Developing high quality animation in Daz3D
tring01
Posts: 305
I'm teaching myself 3D animation (or trying to) and Daz is my starting place. I don't have the $$ to invest in pro level animation software. I've come up against an issue I need some help with.
Daz only has the basic timeline and puppeteer for animating natively. GoFigure 3D created animateLite, animate2, GraphMate and KeyMate - plus most of the aniblock packages, which are all great but they're no longer actively developing those products and there very likely will be no future versions of them or aniblock packages for G3 (unless another vendor starts working on them). I tried the Carnegie .bvh files and they're not really that useful in my opinion. They need so much cleanup one would be better off hand building aniblocks in the timeline. There is a converter for the old V4 aniblock packages, but it produces a G3 aniblock that has a lot of sliding around and weird motions that need cleanup like the .bvh files. The converted ones are cleaner than the free .bvh files though. I believe this is why there were a number of negative comments about the recent animation Daz3D put out advertising Karen 7. People can see the feet slipping this way and that during the walk animation which gives the model a floating look.
Add to this the fact that pose building vendors simply don't build useful every day activity poses (sitting in a chair, hitting a baseball, etc. etc.). They concentrate on exaggerated dance and modeling poses - so most of their content needs a lot of adaptation to look like normal human activity - which isn't really worth the time investment in my opinion.
This all leaves me building my own "normal activity" series of poses and using them to create realistic, clean animations for G3.
I've never done anything like this before so I'm reaching out to the community with a question: how does one find images of the human body in routine every day actions to use as a guide in building poses? Are there benchmark images or motion study videos out there anywhere that can be used as a reference guide in developing poses?
Thanks in advance for any help.
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Just put the type of pose you want to see (for example "doing the ironing") into Google Images search, and you will see hundreds of photos of this you can use as a reference.
If you want basic poses, they're not had to come by. 3d.sk has a basic pose reference for most of their models, and there's a whole section for pose references on deviantart. What I prefer to do in most animation programs is set up a keyframe set for motions that are going to be reasonably predictable-- walking, running, throwing things, and so forth. I'm not sure if you can export to .bvh, however.
If you're feeling really ambitious, you can set up in Blender and export kits that way, or if you're up for some real torture you can try and transfer G3F to Poser (been known to happen), and set up your keyframe animations in there. Poses you make in that can be read by Studio directly.
I haven't tried Studio's version of keyframe yet, but last I checked all the animation in Studio was dependent on Aniblocks, and those drive me nuts.
Well, first of all, I'm going to suggest you get Carrara which is also a DAZ 3D product. It's animation capabilities are far superior to Studio's. It is also pretty cheap, and if it isn't on sale, wait and it will be soon, I'm sure! You can get an Animate plugin if needed. It also has NLA tracks and Clips that you can create yourself and save for future use. The disadvantage is that it is not yet compatible with the latest Genesis 3 figures.
For animation, Carrara has multiple tweener types that you can access without a third party plugin, a really nice graph editor, almost any function in Carrara can be animated, including almost all the shader functions, there is a particle generator, the plant system allows you to add wind and rustle to the leaves and branches, there is a fire primitive, fog primtive, etc. etc. The list is extensive.
I would check your local library for books about animation. Even hand drawn animation books would be helpful as they will also discuss how to add weight or mood to a movement, even if they don't discuss the technical aspects of setting keyframes or the like. You could also search on-line for tutorials. I just searched for, how to animate sitting down, and came up with a boatload of links.
The biggest thing I see that people do wrong when they animate a scene, no matter the software, that they think they have to do everything all in one scene and in one take. This is not how things are done with real life footage and not how things are done in professional animations. My advice is to break your animations down into mini scenes, five to 20 seconds in length. Longer than thirty seconds for a single camera angle is pushing the limits of you audience's patience. If it is a dramatic shot or has camera movement, or is held for a certain mood, then you can get away with a longer take. If its a mundane task or a conversation, then go shorter with more cut-aways.
Remember, you don;t have to show somebody going through the physical process of sitting if you don't want to. All you have to do is suggest that they are going to sit, and then cut-away to something else scene related, such as another character, and then cut back to them seated.
Yeah, If I was willing to give up on G3F this would be a much simpler process. I could just buy V4.2 figures that are compatible with the animate2 aniblocks in Daz. Would make things much quicker. But I'm stubborn I suppose. I want to learn and develop my reference animation blocks skills over the coming years and I just can't see steping back to an older generation model for that. I'm assuming G3 will be the dominant product in the Daz universe going forward.
You speak the truth! My first attempt at animation consisted of a single static shot of a belly dancing figure that ran for almost 60 seconds. Awful! I realized I had to teach myself basic cinematography BEFORE my next attempt. Just about done with that now.
Thanks. I will try it.
Here's a few sample videos that I did that make heavy use of short renders and cut-aways, if it helps.
For no more than 2 years, meaning 20 months or so left. But that is assuming you think V4 was ever dethroned, which many will say never happened. Especially if you look outside of this one site. There is still much more support for V4.
