I got this to work by manually setting key's on each frame (node recursive). The animation remained the same even without the IK.
Is there a script available that goes through the timeline frame by frame and sets key's for a given node?
Thanks!
you can do it if you own Animate 2 by creating an aniblock from key frames then baking it back to the timeline
I render LAMH on animated animals in 3Delight this way as it needs keyframes for every frame to sync
I got this to work by manually setting key's on each frame (node recursive). The animation remained the same even without the IK.
Is there a script available that goes through the timeline frame by frame and sets key's for a given node?
Thanks!
you can do it if you own Animate 2 by creating an aniblock from key frames then baking it back to the timeline
I render LAMH on animated animals in 3Delight this way as it needs keyframes for every frame to sync
I had weird results doing it that way. I don't think that animations with IK Chains can be converted to aniblocks without issues.
Update:
I've tried it again and this time it worked fine. I removed the IK chains and the animation played as it should.
Update 2:
Tried it with a longer animation and it didn't work. Strange results. Animate2 clearly has issues dealing with IK.
Better to do series of short shots and piece them together in a separate movie editor?
That might be worth a try.
I actually took the time to manually keyframe every frame (60) of my test animation, thinking that this would let me remove the IK chains like I would in Motion Builder.
Well, not so much in DAZ The constrained nodes did not stay in place after I removed the IK chains to render in DS 4.11
So I'll either deal with CPU fallbacks and pick up an animation from whenever OptiX decided to crash, or I go back to using Motion Builder. The MB IK rig is a million times better than current DS IK implementations anyway.
My dad would say, use the right tool for the job at hand. So if MB works better for you, then that is what you should use to get the job done right.
That sounds like some good advise right there! :)
I'm rendering in 4.12 right now and hadn't had a CPU fallback yet. Knock, knock, knock. Maybe 4.12 with the older Nvidia drivers isn't as prone to crash.
The DS - MB - DS pipeline has a lot of import/export overhead, so that's why I'd prefer to just stay in DS if possible.
At any rate - I'm baffeled that there isn't a DS script out there to plot down an animation to the timeline. Seems pretty common practice to me.
I got this to work by manually setting key's on each frame (node recursive). The animation remained the same even without the IK.
Is there a script available that goes through the timeline frame by frame and sets key's for a given node?
Thanks!
Yes.. it is called "set # keys"
It is built into the 4.12 timeline. ..
Hold down the ctrl key when selecting create keys see pic
I got this to work by manually setting key's on each frame (node recursive). The animation remained the same even without the IK.
Is there a script available that goes through the timeline frame by frame and sets key's for a given node?
Thanks!
Yes.. it is called "set # keys" It is built into the 4.12 timeline. .. Hold down the ctrl key when selecting create keys see pic
But that just seems to create new "empty" key's without following and plotting down the current nodes animation..?
Hey Daz animation friends. Am I the only one whos keyframe copy-paste is super buggy? This is regarding G8F copy/paste keyframes. I made a video. The bug occurs on 4:27
There is a naked G8F, but I made sure that, the video is only viewable to people who are 18+ so I hope that's cool?
Submitted this via the bug report form. Just wanted to know if I am the only one and if you maybe found a workaround for this problem.
Hey everyone.. I'm sorry I haven't posted the tutorials as promised.. I got so busy there for a while, then wham.. everything to a standstill. Fortunately I do have a day job, so that is been keeping me afloat, so I will start back on getting those done here soon.
I do however, have something else going on, in response to the situation, leveraging the tools that I have https://www.facebook.com/bryan.steagall/videos/10158398602157490/ and more of a PSA https://www.facebook.com/bryan.steagall/videos/10158398586387490/ This is real time, recorded as I'm performing, using a Rokoko Smartsuit and Dynamixyz facial mocap headset, streaming to motionbuilder, then recorded on a live camera feed using OBS (Open Broadcast, used for streaming). The character is Sir. Waddleston by 3d Universe. The idea is to use him to live stream and call little ones that I know via zoom live to sing happy birthday and stuff
I am still not 100% sure if having many, many keyframes does slow down the DAZ viewport playback performance. After a lot of testing, I feel like it does not make a significant difference if any difference at all.
