Morph Keyframes and Keymate
ghastlycomic
Posts: 2,531
in The Commons
Where do morph keyframes like facial expression morphs show up in Keymate? All I see are bone keyframes.
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The facial expression are properties placed in the root node of the figure. The facial expression sliders on the head dosen't count as morphs they are so called Aliases (remote control properties) of the actual facial expression properties. So I guess in keymate there is a box/dot on the figure root representing the keyframe that can contains all properties like morphs for shape and pose controls not just facial expressions.
Actualy in the most recent genesis figures 3 and 8 with all the facial rig bones the expressions are technicaly pose controls that I think can have a morph shape and/or face rig bone transformations (movement/rotation).
I could be wrong and the most facial expressions at least the offical daz products are only driving the facial rig bones. In this case you can use "Bake to Transforms" Shift+B to convert them into pure bone transformations, without the pose controls driving them, to edit the keyframes on the facial rig bones in keymate, if thats what you intended to do.
I'm using a figure that has no facial rig, just morphs with pose controls assigned to them.
OK so the facial expressions are mixed up with all other pose controls that you may have in your keyframed animation, like I saied its all in the figure root node keyframe.
To keep things seperate and have more control I would use AniMate2 and create a seperate animation layer only containing the keyframes for the facial expressions, that you can edit with keymate.
To extract the current facial expression animation from the timeline you could save a Pose Preset (with animation range selected) and in the properties list of the save dialog select all Pose Controls for the Head only.
Then reset all expression sliders with Alt+click on them and create an AniBlock of the figure animation without expressions. Add the figure movement AniBlock to Animate2, next create a new animation layer for the facial expressions and load the Pose Preset saved before on frame 0. Don't know if this would work, its just my suggestion I'm not an animation expert.
I've had a simmilar discussion here:
hi can someone help me with animate 2
To see morph keyframes in keymate, you have to change the drop down from TR (translate roate) to TRSV (translate, rotate, scale, value). Value = morph slider value.
Thanks
Thank you barbult. Good to know, its been a few years now since I last tried to animate in DazStudio.
I use Keymate mostly for animated dForce simulation.
Gotta love animating with Keymate. Sure beats the hell out of Timeline.
Incidently, If an update is ever made to Keymate I for one would be really appreciative if key frames were colour coded based on the type of interpolation they're set to.
Indeed the ability to customize the color of the keyMate dope sheet
,as we can in other animation programs,would be fantastic!!
Sadly the Keymate plugin is not a Daz product but is made By "Gofigure"
who seems to no longer be interested in further developing
their highly useful animation plugins for Daz studio.
I think that's unlikely. GoFigure (the producers of Animate, KeyMate and GraphMate) seem to have gone into hibernation for the past few years. Their website is reduced to a shell with no content. I sometimes wonder why DAZ hasn't just bought the rights and developed the products in-house.
You might want to look at their product pages.
Cool!! forty percent off AniMate& keymate so $24 USD for both plugins.
OK There are "new" aniblocks for G8
However now that we all know how to retarget G1 motion to G3/8
what is the point of buying a G8 aniblock at any price??
I would imagine those "hip hop moves" for G8 are just recycled from the older ones for
M4/V4 in which case we can recycle all of our older aniblocks ourselves
via Genesis one.
I agree with Marble that the main animation plugins seem abandoned
by Gofigure.
Did you see the vendor line?
I am more concerned with the tools rather than the aniblocks. I like to mess around with short animations by posing figures myself so to do that I need to use the tools. They certainly add a lot over and above the standard DAZ offering but there is nothing by way of support and little by the way of tutorials. Animators might find them simple but occasional hobbyists like myself might need a bit more help. For example, the question of the OP was something I wouldn't have had a clue about had I not stumbled across this thread. I mean that I wouldn't have known enough to ask the question, never mind supply the answer.
In general, I agree that these products appear to be "abandonware". Although Richard pointed out that they are now listed as Daz Originals, as far as I can tell, Daz3D has not done anything other than keep them in the store. They are still valuable plugins, even though they don't seem to be in any kind of development or update cycle. Edit: Daz does at least keep them working in new versions of Daz Studio. I use keyMate in DS 4.11.0.236.
A small keyMate update was posted in the forum by Ammon (GoFigure) in October 2017. I don't know if it ever made it into a Daz released update or not. A Mac version was promised, but I don't know whether that was ever delivered either. DIM lists the keyMate package date as 2013, so that does not bode well.
The product readme has no information about an update, but does have some basic usage notes.
There are pretty good online tutorials for keyMate and graphMate. For example here and here and here. They can be found with a simple Google search, if you lose track of the links.
