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I hope DAZ Studio 5 has better animation support

christopher-2607496christopher-2607496 Posts: 33
in Daz Studio Discussion

DAZ Studio has been version 4.something ever since I started using it, but recently I've been getting into animation and I've found quite a few things that annoy me about animating in DAZ Studio

  • Need 3rd party plugins (Keymate / Graphmate / Animate) which don't always play nice with each other
  • TCB propogates through adjacent keyframes.  Given 3 TCB keyframes, referred to as A, B, and C in chronological order, the animation of BC will affect the animation of AB often leading to undesired wiggling movements.
  • There's no way to set a keyframe on an object, all of its children, and their morphs.  Keyframes in Keymate always miss things in Graphmate and vice-versa.
  • No simple way to exclude objects from being animated (mostly for cameras and lights)
  • No simple way to export single frames as new scenes
  • No way to change cameras during a render
  • No way to modify surface, shaping, visibility, or parenting during an animation. 
  • No indication of what kind of keyframe a particular keyframe is (TCB / Linear / Constant) in either Keymate or Graphmate

So I guess this is my feature request.  I know there's other animation tools out there but I'd really rather stick with DAZ than trying to get all my content to work in some other program.

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Comments

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,812

    There's no way to set a keyframe on an object, all of its children, and their morphs

    THIS, drives me nuts in D|S!!!

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,764

    "There's no way to set a keyframe on an object, all of its children, and their morphs."

    This may be possible if you use the group function and put them all under one group node  and set keyframes on changes to that node  ( I will have to investigate this myself )


    " Keyframes in Keymate always miss things in Graphmate and vice-versa."

    Indeed  quite annoying

     

    "No simple way to exclude objects from being animated (mostly for cameras and lights)"

     

     Agreed

    "No simple way to export single frames as new scenes
    No way to change cameras during a render"

    Agreed

     

    "No way to modify surface, shaping, visibility, or parenting during an animation."


    Technically you can modify parenting with an aniMate constraint 

     

     

    "no indication of what kind of keyframe a particular keyframe is (TCB / Linear / Constant) in either Keymate or Graphmate"


    Yes severely needed

  • XoechZXoechZ Posts: 1,102

    I hope we do not have to wait for version 5 for this.

     

    But even before solving these issues the Active Pose Tool and pinning system has to be fixed for Genesis 3 figures!

  • ToyenToyen Posts: 1,861

    First and foremost Genesis 3 needs animation ready rig controls!

  • PA_ThePhilosopherPA_ThePhilosopher Posts: 1,039
    edited December 2016
    christopher-2607496 said:

    DAZ Studio has been version 4.something ever since I started using it, but recently I've been getting into animation and I've found quite a few things that annoy me about animating in DAZ Studio

    • Need 3rd party plugins (Keymate / Graphmate / Animate) which don't always play nice with each other
    • TCB propogates through adjacent keyframes.  Given 3 TCB keyframes, referred to as A, B, and C in chronological order, the animation of BC will affect the animation of AB often leading to undesired wiggling movements.
    • There's no way to set a keyframe on an object, all of its children, and their morphs.  Keyframes in Keymate always miss things in Graphmate and vice-versa.
    • No simple way to exclude objects from being animated (mostly for cameras and lights)
    • No simple way to export single frames as new scenes
    • No way to change cameras during a render
    • No way to modify surface, shaping, visibility, or parenting during an animation. 
    • No indication of what kind of keyframe a particular keyframe is (TCB / Linear / Constant) in either Keymate or Graphmate

    So I guess this is my feature request.  I know there's other animation tools out there but I'd really rather stick with DAZ than trying to get all my content to work in some other program.

    I am hoping for this as well. I think as the growing demand for animation continues---thanks to the advent of GPU rendering---Daz will eventually expand its animating capabilities.

    I am also hoping to encourage this progress by releasing more animatable products of my own.

    -P

    Post edited by PA_ThePhilosopher on
  • UVDanUVDan Posts: 112

    I am hoping to render an animation direct to video and have it come out without sparklies and a white border around the actors.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 96,849
    UVDan said:

    I am hoping to render an animation direct to video and have it come out without sparklies and a white border around the actors.

    As I said at Renderosity, use an image format that suppots the alpha channelb (rendering to Image Sequence).

  • Syrus_DanteSyrus_Dante Posts: 983
    christopher-2607496 said:
    • TCB propogates through adjacent keyframes.  Given 3 TCB keyframes, referred to as A, B, and C in chronological order, the animation of BC will affect the animation of AB often leading to undesired wiggling movements.

    Maybe this script will help mcjMemorizeRestoreFigurePose

    and there are even more scripts on this site for helping with animation in DazStudio like:

    No way to modify surface, shaping, visibility, or parenting during an animation. 