Which experiences did you make in this regard?
---
I am asking because often I click on G8 and set keyframes on "object" or "node recursive". This operation sets keyframes everywhere, across all possible parameters, even those that aren't used at all. This way a lot of keyframes can accumulate quickly. But like mentioned before it doesn't seem to affect the playback performance in a negative way.
Does anyone know if there's a way to edit bezier handles of keys in the 4.12 graph editor? How can we get sharp peaks in our animation curves (e.g., a bouncing ball) without being able to edit the handles?
Does anyone know if there's a way to edit bezier handles of keys in the 4.12 graph editor? How can we get sharp peaks in our animation curves (e.g., a bouncing ball) without being able to edit the handles?
They are not Bezier curves, they are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochanek–Bartels_spline - you would edit the C value to get a sharper point - see the sample curves, using the same points, at top-right of the linked page.
Does anyone know if there's a way to edit bezier handles of keys in the 4.12 graph editor? How can we get sharp peaks in our animation curves (e.g., a bouncing ball) without being able to edit the handles?
Does anyone know if there's a way to edit bezier handles of keys in the 4.12 graph editor? How can we get sharp peaks in our animation curves (e.g., a bouncing ball) without being able to edit the handles?
They are not Bezier curves, they are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochanek–Bartels_spline - you would edit the C value to get a sharper point - see the sample curves, using the same points, at top-right of the linked page.
I've encountered a strange bug twice now (one that's proven very difficult to reproduce) where, when I parent an IK node of one figure to a bone of another figure (e.g., one figure's hand to another figure's shoulder, so the hand follows the shoulder), Daz starts adding keys on every frame whenever I scrub backwards in the timeline. When this happens, the keys for the IK node get overwritten, and it stops following it's target.
The first time this happened, I made the fatal mistake and saving & then reloading the scene, which made it impossible to get rid of the problem. Even when I reloaded the file, deleted all the IK nodes, then recreated & parented them, the problem persisted. As far as I could tell, the only way to get rid of it was to rebuild the entire scene from scratch. Has anyone else encountered this?
I recently obtained Animate2, and have been following various (although limited) guides from Daz 3d and various other youtubers. Creating and editing Aniblocks. The majority of these videos use multiple Sub Tracks with only the specific part they want to affect checked in the Part List of said Sub-Tracks properties. Aka only hands checked, or only the head.
However when trying to copy this my Sub-Tracks have half of their parts ticked but greyed out - I cannot figure out how to enable the ability to change all parts which makes this feature harder to use (screenshot included for clarity, backup link is https://i.imgur.com/WIjaVyV.jpg).
It seems there have been a few posts bringing up the same issue, but they only linked to a now dead website -gofigure3d-. So I make my first post to ask you all for your assistance and wisdom in this. For reference I am using g8f base, but have tried other figures to no avail.
Ok, I'm about to pull my hair out here... Is anyone else finding that the copying & pasting keys in the 4.12 Timeline is just *completely* broken? It randomly causes very strange errors (e.g., figures just disappearing, or even the entire viewport going blank) that seem to permanently corrupt the scene. The only way to fix it is to load a version of the scene that hasn't been corrupted. I'm wondering if switching back to Keymate until the builtin Timeline is more stable would help...
@callums any figure ,after genesis 2, will not let you filter out certain body parts,in animate 2 ,due to the addition of the extra "twist bones" in G3/8.
@hookflash
Before I moved all of my Character animation over to Iclone/Blender in April, I had reverted back to the old GraphMate&KeyMate Plug-ins to finish My 92 minute feature film, due to issues such as the ones you have encountered.
