Digital Art Zone

Here’s my question. Can we create AniBlocks from the new KeyMate timeline?

Jaderail - 11 December 2012 04:49 PM

Here’s my question. Can we create AniBlocks from the new KeyMate timeline?

aniMate2 allows you to create an aniBlock from DAZ Studio keyframes.

keyMate is a tool that operates on DAZ Studio keyframes.

short answer yes.

Could you describe the main differences keymate vs aniMate?
If I have animate animations can I reuse them with keymate?
Can I switch to work with either them easily?

Thanks

JorgeMR - 11 December 2012 04:59 PM

Could you describe the main differences keymate vs aniMate?
If I have animate animations can I reuse them with keymate?
Can I switch to work with either them easily?

Thanks

keyMate is the somewhaat equivalent to Maya’s dope sheet.  aniMate is somwhat equavilent to Maya’s Trax editor.

aniMate takes over the animation system(substituting its own) for the figures and nodes that the user tells it too.

keyMate shows and operates on the DAZ Studio keyframes.

In anIMate2 you can bake to Studio keyframes.  This puts a key on every frame.  This is not very useful if you want to tweak the animation in keyMate(you would be better off tweaking it in aniMate2).  But if you want to take a whole section of keys and move them to the side and then do a section of hand animated keyframing in between, this can be quite useful.

You do understand that for us users who have never used nor seen Maya, what you just said, means nothing. And the answer I got for making AniBlocks from the KeyMate timeline did not answer me at all. Telling me “yes” was a copout. Saying right-click choose send to animate, or right-click create AniBlocks from timeline would have given me an answer.
At this point I’m going to keep my money until I have an answer that will mean something to me and other users.

Edit: I understand how to make AniBlocks from the animate plug-in. So I expected someone to say open animate and then choose create AniBlock from timeline. If this is too much trouble, then why should I trouble myself with buying software from people who consider my question to simple to answer?

DAZ Studio comes with a Timeline facility. So you can animate your characters using the Timeline tab. However, it’s never been easy, because you can’t move around keyframes, and it’s very hard to see where you have made keyframes. This is where keyMate comes in. On the keyMate tab, you can see all joints with keyframes, and you can move them around.

However, when you use an aniBlock in aniMate2, the DAZ Studio Timeline is subsequently ignored. So if you make keyframes using the Timeline tab, or on the keyMate tab, these are outside of aniBlocks, and they are ignored.

Making an aniBlock involves transferring keyframes from the DAZ Studio Timeline into an aniBlock. You can’t do this in keyMate, but you can in aniMate2. Once you’ve got your keyframes inside an aniBlock, all keyframes made on that character in keyMate will then be ignored.

aniMate2 was mainly designed for using pre-made blocks, and although you can create your own aniBlocks, it was never the priority, so it wasn’t as easy as in Poser, for example. keyMate changes that - you can create your own animation using more traditional tools, that people coming from other software will understand. (If I can use the word traditional in a digital sense.)

I hope that makes things clearer, Jaderail, and I didn’t muddy the waters. It’s just the concept of there being two, and only two, totally separate animation timelines - one is the DAZ Studio Timeline (and keyMate works on that) and the other is the aniMate2 timeline, which overrides the DAZ Studio Timeline.

OK i have been messing with keymate for since i got it yesterday. I have a couple of suggestions. First of it works great! I am very happy to have a decent animation system for daz.

Suggestions:
Is there a way to turn off elements in the scene to where they will not record the animation. For instance the default camera. That way you can move it around with out it key framing.

The second is when using puppeteer to animate morphs. Ok so i have my animation finished, then i want to work my morphs for secondary animation. So i move over to puppeter, with out the record feature on in puppeteer i key frame what i want. Then if I scrub in the keymate window it starts keyframing as i scrub. I noticed however if I click in another window before i scrub in keymate it does not happen. Just a little heads up.

Jaderall,

I see that my analogy showed my ignorance and I apologize for that.  I meant no disrespect.  I think Carnite has explained it way better than me.

aniMate2 has layers and levels.  I guess I wanted to explain that the transfer from aniMate2 to DAZ Studio Keys, while the animation will look the same(or very close), going back from Studio Keys to aniMate2 the levels cannot be restored. 

Hopefully, a different analogy will be helpful. The effect is similar to saving a png in gimp(or photoshop), where you have several layers.  You can bring that image back into gimp or photoshop, but you won’t have your original layers. While, not really hard hard, that is why I would hesitate to say its easy to switch between the two.

davesolo - 12 December 2012 08:19 AM

OK i have been messing with keymate for since i got it yesterday. I have a couple of suggestions. First of it works great! I am very happy to have a decent animation system for daz.

Suggestions:
Is there a way to turn off elements in the scene to where they will not record the animation. For instance the default camera. That way you can move it around with out it key framing.

The second is when using puppeteer to animate morphs. Ok so i have my animation finished, then i want to work my morphs for secondary animation. So i move over to puppeter, with out the record feature on in puppeteer i key frame what i want. Then if I scrub in the keymate window it starts keyframing as i scrub. I noticed however if I click in another window before i scrub in keymate it does not happen. Just a little heads up.

Glad to hear it davesolo.  I will look into that puppeteer thing.

davesolo,

In regards to the camera many will simply switch their camera to be the perspective one.  That one will never animate.

Interesting product.. I could see how this would help go along way in fixing Genesis bug fixes when using gen4 aniblocks especially replaces the key frames that make the feet curl up and the aiblocks that reset the morphs to the genesis character.

I haven’t seen anywhere though where you can target objects such as clothing aimed at autofit tool. that would be a great bug fix.

Thank you all for clearing up most of my concerns. I’m fully on board now and will be happily installing KeyMate very soon.

I bought KeyMate yesterday, but have no idea how it works.

1. I have installated KeyMate, 2. opened the tab, 3. imported my character (SecondLife), 4. imported a .bvh-file and everything is showing properly. Now I want to edit parts because the arm does not move in the right way. I get the keyframe, found and marked (yellow) the point where I want to change something (rotation), but nothing is moving in any direction…

Until now I used animate2, exported to QAvimator, changed parts and reimported to DAZ3D.

Can anyone please give me a hint about the next steps? Or is a kind of tutorial (or another thread) available?

Thanks!

Here is the first video.  It probably does not help you in this particular problem, but more videos will be forthcoming.
Getting started - - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX_knWUBOGk

Thanks much! Go Figure.

and I hope ,,if editing aniblock by keymate is more easy way than modify each parameter in animate 2 timeleine edit mode?

sometimes I am confused about the difference of DS timeline and animate key.

This tool seems best solution who install ds 4 to start basic animation I think.

and I hope,, GO figure ,, make simple step by step tutorial how make new aniblock from scratch
by using key mate and ds 4.5.

(I believe many new user want to make original short ani-block @@;)

anyway,, I must get this tool ,and try !.

and hope animate 3 will be released which has more power for moving genesis.
(I LOVE simple and EASY ^^;)