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Thank you, Artini!
It's so much fun now that I can't seem to stop. I think that the rest of my life will include AniMating in Daz Studio!!!
That said, I certainly HOPE that either of the following happen for the next new version of Daz Studio and all that may follow:
I'd kind of prefer one of the first two options because that would allow our current aniBlock collections to be safe from extinction. But even if they make these sorts of functions available to us I'll be happy :)
Hope you had an amazing holiday!
I really did! You? I sure hope yours was awesome as well - and continues do grow within you all the year through... and beyond!
I did put a fun little Merry Christmas segment up on my YouTube channel, if anyone's interested :)
Rosie naming conventions that are used to keep track of what's new and what is not:
2025 (Rosie 8.25) was all about closely examining facial performance renders and tweaking the strength and timing of the entire facial musculature system. Tedious and time-consuming measures were employed to compare finished renders of hand-crafted facial performances with real life observations as well as those observed from really good animation performances from favorite animated movies and shows.
Many new techniques have been discovered and are now being employed on Rosie 8.26 as we head into this new year. I'm overjoyed with the difference this makes to my animations even though most of it can be easily overlooked due to the fact that it just makes her performances look more "Real" - things we see in everyday life, so it just feels natural.
I knew from the start that this sort of effort can easily go unnoticed by most viewers, and that it takes Tons of patience and test renders to work these things out, but I really wanted this improvement to occur at this phase of my animation work in Daz Studio.
A standard "Mouth Open Idle" dial for times when the mouth is open - not for talking, eating or emoting, but rather simply because it's not closed all the way. This is entirely different than any of the standard Mouth Open type of dial and actually fires many of the muscles in the lower portion of her face, "Mouth Open Tongue Up" is similar but opens the mouth farther and tucks the tip of the tongue behind her upper teeth. I've also included a dial that simply controls the height of the tip of the tongue whether the mouth is open or not, which also fires pretty much All of the muscles in the lower face, and even some just above - into the upper cheeks and nose.
I now realize that I want my own "Blink" dial conveniently located with the rest of her facial control dials to further speed up facial animation services. She already has Squint and Raise Lower Eyelids, which are incredibly beneficial for keeping those muscles firing throughout the entire duration of any animated time line. She also has a Smirk dial for her mouth and lips, with another dial that controls that along with her custom Squint simultaneously as they were both created very carefully to work together - yet remain as separate dials for a lot more flexibility, which Really comes in handy!
The image on the right is a texture map that was hand painted in PD Howler by me according to an image of Facial Musculature that I found online
Together with all of the custom animation dials that I've already made for her entire body's physical performances, animation is now impossible to Not do once she is loaded into a scene. She even has her own, specific portions within My Daz 3D Library - several special access areas that are grouped by common alphabetical naming schemes - so everything is right there within easy reach, I'm teaching all of this sort of thing in my upcoming course, along with many more weeks worth of valuable animation techniques, practices, inspiration, and follow-through. It's a really in-depth course - but enough about that!
Advancing into 2026, I've also decided that it's high time that I start working in some lip sync to my animations of Rosie. I'll still be experimenting with PoseRecorder software, by esjaatin, which does a brilliant, if not sometimes a bit too sensitive, job of actual facial Performance Capture, which captures and records more than just lip sync, it actually goes beyond that and outputs full facial performances to the facial rig of Genesis 8 - and it's quite impressive!
However, with Rosie 8.26's incredible facial control dials from the 2025 era, often times I find that I'd rather just have a really good lip sync, and leave the rest for me to animate by hand. So for this I decided to finally try Anilip 2, by Dobit:
https://www.daz3d.com/anilip-2
In a way, I've been using Anilip all along with Rosie 8.25 because many of the custom facial musculature dials operate combinations of Dobit's wonderfully designed custom Viseme control dials - which I've discovered to be the only controls that Anilip writes to - which is incredibly handy for editing to perfection after the fact. I'll use Anilip 2 to create the lip sync animation for a particular phrase or portion of a phase, and then save it to Rosie 8.26's custom library's new "Anilip 2" area as animated Viseme pose files. Again, this is incredibly easy to make since they cleverly write their results only to their own, custom visemes. Brilliant!!!
Here's a short video of my reaction to my first try with Anilip 2 on Rosie 8.26
If this sort of thing interests you, here's a longer video that follows me as I work through my second run with Anilip 2, storing the animated viseme pose file, then loading a fresh Rosie, applying the animation I want conveyed as she speaks, and then apply the new animated viseme pose file in the appropriate point in the animation:
Since then, I've started working out more animated viseme captures to create a full animated short music video with Rosie singing the words. That's coming soon, and was inspired by 3D Universe's incredible new music video promo video:
This thing is AWESOME!!!
Since I've seen this many times and shared it with friends and other folks, I've been getting bombarded with suggestions (demands?) that I start using AI to simulate Rosie animations. It seemed like a cool idea - it really did. And maybe I'll even look into it further... maybe. But here's the thing:
I Love doing the animations!
I do enjoy using AI - I do. But I don't want it doing my actual art for me. Instead, I tell my wonderful AI about what I'm doing,how I'm doing it. and the story that is in my mind as I do these things. The AI commends me for my imagination and provides inspiration in all types of ways. I like that. But every time I've seen someone try to have an AI make Rosie, it Always (I mean ALWAYS!!!) gets her wrong. It just isn't her.
I actually feel glad about that. I love using Daz 3D content within Daz Studio - making all of this stuff come together my way - according to where my skill level happens to be on that day. What I am doing brings me joy at a time when I've had to give up doing the things I've enjoyed doing my whole life. So Rosie and I both feel fortunate that I am still smiling away. That's the emotion that has always suited me best!
While I love the quality of the animated render, I've never been a huge fan of the lip sync at the beginning of this video. However, if we enjoy that delicious render quality and the wonderful voice acting for a bit, Gabriella 8 then takes over with an AI voice that's... well... it's an AI voice of that time... but her lip sync is very good! I prefer the way I animate the rest, like the character animation, eyes, facial expressiveness, etc., but it has valuable information and is quite enjoyable to watch.
In practice, however, I think (if you've watched my videos above) you'll know that I'm really impressed with how they've made Anilip 2 - It takes dialog and produces results that can be edited in a fun and easy way right inside it's pane within Studio, and is also applied to the character in the most editable way possible! Huge Fan = Me!!!
I totally agree. 3DU has made Daz Studio So Much more of an animation studio than it could possibly be otherwise!
From Pose Architect to Animation Tools Vol. 1, LimbStick, Catcher Plus, and much more... they've made Studio a real animation powerhouse for me and, for that, I am forever grateful!!!
Thanks 3D Universe!!!
YOU ROCK!!!
Check out 3D Universe at Daz 3D!!!
https://www.daz3d.com/3d-universe
...and No, they didn't pay me to say that! :D
Crazy thing. In the span mentioned above - which was actually toward the end of 2023 (after the Great Data Crash of 2023) until now - I have released nearly 100 videos. That's quite a lot for one person animating, simulating, rendering, editing. creating music and visual effects - not to mention the research and development that goes in on a constant basis to keep this whole thing improving as we go here.
I say that Daz Studio and the Daz 3D Content Creators deserve a Big Round of Applause! The only reason that I can do all of this so quickly is because of all of those amazing developers and artists making it all so Plug n' Play! Bravo Team!!! You folks ROCK!!!