Dynamixyz performer test of the iconic performance of the late Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner. I wanted to test Performer's tracking of a challenging clip. The challenges: 1.- Dim lighting, 2.- Lots of noise due to the rain falling in the foreground (amazing how much a rain drop can influence). Kept anchor frames to a minimum with only around 25 base frames. Retargeted in Motionbuilder using my animation rig, cleaned up the noise and brought into Daz Studio for draft render. https://vimeo.com/417665982 Will try to now simulate the environment and lighting in Studio of the original clip
That is excellent work Bryan!!,
great facial expressions
and one of my Favorite bits of dialog
from one of my favorite Sci-fi classics.
I used Daz mimic live for my (now completed )feature length animated film.
However I recently moved all of my animation ,Facial and Body, over to
Iclone to use Iclones far superior Face puppet/face key and Audio based lipsync features that have separate smoothing and strength adjustment option
for the upper and lower Jaw.
I only use Daz studio for Character creation& custom clothing rigging before export and conversion to an Iclone Avatar.
I dumped C4D entirely and Export to blender for final renders in EEVEE
Here is a recent Lipsync test with some Audio from one of my favorite Classic anime's "Ghost in the Shell"
Why thank you Wolf! That is the reason why I chose this clip, one of the best soundbytes ever.
I considered trying out iclone at one point, but that was way back before settling on the workflow I have right now. (and since I had already paid for motionbuilder, might as well use it to the fullest)
I was a long time user of the original Mimic, and got to the point where I was creating my own dmc's to add more of the facial movement than the default and ease the transitions between phonemes (it was a little harsh at times) Can you do that in iclone?
EVEE is such a nice renderer, I need to see what I can do about using it more with my workflow. I had been using Marmoset Toolbag, but recently they've had a lot of issues importing animation, where it doesn't look right, doesn't hit the target blendshape/bone shapes, etc, so I've been using UE4, which for my purposes, is more than enough for now, and they've been adding so much to it (especially in the real-time arena, which a lot of my clients seem to be gravitating to)
93 minutes? wow, that is a LOT of work, I congratulate you!
It was a painful 93 minutes with a really old version of C4D on a really Old mac computer.
I feel good to have accomplished a feature length animated Fanfilm
working all alone, but I am greatly relieved to have it all behind me
and moving on to newer and better with Blender EEVEE and my New AMD PC tower I am buying at the end of May
As you know, the biggest weaknesses with all Daz native lipsync
options including the $90 USD "Anilip2",is the linear "quick Snap /lip flap" effect between phonemes that is very unnatural.
Reallusion added smoothing filters for the upper& lower jaw
to blend the transitions between phonemes which are evident in
the clip I posted.
As well as individual strength adjustments for the upper and lower jaw.
Iclone has an optional cam based Facial motion capture plugin
requiring an $$$ IphoneX $$$
But I wont buy back into the Apple Ecosystem just to use
one program feature.
Ya, I've seen that, and as you say, not very practical. Don't get me wrong, facial mocap with Dxyz can also be a little tedious, as you have to go back and forth with it until you get to a level of satisfaction (notice I don't say perfect.. lol) but after that everything is virtually automatic (meaning, that same profile can be used for the same actor and a multitude of different characters as long as the capture environment is similar)
The iphone product is good, but forces you to a certain naming and blendshape convention, while Dxyz uses anything you are already using (bones, blendshapes, splines or combination thereof), you can use any camera (as it is basically video based). I wish I had the skills to create a plugin with it for Studio, as they have for Cinema4d and autodesk products (maybe I should talk to them about making a blender plugin)
The old Mimic Pro still seems to be easier and more accurate than a lot of newer solutions. Anilip, for instance, doesn't look good, even in their demos. Mimic Pro still works in Windows 10 on my new machine, so glad about that, but I wish they would update it for the newer figures. This is quick test I rendered right in Mimic, so no other animation added, but I think the lip sync is pretty good, considering this software is from 2008!
Welcome back to your own thread :-)
I was being super polite about Anilip2 but.....
hmmm.yeah
I agree that the venerable mimic pro3 rules the pre genesis era.
