Can/should I animate with Daz?
Rock23
Posts: 9
Hi,
Daz feels great for creating scenes and stills, but lately I've been trying my hand at some animations and it just feels so lackluster and frankly, frustrating.
I would really apprecate it, if anyone could answer a few questions:
- The IK system: I've seen many posts on sliding feet and lack of IK. I know it was (recently?) improved, but it still doesn't work nearly as good the ones I've seen in other 3D applications.
The pins work to some degree, but it takes so long to do even simple animations, it's very error-prone, and I have to manually correct many small deviations, often resulting in "jittery" body parts.
Is this something that's ever expected to be improved ("basic" things like keeping feet on the floor, or a hand on an object)? - Keyframe interpolation: Basically, I'd like to be able to have an animation ease in/out at certain points. The classic example is the bouncing ball.
TCB works to some degree for this, but not really when it comes to figures.
Do I really have to set these values for each individual limb/property (instead of just for a keyframe), and how do I know what to set them to?
I've tried adjusting them in many different ways, but this seems to increase the property values itself, and not the animation speed.
Is it possible to drag curves/handles or something somewhere in the graph editor (it doesn't really feel like a graph editor at all).
I can't find any (decent) documentation on this either, so a reference would be appreciated. - When setting 2 keyframes, I would expect a smooth animation between the 2, but for some reason a lot of the times the figure just makes unexpected movements (probably due to some kind of bone restriction?) even though both the start and end pose are perfectly valid.
I've tried removing all rotation limits, but that didn't help either. This is probably related to number 1 though.
Also, is there any way to move keyframes around, instead of copy/paste/delete or moving each individual property "T-frame"? - Is it possible to export to other animation applications and import back to render, without losing materials/morphs/etc. (which already feels like a very inefficient workflow), and if so, which would you recommend?
Maybe I'm just doing things the wrong way, but I feel very disappointed with Daz's animation capabilities.
I am considering moving to something new altogether because of this, even though I would really prefer to stick with Daz if possible, because I do like the possibilites it offers aside from animation.
Sorry for the long post and thanks a lot in advance!
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Comments
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
I managed to find a single forum post by moderator Richard Haseltine stating a plan to fix the soft pinning IK is "on the drawing board," but there's no timetable.
It was written two to three years ago.
I use the Diffeomorphic Blender exporter. Works great.
@marrave Thanks, I'll look into the Diffeomorphic Blender exporter.
@wolf359 That's a very instructive video, thank you for that! I see you are using the Diffeomorphic plugin as well.
I know you mention using Blender to render, but is it possbile to import back into Daz as well?
Because I don't have any experience with Blender yet (but it might be a good idea to start learning).
Yes:
Diffeomorphic: Save Pose Preset
As users who no problems to use another software as long it make my project happen/finish , I would suggesting to pick what DAZ Studio actually offer for now and dont focus to what DAZ not yet offering. And look if another tools or apps can perfecting what you`re already done in DAZ studio .
" Frankestein" all the aniblok/animation poses + pupetter is something I `ll try first, to see if I can get the base motion I wanted .
If there are IK or sliding feet problem , I will choose to set the camera for not showing those problem or Bring to another software to fix it . Sometimes It will need frame by frame correction if those are commercial project , if just for personal pleasure or the client doesnt bother with it I will go with the first option
This is maybe out of topic but most problem I`ve encounter when doing animation is came from THE NEED to use all assets from DAZ worlds . Props maybe something we can reuse, but for humanoid I`ll go into native and ready to animate solution if possible . Thankfully right now there are plenty option to buy Rigify character with competitive prices, especially for commercial projects
Hi
on the matter of using diffeo to send animated poses back to Daz studio.
Yes that may work in many circumstances as the Blender IK is baked to Fk
for things like walking,
Daz studio can import IK to Fk baked root locomotion
with a decent amount of foot/floor contact fidelity
from proper retargeting softwares like Iclone3DX or Autodesk Motionbuilder as well .
However rigid constraint pinning
(such as the girl is swinging on the trapeze bar at the end of my tutorial posted earlier),
will NOT transfer back to Daz studio and the hands will fly all over the place in Daz studio.
This is why I personally am very hestitant to tell people to use the diffeo plugin for sending animation back to Daz studio
despite my strong endorsement of diffeo as the BEST means to get G8 figures over to Blender for animated filmmaking& rendering with Cycles or EEVEE.
just FYI.
If you are serious about this, gaining at lest basic proficiency in a bona fide animation environment such as Blender is the single best favor you can do for yourself, and not just for animation related things. While animating, you will constantly create the need to tweak the geometry, and for that you will need a competent modeling tool. Something else that Daz Studio is not.
