A couple of questions about Animating
Lotharen
Posts: 282
Okay, so I'm going to take the plung and attempt animating in Carrara but I have a few things I'm confused about.
1. Can you place a figure with in a scene, exactally where you want them....or will it default to the 0,0 marker?
2. I will be using Fenric's shader doctor, will it fix the white eye problem I have seen. Where the eyes are all white and you can't see the irisis?
3. What use is puppetteer when you can key frame? It seems so imprecise.
4. Other than the basic's that come with Carrara 8.5 pro is there any addon's or packages that would make life easier? (ie. better shaders, lighting, ect)
5. Do you animate with Gen4 or Genesis 1/2? Why do you prefer them. (I'm attempting to focus what I buy based on a figure set, just looking for input hehe)
6. When I attempted keyframing I moved the camera to get a better look at something and it recorded the camera movement, is there a way for that not to happen? Either via a second camera or something else?
7. How do particles hold up, realism wise? Video's on Carrara animation are hard to find. I'm just wondering would it be better to composite say fire or afterburner effects in Blender for will Carrara handle it just as well?
I think thats all the questions I can think of. I've attempted to animate in Daz Studio and its been very frustrating....expecially with no collision. I'm really looking forward to learning the in's and out's and making something 'hopefully' awesome.
Thanks for any replies, you guys are awesome!
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I can answer a couple of these. Regarding the camera movement, you can use what is called the Director's camera. When you create a scene, at the top left side of the Assembly room view port, you should see some text that says something like, Camera1 100%. If you click that text, a menu will appear where you can choose the Director's camera. The Director's camera is not a rendering camera and doesn't animate. If you find an angle you like with the Director's camera, you can select your rendering camera (Camera 1 for example), click the Camera 1 text at the top of the view port and then choose to position your camera at the Director camera's location.
I've animated with the Generation 3 figures, the Generation 4 figures and dabbled with the Genesis figures. They each have their advantages and foibles. I like the joints better in the Genesis figures, but I haven't done much with them, so I'm maybe not the best person to answer this.
Here are a couple videos using Generation 3 and Generation 4 figures:
Particles can do some cool things. They can work really well for smoke, or something like a rocket engine, but for a campfire or something like that, maybe not so good. Although, if you use the particle emitter in conjunction with other effects, the effect can be pretty nice.
Here are some videos that use particles. The campfire video uses the fire primitive and some shader functions to make the logs look as if there are burning coals. I used a particle emitter for the sparks. I hadn't got around to using one for the smoke yet. I also used animated lights to get the flickering light, which was automated by using a noise tweener between the start keyframe and the end keyframe.
The Martian War machine was built and rigged in Carrara and has a simple emitter parented to the "head."
The emitter can even be used to write. This is a proof of concept loosely based on a long lost tutorial I read once.
So, aside from those examples, Carrara has many other features to consider, such as deformers, volumetric clouds, shaders, physics, etc. Literally, almost anything can be animated in Carrara.
There are many fine plugins out there that can help extend Carrara, but it is not like Studio where you need plugins for anything beyond the most basic functionality. All of my videos use Carrara's native features with the exception of the A3 Walk Montage video, which uses Sparrowhawke's jiggle deformer.
Collision detection in Carrara is basically for placing objects in a scene. For animation purposes it really doesn't prevent collisions. There's physics for that in some circumstances. Maybe also setting constraints so something can't be moved beyond a certain point...
1. If you drag a figure into the scene as shown on screen, rather than the instance list, it will be placed where you drag it. Or just load as normal and then drag it to where you want it (or use the Motion tab if you need precision)
2. Is this in the render or just the preview? The issue may be the preview mode, if you select the fully textured mode (upper right of the main window) that may sort things.
3. I agree puppeteer is quite imprecise and doesn't record keyframes fast enough for me. I suppose it could be OK for adding a bit of loose, random motion to prevent a figure being completely static, but for most purposes, I agree that proper keyframing will be better.
4. There are loads of add-ons as Carrara can load Poser and DAZ content. There are lots of Carrara shader packs on the DAZ marketplace too, both general stuff and figure specific. There are probably less lighting packs, Tim Payne's sky packs and my own Carrara Portrait Studio come to mind.
5. Both Gen4 and Genesis can work well, the later generations tend to bend better in extremes, but both are about the same in terms of working with them.