But Daz's hands are apparently tied by a standing license agreement restricting what they can do with the original mimic technology so they have moved on.
There is a third party IPHONE BASED facial capture app called 'Face mojo"coming to DS.
For my post C4D.obj/MDD pipeline,
I decided to just use the tools I already owned,
and convert my Daz characters to realtime Iclone Avatars
and use Reallusions far superior motionbuilding, face puppet& lipsynch tools,and round trip between Blender and Iclone.
And this is the final render... https://vimeo.com/417876497 brought it into Marmoset Toolbag (1 hr render vs 12hrs that it took for my previous test in Studio), I will render it out in Studio for comparison
Quick compositing in AE to add rain, smoke and a slight blur to the character to knock down the sharpness. As far as I'm going to go with this one, but I think I will use it for the tutorial I'm planning (yes, still going to do that)
Thanks for sharing that Tim!, ahh, the good old days..
Comments
you can do it if you own Animate 2 by creating an aniblock from key frames then baking it back to the timeline
I render LAMH on animated animals in 3Delight this way as it needs keyframes for every frame to sync
I had weird results doing it that way. I don't think that animations with IK Chains can be converted to aniblocks without issues.
Update:
I've tried it again and this time it worked fine. I removed the IK chains and the animation played as it should.
Update 2:
Tried it with a longer animation and it didn't work. Strange results. Animate2 clearly has issues dealing with IK.
That might be worth a try.
I actually took the time to manually keyframe every frame (60) of my test animation, thinking that this would let me remove the IK chains like I would in Motion Builder.
Well, not so much in DAZ The constrained nodes did not stay in place after I removed the IK chains to render in DS 4.11
So I'll either deal with CPU fallbacks and pick up an animation from whenever OptiX decided to crash, or I go back to using Motion Builder. The MB IK rig is a million times better than current DS IK implementations anyway.
That sounds like some good advise right there! :)
I'm rendering in 4.12 right now and hadn't had a CPU fallback yet. Knock, knock, knock. Maybe 4.12 with the older Nvidia drivers isn't as prone to crash.
The DS - MB - DS pipeline has a lot of import/export overhead, so that's why I'd prefer to just stay in DS if possible.
At any rate - I'm baffeled that there isn't a DS script out there to plot down an animation to the timeline. Seems pretty common practice to me.
But that just seems to create new "empty" key's without following and plotting down the current nodes animation..?
Something short and sweet . try not to smile
Hey Daz animation friends. Am I the only one whos keyframe copy-paste is super buggy? This is regarding G8F copy/paste keyframes. I made a video. The bug occurs on 4:27
There is a naked G8F, but I made sure that, the video is only viewable to people who are 18+ so I hope that's cool?
Submitted this via the bug report form. Just wanted to know if I am the only one and if you maybe found a workaround for this problem.
Hey everyone.. I'm sorry I haven't posted the tutorials as promised.. I got so busy there for a while, then wham.. everything to a standstill. Fortunately I do have a day job, so that is been keeping me afloat, so I will start back on getting those done here soon.
I do however, have something else going on, in response to the situation, leveraging the tools that I have https://www.facebook.com/bryan.steagall/videos/10158398602157490/ and more of a PSA https://www.facebook.com/bryan.steagall/videos/10158398586387490/ This is real time, recorded as I'm performing, using a Rokoko Smartsuit and Dynamixyz facial mocap headset, streaming to motionbuilder, then recorded on a live camera feed using OBS (Open Broadcast, used for streaming). The character is Sir. Waddleston by 3d Universe. The idea is to use him to live stream and call little ones that I know via zoom live to sing happy birthday and stuff
Hey fellow animators,
I am still not 100% sure if having many, many keyframes does slow down the DAZ viewport playback performance. After a lot of testing, I feel like it does not make a significant difference if any difference at all.
Which experiences did you make in this regard?