But you could always use a corrective aniblock to make the V4 animations work well on Genesis or Genesis 2.
I vastly prefer Daz to Carrara for stills, but for animation, I concur with the advice to use Carrara. If I remember right, there are all sorts of physics functions you can use in animation.
Yes indeed. Its what I miss about Carrara. But I refuse to install it anymore. No commento.
Then there's the ocean primitive and a shader designed to create white caps as the waves rise, and dissipate as the wave lowers. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/uploads/FileUpload/75/0b3c7e116eedc7757c1e4ceae7ee01.gif
That was true until about 2-3 months ago. The two main sites for new releases of DAZ/Poser stuff is this site and rendo. Whilst obviously the new releases here are dominated by Genesis 2 and 3 items, Rendo was predominately V4 until recently. Now, I would say 2 out of 3 are for Genesis 2 or 3 (mostly 3), and 1 out of 3 for V4. If you look at the what's Hot (ie what people are buying, compared to what is released), then this is also dominated by Genesis now.
Whilst it is too early to say that V4 has been knocked off its perch, given the vast amount of older content for it, as far as new releases are concerned, it has already been replaced.
Hi heres my take on the matter. If you are truly serious about creating quality Character animation Skip Carrara and Save your money to buy Iclone pro with the 3D exchange pipeline tool. The key to creating & editing Character motion is a really good Human IK system and REAL TIME viewport editing !! Niether Daz nor Carrara truly offers this. It does not even matter that every parameter in carrara can be animated or that it has excellent spline graph tools The animation tools in Maxon Cinema4D are an order of magnitude better yet my $3600 seat of maxon still sucks at creating even to most basic Walk animation and forget complex/compound motions or retargeting character motion Data from outside sources. Iclone Has direct support for the genesis rigging it its "3D exchange" tool right there along with its template for Autodesk MAX biped and Autodesk Maya Human Ik rigs. I am using Iclone 5.5 pro to generate nearly all of the Character motion for my Current animated film project and am retargeting Iclone created Character body motion for genesis 1& 2 and ..yes poser figures as old as Daz mike2!!. It is achieved by simply bringing thier BVH skeletons into the 3D exchange app and a one click conversion to "non Standard" to make them ready to accept Iclone created motion Data Back in Iclone create any motions you desire with the native real time game engine figures from Iclone. and retarget the finishd motion to your daz genesis or poser BVH rigs with one click. and any secondary performance actions such as lipsynch,and facial motion incna be done in DS or poser but the true heavy lifting grunt work is done in Iclone in REALTIME
Keep in mind there is a threshold of content and tools people generally need before they replace older figures. That's the important piece. I've primarily bought G3F content since her release, but primarily use G2F for production work and use G3F for giggles. So charts would be influenced by my purchases but my output is primarily an older figure I don't need to buy stuff for anymore(and she works with V4 aniamtions I have pretty well too)
If you wanted to get animation done right now, I wouldn't pick G3F (even with that converter) unless you plan to do your own mocap or animations. If you are dependant on stock animations I would use an older figure. And that will hold true for a long time.
Yes, I'm starting to get the message. I purchased too much G3 content and tried and tried to find a way to animate it. I give up. I'm going to drop back to the G2 line, which means more money. Oh well. I'm also getting the point that animation can be fiddled with in Daz, but not with reasonalbe effort. Looks like iClone is on my Christmas list.
You may want to look into GraphMate and especially Keymate, two plugins for DAZ Studio available in the store here. They greatly improve the functionality of Studio's timeline and although I have not done a lot of animating in Studio, they certainly made it easier when I did.
I feel your pain, I'm sorry can't be much help to you. all I can say no matter what character generation type you choose they all come with their own set of challenges when it comes to animation. , The truth is using Daz software is a tough learning curve for animations if your just starting out, still trying to learn how to render still graphics. Your biggest draw back is your render times so you will needs some patients for rendering your scenes . , I know first hand how hard animation is with daz software. I have made 62 story animations using Daz.(not test animations) While Aniblocks and BVH files are great starting points in your animations. and will really help you alot in learning the daz timeline. you ill find over time custom hand keyframing animation with Daz puppeteer is no more difficult than doing it in Blender or 3DS . I can't tell you anything about Iclone or Carrera because i do not use those programs. I use to love using Poser for animation, but with the divorice between daz and SM . I had to make a choice on which software i wanted to go forward with to make animations with., Daz is by far the better program in "my opinions" But that another story.. I hope you post what you create. Good luck :)
This animation was done in Daz Studio - or so they say at least. I watched the whole thing. The dance routine at the beginning is slow but it picks up much later and I was impressed what that person was able to accomplish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE5EswUqppQ
All the carrara animations I have seen are not that smooth but appear robotic at times. I've heard Carrara is the best for animation compared to Studio but I just havn't seen it.
@Ivy Checked out your youtube channel. I'm am suitably impressed by what I saw. I to plan to use Daz Studio to animate - I've been thinking of getting Keymate and Graphmate to aid in my animation. What are your thoughts on those?
