Animation workflow in Daz
PixelReaper
Posts: 37
Seems like 4.14 try to bring animation actually doable in Daz.
With the new tools like face rig for G8, spring and Filament or even Octane Render to speed up photorealistic render.
But it's been some times now I'm wondering if people are actually doing animation inside Daz? (I'm mean by that, actual keyframing and complex animation... not import BVH/mixamo and hit render)
If so, I'm really curious about the workflow you are using. What tools are indispensable, timeline hidden tricks, scene otpimisation etc...
I did try to animate in Daz and it always has been painful. The timeline is full of bug, I can't edit properly key frame graph interpolation, IK acting weird sometimes... I was wondering if other people also encoutered this kind of problem ? If the tools and add-on proposed on the store were really necessary ?
For example, I don't have Ani-Mate2. Is this really a tool that makes a huge difference ? I feel like it's for Ani-block but I don't have interest for Ani-blocks, I want to make my own animation.
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Comments
You can make your own aniBlocks. AniMate2 allows things that you can't normally do in DS. It is not easy to do animation in DS without the plugins. Keymate and Graphmate are now part of the timeline advanced features.
I love creating animation with daz its a lot of fun. and Daz Studio is pretty much all I use to make animation with. I like to use a mix of hand keyframe animation and Animated presets & aniblocks.
But most of the animations I make there are no presets for which requires making the animation by hand. I have a work flow and file managment tutorial in the store. https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio--getting-started-with-animation
Something fun to watch in the mean time.
click to play. best viewed in 1080HD
The gymnastic animation was done completely by hand there is no aniblocks for gymnastics
I'm not sure to understand. Keymate, Graphmate, advanced features... It's a bit confusing, are you talking about features inside AniMate 2 ? (Sorry I'm using Daz only since a few month...)
Because in the first link you posted is just about how to enable the advanced timeline. Which is the first thing I did when I started animation in daz. Also, he is showing the graph editor and how to swap between Linear and eased interpolation but is there a way to edit manually these curves ? (With Graphmate I guess :s ?)
The second link is about how to create aniblocks with Animate2 ... It kind of confirm what I was thinking about this plug-in :s
Thanks for the link @Ivy :D, maybe I'm wrong but it seems to be oriented for beginners and I was kind of looking for more "advanced" advices :s. (I'm a motion designer, I'm using keyframes all day long :p)
For instance, if you make animation by hand, do you use any plug-in to make your life easier ?
Actually for human motions I do have a favorite tool I like to use its called Ultimate Pose Master https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-pose-master I use it in combination with the puppeteer tool for creating loop animation cycles , I'm currently working on some gymnastic animations at the moment currently, & I am looking for a home to sell some jogging aniblocks & motions presets for gensisi 8 male & females.. I made these using the pose master and puppeteer. I'll properly be selling them at renderosity soon. Daz didn't appear to be interested in them.
Keymate and Graphmate were plugins that were companions to Animate2. But daz3D bought the plugins & has incorporated them into the daz studio native timeline. you do not need AniMate2 to make animations with daz studio But you will find that Animate2 will make animation easier , I actually bought Key-mate and Graph-mate plugins long before daz bought them off Gofigure. So I am use to using those plugins. Also AniMate2 has a Built-in graph editor as well
The daz Native timeline has been much improved and now has a properties panal it never had before that you can edit and create Ik/FK interactions with , its also easier for keyframe editing than it use to be . But I still find myself using Keymate over daz native timeline. Maybe because I can customize the UI of Keymate where as the daz timeline you can't customize the UI with color codes or line colors . But they are basicly the same plugin only intergrated into the daz native timeline.