---
I am asking because often I click on G8 and set keyframes on "object" or "node recursive". This operation sets keyframes everywhere, across all possible parameters, even those that aren't used at all. This way a lot of keyframes can accumulate quickly. But like mentioned before it doesn't seem to affect the playback performance in a negative way.
What do you experience?
Does anyone know if there's a way to edit bezier handles of keys in the 4.12 graph editor? How can we get sharp peaks in our animation curves (e.g., a bouncing ball) without being able to edit the handles?
They are not Bezier curves, they are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochanek–Bartels_spline - you would edit the C value to get a sharper point - see the sample curves, using the same points, at top-right of the linked page.
Does anyone know if there's a way to edit bezier handles of keys in the 4.12 graph editor? How can we get sharp peaks in our animation curves (e.g., a bouncing ball) without being able to edit the handles?
Ah, cool, thanks!
I've encountered a strange bug twice now (one that's proven very difficult to reproduce) where, when I parent an IK node of one figure to a bone of another figure (e.g., one figure's hand to another figure's shoulder, so the hand follows the shoulder), Daz starts adding keys on every frame whenever I scrub backwards in the timeline. When this happens, the keys for the IK node get overwritten, and it stops following it's target.
The first time this happened, I made the fatal mistake and saving & then reloading the scene, which made it impossible to get rid of the problem. Even when I reloaded the file, deleted all the IK nodes, then recreated & parented them, the problem persisted. As far as I could tell, the only way to get rid of it was to rebuild the entire scene from scratch. Has anyone else encountered this?
Hello,
I recently obtained Animate2, and have been following various (although limited) guides from Daz 3d and various other youtubers. Creating and editing Aniblocks. The majority of these videos use multiple Sub Tracks with only the specific part they want to affect checked in the Part List of said Sub-Tracks properties. Aka only hands checked, or only the head.
However when trying to copy this my Sub-Tracks have half of their parts ticked but greyed out - I cannot figure out how to enable the ability to change all parts which makes this feature harder to use (screenshot included for clarity, backup link is https://i.imgur.com/WIjaVyV.jpg).
It seems there have been a few posts bringing up the same issue, but they only linked to a now dead website -gofigure3d-. So I make my first post to ask you all for your assistance and wisdom in this. For reference I am using g8f base, but have tried other figures to no avail.
Ok, I'm about to pull my hair out here... Is anyone else finding that the copying & pasting keys in the 4.12 Timeline is just *completely* broken? It randomly causes very strange errors (e.g., figures just disappearing, or even the entire viewport going blank) that seem to permanently corrupt the scene. The only way to fix it is to load a version of the scene that hasn't been corrupted. I'm wondering if switching back to Keymate until the builtin Timeline is more stable would help...
@hookflash Before I moved all of my Character animation over to Iclone/Blender in April, I had reverted back to the old GraphMate&KeyMate Plug-ins to finish My 92 minute feature film, due to issues such as the ones you have encountered.
Hey everyone!
Dynamixyz performer test of the iconic performance of the late Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner. I wanted to test Performer's tracking of a challenging clip. The challenges: 1.- Dim lighting, 2.- Lots of noise due to the rain falling in the foreground (amazing how much a rain drop can influence). Kept anchor frames to a minimum with only around 25 base frames. Retargeted in Motionbuilder using my animation rig, cleaned up the noise and brought into Daz Studio for draft render. https://vimeo.com/417665982
Will try to now simulate the environment and lighting in Studio of the original clip
and one of my Favorite bits of dialog from one of my favorite Sci-fi classics.
I used Daz mimic live for my (now completed )feature length animated film.
However I recently moved all of my animation ,Facial and Body, over to Iclone to use Iclones far superior Face puppet/face key and Audio based lipsync features that have separate smoothing and strength adjustment option for the upper and lower Jaw.
I only use Daz studio for Character creation& custom clothing rigging before export and conversion to an Iclone Avatar.
I dumped C4D entirely and Export to blender for final renders in EEVEE
Here is a recent Lipsync test with some Audio from one of my favorite Classic anime's "Ghost in the Shell"
Why thank you Wolf! That is the reason why I chose this clip, one of the best soundbytes ever.