    TexAnim for DS 3 & 4

    MatAnim for DS 1, 2, 3, 4

    No indication of what kind of keyframe a particular keyframe is (TCB / Linear / Constant) in either Keymate or Graphmate

    SetInterpolation V 1.0 for DS 2,3,4

    No simple way to exclude objects from being animated (mostly for cameras and lights)

    UnAnimate / ReAnimate DS 1,2,3,4

    There's no way to set a keyframe on an object, all of its children, and their morphs.  Keyframes in Keymate always miss things in Graphmate and vice-versa.

    mcjPoseToPose DS 1,2,3,4

    mcjParent

    mcjRepeatAction

    mcjPropagate

    mcjSceneGraf for DS4.5

    There's no way to set a keyframe on an object, all of its children, and their morphs

    There is a workaround that I use often therefore use select children on a figure root node and click the plus sign - add keyframe - in the timeline pane.

  • hphoenixhphoenix Posts: 1,335

    Yes, a lot of 'workarounds' have been created to overcome the limitations of DAZ Studio's animation system.  But I agree with the OP, a lot of this stuff should be built-in to DS, not have to be scripted.  @mcasual made those scripts because of the animation he does in DS, that DS made painfully difficult to do manually....even with the Animate2/Keymate/Graphmate plugins.

     

  • mikael-aronssonmikael-aronsson Posts: 546

    If there would just be a simple IK terminator option to terminate IK chains at hip and collar's and possibly disable IK on some bones not just on/off for the entire character would be a huge improvement.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,812

    tracking

    it needs tracking badly

    cannot track anything with a bone on a rigged figure like feet tracking pedals on a bike, holding hands, etc like I can in most other software with IK rigged figures.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,714

    This presumes that the next version is version 5.0.

     

    XoechZ said:

    I hope we do not have to wait for version 5 for this.

     

    But even before solving these issues the Active Pose Tool and pinning system has to be fixed for Genesis 3 figures!

    Actually, using the pose tool and pinning does work pretty well; granted if I pin it, I NEVER want what I've pinned (the clue is in the name imo) to move, but pinning does help a considerable amount.

  • Syrus_DanteSyrus_Dante Posts: 983
    edited April 2017

    @ hphoenix

    @mcasual made those scripts because of the animation he does in DS, that DS made painfully difficult to do manually....even with the Animate2/Keymate/Graphmate plugins. 

     I agree with that after some time I bought all three of them I realised that DazStudio is still very limited in animation and this is as far as it goes in this department.

    We have may options to pose the figures but DS isnt that focused on doing animations. You still can use BHV motion captures or animation from other professional animation software if you manage to retarget the genesis rig there - and I think you dont neccesarly need to have the same weightmaps on the figure in external animation software to create the motion you want to see in DS.

    Maybe someone is intrested in doing mocap at home with DS and:

    mcjKinectKit001

     

    th3Digit said:

    th3Digit said:

    tracking

    it needs tracking badly

    cannot track anything with a bone on a rigged figure like feet tracking pedals on a bike, holding hands, etc like I can in most other software with IK rigged figures.

    PinMeDown

    mcjAutoLimb

    mcjHoldOn

    prestoSnap

    mcjToeBasedFootPose

    mcjtoewalker

    mcjPlaceUnder

    mcjHipBasedPin

     

    nicstt said:

    Actually, using the pose tool and pinning does work pretty well; granted if I pin it...

    Yes pinning is a geat method for making poses but dont forget to unpin all. This creates a temporary IK-chain I think. So I use it for example hand positioning - therfore I pin the chest or the collar bone and translate the hand as the IK-chain goal with the universal tool set to Use World Coordinates. But this system is weak and can easily freak out. Try for example pin the collar and the hand bone and pose the shoulder bone in between. The pins loosing theyr positions quet easily and showing this doted line if the IK-chain solver cant handle the pose anymore.

    I once tryed to pose my figure with the limb bones pointing at some null-targets to as a workaraound for the IK-chain solver. For example I used the Point At fuction on the shoulder bone to point at the null-target so I tranfer the null to let the arm reach in this direction. Imagine this like the strings of a puppet player. Unfortunately also the Point At funktion is very limited and you cant animate the strength/influence that I think the parameter value of 1 - behind the target node - should be. Lately I even encountered that DS simply crashes sometimes if I change the target node of Point At.

    Post edited by Syrus_Dante on
  • Syrus_DanteSyrus_Dante Posts: 983

    Imagine we could have a modifier stack in DazStudio like Blender does have.

    So I think of having a pane with all the fit-to, smothing modifier, Sub Division, DFormer in one clearly visible and organized interface and also have a section for rigging modifiers where we can setup the IK-chains, PointAt, Animatable Constraints and also add support for third party modifiers as plugins - so we can have all the clever scripts like the ones mcasual does loaded in and use them with live preview on the viewport or maybe bake the animaton keyframes to a aniMate block to reuse it later and do a second keyframe block bake to add on top.

