HEAT Animation Plugin License Clarification

Gordig

emanuela1 said:

It is not clear whether the movements can also be saved locally and used even after the account expires and to what extent they can be used. From the website FAQ it seems to understand that if you cancel your account you can no longer use it.

The FAQ refers to animations you have "collected", which suggests to me that if you save an animation to your collection during your membership, you can still access it after your membership expires. The wording is a little unclear, so that may not be the actual policy. As for saving movements locally....that depends on how much work you're willing to put in.

jdkammerjr_dd07a7e512

Reading the agreement would mean me spending $700+ a year for commercial licensing... 

No thank you, I can buy iClone + Character Creator for the same price ONCE and can buy my animation for a couple of bucks from ActorCore and keep them... why would I go to a yearly subscription tier for animation that I might never use or fit my project's needs? 

It would've been better if they charged a low monthly fee for the bridge and charged individually for the MoCap files, so people aren't paying for a library of MoCap data they may never, ever use.

Look at it another way, if I spent $735 a year for the commercial license for the data, I could almost bought my own Motion Capture Rig from Rokoko (Body, Gloves and Facial Rig) for $3,995 in 3 years time... yeah, Heat is soaking people.

Ivy

wolf359 said:

Thank you for this deep dive of thise service @Ivy

Still alot of unanswered questions but in the end we are in an era where mocap is ubiquitous.
but not universally compatible with every 3D character rig type

The only way to extract commercial value from it is to provide RETARGETING methods for the specific character rig types for the eco systems to whom you are selling your mocap files/services.
it does not matter how the mocpa is harvested as even the new AI 
camera/video based systems need to be RETARGETED to your particular rigs in your software ecosystem at some point.
 
I can already do this myself with My Blender ARP rigs or Iclone 3DX or Autodesk Maya.

It looks like HEAT is doing this RETARGETING to Daz genesis 8-9
for a monthly rental fee.
However if you pay the $75 per month for a commercial use license  that is $900 in a year.

Which is exactly what it would cost you to buy
a perpetual license of Reallusion Iclone & Character creator 8.4
and create bespoke animation for genesis 1,2,3,8,9
and export to Daz studio as well as retarget canned mocap from Mixamo and any other sources such UE market.

or you could pay only $600 USD for the old Iclone 7 & 3Dxchange pipeline (That I use)
as iti is still available from Reallusion, and does the same thing.

But if  you really are into the whole pay monthly thing ,you can rent the Mighty Autodesk Maya indie for $300 per year and retarget to Daz figures,as long as your income is below $100,000 annual.

Pick your poison 

 

I'm not downing the plugin. I really do think this is a positive thing.  I think it will be very useful to people who are game developers. or are like Benny or yourself who are creating animation professionally.  I also believe Ai will be a huge tool as well.  But a speaking as just a hobby animator who does this for fun , Yea sure it be nice to have access to a mocap library like this. & I do have tons of canned mocaps I use. so I am not opposed to mocaps.  But for the prices its just not something I would be interested in and then still have to retarget the motions to work for my needs.. I would have no way to recoup the money & time that is invested. 

I know its hard to believe in this day and age . But the animations I do now days are still done by hand the old fashion way one frame at a time, put together in a film editor. I still make custom motions on as a need to have a certain movement basis. Heck I am and still using these old plugins like the standalone Daz Animator plugin (no longer available), Pose-master for hand ke-yframing animation one frame at a time, for genesis thru genesis 8   https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-pose-master

And I love the walkit plugin for walking and run cycles.  that I can use floor pin the feet in a walk-cycle over uneven terrains right within the daz studio app, now that is handy plugin.

These pluging I am still using are the 1# reason I have not moved beyond daz 4.12 & 4.16 , So I was very pleasantly surprised when I installed the Heat plugin & it worked in my daz versions. I just wish the mocaps did not cost so much

I am happy to see daz moving to into bigger animation platforms markets. Perhaps some big new improvements are coming soon to motivate me.

when daz studio gets Ai that will be a real game changer, Only if t does not cost you, your first born in order to use it.

