Bridging Technology - Daz 3D

Dartanbeck

I've been following and supporting Daz 3D for a  l o n g  time now - and for good reason.

I'm still going to be pursuing the new Genesis 8 and 8.1 technology because I really like the direction it's going. But to continue pushing forward with my CG Animated Movies Project, I've been nudged by a collaborator to take another look back at Genesis 1.

 

For me, this was easy. I was just working with a Generation 5 figure before I started checking out and learning to use Daz Studio more for what it's meant to be used for - rather than just an "Assistant to Carrara". But since I worked primarily in Carrara, that's where I built the figure - so it is incredibly time-consuming and ultimately difficult to get her into Daz Studio - hence my (finally) trending into the Genesis 8 platform.

 

Well Rosie 5 got jealous of Rosie 8. She's got that pretty face and that hair - oh that Hair!

 

Since Rosie 8 was based on Lara for Genesis 8, by Thorne and Handspan Studios, I decided to go with the closest character preset for Genesis 2 that I could find - Ysabaeu 6, who I ported into Genesis 1 via Genesis Generation X2. There's a lot more about her design and the direction all of this is heading in the article Rosie 5.5

 

The reason for all of this was to get animating, which I've been doing all along, but also to get lip syncing. I was able to get some pretty cool results with Rosie 8 in Carrara using Mimic Pro for Carrara, but when importing the results to Daz Studio, where her hair lives, a Lot of the animation didn't follow the path. I also got some interesting and successful results from the Lip Sync in 32 bit Daz Studio.

But when I was nearly finished creating Rosie 5.5 and started making PZ2 files of her talking, using Mimic 3 Pro stand-alone, there was such a huge workflow advantage and boost to realistic looking results that I have to pursue this thing!

Beyond that, I have a Wealth of animation files that I've made, collected and purchased over the years for generations 3 (V3/M3), 4, 5 and 6 - while the only animations I have for generation 8 are the ones I bought recently when I started trying out Daz Studio. Starting that whole collection over again will be time-consuming and expensive.

Like I said, however, I'll still be working toward Genesis 8 and even using 8 for characters other than my main protagonist, but for now she's just a bit too far out of reach.

 

Rosie 5.5 can wear virtually any clothing, male or female from generations 1 - 8, which is Huge! She can also use almost all animation files for any generation other than 8 and perhaps (probably) 3, leaving more than 90% of my animation files at least mostly compatible - that, too is Huge!!!

 

I used to do All of my work in Carrara - using Daz Studio only for prep work - aniMate 2 to edit/create aniBlocks, use the Content Creation Tools to get my models to fit the designated figure, and use plugins to convert animations from one generation to the next - something I haven't got working for Genesis 8/8.1 yet.

Well since my Holiday experimentation in Daz Studio, I've grown rather fond of many things  - even something that I always dreaded prior to 4.14 - Animating. The improvements made to the Timeline are a major change for me using DS for animating - and having aniMate 2 in-house is an excellent boon.

I've also really grown fond of OctaneRender for DS and Valzheimer's Octane Render Kit (ORK). 

 

So where does this leave us? This puts us in a powerful position of truly Bridging Technology!

I've written the beginning intro to the project under that same title: Bridging Technology, which currently touches on some of the plans that we're heading with all of this. There are also currently two sub pages, Mimic Lip Sync and Rosie 5.5

Have a look and let me know what you think!

Dartanbeck

I'm almost done rendering all of the frames for the Intro video. Stay tuned!

We'll see how expressive this little beauty is with her three generations of expressions and micro-movement morphs! We'll here her talk about how she came to be. I can't say enough about how fun she is to animate!

I used my newest verion of Rosie 8 as inspiration as well as using what I really love about Rosie 5 and I just love the results so far! She's still not entirely mission ready', but she's very close, I think - according to the test animations and lip syncing I've been doing with her.

For those who haven't met her yet, here's the earliier introduction to her predecessor: Rosie 5

Dartanbeck

...and this is an image of Rosie 8 for comparison

Dartanbeck

Hybrid aniMation is an article that's still a work in progress, and will become a text article/video series type of thing, which I'l being doing for many topics on the site.

This one in particular will dive deep into how I use aniMate 2 and Studio's new animation features to bring characters to life.

Dartanbeck

From not liking the DS timeline at all to actually having a lot of fun in it, I have to thank the development team for what they're doing for animators wanting to use Daz Studio. By itself I think it's still missing some very important functions, but aniMate 2 truly helps to soften the blow with many of these lacking elements built into it.

It still means jumping back and forth between the timeline and aniMate but at least the posibilities are there.

I'm really looking forward to watching Daz Studio progress in development and am optimistic that animation features will start to emerge and mature. Without aniMate 2, however, Daz Studio is still pretty far from what I would call "Animator-Friendly"

Dartanbeck

New Video

Rosie 5.5 Support Article