I consider Daz Studio to be the best character creation tool available, and the value proposition of its PAs with respect to what you get vs what you pay for it, is nonpareil. But you deserve tools that are going to unlock your creativity, and Daz Studio is just too primitive to do anything but hinder. Anyone who says differently either has quite low expectations or is just not participating in reality.
I'm just here to chime in about the weird and unwanted movements of limbs or objects when you set a couple of keyframes and it moves when you don't want it to, especially in the spots where you want something to stay absolutely still. The only workaround I've found to fix this is to go one frame after the first keyframe, copy and paste the keyframe in the direct next frame, and then go one frame before the second keyframe, copy the second keyframe and paste it right before it. Now select the two new keys which should be between the two actual keyframes you want, highlight them and make them linear. Now Daz won't move the person or object in any direction you don't want it to. I hope this makes sense, it's almost one am and I've had a long weekend. It's an incredibly unnecessary, long, and tedious thing to do that any other program would just do what you want it to from the get go, but if you're in a spot where you have to animate in Daz for whatever reason and find things are wonky, try this trick.
Also if you copy and paste a keyframe that's X amount of keyframes away and the person does a weird exorcist type head jerk or something, or they disappear completely from the screen, highlight the two keyframes, set it to linear, and then set it back to TCB if you want the easy in and out and it'll actually work how you want it to. This does not work for times where a limb moves backwards in-between two keys though, only from a copy and paste situation.
If you're just starting out, I would agree with everyone above and learn Blender. The negatives for Daz's animation ability far outweigh the positives you get with it, and this is coming from someone who spends most of his time animating in Daz.
Thanks a lot for all the comments. These are all really helpful.
It's a shame that Daz doesn't step up its animation game, but it's good to know there are alternatives.
I'll try my hand at my Blender.
if you are willing to hand key everything you certainly can animate in DAZ studio, Ivy Summers has that dedication but I don't so I use other software
* Blush*
Thats because I learned to do animations old school one frame at a time & now I am just old & stuck in my ways...
As for diffeo, the reason why animations don't get back fine to daz studio, is because rigify and mhx use different bones. These are remapped to the daz rig but the retargeting can't be 100% accurate. There are two ways to get around this issue.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/545/save-pose-preset-doesnt-work
As for animating with daz studio, my personal opinion is it's good enough to assemble premade mocaps with animate lite. It's not good for original animation with ik and the timeline because of ik/timeline issues and the lack of a proper ik rig for figures.
Then I find puppetteer very interesting and quick for some kind of animations. It's a sort of hand-made mocap and I'd love to see something similar in blender.
@Padone, just for clarification
any rigid limb pinning has to be solved locally
in the final render app.
this is not so much a Daz studio limitation
but just a fact of how motion transfer works.
If I need to replicate this
exported Endorphin simulation to Maya
I will have to re-pin& solve that right hand in the Maya IK system
as some things will never hold postion even when baked to FK.
I started the prospect of animating in Blender, which truly looks like a great option, but there were many aspects that looked as if I would end up spending more time learning how to make things work that would take me away from getting my animations working.
I have been collecting aniBlocks for a number of years and have a good selection of them, which is what I use as a base for many of my (Character) animation to begin with. Then I tweak them in aniMate 2 using their tools. Kind of a bummer that it's all so tiny in Daz Studio, but....
So then I bake the result to the Daz Studio timeline, where I further tweak the results, which might include selecting certain frames from certain limbs and deleting them or altering their strength, etc.,
Daz Studio is lacking in some very effective animation tools, but aniMate 2 helps to bring some of that, if not in a difficult to see manner.
If you like using Daz figures and the controls of morph dials and such, and would like to incorporate that into your animations - especially if Blender is becoming a bit of a nightmare, check out the page I have for aniMate 2. The videos there are pretty old, because aniMate 2 came out a long time ago, but check out how cool the tools work!
I only have very limited time for my 3D craft, so this is still very much something I can only work on for a couple hours in a day. This is why I've been collecting aniBlocks to help. With nearly all of PoserMocap, GoFigure, SKAmotion and BoneTech 3D aniBlock collections, I blend various aniBlocks together using aniMate 2. This can be done on the same track to switch from one motion to another, but we can also add Subtracks and select which parts of the rig will be affected, and whether those parts are completely overridden or only somewhat blended in, etc.,
Since my aniBlock collections are often meant for a specific Daz figure, I've found zaz777's animation conversion scripts to be a major benefit! With it, I can easily convert my V4/M4 motions to newer Genesis figures.
