom animation system then it is not possible to export it with diffeo.
It is also ironic that the log tells to check the log for details, and there's none. But in this case it seems clear to me that the issue is I don't have mimic installed.
edit. Never mind. I thought it was a scene file but it is an animation file. Loaded on G3F and it works fine in daz studio even if I don't have mimic. Going to test the diffeo export ..
@wolf359
Ok I got it. It seems there's something wrong in the animation file since diffeo can't recognize the figure to apply the animation to. To solve the issue you have to export the animation in daz studio as visemes. This way the animation is exported correctly and diffeo can read it.
Then in diffeo you have to:
@wolf359
Never mind, your animation file is good, it was just me that forgot to import visemes first. Then if the animation also uses other head pose controls or expressions in daz studio, then you also have to import units and expressions in diffeo, always in the morphs section.
Wow!!!
It seems Diffeo has its own system for storing shape keys
for lipsynch visemes at least.
And there is even an option to import MOHO files from the free 64 bit papagayo utility for those who cant afford the cost of mimic live or Iphones and dont want to bother with installing 32 bit Daz studio for audio based lipsynch.
Thanks Padone! this is the kind of information that newbie animator/filmakers who wish to implement Daz Genesis /Blender pipelines need to know.
LOL Diffeo wins again!!!
@wolf359
It seems I can't attach pictures, with edge the forum has issues. That is, I don't see in my posts above the pictures that I attached for reference. Will try to fix them as I get home, but I'm having a very hard time with the forum lately.
edit. Fixed with firefox the pictures are back. Still have edit issues I have to write in html.