    I hope some developers may think of this logical concept to clean up the user interface and the modifier system that are all historicaly added somewhere.

  • Bobeagle77Bobeagle77 Posts: 164

    +1 for a beefier DAZ Studios 5. Would be awesome if animation was user friendly.

  • AndySAndyS Posts: 1,434

    I hope, they repair the huge number of existing bugs first!

  • chorsechorse Posts: 163
    edited April 2017
    christopher-2607496 said:
    • No way to modify surface, shaping, visibility, or parenting during an animation. 
    • No indication of what kind of keyframe a particular keyframe is (TCB / Linear / Constant) in either Keymate or Graphmate

    - Agreed - no way to keyframe textures & visability.  We should be able to keyframe all properties including textures/texture maps.

    - The type of keyframe interpolation can be seen by expanding the items property in the keyMate timeline.  You can also set different interpolations on individual objects and body parts.  

    Post edited by chorse on
  • chorsechorse Posts: 163

    christopher-2607496 said:

    • No simple way to export single frames as new scenes

    This is a big annoyance.  There should be an option on scene subset/scene menu to save all frames or just current frame, or a range of frames. 

  • RuphussRuphuss Posts: 2,631
    edited April 2017

    just diccovered that you cannot animate camera options like DoF and focal length

    Post edited by Ruphuss on
  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,764

    "Actually, using the pose tool and pinning does work pretty well; granted if I pin it, I NEVER want what I've pinned (the clue is in the name imo) to move, but pinning does help a considerable amount."

     

     


     
    Indeed it does help and at least it is switchable ,meaning one can pin & unpin at any point without completely destroying the ENTIRE animation as happens when you try  to turn IK  off/on in poser.

    I have noticed that the Daz pins are not saved with a the scene
    and when I re-open a saved scene that had pins  they have all been realeased  requiring me to re-pin them.

     

     

    "This is a big annoyance.  There should be an option on scene subset/scene menu to save all frames or just current frame, or a range of frames. "


    You can save single frames or a range of frames as a pose preset and apply them to a different scene.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,929

    Well it's been a few months since I've had a DAZ Studio beta available. The last one was 4.9.3.166 so maybe they are marshalling their SW development for D|S 5

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,714
    edited April 2017
    nonesuch00 said:

    Well it's been a few months since I've had a DAZ Studio beta available. The last one was 4.9.3.166 so maybe they are marshalling their SW development for D|S 5

    or 4.10.

    It is interesting that things are quiet. :)

    Post edited by nicstt on
  • josephlemons69_4db0991b45josephlemons69_4db0991b45 Posts: 423

     

    nicstt said:
    nonesuch00 said:

    Well it's been a few months since I've had a DAZ Studio beta available. The last one was 4.9.3.166 so maybe they are marshalling their SW development for D|S 5

    or 4.10.

    It is interesting that things are quiet. :)

    Just have to wait till next month in June, Cant wait to see what all the new features are :D 

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,565

    You can always watch the Change Log to see what's being worked on:  http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log

  • hphoenixhphoenix Posts: 1,335

    Hmm... the changelog shows them at 4.9.4.88 as of 5/1, with most of what I saw being SDK/Scripting API updates and documentation updates for them.  A few auto-fit and Transfer Utility fixes.

     

  • ChoholeChohole Posts: 33,604

    The change log gets added to every single week...

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,714
    hphoenix said:

    Hmm... the changelog shows them at 4.9.4.88 as of 5/1, with most of what I saw being SDK/Scripting API updates and documentation updates for them.  A few auto-fit and Transfer Utility fixes.

     

    Yeh lot of fixes it seems. Log file size increased I notice. Oh and an update to IRAY. Wonder if that will add anything and what if it does.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,929

    Hmmm...still not very busy but I suppose the really new features are private private. I really like the scripting API updates and the seeming integration of Autofir to use with Transfer Utility.

  • spacecat56spacecat56 Posts: 54

    The hard-coded default setting for interpolation mode has to go!   When using the timeline as a photo-shoot (rather than as a video) I never want the engine to interpolate but it's an ongoing (and often losing) battle to get prior frames to stay unchanged when working on later ones.  

    We should have "policy" settings inside each scene/project which would include: Default Interpolation Mode which I would set to Constant and expect that all that wiggling would JUST STOP HAPPENING.

    Probably there are other nuisances that should be addressed by additional policy settings? ... 

  • FirePro9FirePro9 Posts: 455

    Would love to see more animation tools for DS.  

    For now, importing BVH, saving to aniblock, then importing into Carrara is working for me.

    After stuggling with DS animation for couple of years I recently discovered Carrara which provides great animation tools built in...wish I had disovered it sooner. 

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