Developing high quality animation in Daz3D

Ivy

tring01 said:

Lotharen said:

@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.

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.

Everything you said is true that animate 2 is the use of motion capture used in Layer timeline . its just one of the arsenal of tools you can use to animate in Daz,.  I've been using animate 2 for years , But you will find like i said that "Hand keyframing" your own Animations using the puppeteer tool will work much better for you once you learned how to use daz. for creating custom animation movements.  I'll stand by my advice that  you should always save your newly created movement you made as a Anibock , as  the more you use daz for animation the more you will fall back on animate 2 for background & character movements. moves, it  will save you time and furstation in setting up scenes with multi characters , when you start getting into more complex animation with daz.  I have also found over the years of using daz that every person will find what technique will work best for them. I personally like to render to AVI while other prefer to render in single png keyframes. So that is why I never tell people how they should create their animations, my way of doing things may not be the way they are use to creating animations & etc.. .

Each person  no matter your 3d software you choice will find this to be true, because as you learn 3d you also learn short cuts & tricks in the software your using,   I use daz to make animations because they are fun and I like to tell stories, daz give me that outlet.

Ivy

tring01 said:

 

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.

If your making anime style animations  you don;t really need photorealism, , beside if you truely want photorealisim animation I properly would use Maya or Cinema4D only because they have better rendering options  the more exspensive the software the better the goodies that come with it.  for Cartoons and basic  animations 3delight works great , Unless you don't mind waiting 10 hours for 30 keyframes of rendering with Iray. beside if your using windows Movie maker or Youtube all your iray render  relistic efforts will go out the window anyway. I created a Haunted castle animation a while back  that came out perfect until I uploaded it to Youtube and then the 1080 HD  did me no favors with the fog and volume cam effects because it pixelated under the youtube video convert format...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8-EE7fUAjY&list=PLFF80205552D7368D&index=12

As a personal prefference I am pretty happy using 3dlight  for my style of animations  its fits my needs with a heck of a lot less render times.  for good looking renders in 3dlight you just need to tweek your lighing to get the results your looking for,  Besides it not like I am making a disney quailty movie or something, for those type animations   I would be looking at using Mudbox and Maya with a $6000 license fee to use them.  No thanks Daz works great for what I do and I have no problems with using 3delight as my render engine. it was developed by Renderman .   :)

Lotharen

Thanks for the replies everyone! I'll give it a go with 3dlight and see what happens. I was attempting to save the animation but didn't know how and only saved as a scene - so I doubt my animation will be there when I load it back up. Keymate was a huge help in making the test animation, there are a few flaws and such with positioning I didn't like but I really wasn't paying attention to detail with this.

One question though. I attempted to get the eyes to follow the camera - from the point the camera is in front of the face to its resting spot and the eyes kept cutting to the camera's initial starting position for the entire scene. I tried making a keyframe of the camera and eyes at the start of where I wanted them to follow but that still didn't work. Any ideas?

Lotharen

Ivy said:

tring01 said:

 

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.

If your making anime style animations  you don;t really need photorealism, , beside if you truely want photorealisim animation I properly would use Maya or Cinema4D only because they have better rendering options  the more exspensive the software the better the goodies that come with it.  for Cartoons and basic  animations 3delight works great , Unless you don't mind waiting 10 hours for 30 keyframes of rendering with Iray. beside if your using windows Movie maker or Youtube all your iray render  relistic efforts will go out the window anyway. I created a Haunted castle animation a while back  that came out perfect until I uploaded it to Youtube and then the 1080 HD  did me no favors with the fog and volume cam effects because it pixelated under the youtube video convert format...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8-EE7fUAjY&list=PLFF80205552D7368D&index=12

As a personal prefference I am pretty happy using 3dlight  for my style of animations  its fits my needs with a heck of a lot less render times.  for good looking renders in 3dlight you just need to tweek your lighing to get the results your looking for,  Besides it not like I am making a disney quailty movie or something, for those type animations   I would be looking at using Mudbox and Maya with a $6000 license fee to use them.  No thanks Daz works great for what I do and I have no problems with using 3delight as my render engine. it was developed by Renderman .   :)

@Ivy  In your animations which figures do you tend to use? I thought I could see V4 up to G2?  Just curious.

tring01

Ivy said:

tring01 said:

 

If your making anime style animations  you don;t really need photorealism, , beside if you truely want photorealisim animation I properly would use Maya or Cinema4D only because they have better rendering options  the more exspensive the software the better the goodies that come with it.  for Cartoons and basic  animations 3delight works great , Unless you don't mind waiting 10 hours for 30 keyframes of rendering with Iray. beside if your using windows Movie maker or Youtube all your iray render  relistic efforts will go out the window anyway. I created a Haunted castle animation a while back  that came out perfect until I uploaded it to Youtube and then the 1080 HD  did me no favors with the fog and volume cam effects because it pixelated under the youtube video convert format...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8-EE7fUAjY&list=PLFF80205552D7368D&index=12

As a personal prefference I am pretty happy using 3dlight  for my style of animations  its fits my needs with a heck of a lot less render times.  for good looking renders in 3dlight you just need to tweek your lighing to get the results your looking for,  Besides it not like I am making a disney quailty movie or something, for those type animations   I would be looking at using Mudbox and Maya with a $6000 license fee to use them.  No thanks Daz works great for what I do and I have no problems with using 3delight as my render engine. it was developed by Renderman .   :)

Hi Ivy!  I always value your opinions.  Thanks for chiming in!

