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Yeah, certainly, started to use it from G3, and SY's DeCrackifier, Breast Helper, etc. just for making a perfect fit by all means ~
Love these tools!!!
...and I'm really loving Daz Studio!!!
Once I get a dForce simulation that I'm happy with for a new outfit - even if I might want to tweak it more, I'll save it as a wearable - everything that goes with that outfit.
Before I new about the Clear Selected option for dForce, I'd save the wearable with the simulation still active. The next time I load it, I clear the sim and save it over itself. Now I just "Clear Selected" and then save it. So cool!!! This whole Save As > Wearable Preset has becoem a very important part of my workflow. Many of the costumes I use (and not just for Rosie) are made for a different figure and I tweak them into what I want. Many of them also recieve hours of dForce tests and adjustments. Not in one sitting, but still. It's really nice to be able to load stuff as it was the last time I worked hard on it.
Now I've started doing this for anything I tweak - not just dForce items.
dForce is an in-house project, so it is essentially the same team of developers.
Cool. I did not lnow that! Thanks Richard! Kudos to the team!
Once I got used to the difference between low-dynamics and making things rigid vs excluding them from the sim altogether... it really starts to get a lot more predictable and easy to add to just about anything!!!
Loving it!
Working on a quick "Proof is in the Pudding" video :)
As what often happens after my initial conversion of a product to dForce, I study the resulting simulations and make tweaks to the settings to improve upon it. So I improved Whymsy a bit - added more silkiness to the sleeves and skirt and stiffened the upper frillies above the waist band of the skirt. FYI: While I think it would work simulating both at the same time, I simulated the top and skirt separately. I prefer to work this way so that, if problems do occur I can fix it easier - because I can locate the issue earlier.
Iray - man, I Love Iray!!!
I'm rendering my Andrey Pestryakov Stones and Structures with The Philosopher's iReal Ocean Water simulated, scaled down and instanced into the steam with the Sun Sky dome and Sickleyield's Iray Sky System after positioning the camera a bit to better fit the renders I did of Rosie in Whymsy, and ran the water simulation longer to accomodate the length of Rosie's animation.
Folks might remember that my earlier showing of Stones and Structures with iReal water didn't have a sky. SY's Sky system is fun and easy to work with. I also enjoy using Magix101's Iray Worlds and it's addon. This time I just needed a nice bit of cloud layers against Iray's Sun and Sky - and Sickleyield's Sky System is just what the doctor ordered for this.
Andrey's kits come with various "Lighting Settings", which adjust the Iray Sun Sky dome for different looks using the various cameras included. After using those a few times, I started getting to grips with how to easily set up these features myself, though I still like to use Andrey's out of convenience.
Some of Dimension Theory's HDR products taught me about the Matte Fog, which is also a very powerful feature that I love!
Stones and Structures looks great with the water being still, but for some reason, still water in animations just look like a still image background to me - so I always try and move the water some when I have it in my background.
It's been a while since I've used HitFilm, so I'm going to fire that up and give it a whirl for doing the composite. Should be fun!
It's funny. I was totally against using Daz Studio for animating just not long ago. In truth, Carrara does make animating a Lot easier and more fun. The visual feedback in the workspace is nowhere near as pretty, but the tools and features are fluid and fast - and they're very much what an animator will expect to find in an animation toolset - truly.
Learning to animate in Daz Studio started off as the headache you'll read about from everyone who says that you just can't do it... export to Blender instead!
After getting "You Can't" out of the mind, and instead look at what we Can do, it all starts to get easier - especially when I stopped ignoring dials. In Carrara, I use the universal manipulator for just about everything. The manipulators in Studio work, but... I don't know... they're so... cludgy? After being in Studio for a while now, I'm more used to them, so they're fine.
Being a total newbie to Studio for this sort of thing - starting in 2021 - especially now that I've been here long enough to know how to do what I want to do - at least in simple form, I'm back into that fresh feeling of awe and wonder as I learn new tools, functions and settings. That world of discovery!
That never goes away with Carrara - it has such a Massive toolset. It's neat, though because Carrara is designed to put everything right in your face - so just opening the software can teach you something new just by hovering your mouse over something new. If you don't have Carrara, and love to animate, I'd grab it. It's so inexpensive these days and it comes with a plethora of legacy products that add a lot to the library - all of which work beautifully in Carrara.
Check out the content you get with Carrara 8.5 Pro!
These amazing Daz + sales... that's where I found a lot of the Helper products that eased my learning curve for Studio. Things like Andrey's scenes and Sickleyield's and Magix 101's sky systems,
And then there's the fact that I've been throttling back my content purchases to only buy things that worked for Genesis 2 or earlier due to Carrara's limitations in that factor. We can still make new stuff work (and this is only regarding the figures - props and scenes generally work pretty well - but I still avoided them), running Studio opened that all up - so now I'm getting things like Orc for Genesis 8 Male, Drago - a Dragon that can use human aniBlocks? Get Out!!! Awesome!!!
