Animation Timeline Questions
marble
Posts: 7,500
Hi,
I have been asking questions about the DAZ Studio animation timeline in the Beta Release thread and that is clearly not the place to go into this in any depth. I've also been conversing by PM on some of the issues but it is better to have a dedicated thread because I know there are a lot of questions, not just from me, related to animation in DAZ Studio.
Some people will comment that there is no point in trying to animate in DAZ Studio and rather send the scenes to Blender and do it with a proper animation suite. I would like to agree but there are practical reasons why I don't do that. Diffeomorphic is a learning curve by itself and it still has limitations from what I can see (I wouldn't have a clue to animate a clothed figure as I do with DAZ Studio and dForce, for example). Personally, I like to pose and animate in DAZ Studio because it is my comfort zone and I would actually pay for a DAZ Studio with a decent animation feature set. I love Blender for making morphs and a few other things but transferring whole scenes and trying to adapt my DAZ Studio workflow to the complexities of Blender is just not going to happen for me.
Anyhow, I'll ask the mods to move the relevant posts from the other thread to this one and will be interested to see the responses.
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Comments
Hand Poses (not to be confused with hand bone poses) - how to remove keyframe from timeline again
The screenshot of hand grasp you posted in beta is also an alias.
Checked. Will re-post that screenshot of where alias is referred to in morph parameters.
Alias links to an actual morph. But alias is a link. And not a morph itself.
Timeline at this time handles that differently based on my usage.
Make sure you have at bottom of timeline all Types enabled TRSOAH - A should be the alias
To find the key for that hand-pose go to your left hand and keep expanding.
Compare to my screenshot below (though mine was for right).
First in hierarchy is the hand poses you are using.
Expand again if you have hand dials you will see them there.
So right now, only way to zero that AFAIK is using screenshot below showing that right-click timeline tab> clear animation > clear selected item pose(s)
Can understand that you worry it might clear everything.
But that's not the case.
Also important. Because this shows as morph/pose in parameters tab, you have to pick "clear selected item pose(s)" and not the shapes clear.
This 'clear selected items poses' only works on (1) what you selected and (2) items in timeline.
Using this command on a very heavy animated scene. Nothing else changes.
That command focuses on timeline cos it's a subset of that function. (1) selected item on timeline and (2) whatever you marquee highlighted. Try it. Just remember the labels that you see are just descriptive text and link to god knows what in background. Just watch your anim after you click that command, and see how nothing else changes.
Just read your 2 other beta posts.
Interesting devg8f worked?! Never use for this for anim stuff, so can't say. If someone wants to look into it, would be really curious to hear why. Always like improving.
There is a very special trick to get the timeline to show any desired key on DAZ's graphmate. Took a bit of time & frustration to figure out. Never saw this fact posted on DAZ forums in 3 years plus been here. If you feel like it, see if you can figure it out. Am curious if anyone else knows that. For sure can send you a DM how to do this. Haven't decided how much of my stuff to post. Perhaps another animator will join in and post that tidbit ?
Thanks and, yes, I did find where the alias is referenced (in the parameter settings) but it wasn't clear what an alias does or how an alias appears on the timeline (little triangle or something else).
I think I have noticed (although it is sometimes difficult to reproduce my observations) that morphs are handled differently on the timeline compared to bones. By morphs, I mean mesh deformations. I get the impression that morphs are ignored - or rather they do not create a keyframe when their parameters change. I checked and I have TRSAH showing by default (not the "O").
Getting back to you excellent explanation above, could you further comment why, when we expand the nodes in the timeline panel, some things are listed as "Properties". Do we need to manipulate those or only the actual nodes?
I'll experiment with "Clear Selected" but I do have bad memories of thinking those commands meant one specified thing and they actually meant "Nuke the lot".
Alias. They are something that could take a bit to clarify.
If you make lots of morphs, eventually you will run into aliases (and so much more for auto-this and that)
No deltas in the alias. There's alot more in/outs to it.
Main thing is for purpose of animation would say they are not a morph, just a link, so handled differently in timeline for deletion (my usage).
Mine appears in that screenshot as a T with circle around it.
Only way to know is open parameters and check for pose vs shape and is alias there or not. Think most face and many handposes are aliases.
Use morphs all the time in my timeline.
Soon as i dial the morph in a keyframe auto-appears in daz's own graph-mate portion of timeline. So maybe say how/what you are trying to do. Will try to replicate.
Some poses like Zevo's breast control morphs, go expand or look under Your Character > Properties >Pose Controls > chest > etc
So these character properties, mentionned in line above, come immediately after your character.
The subsequent properties are for some transforms (not translate) and render-display properties. Each bone and node should have them. If you want to change scale for example of a bone, imagine this is where it would happen. So likely properties themselves not used much for most animators. They are more like a book cover introducing the next hierarchy.
Totally understand bad associations. Key here is selected keyframes from timeline tab command only. Any chance you clicked clear from menu>figure>etc?
I think you are right in mentioning morphs from certain vendors. I have a LOT of Zev0 morphs and also I have 3rd. party Geografts which also come with many morphs. I find it difficult to find a way to save a character pose/shape/morph settings from a frame in a scene so that I can replicate it in a single scene or scene subset - I mean that certain morphs just don't save and are reset to zero. Sometimes saving animated poses has the same problem. I tried saving a Puppeteer dot but I don't know how to save that external to the scene (so that I can re-import it in another scene). I think Puppeteer only works during an open session.
As for the Clear/Zero thing - I believe that DAZ has changed the way it works in the latest Beta versions so maybe it will work ok now. I had trouble understanding the way it is explained in the Change Log though.
Did you try that animation stripper yet? Know you said you put on wishlist. My 3rd party geograft is keeping morphs.
DAZ changelog. Clear/zero i think has to do with the figure, and especially G9 (complaints). Not with these timeline keys. Am using latest beta 4.21.1.29 and normal delete still does not work. Just process above.
Not yet - I am doing a long render so maybe I'll get a chance later (I'm in New Zealand so it is late afternoon here).
I'm not surprised I got the changelog thing wrong - I do find DAZ documentation (when it exists) difficult to follow.
Oh yeah. Should add. One hand pose alias i resaved as a morph/shape from morph/pose. Just curious what would happen. Now on timeline had to zero with same steps except last part is clear from selected (shape). Otherwise hand non-expanded still showed a key, which was that dialed in alias resaved as morph/shape.
Not sure I follow all that but when I get a chance I'll try to work out what you are doing here.
Clearly some things about the DAZ Studio timeline are far from intuitive. I know I'm getting much slower at grasping new ideas but I'm really struggling with this.
Did my answer about morphs working for me on timeline help? Post an example if you are interested in a second opinion on that morph.
TRSAH with O being Other if remember right. I just have TRSOAH all on in Timeline so absolutely everything is exposed. Again probably a performance argument. Less values on to keyframe etc... means less timeline time maybe? Don't feel like testing all that right now. With anims being single-threaded, maybe? Never seen this info as to time/performance shown either at DAZ forums.
Ties in with morphs and their management. Or, interrelated with animation-timeline. Not sure necessary, but sure helps.