If you are a motions designer , you should not have any problems getting use to the daz timeline ¬ need the AniMate2 plugin. Lately I have been finding myself working more and more exclusively in the daz timeline
when I get done rendering this Animations I doing right now I'll take some screen shots of the the daz timeline and the graph-mate,-keymate plugins to show you the differences
Ivy answered your questions. I would still get aniMate 2 if I were you. It goes on sale once in a while. You can find the video tutes for it still on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/user/GoFigure3D
here are the differences of the timelines . the Key-mate, & graph-mate plugins are part of the daz studio timeline so the differences are minor
The top is The Key-mate Plugin the bottom is the daz studio keyframe editor
The top is the Graph-mate plugin the Bottom is the Daz Studio Timeline graph editor
Top is the AniMate2 Timeline. the Bottom is the Daz Studio Native timeline
Thank you both for your enlightenment :)
Still not sure about Ani-mate 2 though, It certainly does have some cool features (like the hability to see and edit a motion curve in the viewport !) but most of it are for ani-blocks... Also, based on the tutorial's date, it's a 10 years old plug-in !!? Wow... is it something that is regullary updated ? This is strange that it's not nativelly integrated yet :s
Ultimate Pose Master is actually the kind of tool I was looking for ! Thanks ^^ ! I was a bit confused with Daz FK system and I missed contoller for hands and feet :D
I hand keyframe everything except walking, for that I either use a Daz aniblock for it or Mixamo, and my goal for the rest of the year is to really learn how to keyframe a walk cycle. But generally what I do is I either find a video reference of what I want to animate, or I act it out myself on camera, and have that in my editing software next to my monitor. I go through and I make a cut on the timeline where every change in a pose would occur, like if an arm is moving, I'd make a cut at the start of the movement and another where the forearm starts to bend or whatever, and do that for the whole sequence. Then I look at the pose and recreate it in Daz for the first frame, select all children and set a key so everything is keyed on that frame, move to however many frames to the next pose change, recreate that pose, select all children set key, and repeat. For facial stuff, I picked up Face Motion and it's the greatest tool in the world.
This was my submission for the Movember contest. it was all hand keyed except for what I mentioned above. You will notice the ledge shot the feet are all over the place, that took me five hours to get to that point, the feet just don't want to stop moving for some reason. I went into blender and in twenty minutes had a perfect animation of him stepping up with no movement, but the materials didn't match the iray renders so I had to go with the feet moving around. Just think it's windy or something lol. But that is the one drawback to animating in Daz is it's so dang difficult to keep the feet from moving everywhere.
(9) Peaches - A Daz 3D animated film - YouTube
Bennie, somehow Free Nomon has figured out how to get feet on the ground with his Mixamo plug-in and Ivy's preferred tool for walking seems to do it very well. I can't think of the name right now. Good production value in your animation!
PixelReaper, GoFigure3D's last work was KeyMate and GraphMate. Daz ended up buying them and rolling them into Studio but possibly aniMate2 is still selling well enough that they didn't come to a deal. I don't know. aniMate is part of Studio. You would need aniMate2 for the advanced features for aniblocks. One of the original developers was still working on KeyMate but I haven't seen them post in a long time since before Daz bought the plugins.
Walkit
@wendyluvscats that is amazing! I just watched the youtube video and am blown away. I am so going to get this!
@kevin sanderson yeah, Freenoman's mixamo plugin is awesome! That's how I bring in most of my walk cycles now. I couldn't find a mixamo animation to just take one step up so that one I tried so hard to hand keyframe and it just didn't work. Although this walkit might do the trick, if I can get it to work I'll swap out the old shot with a new render so it looks better. And thank you for the kind words and taking the time to watch it!
Thanks! That first video changes Everything (for my experience in DS)... I think! No wonder I've been befuzzled on what the heck to do in Daz Studio for animations! So for me, all view modes are utterly useless except for Advanced View. Now I need to figure out of I can set this as my default or if I always have to turn it on.
Yes Walkit. I can't post a link to where you can buy it. but just PM I'll give you the site url. Its cool plugin works in daz 4.10 -4.12.0.85 it how ever does have some issues with daz 4.14 some of the walk styles are not reconized.and the script crashed a bunch of times when i was trying to walk threw some snow. But it maybe because I am using 4.14 Beta too.
But works in daz 4.10 -412 fine, it a great tools you lay down foot prints & your character follows the foot steps even over uneven terrain. it has a bunch of options for walk styles as well as controls for speed and gait
this is a cute toon using walkit . click to play. best viewed in 1080 HD
Fun vaca video. Ivy!
Dartanbeck. I don't know if you can, but maybe.
PixelReaper here's a brief tutorial for aniMate2
and another one...
and another...
