Be Honest, Is Daz the best for animation?

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  • IvyIvy Posts: 7,153

    Nice, fun to watch  :)

  • specta3specta3 Posts: 32
    Ivy said:

    Nice, fun to watch  :)

    Thanks :)      

    I just edited it trying to reduce the lag from effects , managed to make it a bit smoother

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,131
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • specta3specta3 Posts: 32
    edited June 2016

    Really cool, creepy atmosphere you made there. So CryEngine is for all the background and effects? Was it hard to learn? I did a quick google and see that its for game development mostly.

     

    Thanks Dominic

    The volcano particles and clouds etc where made in cryengine useing the particle editor . The temple and bridge are daz assest that i imported to Cryengine and filmed it in there. The colour grades and other particle effects where added in HitfilmPro. Also used Green screen for most of the dragon shots and chars.

    Cryengine has a great terrian editor in it and its easy to use and renders trees rocks plants very well and a neat system to place them. If you want to create a enviroment to show Daz assets in its ideal for it. Things get difficult once you start to animate and use AI in cryengine .Thats why i use Daz to animate in , you can also export alembic models and animation direct from Daz to Cryengine.

    Cryengine has been used in Films as well and has just launched a new version of cryengine aimed at the films industry . Cryengine is free to use and if you take the time to learn the basics you can create any enviroment you want , just takes a little time learning

    Love Daz and its animation tools and AntiBlock system and assets , but when it comes to enviroments you you need to look at other applications. Cryengine also has a tool called the designer tool , Its a straight forward to easy to lean3dModeling   tool great for making your own shapes like bridges and houses and stuff  and and its  powerfull and its all free to use are pay what you want etc

    You should give it a try

    https://www.cryengine.com/get-cryengine

     

     

     

    Post edited by specta3 on
  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,131
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • RuphussRuphuss Posts: 2,631

    just discovered one of my first animation with daz

    lots of light playing

    just post it here for the cool guitarplaying

    so hear it loud

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqHJpAVFiXw

     

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,131
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • KnittingmommyKnittingmommy Posts: 8,191

    Probably one of the best dance animations I've seen to date.  I like the guitar, too!

  • nelsonsmithnelsonsmith Posts: 1,325
    edited June 2016

    I was about to say Blender, though as far as Noobs are concerned,  animation is going to be a challenge no matter what you're using.  It's going to take some dedication.

    That being said,  if you're simply trying to tell a story and animation is the medium you've choosen  to tell it in.  I've seen work done with Daz (in some aspect of the production) that I have to say more than meets professional standards.   As far as being the best,  I'm hesitant to say that about any piece of software.  Best really comes down to the user more than the tools.  I've seen fantastic animation done Blender, and complete crap done with Maya, yet a lot of people would say that Maya is the best 3D program around.

    Check out the film Rosa, and then read up on the articles about the guy that made it.  He learned the skills to pull this off in a very short amout of time.  certainly a shorter amount than it would take to master any of the other 3D programs out there to the extent that you could pull off a bit of animation like he accomplished.   Yeah  I'd have to say that Daz can meet your needs.

    Post edited by nelsonsmith on
  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,131
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • RuphussRuphuss Posts: 2,631

    thank you Dominic and mommy

    that was one of the moments where you think:

    "damn that was me!"

  • RuphussRuphuss Posts: 2,631

    about Rosa

    very well done

    the trick you can learn if you like it

    cut, cut, cut and cut

    no long animation sequences in it

    and you can hide a lot with this

    or in other words

    the art of hiding means let the eye of the beholder work for you

  • IvyIvy Posts: 7,153
    edited June 2016

    I was about to say Blender, though as far as Noobs are concerned,  animation is going to be a challenge no matter what you're using.  It's going to take some dedication.

    That being said,  if you're simply trying to tell a story and animation is the medium you've choosen  to tell it in.  I've seen work done with Daz (in some aspect of the production) that I have to say more than meets professional standards.   As far as being the best,  I'm hesitant to say that about any piece of software.  Best really comes down to the user more than the tools.  I've seen fantastic animation done Blender, and complete crap done with Maya, yet a lot of people would say that Maya is the best 3D program around.

    Check out the film Rosa, and then read up on the articles about the guy that made it.  He learned the skills to pull this off in a very short amout of time.  certainly a shorter amount than it would take to master any of the other 3D programs out there to the extent that you could pull off a bit of animation like he accomplished.   Yeah  I'd have to say that Daz can meet your needs.
     

    it sure would be great if daz had a build in Bullet & physic engine like Blender and poser has. you could properly accomplish a lot more with daz studio if it had those options like blender. I hope when they come out with Daz 5 that it has a floor pinning tool.