6. There is a little check box to disable camera animation, but as Evil mentioned, you are better off using the Directors Camera for setting up. You can also add as many extra cameras as you need, sometimes I find it useful to add a camera and parent it to the figure's head, so that it follows the figure and you can pose expressions easily. You could do the same for hands or whatever. If you have extra cameras on the scene, you can specify which camera will be rendered in the render room settings, it will not automatically be the camera you are viewing the scene with.
7. Particles look OK for some types of effect, but you may be better off either compositing or maybe use an animated texture of fire (or whatever) and adding that to a plane or splat. Combinations of different techniques can work well.
I hope this helps. I am currently recording a video tutorial series on animating in Carrara, so that may be of interest when it is released. I do cover some animation in my other sets too (released under the Infinite Skills name)
2. I have not had this problem in many years of Carrara use.
3. I have not found much use for Puppeteer, but you do want to look at the NLA feature, and also Animate import for conversion to clips. Also, of course, Poser format mocaps like the Posermocap products available here at DAZ.
5. I use Gen4 characters because I have a LOT of compatible clothes, hair, mocaps, etc. There is a vary large amount of compatible items on many websites, at affordable prices.
6. Besides the director's Camera, I routinely add cameras to avoid moving the camera with the angle I want.
7. I have not had much luck with Carrara particles, and prefer using Particle Illusion which can overlay any still or video and renders near real time (or faster - really). Not cheap but very useful and with hundreds of free presets.
Thank you all for your replies! It is much appreciated.
I'm hesitant to buy now, honestly. With the mention of Daz Connect and how it locks Carrara from using the files do to the encryption has me skittish. Basically about Carrara's future, I don't understand why they just cant say what there going to do or not do in reguards to this program. I don't have a LOT of time to spend learning softwear and my worry is Ill get this - it will go obsolete and Ill need to find something else.
So - I'm stuck right now. I need to puzzle this out and figure out where to go. I don't have a lot of content - compared to a lot of you on the forums so picking up and refocusing my efforts wont be as painful or tedious.
/sigh
I understand where you are coming from - just to say that as of now, no content is locked from being used in Carrara and Daz have said that they have no immediate plans for Daz Connect-only products (although they have indicated they are planning to move to that at some stage in the future for some content).
Okay, this is going to really open to barn doors.
I've got Carrara, I'm ready to attempt a small animation. Here's what I want to do.
Base land scape with some small hills, a temple and sky with some clouds. Where do I begin??? What size should I use for the canvas?
The temple will need to be big enough to animate some figures walking out of it.....when I played around the temple was tiny when it entered the scene and it was sent to medium.
Thanks for any help in advance!
I would set the scene scale to medium when animating figures. Most content should come in at the right scale but for some reason, it sounds like your temple came in too small. You can see the real life dimensions under the Motion tab, so if it is too small, you can scale it up to be more lifelike.
Thank you Phil! That popped the temple in a the correct scale. Now to make it look like its surrounded by tree's to give it the illusion of being in a vast forest.
Replicators are your friend! You can control the distribution either by replicating on a plane or other shape that has had polygons deleted where you don't want trees, or you can use a distribution map on your terrain.
Right now I haven't got much time (if at all) to visit the forum, so I apologize if some of this is covered already, I just wanted to put my two cents in, and I hope that some of it might help you out a bit.
First of all, Ctrl + K (Edit > Align) is an excellent way to get anything where you need it to be in Carrara, and it can be very helpful to only select the axis' that you wish to be aligned in the dialog. Most cases selecting all of them is the way to go. But I've been finding it really beneficial at times to exclude one of them. If you don't have anything near where you need to send something, like your figure, just send it to the camera that aims where you want it. Then use the Director's camera (or another) and set it's positioning to match the camera you want to use, back it off a bit, and move the subject away in the appropriate direction.
