Digital Art Zone

So after using DAZ for awhile I decided I wanted to check out its capabilities in regards to making animation. Now, I come from Poser and I absolutely love the walk-creator which basically lets me make walking animations for characters in seconds.

However, I noticed in DAZ3D I can’t really make any animations at all, no matter what I play with in the animations tab. I have DAZ3D 4 Pro. I’ve looked around for some guides or something regarding perhaps how to make animations with DAZ3D but… nada. At least nothing that really goes into any real depth.

Since I love the Genesis model so much, I would really, really like to make animations with DAZ3D - it kind of sucks having to go back to Michael 4 in Poser to make animations as it is much more limiting.

Does anyone have any helpful guides or links or anything about how to make animations in DAZ3D?

animations are simply poses along the timeline.
puppetteer and animate make it easier.
use puppetteer to save a few poses as dots then mouse between them
you can save the result as a pz2 using the script found in Richard Haseltine’s sigline link
Poser pz2’s open in studio too so a walk designer walk can be used in studio.
animate lite included with studio has a few walks etc and you can buy more blocks,
you need Animate2 to bake, edit and create blocks
lots of DS3 tutorials on YouTube, most still applies.

Thanks for the quick info Wendy. Perhaps you’d be willing to expand on something for me? I can’t fiddle with it right now since I am at work, but how would I open a PZ2 file (say I make a walk animation in Poser 9 using Michael 4) and use it in DAZ3D? Could the animation still be applied to the Genesis figure?

A pose, especially a pose made with IK on, would be likely to knock the feet and hands out of position. Adamr001 does have a script to fix this, but I’m not sure it works on animations (other than frame-by-frame). But with that caveat, and allowing for the fact that the figure being a different shape the pose might not have exactly the desired effect, yes you could apply a gen 4 pose to Genesis.

Is making/fiddling with animations possible in DAZ3D without the use of a plugin like Animate?

SuperGJ - 09 June 2012 10:43 PM

Is making/fiddling with animations possible in DAZ3D without the use of a plugin like Animate?

sure can - up to you to learn how - just takes time like any thing

I animate allot with 95% of the work being done on the timeline.  Animate2 is not necessary (IMO), though aniblocks can be fun if your into “instant” movement.

And Richard got it right about the pose thing.  Gen4 poses “work” on Genesis, but some tweaking will be needed.  Especially in the feet.  Though it is not very hard to delete all the keyframes on the feet, and then just redo them.  I have found very few “premade” animation sequences that didn’t usually require tweaking anyway, so it’s nothing unusual.  Personally, after searching for and then tweaking, fixing, re-timing and reconfiguring an animation sequence to work within MY scenes, I usually find myself wondering why I didn’t just keyframe it myself (but that’s just me)   It all depends on your workflow and final objective I suppose.

Super Newb - 10 June 2012 06:33 AM

I animate allot with 95% of the work being done on the timeline.  Animate2 is not necessary (IMO), though aniblocks can be fun if your into “instant” movement.

And Richard got it right about the pose thing.  Gen4 poses “work” on Genesis, but some tweaking will be needed.  Especially in the feet.  Though it is not very hard to delete all the keyframes on the feet, and then just redo them.  I have found very few “premade” animation sequences that didn’t usually require tweaking anyway, so it’s nothing unusual.  Personally, after searching for and then tweaking, fixing, re-timing and reconfiguring an animation sequence to work within MY scenes, I usually find myself wondering why I didn’t just keyframe it myself (but that’s just me)   It all depends on your workflow and final objective I suppose.

Yeah, I pretty much mirror what you are saying here. I won’t even use most of the animating morphs, especially with hands. They just tend to mess things up later when I want to keyframe the hands. Plus, it’s just much easier to create presets for everything and then drop them in where you need them. When you get your UI the way you like it, and your shortcut keys created, Daz is a breeze to animate with, IMHO. The only thing that I really need is the ability to add and remove frames at will. Well, maybe mirroring a whole animation would be good too, instead of just a frame. Oh, and It would be nice to see the animation in realtime without rendering a video.

” would be nice to see the animation in realtime without rendering a video “

just play the animation - you can see it in real time .

bigh - 12 June 2012 08:12 AM

” would be nice to see the animation in realtime without rendering a video “

just play the animation - you can see it in real time .

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see “every” frame in realtime. This becomes more and more obvious the more you add to a scene. Now, I could very well not know some setting that I need to checkbox. Or, possibly, my pc specs aren’t high enough to see it all, but my pc is not that low in specs as I can have quite a bit in the scene viewable and still be able to edit things pretty good. Even with 1 low poly model, I’m not seeing it all when I click play. If some1 can give me any advice, please do.

I’ve seen Bigh post that statement a couple times before.  I’ve come to the conclusion he must have one heck of a computer - or - there is some secret he is keeping to himself.  Mine won’t do it except for the simplest of scenes with maybe one lower res figure.  A naked Aiko 3 with no hair and no morphs and no background seems to move pretty fluently, much more than that and the “preview” starts skipping frames.  But rendering an AVI in preview mode only takes a second or two per frame.  My best investment in animation was a $6.00 stopwatch, I act out my motions and get the timing as close as possible to begin with.

EDIT: As a consolation though, I hear even the High end animation programs (Maya) usually won’t play a realtime playback in preview.  You can also try changing the texture mode your viewing (the dropdown menu from the globe in the upper right hand corner of the preview window) some people change it to wireframe or solid bounding box and claim that helps.

It is graphics dependent.
Daz studio WILL play back for me in realtime unlike Carrara on my desktop but no way my laptop.
adding multiple lipsynced voices tends to muck it up though.
do not always get them all in playback
rendering is a different story
but I would die of old age if I had to render in studio!