Akeytsu is an affordable option for character animation for Daz

richmclean

I saw Akeytsu on sale for around 100 on Steam so wanted to share the news.  It is a great option for creating character animation (Gen 1 and 2) that can then be brought back into Daz to render.  Setting up a reverse foot rig and IK takes seconds.  Here is a quick test that I did this afternoon.  BTW.......Akeytsu is setup for good old manual keyframing and is not designed to work with motion capture like motionbuilder. 

 

 

SasquatchIsCool

This looks pretty cool.  Can you show us how it interacts with DAZ?  Or any characters for that matter.  

Please share. I want to see more. 

richmclean

Thanks. 

Here is a simplified overview.

It works best with Gen 1 and Gen 2 because its reverse foot rig relies on a joint structure without the twist joints that are in Gen 3 and Gen 8.   You morph and cloth your Gen 2 figure in Daz then export as fbx.  Import the fbx into Akeytsu then select each toe joint and click the reverse foot rig button and you are ready to animate.   After animating, export as fbx and then import back into Daz.    Daz does not handle the fbx import cleanly so the workaround is to then export back out of Daz as bvh then load a Gen 2 and reimport the bvh onto the figure including only rotations and only on the hip to you apply translation.

There are a few additional steps to take advantage of Akeytsu's very powerful pose and animation mirroring features but this gives you the basic workflow.   The additional steps are to export the fbx as ascii then do a search and replace to rename the nodes so the right limbs use "right" as the prefix and the left limbs use "left" as a prefix.  Currently the nodes just use "l" and "r" as the prefix for the node names in the fbx exported from Daz.  Also when importing back in the bvh, you then make sure the left and right nodes are correctly mapped.   

There is also a workaround to address the fact that Akeytsu does not read the pre rotation values in the fbx export out of Daz so all joint rotations are 0,0,0 on the intial bind pose which can cause issues like the joints are not aligned along the fingers.  The trick is to create a pose preset in Daz that straightens the hand and fingers and thigh then bake the joint rotations.   Save that character and use that character as the source for the fbx export and the target for the bvh import.

Here is a run cycle that I threw together.  It's mirroring features allow you to animate the first step and let it generate the second step and cycle.  It has a cool feature for keyframe management that is setup like a traditional x-sheet.  It also has animation layers but currently they are not additive.

richmclean

Here is a screenshot from the program showing its x-sheet and graph editor that overlays the main view.

 

SasquatchIsCool

Awesome.  Thanks.  Very intersting

 

Artini

I have missed initial sale price, so no go for me.

marander3d

Thanks for the info! I have Akeytsu since a while and it's a great tool. Initially Gen3/8 characters could not be loaded (The FBX exported from Daz does not contain vertex normals). I reported this bug which was fixed by the dev. The info about the ik chain incompatibility is interesting and Gen3/8 support would be great. I will raise a feature request to Nukeygara.

richmclean

I just checked and Akeytsu is $107 until July 5th as part of the summer steam sale (tons of games and software on sale).   If you google "Valve's steam intergalatic summer sale" you will find the sale.  I am being sure not to spend too much though so I have plenty of money to spend on Daz's great products.

I agree that Gen3/8 support would be great.  I currently work around it by transferring Gen 3/8 morphs and textures to Gen2.  I make use of Gen8's face rig to create morphs that I also transfer to Gen2.  I use Akeytsu only for body animation and use Daz for facial animation including lip sync.

I had sent the Akeytsu developers a request about handling the fbx pre rotation values but the latest version still brings in the joint rotations as 0,0,0.  So the key is to setup the figure in Daz so you do not have to adjust the bind pose in Akeytsu.  Nice thing is once you do it once and save the pose, it is a quick process to apply the pose and bake the joint rotations in Daz before exporting.  Then just use the same figure as the target for the imported bvh.

The akeytsu revese foot rig expects a joint structure of thigh>>shin>>foot>>toes.  It is not designed to handle the Gen3/8 structure of thigh bend>>thigh twist>>shin>>foot>>metatarsals>>toes.