Question about what is needed for animation

DDCreate

Am I correct in assuming that in order to use any sort of aniblock or any other animation type file I would need animate2? 

Also, I understand that animation takes a long time to render (understandably so) and was wondering what sort of time frame to expect for basic movements e.g. running, kicking, jumping

When an animation is complete, what kind of file type does it save as and can it be used on something like a website?

I know animation is a very intricate process, I was just wondering about these things before I jumped into it.

Thanks, for any info :)

Richard Haseltine

You should be able to use AniBlocks with the AniMate 2 Lite included with DS.

The standard advice is to render to an image sequence, not to a final aniamtion file, then assemble the image sequence in another animation tool - that allows for minor fixes, rerendering sections, protects against crashes part way throug, and allows you to keep the alpha channel among other benefits.

DDCreate

Okay, good to know Richard. I guess what I was asking was when you have your finished "Alright! That looks good!" product can you save it as a .gif or put it in a website? The end result being something like the following...

www.myzombiestory.com and across the top of the page is a zombie chasing a human

or

I want to email it to my friend who also loves the Walking Dead and say "Check this out! I made that!" and then they can open it up and view it.

BeeMKay

I'm rendering an image series, and then use Sony Movie Studio to get everything together (I use the platinum edition of version 12, which I got cheap on sale). I can save my project in various file formats, and upload directly, or burn to DVD, or whatever I please to do with it. I usually upload to vimeo.

There are also cost-free alternatives, and other pay-for alternatives.

As far as rendering times are concerned, that depends on your PC setup, and what you are trying to render. What I usually do is, I prepare a sequence, then render a test frame to see how many iterations it takes before the image has a decent quality. Keep in mind that HD is 1920 × 1080 , and 720p is the smalles HD format at 1280×720. You'll get away with a certain level of grains. I hope to keep render times at around 2 minutes per frame (in Iray), preferably less. A second has between 24 and 30 frames. DAZ default is 30 frames per second. At two minutes per frame, that default leaves you with around 60 minutes for a 1 second animation. For a ten second animation, you'll look at 600 minutes, or ten hours pure render time.

If you look at most of the pre-made moves, you have anywhere between 180 and 500 frames, sometimes more.

 

Deke

Render in layers: Foreground, Middle Ground, and Background if need be.

Render as a PNG image sequence so that you have an alpha channel

Comp the layers together in a program like After Effects. In some cases, you can get away with a still image a background and just animated it in AE instead of redering all those layer frames.