Thanks :)
I'll keep digging on the different techniques and see what results I can get. Happy to see others work, I'll try to post some of mine with some tips and tricks and the tools I've used (When I'll have the time :p)
By the way, @benniewoodell ... Great Job on your movember entry :D that's a lot of work !
Sigh, no sadly it does not work well in 4.12 at all. Even changed the screen display size but nope, cannot get "all" of the panel to show. There are some rather important sections near the bottom of that panel lol ...
It also did not display any options for purchase which is fine 'cause there's no point in buying something that obviously will not work. So I deleted that and all the other trial plugins from the site. Somethings just look too good to be true and that's one of them.
What version of daz 4.12 are you using? Are you try to use it in a beta version of daz? I am using it in 4.12.0.85 public build and it has no issues at all for me, its works the same as in my daz 4.10.011
The walkit plugin script was design to work with daz studio 4.10 and it works in my Daz Studio version of 4,12.0.85 public build. . but it does not work in any beta versions of daz studio even daz 4.14 beta like you said it has missing panels and features . . check your version your trying to use it in . it should work great for any daz versions 4.10 to 4.12.0.85 . Anything above 4.12.085 public build. I have not tested it in. because I have not upgraded beyond 4.12.0.085 because.0.85 has been the best and most stable version of daz for me to do animation with. Specially after trying the other new release versions I kept having to go reinstall back 4.12.0.85. Same issue for a few other plugins like grow it and HDR magic not sure why why beyond4.12.0.85 things become broken.
I sorry I can't give you anymore info than that . I have had this walkit plugin for a couple of years. & it does work good. in my daz versions.
4.12.0.86 not beta. I don't know why plugins keep getting broken either but they do. Rather frustrating.
This is my daz version 4.12.0.86 (September 24, 2019)
I really do not know what to say about it not working on yours
This is a screen shot showing you how it works on mine below everything works great. I have textures turned off on my screen for this screen capture because of the naked g8 so the foot prints show only the trans-maps
I'm not sure why your plugin isn't working?? . yes the breaking of useful scripts is most ignoring
I did notice this week that my animated texture scripts are not working when i was trying to make some animated fireplace fire and that is going to be a issue because i use animated textures alot so I'll try reinstalling them and see if that corrects it ..
But walkit works for me just great , I'm sorry its not for you, you might contact Genx about it
edited for spelling sorry I am very dyslexic
I used Casual's TexAnim with Filament in the latest beta so that works
Awesome
I tried again today, tried even more display settings, but no dice :-(
It will not go shorter and wider in size as you show either. I can give it the entire screen, it will not display the bottom 2 sections, indeed at times not even all of the blue section either.
The link I found was from this post: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/2348071/#Comment_2348071
Is there another place to get it from?
Yup thats where i bought it.
I think it cost like $10 and some change USD to get the full license . Its to bad your having so many issues. I never had any, the grow-it and walk-it plugins worked right out of the box . I would contact generationX and ask them I got their email of their contact of their website I had to email them once to get my Activation code when i last Hard drive crashed. Email them at: DazPlugins@pilning.net
I would contact them & tell them whats going on. I do not know if they are still supporting it or not. the fist plugin version was made in 2016 and the last update was 9/2019 But it never hurts to ask them. Like i said it works for me in daz 4.10 - 4.12.086 but new versions of daz the the walk-it plugin some of the panel walk functions are not recognized.
BTW I reinstalled my animated texture scripts and those are back working again.... whew. I thought i lost use them. these are old scripts, but they still work good and for animation they are very useful & now that Dragonstorm is no longer with us. I dread the day this & "send in the clones" gets broken
Well I think the price has gone up some but then the one price I saw was in "E" which I have never used. Thank you I'll try the email and see what happens.
Yes I like Draagonstorm's scripts too. The one for picking a colour was one of the few "instant buys" for me :-)
Also, I have a page dedicated to aniMate 2 with all manner of great GoFigure tutorials and guides for features that aniMate 2 has built into it. It's quite amazing what all we can do within the tool.
aniMate 2 reference page
Just ignore the aniBlocks for Carrara stuff (there isn't much - it's mostly about aniMate 2 in DS)
The list of tutorials takes you to the videos