Digital Art Zone

I am thinking of buying “aniMate aniBlock Importer for Carrara”,

But can I import my old aniBlocks from Daz Studio? Or do I have to buy new ones made for Carrara?

?

works fine with Aniblocks as is!
and you can edit the keyframes!

Yup, loads all your existing Aniblocks, then I would recommend saving as Carrara NLA clips.

Thank you both, But why should I save as Carrara NLA clips?

I have thought of a second solution. Export from Daz Studio via bvh into Poser. Build library of all the blocks in a package and save to a Poser runtime library. Then can I load that runtime into Carrara while also have everything available in Poser.

Am I thinking wrong?

you can also create pz2 files in DS with the PFE (Poser format exporter) I used too.
but I like the disable transforms function in the Carrara importer, never worked well the other way if you wanted to change direction of movement etc.

You don’t have to save as NLA Clips, you can go through the import dialogue each time. But I find it handier to have them saved as clips - just a suggestion, you don’t have to do it this way.

PhilW, “But I find it handier to have them saved as clips “

True, that was also the reason why I wanted to have them in a Poser runtime..which would amount to the same thing.

wendy♥catz, “I like the disable transforms function in the Carrara importer”

So that is a compelling reason, it has to be the Carrara importer then! I can still make a Poser runtime..

Thanks again.

One plus for NLA clips is the ability to loop them, for say a walk cycle.

PhilW, “One plus for NLA clips is the ability to loop them, for say a walk cycle.”

Ok I have to consider very carefully when I have learned what NLA clips are!
I have only used Carrara for one day, but I find it very easy and intuitive.

With Carrara it is complete. I now use all the programs that can handle Poser files. Poser, Daz, C4D and Carrara!

If you are doing much animation, NLA clips are well worth getting your head around!  They are a very flexible and re-usable way to save parts of an animation which can then be recombined. So if you have say a walk clip, and blink clip and a smile clip. you can combine these to animate the full character without having to re-invent the wheel each time, looping or changing the timing to suit your scene.

I have just bought aniBlock Importer and BVH Exporter and both work as expected, fine so far!

After what you say NLA clips must be something like “Movie Clips” in C4D.
Of course I will use them otherwise would be a no brainier. I had not expected that Carrara should be so powerful.

Now I can build my first animation which will be a runway walk, to be used in combination with Marvelous Designer and Lumion.
I must have done something right in my former life, to get access to all these wonderful toys!

Sounds a little like this one that I did:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WBXnsYSiaY

But I did not use Lumion - thanks for the pointer, I just had a look at that. Don’t think my current system will run it though, graphics card too underpowered.

Fenric’s MDD plugin? Another plugin I have to buy? Hmm, no I think I manage with C4D tools.

I saw the video nice work!,

yes, as you did but with my own quirks…

I plan to do it the following way,

1) Model the environment in C4D
2) Bring it into Lumion and make a short movie.
3) Create camera movement in C4D to match up the movie clip
4) Make the animation in Carrara as a series of clips
5) Export all clips to C4D with bvh and adjust to fit

The cloth will be a combination of modeled conforming cloth and simulated cloth. It is important that the cloth is of high quality as that is the most important in the MD monthly competition..

6) In C4D I dress up the character with the conforming clothing
7) Export the fully clothed avatar to Marvelous Designer with point cache (obj+mdd files)
8) Create the outer, simulated clothing in Marvelous Designer
9) Export back to C4D for final video rendering

The advantage of that workflow which I hope to reuse many times is that even in the final step you still can do adjustment of hands/feets and head and even do small changes to the clothing. (the bones are still intact)

Edit: I did a preliminary test as you can se here,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNtmw_kKOBA

nothing fancy just as a proof of concept.