Next is the topic regarding "which figure version do I like to animate with in Carrara?" and the answer for me is largely based on what I've made myself used to using over the past five or six years. But there are many factual benefits to each of them, so I'll speak my mind on that for a bit:
Michael 4 and the rest of his generation 4 family - These figures were made for Poser, and DAZ Studio of the time was geared more closely towards working with Poser-compatible figures. When Carrara was gaining the powerful, wonderful ability to import Poser format figures, and use them within Carrara as you would from Poser, it was done so using the same figure technology as this family of figure, so they are very compatible and a solid choise for reliability. As with everything when it come to cross-compatibility, there may be times when something just isn't playing nicely, which can be frustrating. But Carrara does a really nice job with Poser 7 and earlier figures, which generation 4 figures are top-of-the-line in. I have really grown to feel appreciative of the mesh layout of 4th gen DAZ figures. They have all of the parts of the eye mapped onto domains of the eyeball mesh with an extra Cornea, Eye Reflection, and Tear mesh to play with as well. Many of the setups I see have one of eye reflection or cornea set to just invisible, since in Carrara, we can put a nice clear glass-like shader onto one such serface to handle the entire outer layer. But for animation, we're treated to that extra shader-holding mesh for effects or shine-enhancing, or any other idea. The tear is amazing if you want to make your character sad. Just crank up the wet look, puff out the eyes a little and a cryin' they will be. The cornea mesh also has a nice convexing morph to add bulge.
I love using GoFigure's aniMate aniBlocks. There are a lot of them for M4 and V4 and most of those with fine with the partner with some tweaking as well. I don't think that the aniBlock importer works on Genesis 1 or 2 in Carrara. I might be wrong on that because I do recall using it on Genesis 1 at some point, and it accepted M4/V4 aniBlocks just fine. I just needed to tweak the feet angles along with some of the rest of the legs in certain parts, which is really simple using the graph editor, and the new graph editor 'selection box' makes such tweaks even easier. I really love Genesis 1 because it can be pretty much anything. Man, woman, child, ape, monster... and it can morph between them right before the camera's eyes! Carrara's awesome texture room makes animating shaders a real treat! That goes for any figure you use.
So right now I've got a cast of 4th Gen figures and a bunch of stand-in people made using Predatron's LoRez figures, which are excellent. They match up well with other figures and can add a lot of variety for background folks that don't need to be paid attention to, but would make a hole to have them missing. This is where aniBlock importing adds a whole new dimension. Use a frisbee toss animation on a guy on the street. Now take away some of those keys so that he's no longer throwing a frisbee, and you have an interesting action happening back around the corner of that far off building. Carrara is amazing at zipping through background details like that in a render as if it was just part of a background image - if you set it up like that in the first place.
DAZ Studio is on a developmental fast track and it's very impressive to me to see it grow. I never use it other than to just fire it up to look at once every blue moon, but it's quite the thing nowadays! So I'm grateful for whatever DAZ format nicities they can give us. I love the Genesis 2 models. I haven't tested making 3d morphs for them to be saved directly into my Carrara browser yet. I recall during earlier beta tests that it was strange to add morphs, but that's likely a simple learning curve - getting used to a different figure technology. Genesis 3 is really mind-blowing. Have any of you been checking that out? Man! Bones for the facial muscles and so on... Genesis 2 shapes are so improved... I wasn't ready to hear of Genesis 3. But boy oh boy are those ever nice! They do not work in Carrara so I've never actually opened one up. I use Carrara because I like it better. So I'll just stick with what works. I made up some Genesis 2 versions of Dartan and Rosie (my main actors) and I actually liked them better than the ones I've built from M4 and V4 over the past five years - that is, until I went to animate them.
Don't get me wrong, they animate very nicely. DUF pose files take forever to load for some reason, the hand poses aren't as elegant to use as Poser Hand poses, but the rigging is fantastic and very flexible to put to motion. My problem is with the fact that I've made my custom characters as Carrara-saved Poser figures a long time ago and have been adding my own morph needs to them along the way. When I need Rosie to smirk out a smile, it flows right through me as I scroll through the endless morph dials. One of my favorite parts about Carrara is the ability to simply save a new morph for my figures and their clothing, hair, and items. I have also been collecting a lot of content for those 4th gen models so it's easy for me to fall short when it comes to trying new ideas with the new models. There still is not a hair product for any of the Genesis versions that work for Rosie.
I started with Poser and found Carrara while looking for something just like Poser, but with a 3d modeler built in. Carrara vastly exceeded my needs and expectations. On that note:
Poser has this excellent Walk Designer tool. Poser also has a robust method of saving poses, even animated ones. We can save just certain joints and select the frame range. But it also includes the three special types of pose files: Full skeleton (figure), Just Face, and just hands. Save one hand pose and the file may be easily applied to either hand upon loading the file to the figure... very cool. The walk designer is great for setting up custom animated movements through a scene, and then we may save out the whole animation, certain joints of the animation, both, or any combination therein.