Further, I also create my own animation-helper control dials that help me to adjust posture and other things during an animation simply by using morph dials - custom morph dials I've made myself - so when I need new ones, I just make them.
An example of what I mean is a freebie I've made for Genesis 1, if you'd like to see how they work: Genesis 1 Morphforms +
Although written for Carrara, my Hybrid aniMation idea is the premise of how I work with aniBlock data to mix them up in order to create custom motions that do what I want them to do. You might find that useful. For working in Daz Studio, I'll also sometimes use the more robust animation tools of Carrara to work with my aniBlocks, and then export them for Daz Studio via BVH (using the BVH Export plugin, which is free).
Blender is amazing! Not trying to deter you!
But if you're like me, and want to have the convenience of working with Daz figures without a whole lot of voodoo and having to learn something as sophisticated as Blender, give Studio a try. Using filmmaker techniques of making short clips that all fit together to tell a story, Daz Studio can help you get there. Though I'm really hoping that they'd get some serious tools added to the animation pipeline. As others have mentioned before, some things are just downright under-developed. A lot of those shortcomings can be assisted by using aniMate 2's tools.
Cheers and good luck on your endeavors!
Whew! That was a long post.
I'd just like to add that I'm still fairly new to animating in Daz Studio after years of practice in Carrara.
At first it felt really tough, like it simply could not be done. But more and more subtle little features of Studio start to shine through making it a lot more handy that it seems when just looking at the awkward timeline tools and difficult (at first) keyframe manipulation.
I'm still in the middle of some heavy animation work (yes, in Daz Studio) but when it's done I'll be putting together a series of tutorials that will help those new to animating in Daz Studio immensely.
One of the biggest things that I love about animating in Daz Studio directly is that we get the wonderful benefits that Studio technology gives to their figures - namely that amazing smoothig modifier, which really helps make the joints of the figure look better frame after frame.
It might seem like a terrible animation solution to folks who use other tools like Blender, Maya or whatever. But like everything, experience truly helps to make certain benefits shine!
I've started a Daz Studio section on my site, and in the Animation section I include some helpful information about a good many things and, like I said, much more helpful tutorials are coming.
It's amazing how many tips and tricks I've taught myself since I've made that page.
That said, Daz 3d claimed that they've made imprvements to the animation tools and this is very true! They still need to keep going, but it's really nice that they've added that graph editor, and there are many other things that it has going for it - especially including Iray and/or Octane as rendering solutions along with the still powerful 3Delight engine, if we like that previous era of render engine.
There is also some fun tips to be gleened from the new series of webinars (top of a Daz 3d page > Community > In The Studio), with Jay Versluis showing us tips and tricks that he's picked up over the past twelvish years. Even if the main topic of the webinar doesn't have anything to do with animation, Jay's tips often still cater to animation - if not simply by getting us better acquainted with the many (Many) features of Daz Studio - which truly is a vast piece of software.
Not if you bake the animation, this is what baking is for. You animate with ik then bake and export the baked animation. There may be some approximation if you use different rigs for the source and target applications. In this case bone remapping and retargeting are needed that may cause such approximation, depending on the quality of the retargeting addon. But if you use the same rig for source and target then retargeting is not needed you just have to bake the ik (and possibly constraints and visual transforms) and everything works fine.
Unless I miss something or didn't get what you mean.
Then if you refer to physics simulations they are another thing and may be exported with cached geometry, without rigs.
Sure you can, I do animations everyday.
You just need to learn how to deal with DAZ Studio.
To answer you:
1) Yes, pinning system still needs some tweaks but you can solve using a script made by MCasual called Autolimb, along with another called HoldOn. They will help you keep the feet/hands where they should be.
2) TBC overshoot can be controlled by the TBC (
) controls in the timeline, just change those values to modify the behaviour. Also the timeline has a nice Graph pane where you can have a finer control over the keyframes. Also, let me sat this, the native TBC Overshoot is GREAT for human/animal motions.
3) I guess you are using Genesis8... Well, that figure is overly broken, I asked many times for a fix but never got fixed. But there's a workaround: When you want to rotate something, like the hip joint don't use the workspace gizmo but the sliders in the Parameters tab. DAZ Studio got this four years old but where the limits gets crazy when they are reached using the gizmo but for some reason everything works fine using the sliders.
4) Yes, using the BVH format. Just go to "export" and select the BVH format from the dropdown menu and export it. The file will work everywhere and can imported in any other 3d application. If you want to keep the morphs, though, you need to use one of the free bridges that comes with DAZ Studio, like Blender Bridge. It allows you to export your char along with a set of chosen morphs.
5) Don't listen to Stillers.
Even with all the bugs, DAZ Studio still is a great tool for animations.