Thank you very much for the sweet comment. I have to admit its been a labor of love making my animations. I highly recommend having both graph mate and keymate. Graph-Mate is excellent for working with aniblocks that have issues of say like the feet dropping below your floor level , using graphic mate you can bend the animation curve to correct some of that types issues.. Key mate is a most excellent tools especially if your trying to join Aniblocks and you find some of your ani blocks don;t match up well. you can use Keymate to help you manipulate & split each of the keyframes giving you more control for your animblocks, Just remember to save the aniblock after you have corrected. to use next time. . After a while working in daz, you will find hand keyframing some of your custom animations movments is not as hard as you think if you use the puppeteer . but some good advice is after you made your custom motion is to save it as a aniblock so you have it for next time. because you will alwasy wish you did if you don't..lol I have tons of such custom aniblocks i have made, Its fun to watch your scenes come to life. , I use Adobe Premiere for my Video Editor so it gives me a few options for post work which helps a lot as well.
Each story I have animated has given me a new challenge to over come using the daz software so you will find the more you use daz the more techniques and skills you develop will only get better. like I said the worst part is the render times.
Thank you so much for that information. I'm also looking into mimic but not sure I will need/want that unless I tackle dialogue. I've seen your art on the forum as well and love what I've seen. Keep up the good work, I hope to get better as I play around in this huge playground called Dazstudio lol
That's a very encouraging tip. I'm going to try it soon!
Interesting that the recent posts on this thread have suggested that the basic tools of all animation packages are the same. I really suspected that. I've also noticed that professional game developers go straight to mocap to get the motions they need. Lot of food for thought on this thread. Thanks!
@Ivy Do I need to purchase Animate to handle animation as well as the above plugins? Just curious since I see Keymate and Graphmate both connect to Animate2 with in Studio but its only a lite version.
I was attempting to read up on it and was unable to determine if it works with Gen3 figures. Also, is it just to support the Aniblocks I see being sold?
Thanks in advance for any info.
Okay, attempted my first animation today. Was just playing around. I posed Bethany 7 in a basic standing pose, had the camera start around shin level and pan around her while moving up to her face. Her right hand was behind her head and when the camera got even with her face I had the hand drop to her waist, her head turn to follow the camera, stop and wink and smile.
I did it all with key frames, no aniblocks what so ever. I learned a lot - here are a few things:
1. Animating is FUN!!
2. Animating is HARD!!
3. Rendering with iray in 720p definition took 8h 30mins for a 9 sec animation - HOLY CRAP! that was crazy.
It was fun but 8 hours! OMG, thats a crazy long time. Of course my comp is a bit old, its an 3rd gen i5 with a GTX 960 nvidia card and only 8gigs of ram.....poor thing was strugling something fierce.
I've got the same animation rending with 3dlight and its done 43 frams in 10 mins (roughly), so over 210 more to go lol....thats a heck of a lot faster.
Anyway, just thought I would post that. :) Fun times ahead.
@Lotharen
I Bought the animate 2 plugin a long time ago before daz4.8 and it still works great . keymate and graph-mate work as their own tab & timeline. they are all plugins. to daz studio. using these tools together can help you archive pretty decent animations , it will take some practice and trial & error, but like you allready learned today.. Animating its fun . Instead of using Iray try using 3dlight its renders faster and still gives very nice results.
Animate2 is a very good tool and adds features not available with Graphmate and Keymate, but you don't need it to animate.
As an aside, you should know that Animate is an entirely different approach to animation. It uses a "layered", motion design concept where you can stack aniblocks on top of each other to combine different actions into a single composite animation. The developer calls it, "non-linear", animation. For example, you can use an aniblock for a walk, then layer on another to have your model turn her head and look at the camera, another to have her wave, etc. etc. In traditional linear animation all of these actions have to be in each frame because each frame is just a single pose. The real power of Animate2 is building a library of aniblocks for common actions you want to combine in different ways. Great concept. Unfortunately the Developer has moved on and is no longer updating the product. They do support it and will answer questions posted on their website (great guys), but I chose to go back to keyframe animation because it will always work whereas Animate2 will eventually become obsolete and disappear. That said, It's a cheap enough tool and is very feature rich. I would defiantly suggest purchasing it.
After playing around with the tools in Daz I find keyframe animation, with a little help from puppeteer, to be the fastest way to create something interesting. That method only works for sequences with simple or repetitive motions. You can throw together something quickly that looks good. The problems begin when your character needs to perform any complicated motion or interact with their environment. Suppose you want your character to bend over and pick up pencil off the floor. You won't be able to find stock poses that work for your key frames. You will have to create each pose either from scratch or by editing a stock pose. Prepare to watch days go by before you're ready to render - that is if you have the patience for it. That's why game studios use motion capture for their animation sequences. It's just a million times faster when you want complete control over your character.
Good to hear you're getting render times that low in 3Delight. I've done all my messing around in IRay because 3Delight, as implemented in Daz, can produce some horrifically bad looking results. Even at best, it can't touch IRay for photorealism. But...to beat the wall of render I may give 3Delight a second look.