Sickleyield's many clones and cloth helpers make this transition into new generation figures a real blast! I don't know if you use Aiko 3, Victoria 3, Michael 3, etc., clothing... but a lot of clothing from that era of figures is Fantastic, as with generation 4, which you probably already know.
Shader packs from Jen Greenlees and Digital Delirium, and others also help to remove the thought of impossibilities.
Scripts and lighting solutions, tutorials and scene effects... with not a whole lot more $$$ than the price of my yearly Daz + membership really got me a great start into all of this.
So Freaking Fun!!!
I'm Loving Daz Studio!!!
Oh My!!!
A little comment for you as you have been so helpful in another thread. You might like to try DaVinci Resolve (Free version). I think you would find it has anything and everything you need. Maybe you know this already but I tried HitFilm and a few others (even paid for a Sony product) but nothing comes close to DaVinci Resolve.
Absolutely! That's why it's been a while since I've fired up HitFilm!!!
I even keep a nice Learning environment for DaVinci Resolve HERE, since there's so much to absorb, I like to frequently hone my skills!
It's been a while though. I need to update that page to the new materials!
Thanks for thinking of me, marble!!! :)
Working on and with the new Dartanbeck 7 (avatar is/was Dartanbeck 4)
He's made up of a Lot of different characters. I'd have to look to get a complete listing. He's even got some of Lyoness' LY Fantasy Races HD Faces and Bodies, and he gets a lot of his stylized shape from Guy 7
He's also sporting Linday's Long Wet Hair, though I've made it a bit different. For example, limiting the shape change with weight painting to keep a rather scraggled look.
In case you missed it in a Simulations thread, here's an example of adding dForce to legacy content, and it is also using iReal Ocean Water System to animate the water in the stream. The dForced items are Aeon Soul's Wymsy for Genesis 3 Females - skirt and top. The flowing water and simulation result details look much better if you watch it on YouTube in HD
And this one is a quick early demo reel I put together to help demonstrate some (just a few) of the animations/simulations I've been doing in here since 2021. Details look much better if you watch it on YouTube in HD
Fun new kit bash!
Part of my new series: Liquid Knight Returns (more on that later)
Playing the Mass Effect Trilogy over again in the new Legendary Edition (All redone in HD and then some), I really wanted an iconic star ship for Rosie to fly around in - and I need it to have a little space inside for living, weapons locker, crew, etc.,
I was just short enough on funds to where Kibarreto's amazing Astromaster was out of reach, so I looked around for other options, both at Daz 3d and renderosity as well as within my own library.
Looking at Daz 3d, I found something in my wish list that looked like I might be able to tweak on Kibarreto's Vanguard ship (which I've owned for a l o n g time) to make it a bit more roomy and to have a bit more of an ominous look to it: Mely3D's Sci-Fi Drone. I just love the shape of the big side wings! Cool!!!
With a bunch of geometry editing and a couple separate loads of the drone, I came up with a fun-looking ship! I went through and performed my own Iray shaders for Vanguard, though I'm not finished yet - nor do I thnk I'm done with the kit bash. But it's looking pretty cool so far, I think!
As Kibarreto says in the promo material for Vanguard, the interior furnishings of Vanguard can be moved around, copied and repeated, etc., so I rearranged the cockpit a bit to accomodate Rosie's Captain's Chair (old, but Wonderful product!), which has also been modified with the geometry editor and Iray shaders.
And I also added a Sci-Fi door just past the airlock chamber behind the cockpit. Now I can use my own Sc-Fi interiors for the cabin areas.
The horribly funny thing is that the very next day (yesterday - today as well) Kibarreto's stuff went on sale for incredibly low prices - but I already spent what I could. Hopefully the sale will either continue or come again!
For Liquid Knight Returns, I've got a few starts on the costume, as she'll have a few of them. When I bought Mely3D's Sci-Fi Drone, I also bought Charlie's Futuristic Hover Bike, which fits beautifully with Liquid Knight. I edited the red texture maps to include some white to help match the attire a bit. This image is a bit too busy, but hey... it's only concept art!
Any insider info if dForce may be extended to include other constraints, similar to what bullet physics offers?
Certainly the plan was said to be to add new features - as dForce hair on top of the original clothing - but I haven't seen any further features in the change log (though they mighrt be hidden) and nothing has been announced.
Wow.
After all this time, making GeoShells and trying all manner of different settings to get a decent wet skin look, come to figure out that the character I'm using for my skin maps (Sol for G3F and G8F) comes with a wet look built right into the shaders!