I don't know what a "stiller" is, but from the context, I think I may be one. I'll reference something that I posted before, or if I didn't, should have: Anyone who writes that Daz Studio is anything other than abyssmal at animation has probably not used a proper animation tool. Personally, I find it impossible to conceive of someone who has used a properly rigged character with IK that works in Blender, Maya, MoBu, or even iClone, ever willingly subjecting himself to Daz Studio ever again. In these applications, there is never any discussion about bugs in the most basic functionality necessary to even call itself an animation program.
If the software cannot support things like pin this here, point that there, let me grab this and pull it here, and adjust the rest of the armature to look natural automatically, well, that's a fail and you are probably wasting a lot of time on technical issues rather than art directing, which is exactly what animation software is supposed to prevent you from having to do.
Daz Studio is the best character creation software I can think of, but it is simultaneously absolutely the worst animation software I can think of. If th OP is considering non-trivial animation, I would really suggest investing in yourself and getting something like Maya Indie and learning how to use it. It is an extra step, but its incredibly powerful HIK system can handle the round trip from DS to Maya and back, perfectly.
I could not agree more about the awesome PA's, JCMs, the smoothing and other modifiers that DS has. But seriously, don't try to animate in Daz Studio. Use what people who are serious about animation use; I would think that should be proof enough to end the discussion.
I would absolutely Love to take your advice and invest in Maya Indie, except that it's too easy for someone with an ultra-low income, like me, for that Investment to turn into something that I only wished wouldn't have stopped working because times are hard.
Speaking of things that should be removed from an artist's mindset - worrying as to whether the software I've just spent a year getting used to will lapse because I need food, shelter and utilities before I can pay for my tools... again. I'm not getting paid to animate, nor do I have a job that lets me play on a computer.
Yes, I understand that it (Maya Indie) may be worth every penny.
I do have plans to invest more time in learning Blender. That looks like a marvelous toolset. I wish I could spend entire days working with other software to get used to how to manipulate imported Daz figures, etc., and set up the additional rig assets and all else that Pro-level animators use. But like I said, Carrara has some great animation tools, allows me to work directly with Daz figures, and I can export to BVH for use in Daz Studio. Since it opens my Genesis 1 and 2 (and 3 and 8 with the help of the presets by Misty) character presets, I know I'm working with the same character, so I can animate freely.
But lately I've been instead working more directly with aniMate 2 and the graph editor in the timeline. I'm sure that I animate differently than a professional animator, but I'm liking my results so far.
I am still growing in figuring out how to get this done in Studio. I gave up several times and just went back to Carrara, which makes animation a breeze. But each time I came back, I learned a new thing about other ways to achieve my goals, and it is getting easier and smoother all the time - and I don't have to rework rigging, asign this to do that or learn how to get the transfer to work to my liking.
So to answer the OP question, I'd have to say: Yes, you can animate in Daz Studio. As I mention in an earlier post, Jay is teaching some fun things. I've learned some cool techniques and tricks that I don't see him using, but for his Live webinars, I think he's teaching some valuable know-how of some of the tools that exist. I plan to take sme of these topics deeper when I start producing my tutorials - and I think he's planning to delve deeper himself.
This is really cool and inspiring.
The caveat that you posted since, about not being able to (sucessfully?) export the results back to Daz Studio could be a bummer for me, until I find a way to make hair better in Blender. Again... I got "So Far" with Blender, then learned that I was still lost as to how to proceed - and was still unsure as to whether I'd ever find a way to give my main protagonist the hair that she needs.
I made some particle hair for her that almost looked good, but animating it was incredibly burdensome - again... I need more knowledge and practice.
Still, I love that you have these cool tutorials available. Perhaps I will watch some more, along with others, and see if I can give Blender some more attention. It's such a bummer having so little time.
So the computer that I have that can handle this stuff is always simulating and animating. That's my chance to come here and see what the internet has to say. But since I'm always pushing forward with my animations, I can't actually use that computer to learn new software. But at least I am pushing forward - which is what I'm all about these days!
Cheers Wolf, and thanks for this! I'll scope out more tutorials and see if I can perhaps ease into Bllender for some tests again soon. I recall that my earlier tries resulted in fun and amazement.
That is where having aniMate 2 is essentially helpful for me. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between what comes with Daz Studio these days compared to the paid version, since it was in my very first cluster of orders from Daz 3d when I became a member. But with the aniMate 2 tool selected, we can open the Tool Settings tab and pin what we want, and move around what we want.
We can even get a full motion path for specific limbs and edit them manually if we want, while pinning things that we don't what to change.