    Heres a simple animation I did a couple years back, In all my animations I try to keep all my effects within the daz studio software.  and sadly a lot of those older tools that use to work in Daz 4.6 or older versions for water and particle effects no longer work in daz 4,9 , which makes me having to look for new solutions to create same simple effect  that I was once able to do easy . 

    Post edited by Ivy on
  • RuphussRuphuss Posts: 2,631

    " I hope when they come out with Daz 5 that it has a floor pinning tool."

    your word in mr and mrs Daz ear

    so many people coming to this forums asking the same questions again and again and then leave

    when they see there is just no interest from the company to evolve animation

    thats the way you lose customers

    not clever

  • MythmakerMythmaker Posts: 606
    edited June 2016

    Haha funny this thread is still going strong! Sign of the (video animation) time! 

    Ruphuss said:

    " I hope when they come out with Daz 5 that it has a floor pinning tool."

    your word in mr and mrs Daz ear

    so many people coming to this forums asking the same questions again and again and then leave

    And it's not like "floor pinning" is so advanced or something... Similar character manipulation tools (Carrara Poser iClone) all have simple live collision for simple shape objects or bounding boxes.

    For the 3D beginners it's just intuitive to have palms and shoes collide against flat-ish things, for the animators it is basic essential!

     

     

     

    Post edited by Mythmaker on
  • RuphussRuphuss Posts: 2,631
    Mythmaker said:

    Haha funny this thread is still going strong! Sign of the (video animation) time! 

    Ruphuss said:

    " I hope when they come out with Daz 5 that it has a floor pinning tool."

    your word in mr and mrs Daz ear

    so many people coming to this forums asking the same questions again and again and then leave

    And it's not like "floor pinning" is so advanced or something... Similar character manipulation tools (Carrara Poser iClone) all have simple live collision for simple shape objects or bounding boxes.

    For the 3D beginners it's just intuitive to have palms and shoes collide against flat-ish things, for the animators it is basic essential!

     

     

     

    so true

  • RuphussRuphuss Posts: 2,631
    edited June 2016

    für alle deutsch sprechenden (lesenden)

    ergibt sich hier grad ein interessanter thread (Faden) zum thema  animation

    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/95211/sprachanimation-mit-allen-modellen-auch-viki7-usw#latest

     

    Post edited by Ruphuss on
  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,131
    edited January 2018

      

    Post edited by FrankTheTank on
  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,926

    Thanks, Ruphuss! I had fun making the spellcaster animation. I made it just as a test trying to get render times down in 3DL but attempting better quality. It was done using a motion capture file from BoneTech3D's Bonus Wizard Combat Animation Pack, with a little of my own keyframed facial animation, and basic camera animation. I'm still figuring things out, and trying not to forget what I've learned in the little spare time I have.

    Thanks for the tip on mcasual's new firefly remover! It will be worth checking out if it saves time.

    For those who haven't seen it: 

    That looks like Sam from Silent Witness!

  • @cjmarsh

    "Blender" Get past the obtuse UI and workflow"

    Fer crying out loud, what version of Blender did you last use ?

    This "UI" complaint about Blender is totally un warranted,  it just keeps getting passed on from one person to another (who likely have never used the software).

    What is obtuse about the "workflow" ?

    The latest version (and versions from about the last ~5 years) have as "standard" a UI as any other 3d package.

    As for Daz, the ready-to-use content is its biggest strength.   Well maybe was, as Blender, has the blendswap site now, and other 3d packages (Maya in particular),  and 3dsMax have a huge amount of content available for free.

    It seems Daz animation tools are lacking  in:

    - no motion graph

    -no dope sheet

    Two, basic tools that are in every other "serious" animation package.

    Iclone seems to be in the same "mind set", trying to make it "easy" to animate.

    Without at least a dope sheet, your character animation gets "lumped" into one keyframe, making it very hard and messy to adjust.

    Maya seems to be on the opposite extreme, with all the animation components of a character rig (by default) seperate, unless you create a "character set" (something that Blender (with its "armature actions" does automagically)

    Mike

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  • D OvD Ov Posts: 103

    Here's my twopence of feedback about DAZ Studio. I have been using DAZ for three years now. How many successfull renders do you think I had since I started? One! Like more or less worth showing on public.