 

SimonJM

Ivy said:

SimonJM said:

SimonJM said:

Has anyone actually managed to get this to work? I have installed it via DIM and all the bits seem to be there, but I just get a HEAT Bridge is not connected message witha suggestion to download it - which I have.

I have a suspicion I know what  the issue is, the bridge does not seem to work under Windows 7. 

you have to have a unreal account that it connects to  https://docs.heat.tech/getting-started-the-heat-marketplace/quick-start

Well, on my WIndows 7 PC the bridge installs, but fails to execute (I forget the exact error message and it is now de-installed) , and having tried the process twice I have given up on it.

wolf359

But a speaking as just a hobby animator who does this for fun , Yea sure it be nice to have access to a mocap library like this. & I do have tons of canned mocaps I use. so I am not opposed to mocaps.  But for the prices its just not something I would be interested in and then still have to retarget the motions to work for my needs.. I would have no way to recoup the money & time that is invested. 

A versatile retargeting solution is what most animators want
and seem to be willing to pay a reasonable price. 
At his point the market is saturated with Canned mocap, made even worse by  AI motion capture from  Video without needing suits.

I can see why Daz user might consider paying monthly for access to HEAT libraries because the retargeting is done for them.

However I do not see the Maya or Blender & Iclone communities buying into such a scheme because we have our own global retargeting solutions to harvest mocap from the any source with No restrictions on what rigs we use.
and the the same is true for the game devs who are also using Blender & Maya.

There are over 2400 FREE motions  over on mixamo.com But again
You need a retergeting solution to use them with the latest Daz figures

benniewoodell

Ivy said:

I know its hard to believe in this day and age . But the animations I do now days are still done by hand the old fashion way one frame at a time, put together in a film editor. I still make custom motions on as a need to have a certain movement basis. Heck I am and still using these old plugins like the standalone Daz Animator plugin (no longer available), Pose-master for hand ke-yframing animation one frame at a time, for genesis thru genesis 8   https://www.daz3d.com/ultimate-pose-master

Yeah, I handkey pretty much everything myself as well. Sometimes if I'm in a bind for time I'll use mocap, but otherwise I enjoy shooting reference and doing it all myself too.

ArtAngel

Gordig said:

Ivy said:

SimonJM said:

SimonJM said:

Has anyone actually managed to get this to work? I have installed it via DIM and all the bits seem to be there, but I just get a HEAT Bridge is not connected message witha suggestion to download it - which I have.

I have a suspicion I know what  the issue is, the bridge does not seem to work under Windows 7. 

you have to have a unreal account that it connects to  https://docs.heat.tech/getting-started-the-heat-marketplace/quick-start

That only seems to be true IF you're using it with Unreal. I installed the Daz/Blender/Unity bridge, and was never asked for an Unreal account. I haven't yet figured out how to actually import animations to a Genesis figure in DS, but as far as I can tell there's no actual requirement to have an Unreal account.

I also saw this in the FAQ, which is potentially of interest, even if it's a little unclear what it actually means.

Yesterday I read this, https://heat.tech/terms and wondered if #8B referred to what we upload as users or what exists in their Database from officcial Creators?

ANGELREAPER1972

joanna said:

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I am hoping a few more people will weigh in on this "free" plugin before I "buy" it because 2 months free sounds like a lead up to a subscription I may not want

I prefer buying animations as I need them and do so already

To me, the understanding is:

• you can get the DAZ plugin for free, no strings attached, and it triggers some nice discounts in March Madness too.
• with the plugin, you get access to 25 moves offered by an external vendor as part of their HEAT app; if you want more, you can get them for free for 2 months, but then you'll have to pay monthly fee.