My goal with animation is 100% focused on going to YouTube.  I've found that you can dial down the quality of IRay renders significantly and not see any degradation due to the "fog of YouTube".  That said, I'm pretty convinced that I'm going to move back to 3Delight.  IRay does much better stills, but I'm not looking to do stills.

Can you point me to a decent primmer on how to get the lighting right in 3Delight?  I've heard from many on this forum that the key to 3Delight is doing your lighting "correctly", but I'm not having much luck finding out any details on what they mean.

Ivy

Lotharen said:

@Ivy  In your animations which figures do you tend to use? I thought I could see V4 up to G2?  Just curious.

I started out with Generation 3 characters  Vicky 3 and Michael  and as daz studio progressed. I just kept up with the characters upgrades, until Genesis 2.  My favorite character is A4 because i like to make anime  . I have not bought or done anything with V7 or g3f  . I found Genesis 2 works very well for key framing animation for my needs at this time... so I am still building my library for g2f and g2m items for now.. I have not seen anything that has intergied me enough with genesis 3  for me to invest in it yet.

Ivy

tring01 said:

Hi Ivy!  I always value your opinions.  Thanks for chiming in!

My goal with animation is 100% focused on going to YouTube.  I've found that you can dial down the quality of IRay renders significantly and not see any degradation due to the "fog of YouTube".  That said, I'm pretty convinced that I'm going to move back to 3Delight.  IRay does much better stills, but I'm not looking to do stills.

Can you point me to a decent primmer on how to get the lighting right in 3Delight?  I've heard from many on this forum that the key to 3Delight is doing your lighting "correctly", but I'm not having much luck finding out any details on what they mean.

All my animations go into youtube as well. and I have noticed youtube has made some pretty good changes using the H.65 HD video formats instead of the FLV which have given the uploads a better looks  I started out just like you its just took me time to learn what I have in animation. some pick it up faster than others,  I was a slow learner..lol   The best advice for creating day time scene lighting  is to use 4 distant lights, one for each pole . North, south, east and west and then make a distant light the sun. make sure you name it the sun so you know which is which .. thats a good starting point for day time lighting from there you can change  your light brightnesss  & color settings and  shadows setting are under the parameters tab.  I would start with using deep shadow maps to see if it will give you enough shadows you require.  if not then use the raytrace shadow setting but be aware it will take a few more seconds of rendering under raytrace shadow maps.

For night time and inside settings I use 2 distant light sources set at defuses light with no shadows maps  and then i just I use spot lights with raytrace setting for where i need the extra light & shadows .. this speeds up your render times & allows your effects cameras to work off the spot lights and it give you more control  on where and how you place your lights  you need by moving the spot light..  ( Hint) you can view through the Spot light like a camera to help locate it where you need it , you just can't use it as a camera for rendering . to view through it it like a camera , just go to your view settings and choose the number spot light you like to view through so you can properly place it where you need it , then go back to your main camera and do a test render to see if you placed it right, from there you can play with the light settings for the spotlight under the paremiters tab. as well .. I hope thats helps for a starting point . :)

tring01

Spent some time learning a bit about how AOA's lights work.  Here's my first test.  I was able to render this in under 2 hours at HD quality.  This is more than adequate quality for what I plan to do.  Guess I will save working in IRay for another day.

YouTube will default your playback to 320p, but you can select 720p and it looks quite good at that resolution.

Lotharen

tring01 said:

Spent some time learning a bit about how AOA's lights work.  Here's my first test.  I was able to render this in under 2 hours at HD quality.  This is more than adequate quality for what I plan to do.  Guess I will save working in IRay for another day.

YouTube will default your playback to 320p, but you can select 720p and it looks quite good at that resolution.

Thats really good. I'm having the problem with 3delight where I'm getting like a ghosting around the figure.

tring01

Can you post up an image or something?  I'm no expert, but I might be able to make a suggestion.

Lotharen

tring01 said:

Can you post up an image or something?  I'm no expert, but I might be able to make a suggestion.

I uploaded the video to youtube. That way you can see it better. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ngXJQL2ag

What are the AoA lights? Can you link to the product?

Ivy

tring01 said:

Spent some time learning a bit about how AOA's lights work.  Here's my first test.  I was able to render this in under 2 hours at HD quality.  This is more than adequate quality for what I plan to do.  Guess I will save working in IRay for another day.

YouTube will default your playback to 320p, but you can select 720p and it looks quite good at that resolution.

That is very good . :) Congradulations I think you got the gest of it :)

Ivy

Lotharen said:

tring01 said:

Spent some time learning a bit about how AOA's lights work.  Here's my first test.  I was able to render this in under 2 hours at HD quality.  This is more than adequate quality for what I plan to do.  Guess I will save working in IRay for another day.

