Digital Art Zone

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I’ll be trying this.

aniMate2 is a brilliant solution for easy animation, and it fits in well with DAZ Studio’s original purpose - to be easy for non-technical people. aniMate2 solves technical problems internally for its own aniBlocks, but because of this, it has always been a little bit tricky when making your own animation. keyMate goes back to the DAZ Studio timeline, allowing easier traditional linear animation.

My preference in the past - I haven’t used keyMate much yet - has been to do keyframing on figures on the DAZ Studio timeline in small chunks. Then convert that chunk into an aniBlock, which means that I can repeat or slide that piece of animation along the timeline, and speed up and slow down. I would think that the addition of keyMate will make that easier in DS 4.5.

I recently got aniMate2 and I am really impressed with all the powerful features it has.  Layering with the option to add or override is great.  It does a lot of auto-magic with blending, looping, & orienting.  It has a graph editor, start points, constraints, and you can even edit trajectory splines in the view-port!  It’s very good at tweaking motion capture, stringing together poses, managing chunks of custom motions made with KeyMate and blending any combination of those together.

I originally was under the impression it did not work well with genesis but it works great.  There is a free block to fix the feet issue with old gen animations but you could easily fix it yourself in a few seconds after you know how it works.

GoFigure thanks your tutorial and reply fo my question ^^

then,, now I tried to use keymate and first simple animation with primitive obj like your tutorial,
I can understand how it work.

after that I hope to make simple walk original animation by editing aniblock.

then there seems some problem.

1. I open animate , then set walk aniblock for genesis, and set my sub original toe adjust aniblock.

2 I bake them to ds timeline by animate 2 tool.

3 I remove aniblock then, tried to edit each key poze. I open keymate tab.

4 I edit them, after save the scene. but It seems not good,, so I want to try from first step.

5 I delete every animation in ds timeline, then open animate 2 and set aniblock agaiin.

6 but after I used the keymate , animate 2 can not play aniblock animation. untill I close the scene.
I checked ds timeline key but, there is no key, and genesis keep zero poze.
and close keymate.  but genesis can not move with aniblock. (I can not check the motion too)

so animate 2 seems just freeze I think.

7 if I close the scene and opne new scene or load genesis , then   aniblock can work again.

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and my biggest question is,, how user make interval animation,, between two aniblock?
I often think about that,, so if make animation by aniblock , need to fill every timeline by aniblock?
Can I not mix ds timeline animation and aniblock ?
eg set run aniblock 1 to 30 key,
I hope 31 to 45 , make animation by ds timeline key,  (I think if I can make this interval animation by keymate and ds timeline,,)
46 to 70 use jump aniblock .
71to 90 set anotehr animation by ds timeline with key mate,,

but I can not do it . if I missed something,,@@;

so if I need to make interval animation as another scene, then bake it as new aniblock, after save it,
mix them with another aniblock? ( I tried it, so, find animate 2 stop, after use keymate,, eventhough
there is no ds timeline key,, )

Check that you have enabled the aniMate track.

In this image, you can see a white eye icon under the top white eye icon. If you are seeing the white eye, that means the track is disabled. Click the white eye, and it should turn into a black square, and the block should work again.

(If this is what is happening, exiting the application will reset the white eye, which is why that works.)

Explanation - When you transfer from aniMate to the DS Timeline, the aniMate tracks are automatically disabled so that the blocks do not interfere with the DS Timeline keyframes.

thanks your help, oh my gosh,,,I believed the eye mark visible,, so it work ^^;

so,, if I can mix ds timeline animation,, and animate 2 block?? @@;

now I am so exciting,, because,, if I can copy poze of key in animate block to ds timeline key,,

so exciting,,,

now I am try some video tutorial,, for waking animation,,
his tutorial and animation seems so great,,,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWDFGlObdh0&list=PL3A9EF5D702546A3A&index=8

before I tried samething,, but I gave up,,,

then I believe I can do same thing by ds and key mate,,if use aniblock and edit,, it seems more easy !!