    I came to a major conclusion: DAZ Studio is excellent for beautiful stills and a source of great disappointment for animation. Unless you are a rocket scientist, a 3D artist who dedicated his lifetime to renders or you have 99999 lives to spend on learning tweaks and tricks. By the way, despite my frustration, I will continue using DAZ Studio as I don't see any comparable alternatives except Maya which is another unattainable Universe. Here are my major observations

    1. Making a character. It took me a while to figure out there are "generations" of models, all those Victorias, Aikos and Michaels. And  ever evolving generations of Genesis, the latest being G8. Every following generation of models is ever more beautiful and realistic. If you use them naked, you are good, but try fitting some clothing items that are designed for one model to another and you are sucked into a struggle. I tried sculpting a character using the likeness of my favorite actress and took G2 and G3 models. Face morphs are numerous, but somewhat strangely prioritized. Say I would like to have my model's face to be narrower. G2 morphs won't have that. Meanwhile, there are dozens of breast morphs. Ok, you can purchase face morphs, but again the simple facial bone narrowing might not be there. Face skulpting is complex and there are so many features that one needs to adjust. G3 offres more facial morphs, but then you'll have issues with either fitting clothes or animation. I will brag about animaiton later.

    Clothing items will stand miles away, they will be poking through one another, shoes will be in awkward places and poses... All those "smoothing modifiers" and all the bells and whistles you learn before anything actually fits on the model of your choosing. There' s nothing like buying an item and applying it to the figure straight.

    Hair is a story on its own. Until they recently introduced Dforce, the hair is a piece of fancy concrete on the top of your beautiful, life-like model.

    2. Animation. Here comes the trickiest part. Every move of a mouse invokes a sort of pre-rendering calculations. You sit and wait till it's finished. You have varios views and options to see what your creation looks like, of which most realistic is NVidia Iray. Try moving a character's hand with IRay on and see how long it takes! Rendering is a different story, of which I will brag later.

    There are aniblocks designed to make your life easier. They do if that's the only thing that you want to have. Again from one generation to another aniblocks will result in awkward zomby-like movements. Editing aniblocks is possible but my, how long it takes! The simplest of all things you would expect from an animation software - the figure to stay firm on the ground instead of falling through the floor is a tedious process. Applying poses for animaiton again may cause awkward results unless they are the poses for that specific model. Some other generation poses are applicable. there are paid transformation plugins available so you can apply a previous generation poses to the next generaiton model. I didn't see backward transition plugins. I spent a few months to animate a figure rising from the chair and walking around it. Unfortunatley for me it was a female model. The aniblocks are designed for a male character with  a huge dumblell between his legs and who is typically drunk or hypnotised. I tried to save the time by applying poses and ended up having my character flying around in the air and pirhouetting from one keyframe to another. I finally managed my poor girl character do what I expected her to do by asking knowledgeable people in DAZ Forum (people are so great here). After almost 5 months I got my first and only render.

    DForce has been a source of endless frustration. The cloths explode, it eats your RAM like a hungry Godzilla and you just sit and watch the cloth turning into stretched out pieces. And your computer crashes. For stills it may work, but for animations - no, unless you have a rendering farm. Almost the same for Dynamic Clothing. My character is wearing bell bottom pants. I am now in the third month of tryig that fabric to correcpond to the model's movements using Dynamic Clothing (paid plug-in too).

    3. Rendering. Here's the deal - my 30 sec animation took about 8 hours to render and I was lucky. Lighting, surface colors, materals, all that eats up your rendering time.

    All in all, DAZ studio is not intuitive, there is a great deal of time one needs to spend to actually achieve a decent animation result. Stills I can do in minutes, and they will be very nice looking.

    I tried iClone which is easier on your system but it's models and clothing and prop choices are poor. I tried exporting some items to render with iClone, or even C4D...very long journey I don't want to take anymore.

    I have a daytime job and I love animation but I don't have my lifetime to learn DAZ Studio in all its great details. I am a drag and drop person. I need to focus on animation not on fitting various items to one another and other distracting nonsense.

    Sorry, DAZ Studio, I don't love you. But I will continue living with you because the diversity of models and props is immense. And when I find a better alternative that is easy on my PC I will switch to it. Until then, long live DAZ Studio.

  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,796

    nothing is going to give you easy realistic animation

    there has to be compromises

    but if you are willing throw realism out of the window OpenGL with postwork does just fine

  • bighbigh Posts: 8,147

    I tried iClone which is easier on your system but it's models and clothing and prop choices are poor. I tried exporting some items to render with iClone, or even C4D...very long journey I don't want to take anymore.

    I love iClone for animation - used to use Daz Studio .

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