YouTube will default your playback to 320p, but you can select 720p and it looks quite good at that resolution.

Thats really good. I'm having the problem with 3delight where I'm getting like a ghosting around the figure.

It maybe how much back light your using or light angle or directions behind the character.. can you please post a snap or  render1 frame of your animation and post it so we can see how the how it looks . My experience has been usually Halo effect or ghosting like a double exposure is caused by to much back light or wrong angle light source, sometime you maybe get a little shutter to cause a Halo effects by the character moving to slow or fast but thats not that common for what your describing. try moving one of your light sources a little  and see if it improves .

Lotharen

Okay, it must have been because of the black background. I changed it to white and rerendered and that ghosting/artifact isn't visable. My question now would be how do you handle a really dark scene, one that would be required to set the mood like night or a lowlight dungeon?

Ivy

I would try a couple of distant light sources set them at defused light and change the light color to grayish/blue color. There is a slide on the side of the color picker you can adjust  how dark the color you want. color   reduce the distant lighting to around 50% each. This sets your Amebeit light. Next add a Spotlight set the light around 80% add a little orangey yellow color to the spot.. keeps it modest. Try the spot(s) Set at deep shadow map setting first to see if thats enough shadow required if not use raytrace,.  point the spot at your subject.or character. so the spot puts the light focus on what your trying to draw the viewers attention too.  Bingo you in like flint

Check out this animation. that is the lighting technique through out the whole film I used . Zelda Raines & The Wizards Castle . Daz Studio Animation

Lotharen

Ivy said:

I would try a couple of distant light sources set them at defused light and change the light color to grayish/blue color. There is a slide on the side of the color picker you can adjust  how dark the color you want. color   reduce the distant lighting to around 50% each. This sets your Amebeit light. Next add a Spotlight set the light around 80% add a little orangey yellow color to the spot.. keeps it modest. Try the spot(s) tat deep shadow map setting first to see if thats enough shadow required.  point it at your subject.or character. so the spot puts the light focus on what your trying to draw the viewers attention too.  Bingo you in like flint

Check out this animation. that is the lighting technique through out the whole film I used . Zelda Raines & The Wizards Castle . Daz Studio Animation

Thanks Ivy! Your a peach. :)  Ill give that a go. One other question - I've noticed I cant use HDRI's with 3delight (or at least I don't see a way). Do you use a lightdome or something for your skys?

Ivy

Sometimes I use a Uber evnioment Sky-dome or sphere  But mostly I use a Free Sky Dome By Glasseye I found at sharecg .com  Glasseye also has a bunch of free textures to go with it   which I had great luck in using.

Good luck make sure you post what you create :)

Ivy

I shoudl memention Dimmsion Theroy has HDR for 3dlight.I dunno if they are still offfered or not.    I don't make HDRi for 3dlight just for Nvidia rendering so I have no idea how to even created a 3delight hdri  Sorry no help there

Lotharen

Ivy said:

I shoudl memention Dimmsion Theroy has HDR for 3dlight.I dunno if they are still offfered or not.    I don't make HDRi for 3dlight just for Nvidia rendering so I have no idea how to even created a 3delight hdri  Sorry no help there

Thanks a ton! I'm currently checking how Luxrender will process an animation....right now with a 800x450 frame size the animation is rending at around 1.3 minutes a frame.

Ivy

I usually render at 1080p HD  with 8 lights Most times my average render times are about 8 - 10 minutes per frames. a 10 seconds 300 keyframe scene can take up to a day and 1/2 to render.  But i'm not shy to use shadow map.So I don't mind the render times to get quailty renders.I use a external hard drive for my runtime  so I can access my runtimes with mulit computers. Build the scene s on my I5 lap-top and render them on my big machine thats a 3.5 ghz  with lots of ram and cooling fans..lol  I also most times usually will create and set-up my animation scenes during the afternoon or day and render them at night when I'm sleeping or when I'm working  I save the my scnes as AVI movies and use Microsoft 1 Video codex to save it.  when done. I put all my scenes together in Adobe Premiere pro  cs5 so I can do my post work to the scenes if i need to add external FX or extra light effects.

Its all a learning process the more you do the more you learn :)

Ivy

This is a older animation using Dynamic clothing in daz studio  this was done using just 3 spotlights. and a Cyclorama background prop

The Dancer HD. Daz Studio Animation ( dynamic clothing)

Lotharen

That is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing your render times like that. My iray clip was actually going at around 1.8 secs per frame which wasn't to bad honestly....considering the times you mentioned.

I'm averaging almost 4sec a frame with Luxrender right now, so Iray was faster - it just tends to bog my machine down a bit more than Lux. I can leave lux running and play games at the same time. lol

Ivy

just make sure you post what yu get done so we can see your movie:)

WendyLuvsCatz

probably the only one I am willing to share here

not high quality but from the heart, some of it was done in DAZ studio with Octane render the rest was Carrara and iClone

https://youtu.be/c-w2NUJ3UHU