This whole thing makes 4th Generation figures invaluable to me.
The latest version of Poser I have, though, is Poser 7. Although it's seen many amazing improvements over the years since, I really only use it for Pose file (PZ2) creation and to remedy those odd occurances where a Poser-compatible product might have issues in Carrara - I can almost always make a remedied version from within Poser. One day I may buckle down and buy an upgrade but in the mean time, Poser 7 has been all I need in that department.
All of that considered, I should also mention that I've purchased Fenric's PZ2/BVH Export for Carrara, which works beautifully - but not for Genesis figures. If using Genesis is important, one could try exporting PZ2s from a 4th Gen figure, and then try and convert it over to Genesis via Poser (DSON for Poser) or DAZ Studio and then saving the optimized conversion out as aniBlocks.
Although I really don't use Puppeteer, it does record key frames to the timeline, which can be a valuable asset. It just takes practice and an understanding of how far to go with it. Carrara's NLA recording feature is amazing and can be used to record data for specific joints as well. I like to save various clips of various elements and mix and match them together to form the animation I'm after. Along those lines, the Puppeteer could be just the ticket for recording animations for specific joints that you need to be different than what you might already nhave available. For example, if you need the head to do a double-take during a walk cycle, you could use Puppeteer to record your head turns and store them as NLA clips so you can use those along with other NLA clips to achieve the results you need for the shot. Sometime to timing of the flick of your wrist can be much more fluid than trying to time it by dragging keys along the timeline. Now, Puppeteer is going to plop down keys as it sees fit to fulfill your mouse action. Just remember that any of those keys can be easily deleted. I delete many keys all the time in order to create my own custom variations of well-recorded motion files. After all... I'm not actually changing the original aniBlock (or PZ2 animation) files, just the work space in front of me. Screw it up? Just load it again! :)
In my experience, anything that can help the director achieve the right motion and the timing of that motion is a huge asset. Puppeteer is one such tool.
4. Other than the basic's that come with Carrara 8.5 pro is there any addon's or packages that would make life easier? (ie. better shaders, lighting, ect)
Fenric's plugins are awesome additions to the Carrara toolset.
Infinite Skills: Realism Rendering course, by Phil Wilkes, is really cool for learning a lot of the pro concepts of lighting and shaders in Carrara. It demonstrates a wealth of helpful insight towards setting up realism in shaders and lighting, benefits of 'linear workflow', indirect lighting both full and Ambient Occlusion Only as well as good tips regarding light type selection and uses. I am a fan of all of those training videos and still frequent them: Basic, Advanced and Realism. It's like having a Carrara professor built into your media player!
I also like to animate and so I use much faster methods of lighting than those discussed in Realism Rendering, but I only work in Linear Workflow mode now. Phil has completely converted me. But during my research into this workflow and putting his lessons to test, I've found that Carrara's Global Illumination with and without Indirect Lighting with modern multi-core computers can achieve very respectable timing. It's just a measure of how much time you can afford for each frame. Shader optimization combined with careful lighting and render settings are key elements to render times so that has been my main focus over the years on my own production and have come up with a standard that sacrifices some render elements which would be very beneficial for still shots, but much less so, in my opinion, for my animation clips. Most of my scenes are really fast - like, about one minute per frame up to around three and a half or four minutes per frame - which can crank out pixels faster than I can design them! ;)
Now, just imagine if Dart did have more time to visit the forums..... ;-)
Some here have seen full well what happens then! LOL
Yeah... sorry. I do tend to babble on and on and on.
The forum is a brighter, shinier, happier place when you are here,( and we learn stuff, too.) Hope RL eventually gives you time to return!
Thanks for that detailed responce! It's greatly appreciated. :)
Hi Da(d)rtanbeck.
Max.
Your wisdom and generousity are appreciated, Dartanbeck. Many of us lurkers thrive on your tips and workflow advice. I'm not sure you realize how much life-energy you've saved us all.
(That goes for EP, jonstark, diomede, philw, argus-, sci-fi-funk, fenric, andy, jo-mama2k, joe-ping, stevek, jaguarelle, sileneUK, and the rest of the seasoned and willing contributors in this fine - if not intriguingly eccentric - crowd)
cheers to you all and those I've missed. bravo.
ms