Indeed I saw that the plugins are listed as jointly owned by Daz and Gofigure
but I assumed it was because they require Daz studio (obviously).
If this means what Richard appears to be cryptically suggesting
then lets just hope that Daz inc has secured more rights to alter/update graphMate&Keymate
than they had for the 32 bit lipsinc plugin.
( although 64 bit mimic live is quite good if you use my external audio procedure)
I would love it if Daz bought them and simply built them into stock Daz Studio and improved upon them.
No, it means theya re now owned by Daz - anything that lists Daz as a vendor is owned by daz, as far as I am aware. Required software is handled by a separate entry.
Good to hear sir!!!
Hopefully graphMate and keyMate will soon become part of the core
Daz studio anmation tools.
Thats something new.. :)
I have started a thread to suggest improvements to the DAZ owned GraphMate& keyMate
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/311916/now-that-daz-owns-the-keymate-graphmate-animation-tools#latest
when animating morphs with daz studio Its so much easier to use the morphs values in the dials and "Apply the morphs value movements to each keyframe as the morphs is needed using the morph dials instead of trying to actually do the morph in the keyframe its self which would require a deformer be added to the mesh.
By Keyframing the morphs dials , you get a better dynamic animated look to the morphs and you don't need key-mate or graph-mate in order to animate the morphs dial and you can go back and change and customize the morph value as you work along the timeline.
But that is just my opinion when animating with daz studio, Its so much easier to use the morphs values in the dials and "Apply the morphs value movements to each keyframe.
I always animate the morph dial values
If you use alot of lipsynch with additional facial animation layered on top
of the basic mouth phonemes then
IMHO you need graphmate for timing when to blend in a smile or a frown
and it also makes it easier if you need to move that facial expression
forward or backward in time by marquee selecting the keys and dragging
them left or right
Here is an example of a shot already sent over to C4D
and is rendering as I write this
This Female crew member was speaking a line of dialogue (via mimic live)
but was suddenly interrpeted by a fairly
horrific scene being broadcast on her workstation monitor.
You can see on the spline graph where her "fear" morph
suddenly blends from zero to one.
I have Hundreds of morphs for the G2 female
(possibly every morph ever released for G2F) .
To be able to isolate any one
of them in the spline graph editor
is the type of visual feedback I need when developing motion
or fine tuning existing motions imported from Iclone.
Another big advantage of the Daz studio graphmate editor
over poser is the ability to select and edit
Multiple parameters of the same node.
For example there are situations where I might need
to simultaneously make a concurent alterations
or deletions to theBend twist and side to side value of a shoulder or forearm.
this is easily achieved with graphmate
(Now on sale for $11.99 BTW)
Honestly, if Daz had a Maya human IK foot contanct solver along with animate 2
and Graphmate& keymate
it would actually be a better value than Iclone for animating genesis
Characters at least.
Great job Wolf that is a great example of using graph-mate.
. I also found graphmate help in changing the y-axis to the hip of a character to remove the foot slip I get with some motion presets & key-mate I found is great for editing & fixing the key jump you get sometimes when you join 2 aniblocks or presets, keymate is helpful if you need to articulate movements for changing or customizing the keyframes because keymate breaks down the components of each bone of the character on the keymate timeline that the animate2 plugin does not offer. . but most things animated in daz studio can be done right in the animate2 timeline. But its old out dated ad needs improvements
That is why I think it be really great if daz has bought gofigures animate like Richard suggest, I can't wait to see what is developed if anything from it. maybe now development will begin in earnest for animation with daz studio. & I am really hoping for much better IK/FK poseing.with hard surface pinning capabilities . that would be a helluva improvement for animating with daz studio. Also be able to keyframe sub-division or instances, for creating & animating FX like fire & flames panes, or wind effects in the leaves of trees and bushes in studio would be freaking awesome.
But for now I have a wait and see attitude.
You know, I bought graphmate and keymate during the black friday sale and I use keymate nearly every day, but I've never opened up graphmate. But looking at what you're doing is making me want to run home after work and finally give it a try and see how much more it can help make my animation smoother!
Hi be sure to get the free key frame culling script from Mcasual's site
it is Called "decimate"
https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/
with it you can sparse down the number of keys any parameter to make them more
managable for editing
Particulary useful with imported BVH/Mocap
or an aniblock baked to Daz timeline keys
as they will have a key for every single frame.
Oh my gosh, this is amazing! I was wondering how I could stop getting a keyframe marked for every frame when I bake an aniblock to the timeline. Thank you :D