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then,,  I use animate 2 and key mate,  bake one aniblock to ds timeline, and tweak each key,,
after that,, I hope to apply sub track, and edit ds time line agan,,
but if I apply onother aniblock as sub track,, the timeline key cleared ^^;
(so my way is wrong,,  or is there good way to protect ds timeline key when apply new aniblock?
about same key, it can not work?)

It’s not that easy to mix DS timeline and aniMate2. Mix is probably the wrong word, too, because as soon as you add an aniBlock, the DS Timeline is ignored.

When you bake the aniBlock to the DS Timeline, all frames for all joints are made into keyframes on the DS Timeline. This means that it is very difficult to change the animation using keyMate, because there are so many keyframes involved.

If you are just looking to copy a pose, then place the aniBlock on the aniMate2 timeline, go to the frame with the pose, and click a dot on the Puppeteer tab. This will save the pose into Puppeteer (you can then delete the aniBlock), so that you can recall that pose at any time by clicking the dot in keyMate. In that video (ghidghid has some good stuff) - you could copy four or five poses out of a block, by putting each pose into a separate dot.

oh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

you,, really helpful,, I can cleare understand the way ^^;

yes I think it is not good way mix and use both tool at same time ^^;
OK,, now I try again,, thanks much your help !!

Thanks for all the great info Carnite!

From my understanding it is really best to only go back and forth from aniMate2 & the timeline (or KeyMate) in limited small isolated chunks. Small adjustments seem much easier to do entirely inside aniMate2 on different levels/sub tracks. It’s a shame you can’t go back and forth easier but I’m finding I can accomplish a lot more then expected all inside aniMate2.

Whenever I add an aniBlock to the aniMate2 timeline my DS / KeyMate timeline gets corrupted, even if I disable or delete all aniBlocks. At least 1 key is missing, TCB keys are converted to linear or constant, copies I pasted of the 1st frame no longer work.  The entire timeline seems buggy until I “clear animation” for the figure.  Just curious if these are known limitations or if something is wrong? I guess you need to really save or import those keys in first.

Also noticed when I animate with the DS timeline or keyMate the little black arrow key indicators in the DS timeline no longer show up consistently.  Not a big deal since I prefer working in keyMate anyway but should probably be fixed.

Ever since I installed the new unreleased crash fix for keyMate, under customize I have two sets of the same keyMate hotkeys listed.  And they got cleared out a few times.

I also don’t understand how the studio keys at the bottom of aniMate2 are supposed to work.  They don’t seem constant with the DS timeline/keyMate.

Aside from these issues I find both programs very valuable. I would say they are essential if you spend a decent amount of time animating in DAZ.

Sometimes crashes here too when I delete the Genesis figure… but sometimes, not always:)

MCMXC - 15 December 2012 03:48 PM

Sometimes crashes here too when I delete the Genesis figure… but sometimes, not always:)

Did you message Go Figure for the fixed plug-in?  So far since I added the fix, keyMate has not crashed once but I also have not been using it much since I started messing with aniMate2. I just have the issue with duplicate keyMate hotkeys.  I did have 1 crash so far from aniMate2 though.

Not yet, I’ll try it, thanks!

MCMXC - 15 December 2012 03:48 PM

Sometimes crashes here too when I delete the Genesis figure… but sometimes, not always:)

I got one when I deleted a whole (Short) animation. I froze the computer.

Swawa - 15 December 2012 12:15 PM

It’s a shame you can’t go back and forth easier but I’m finding I can accomplish a lot more then expected all inside aniMate2.

Yes, I think it would be good if the baking didn’t bake every keyframe, and also if the interpolation were remembered on creating a block.

Whenever I add an aniBlock to the aniMate2 timeline my DS / KeyMate timeline gets corrupted, even if I disable or delete all aniBlocks.

I’m not surprised - aniBlocks take over completely. But you could put in a bug report.

I also don’t understand how the studio keys at the bottom of aniMate2 are supposed to work.  They don’t seem constant with the DS timeline/keyMate.

I thought that Studio Keys were the same as the Timeline. They have different colours for Translate/Scale/Morph.