Digital Art Zone

Hi guys! Thank god the forum is back up.. I need help!

I have animated my genesis using pupeteer and need to copy its animation to another genesis.. but cant work out how to do this?

If I start off simple and just record genesis 1 moving his arm, so just two keyframes. How do I copy those keyframes and paste the animation to another gensis to start his animation when genesis 1 has finished?

Do I use animate2? The timeline?

Or do I save an animation preset? If so.. how?

Thanks a lot!!!

Worked it out! Do the keyframes in puppeteer and record, then in animate2 copy the animate block it created and paste in onto another genesis layer.

* I just tried to do this and realised that it doesnt create an aniblock automatically, I somehow did that when playing about.. will edit..

HI Dazsamm

Once you create animation (keyframes on the timeline) you can save that as a Pose pre-set (animated poses) or, as an animation file EG: BVH / FBX / Collada

If you want to save different parts of the figure animation, you’d need to create/record those parts, then save them, making sure you only save the animation for the parts of the figure you’ve animated. EG: arms only..

You should also be able to save the Puppeteer poses you’ve created as a “Puppeteer pre-set”, then you can load another figure and use the same Puppeteer pre-set to create another animation.

If I start off simple and just record genesis 1 moving his arm, so just two key-frames.

in this case you’ve created two poses, which you can save as Pose pre-sets ,... then you can apply those at any point in the time-line to create a key-frame,.. (note) this will often create keys for all parts of the figure (complete figure pose)  Unless you specify that only parts of the figure pose are recorded.

Hope it helps

Thanks 3DAGE, Im just trying to work out how I did it yesterday, was so simple. I used puppeteer to record, then copied the anibloc to another genesis on animate2 and then dragged that anibloc down the timeline so his animation started after genesis 1. Cant work out how I did it!

..to make things more annoying I just did it again and when I tried to repeat it wouldnt work! I created a new anibloc before I recorded the animation in puppeteer, then copy and pasted that to the other genesis and it worked great. Tried to repeat and no joy

I tested saving a puppeteer preset and see that it just saves the poses created in edit mode but doesnt save the recorded animation.

I have seen an Exp Exporter tutorial but cannot find much help or documentation. Cant even see what it is.

And saving the animation as a bvh..  I cannot see.

DAZ documentation/help is so frustrating!

Okay, I figured it out, buts it seems to be pretty tempermental, and so simple:

1. in animate2 add empty block
2. double click that block so keys are showing (not sure if necessary)
3. in puppeteer, pose and record
4. in animate2 press play to see it animate
5. move anibloc along animate2 timeline to check its animation only plays where you move it to
6. right click copy that anibloc
7. right click paste onto the genesis 2 layer beneath in animate2
8. move this anibloc where you want its animation to begin
9. press play

Voila! And why the hell didnt it work first time? Ridiculously easy. Why is this not somewhere referenced? Okay I need to eat

In the meantime, can someone tell me how to export this animation so I can bring it in as a preset to another file? That would be great.

Cheers!

Hi guys, I just followed my own steps and it works except.. for some reason the genesis has moved from his seated position and curving his back at an odd angle. I tested this on another genesis and it happened to this one and then the first one rotated again in his seat.

Whats happening?

HI 3dsamm

In animation, when you make a key-frame, then add another key-frame, the program tries to calculate how the figure should move between these two key-frames (this is called “Tweening”) creating the in-between frames.

If there’s a lot of time / space between key-frames, then you can get exaggerated results.

the best way to deal with that, is to create another (Middle) key-frame, between the two main key-frames you have.
then you can adjust that middle frame to correct the movement

Normally in animation you would work by creating a main Key frame at every 10th, or 5th frame in the time-line.

Hope it helps

thanks 3dage