Example: Pin the hands and feet and adjust the hip to squat much closer to the ground, and aniMate 2 will interpolate the joint changes for us. Like Wolf's tutorial mentions, we might have some cleanup to do later in the graph editor, but that's as simple as dragging some keys around to where they belong.
Another thing I love about aniMate 2 is how we can edit changes in layers to any animation using it's built-in key frame editor.
This is incredibly helpful for exaggerating motions or just changing things up to make it an entirely different animation.
In Carrara, I could select a group of key frames and stretch or constrict them with the Alt/Opt + Drag. I was really missing this in Daz Studio. But aniMate 2 has it.
aniMate 2 truly reminds me of a powerful, yet user-friendly version of Carrara's non-linear animation (NLA) system, which allows us to work with animations that we save into blocks, so we can add them, blend them, etc., together to make unique and fullfilling animations.
Again... results, demonstrations and tutorials coming soon.
This is one of my latest clips:
NO AniBlocs, NO BVHs and NO ready to use animations has been used there. Everything has been done with Timeline and GraphMate. Even the special effects have been made interely inside DAZ Studio.
As I said I do a lot of animations, and I tried most of the softwares you named. They are good but DAZ Studio has everything I need to make my stuff.
Using DAZ Studio for animations is a bit confusing at first but once you grasp it, everything goes smoothly and good. And some of the bugs which pesters latest versions (I'm using 4.12.0.86) makes things a bit harder, but still DAZ Studio is agreat software for animations.
@Dartanbeck I really am looking forward to your tutorials and hints/tips for animating in Daz Studio. I loved your work in Carrara and can only imagine what you have achieved in Studio. I have taken a very long break from 3D and am only just now getting the urge to create again. At the time I wanted to get into animation using Daz and had the workings of a story and everything. I ended up getting Marvelous Designer, Substance Designer and Painter so I could make my own assets, that way my animations would be original. Fast forward 3 years and I have no idea how to use any of them and would very much like to put them to use so that I don't feel I've wasted money with nothing to show. So thank you in advance because I know what you put out will be of great value to me.
@Imago That animation was superbly done, Bravo! I really liked the reactions and action. Keep up the good work.
I agree with everyone if you don't have deep pockets go with Blender and Evee with the Daz to Blender bridge. If you have deep pockets you can get iclone 7 and pipeline and do the same thing just stay away from iray animations and stick to DirectX animations using a 3D engine. You could also go the Unity or Unreal engine path those also work well but it is more work.
Thanks!
@Imago I enjoyed your short story a lot. Bravo.
As for the animation quality, if I may give some advise, in general you need to overshoot a little. That is, for example, when you rise a leg the speed will be fast at the beginning then slow at the very end. There's acceleration then deceleration. Your timing is good as for posing, but you use linear velocity for inbetweens that's wrong and looks "robotic". This is especially noticeable for slow moves, less for fast moves.
As for animating with daz studio, of course you can. But you will animate as they did it in the 90's when there wasn't any ik around. You miss powerful features that other softwares provide, so you don't have to go frame by frame to refine your animation, as you are forced to do with daz studio because of the missing tools. Specifically, ik for animation doesn't work fine in daz studio. And you also miss a proper ik rig for figures.
This is not to be confused with ik for posing (pinning) that will break in animation. That is, pinning for posing can't keep the feet standing during animation, because inbetweens interpolation will always come in the way. On the other side ik chains (pinning for animation) will do.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/357776/ik-chains-explained
Well stated sir!
@imago animation is cute but Compare it to any similar "cute kids" animation created by any experienced animator in Blender Maya ,Max and you see that while he has meticulously avoided foot slide during forward locomotion, his actors movements are "floaty" and lack weight and there are no solid sustained "holds"
The appearance of an actor having weight when interacting
with rigid objects in their environment (floors,seats ,walls etc)
is only possible with proper the IK solving that his posted animation lacks
look at how this guy creates a sense of weight in less than 2 minutes in blender
I know DAZ Studio still lacks of a good IK system but still it is really good for animations.
I'm trying to have those fixed since G3 came out, which had the most horrible IK system ever and they kept that trend in G8 too. That's why I do my works with Genesis1 which is absolutely perfect for animations.
About your example... Well, the final render looks pretty unnatural to me, even less natural than my poor attempts.
Too much linear and it has a lot of jankiness.
Anyway, let's keep the thread clean, the question was "can I animate in DAZ Studio" and the answer is "Yes you can with a bit of good will".
If you need more, just export to Blender or Maya.
yes even iClone BVH exports work on Genesis 1 in DAZ studio
it's 3 and 8 that footslide around like ice skaters regardless of what method used to transfer