Animation

Joe_88816

I've been working on animating Michael 6 and Victoria 6 into this short trailer :

But it still needs a lot of improvement : the movement of the characters doesn't look natural. 

I'm looking for people who have experience in DAZ animation techniques that could help me out.

Thanks.

Ruphuss

not that bad

but look for a better walking ani for her

a voice over would do a lot

his body turn stops to early when she aproaches

let his hands stay on her shoulders

and i know how much of work all this needs

hphoenix

The biggest issue when trying to animate for realism is that humans (and all animals, for that matter) don't ever really stop moving.  Breathing, small motions, little shifts in balance, etc., are occuring constantly.  It's a pain to animate, as it means pretty much everything has to be keyframed, even if they are just cyclic segments.

 

Add in blinking of the eyelids, breathing, movement of the hair, and some subtle shifts in balance and posture.  That should be enough to get it looking more 'real'.  Some shifting in expressions wouldn't hurt either.  Small shifts, between the major expression changes.

Animating characters realistically is VERY difficult.  Ask any of the big 3D houses.  It takes hours and hours of work to build up the basic blocks, and more to tweak them for a specific scene and/or character.

 

Good luck with it!

 

WendyLuvsCatz

My best animations few as they are,  have involved lots of camera cuts, facial close ups for a few seconds interspersed with full scenes and different angles

Roman_K2

Wow, I thought that was pretty good for an amateur production. I've glanced at a few clips of V4 and Genesis dancing but I didn't know you/we had come this far.

I liked hphoenix's comment about things always being in motion... not sure if that's true but I've spent a lot of time moving pixels back and forth to try and get a bit of jitter into my frames, yeah.

 

Joe_88816

Thanks for the feedback.  On this forum I've also found articles for getting DAZ characters into iClone and animate them their (https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/60291/animate-daz-with-iclone-6-reference-guide#latest).

iClone seems to be equipped with a lot of built-in movements that you can apply to your character.  But it seems to be a tedious process : first get you characters into iclone, animate them and then get them back to DAZ Studio, because I like to render them with iRay. 

Also I've been reading several articles that there are still quite of few (comptibility) problems when going this way.  So I doubting to try out iClone.  What's your recommendation ?

 

Roman_K2

Joe_88816 said:

What's your recommendation ?

Sorry, I don't have one. Not really there yet, not sure what iClone is and I'm staying away from iRay for the time being... I'm having enough trouble understanding mesh or "area" lights. I did notice that there are a few more Animate expression routine or modules etc. available in DS 4.8 than there used to be... that has to be good I suppose.

Ruphuss

look at the simpsons or southpark

you do not need realism if you are a good story teller

try to have a style

anthonyonggg

what happen to the dote......it is like not render complect or something!!?
do u know daz 32 bit have the talk thing so the speech will match !!?



welcome to check out my channel!!? ahahah

Roman_K2

Yaaaaa bro, doo dah TOK TING, dude!!!

Um, gee thanks for the elegant explanation; I'm sure everyone is grateful you've opened our eyes to "da possibiliteez".

On the topic of keeping it simple though I am reminded of something I experienced years ago... I was working in a little studio in college... there were two 16mm animation tables in two little black rooms, and I was enrolled in an "Animation 101" course and we would take our inspiration from Norman MacLaren and that sort of thing... A fellow a couple of years head of me was trying some Disney-type "cell" animation of pencil drawings... maybe he was using semi-transparent tracing paper instead of acetate, I forget. Anyway I saw some of his rushes and they looked ok, natural-realistic movement of leaves and things -- small movements that I now know that DS can replicate on the computer desktop; a 16mm camera and animation table are no longer needed.

At this time I was only allowed to do simple story-lines with the most simple "characters", in fact my characters were little squares of black and white paper! (I'm not kidding, in those days you had to learn to walk before you were allowed to run with an idea).

Anyway the guy eventually left to go to another studio, the NFB... in the following years I often wondered what happened to him... at one point the school used some of my stuff for their own promo reel, eg. "we teach animation", that sort of thing... thinking about it now that must have was quite a pat on the back in a way... I never really got into film (I had earlier flirted with televised sports)... anyway the other chap must have hooked up with some really good people because a few years later I was looking at a recap of local cinema in the newspaper, and the guy had won an Academy Award for a short thing with wormy little squiggly lines. So you never know! It doesn't have to be hyper-realistic and it certainly doesn't have to be feature blockbusters.

By the way for the stuff I was did, that the school liked and repurposed for themselves - the director and idea guy was another Academy Award winner, Richard Williams. Left to my own devices I wasn't really hot stuff, but if you have a good team....

Williams wrote a textbook, Animation Bible. You can probably get it on Ebay or Amazon, that sort of thing. I have a DVD copy of The Thief And The Cobbler.

The Toronto Star had a sort of "how to grow an animation studio" item on the weekend - http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/2015/11/29/how-a-comic-book-heroine-inspired-an-animation-empire.html