Just looking at the skin maps instead of a GeoShell (now, mind you - I'm still an utter noob with Daz Studio - just scratching the surface) I notice that there are maps in the Glossy Layer Weight and Top Coat Weight slots, but they come turned down to 0.00
Just adding a small value into them turns on the wetness. I imagine that this sort of thing might also work just fine without maps... but I think I'm liking the way Sol's maps are working on this. In this example, I set them each to 0.20
I've tried a couple of Wet Skin products, but they look a bit strange to me in animations. Drops that don't move as the characater is flailing around just doesn't seem right. Having wet skin without the drops looks fine. But before taking any of that statement to heart - keep in mind what I said - I'm a noob!!! Total Noob!!!
I guess this is actually more like a Moist skin look, but it works for me.
Having fun though!
Hey, Thanks Daz 3d for all you do!
Working part time on my articles for dForce and such, I want to just pass along this fun little tid bit that really helps with the success of how animated dForce simulations can turn out.
I came to using this because the dForce wind doesn't really work with this hair. Probably due to how dense the hair has to be in order to work so well in dForce in the first place. Whatever the reason... why gripe? Just do this instead.
After the animation is done, before simulating:
Select everything in the simulated scene and group it - including the camera. Now just move the group around the way we want the simulation to turn out. Here are some examples:
Since the camera is part of the group, it won't show the changes that we're doing to the group, which is helpful - even though after the simulation is done, we can delete the key frames of the group to return the scene to normal.
All fun stuff that can really help to make or save a dynamic simulation
I really like how, when we Save a scene with dForce simulations present, they get saved with the scene.
Some of my hair simulations were tricky to get right - without the character's joints clamping on it, etc., throughout a crazy animation. So once I get it right, and get a good save, I can revisit that scene any time I need to.
Having a lot of fun with some of my completed animation/simulation work using different locations, lights, camera angles... I can't say enough how much I'm just loving this software! Iray and the Daz Studio materials for it just blow me away!
To all of you amazing artists out there making this amazing stuff for my project:
Thank You Immensely!!!
Hey Dartanbeck,
I'm really glad you have such enthusiasm for Daz Studio when it comes to animation. I have the same enthusiasm, because the work I've done has been proof that Daz is very capable. There are a lot of options available for animation when it comes to Daz:
That's not even the entire list. There are even more tools aviable, this is just off the top of my head.... which says to me if you can't get good work done with all of those options, maybe you're not as great as you think you are at animation? And yeah, if all that doesn't work for you, you can use diffeomorphic and go to Blender. Personally, I've yet to reach the point where I absolutely need to go outside of Daz for animation.
In some cases even, I have animated frame by frame and it's worked out fine for me. I even take certain animations and break apart certain actions and repurpose them in new animations. There are all kinds of strategies. It just took some getting used to, finding a good workflow and becoming very familiar with how things work.
I believe Daz Studio is what you make it. How you organize morphs and your content library is key to the program being an impossible mess or a very streamlined, refined, easy going system. Now, I will say that Daz's animation features can be better, I won't argue that. It isn't the best package by far, but for what I can do with what's available, I don't really need it to be.
Kudos!
@rilla - A breath of fresh air, reading that post!
With all of that, I'd like to add one of my favorite reasons of all - Compatibility!
Since I prefer to buy my assets from Daz 3d, I can be assured that it all works in Daz Studio and, especially the Genesos 3 + eras look fantastic out of the box in Iray, but I even have an easy time making the legacy content looking great in Iray - all the tools that come with Daz Studio and all the wonderful shader products... I'm just having a Really Wionderful Time!
I'm so happy to read that You are Too!!! Bravo!!!
Yes Indeed!
Another thing, though it will take me some time to make the transition because I barely feel I've scratched the surface of Genesis 8, but in time I will crack open Genesis 9 with Carrara!! So I just see a bright future ahead.
Cheers!!
Another fun thing, since you own Carrara, is to do this sort of thing - and we can use Carrara to make any of the elements we want. Rendering elements as layers for videos or still images is a very professional technique and offers a lot more power towards getting great results.
I love Iray fro my character renders, Since then I also love it for everything else as well, but Carrara has a Lot of wonderful, helpful features to quickly make really nice background animations, foreground elements, visual effects, and so on.
This was all done in Studio - each "Element" rendered separately
Speaking of Loving Daz Studio... Wow! DS 4.22!!!
Now, when I create a new primitive, it has Iray Uber Shader already set upon it - saving me a step! It never really bother me to... wait... yes it did. When I had a lot of things to do, create new primitve or new surface, it always had to be converted before I could apply an Iray shader. So... yeah... this was a Big Wonderful Discovery for me!!!
Primitives have used the Iray shader as default for a while. I can not remember which release that happened, but it was well before 4.22
Mine didn't. Every day I'm either creating a new primitve or assigning selected polygons to a new surface - both actions results in the legacy surface shader base. I mean... not a big deal, but....