I considered trying out iclone at one point, but that was way back before settling on the workflow I have right now. (and since I had already paid for motionbuilder, might as well use it to the fullest)
I was a long time user of the original Mimic, and got to the point where I was creating my own dmc's to add more of the facial movement than the default and ease the transitions between phonemes (it was a little harsh at times) Can you do that in iclone?
EVEE is such a nice renderer, I need to see what I can do about using it more with my workflow. I had been using Marmoset Toolbag, but recently they've had a lot of issues importing animation, where it doesn't look right, doesn't hit the target blendshape/bone shapes, etc, so I've been using UE4, which for my purposes, is more than enough for now, and they've been adding so much to it (especially in the real-time arena, which a lot of my clients seem to be gravitating to)
93 minutes? wow, that is a LOT of work, I congratulate you!
It was a painful 93 minutes with a really old version of C4D on a really Old mac computer.
I feel good to have accomplished a feature length animated Fanfilm working all alone, but I am greatly relieved to have it all behind me and moving on to newer and better with Blender EEVEE and my New AMD PC tower I am buying at the end of May
As you know, the biggest weaknesses with all Daz native lipsync options including the $90 USD "Anilip2",is the linear "quick Snap /lip flap" effect between phonemes that is very unnatural.
Reallusion added smoothing filters for the upper& lower jaw to blend the transitions between phonemes which are evident in the clip I posted.
As well as individual strength adjustments for the upper and lower jaw.
Iclone has an optional cam based Facial motion capture plugin requiring an $$$ IphoneX $$$
But I wont buy back into the Apple Ecosystem just to use one program feature.
I agree with you there.. not a fan
now, wouldn't you love to see a plugin like this for Blender? someone will probably come up with one https://vimeo.com/416449236
Ya, I've seen that, and as you say, not very practical. Don't get me wrong, facial mocap with Dxyz can also be a little tedious, as you have to go back and forth with it until you get to a level of satisfaction (notice I don't say perfect.. lol) but after that everything is virtually automatic (meaning, that same profile can be used for the same actor and a multitude of different characters as long as the capture environment is similar)
The iphone product is good, but forces you to a certain naming and blendshape convention, while Dxyz uses anything you are already using (bones, blendshapes, splines or combination thereof), you can use any camera (as it is basically video based). I wish I had the skills to create a plugin with it for Studio, as they have for Cinema4d and autodesk products (maybe I should talk to them about making a blender plugin)
The old Mimic Pro still seems to be easier and more accurate than a lot of newer solutions. Anilip, for instance, doesn't look good, even in their demos. Mimic Pro still works in Windows 10 on my new machine, so glad about that, but I wish they would update it for the newer figures. This is quick test I rendered right in Mimic, so no other animation added, but I think the lip sync is pretty good, considering this software is from 2008!
Welcome back to your own thread :-) I was being super polite about Anilip2 but.....
hmmm.yeah
I agree that the venerable mimic pro3 rules the pre genesis era. But Daz's hands are apparently tied by a standing license agreement restricting what they can do with the original mimic technology so they have moved on.
There is a third party IPHONE BASED facial capture app called 'Face mojo"coming to DS.
For my post C4D.obj/MDD pipeline, I decided to just use the tools I already owned, and convert my Daz characters to realtime Iclone Avatars and use Reallusions far superior motionbuilding, face puppet& lipsynch tools,and round trip between Blender and Iclone.
And this is the final render... https://vimeo.com/417876497 brought it into Marmoset Toolbag (1 hr render vs 12hrs that it took for my previous test in Studio), I will render it out in Studio for comparison
Quick compositing in AE to add rain, smoke and a slight blur to the character to knock down the sharpness. As far as I'm going to go with this one, but I think I will use it for the tutorial I'm planning (yes, still going to do that)
Thanks for sharing that Tim!, ahh, the good old days..