I have no insights regarding the interactive license/pro tier requirement. Sounds to me like the interactive license was just added automatically to the product listing (or it applies to the plugin itself) and the Pro Tier at HEAT is still required.

even though I probably wont use it I grabbed it because it was free and gave me some discounts on some other stuff

SirRonmit

SimonJM said:

Has anyone actually managed to get this to work? I have installed it via DIM and all the bits seem to be there, but I just get a HEAT Bridge is not connected message witha suggestion to download it - which I have.

Yes, you run the HEAT program separately (from your Program Files) and have it minimized on the right corner. While that is running, the screen you showed will say HEAT BRIDGE IS CONNECTED in tiny green font above the DOWNLOAD HEAT BRIDGE button. From there, select your G8/G8.1/G9 figure (I found out HEAT ONLY works with those so I've been trying to convert all my v4 items to g8/g9), switch to the HEAT BRIDGE and select whatever you want to export (actually says IMPORT). One note, make sure you have DAZ selected on the lower left as it is set to BLENDER by default.

 

What I DO NOT LIKE and haven't figured out yet to change is that all heat animations are set to 0.0.0 workspace. Even if your character is off to one side (say, 1000.0.0), the animation moves your character to the 0.0.0 position. VERY frustrating. I only have aniMate Lite so I'm not sure if aniMATE2 allows editing. I moved my character back to 1000.0.0 but as soon as the HEAT render starts, it moves the character back to 0.0.0 for the rest of the animation. If that is so, then paying the Pro price is worthless/pointless because I'd have to edit each animation to match my scene. 

Anyone else able to tell me if I'm doing something incorrectly? Or do I need to purchase aniMATe 2 ?

benniewoodell

SirRonmit said:

SimonJM said:

Has anyone actually managed to get this to work? I have installed it via DIM and all the bits seem to be there, but I just get a HEAT Bridge is not connected message witha suggestion to download it - which I have.

Yes, you run the HEAT program separately (from your Program Files) and have it minimized on the right corner. While that is running, the screen you showed will say HEAT BRIDGE IS CONNECTED in tiny green font above the DOWNLOAD HEAT BRIDGE button. From there, select your G8/G8.1/G9 figure (I found out HEAT ONLY works with those so I've been trying to convert all my v4 items to g8/g9), switch to the HEAT BRIDGE and select whatever you want to export (actually says IMPORT). One note, make sure you have DAZ selected on the lower left as it is set to BLENDER by default.

 

What I DO NOT LIKE and haven't figured out yet to change is that all heat animations are set to 0.0.0 workspace. Even if your character is off to one side (say, 1000.0.0), the animation moves your character to the 0.0.0 position. VERY frustrating. I only have aniMate Lite so I'm not sure if aniMATE2 allows editing. I moved my character back to 1000.0.0 but as soon as the HEAT render starts, it moves the character back to 0.0.0 for the rest of the animation. If that is so, then paying the Pro price is worthless/pointless because I'd have to edit each animation to match my scene. 

Anyone else able to tell me if I'm doing something incorrectly? Or do I need to purchase aniMATe 2 ?

Try to bake the keyframes to the timeline and then go into the keyframes and delete the translation and rotation keyframes on the character to see if it still moves after you place them where you want them. If it still moves, it's probably baked into the hip. Then I think, and I'm not sure but Dartanbeck would know this for sure if he sees this, if you have 3D Universe's animation tools, there's a body to hip setting that should transfer the hip movement to the body. 

PerttiA

SirRonmit said:

What I DO NOT LIKE and haven't figured out yet to change is that all heat animations are set to 0.0.0 workspace. Even if your character is off to one side (say, 1000.0.0), the animation moves your character to the 0.0.0 position. VERY frustrating. I only have aniMate Lite so I'm not sure if aniMATE2 allows editing. I moved my character back to 1000.0.0 but as soon as the HEAT render starts, it moves the character back to 0.0.0 for the rest of the animation. If that is so, then paying the Pro price is worthless/pointless because I'd have to edit each animation to match my scene. 

Anyone else able to tell me if I'm doing something incorrectly? Or do I need to purchase aniMATe 2 ?

Put your character in a group and you can place the group where you want