A massive BUG in timeline... that prooves how broken it is.

elhectro

Hi.

I use Daz a lot, and I've been making a lot of animations for the last 3 years. I render around 5000 images per month. The HORRIBLE BUG I've found has happened in all DAZ versions from 4.0 and in 3 different PCs. This triggers randomly by handling keyframes, copy, paste, or move, a 10% chance that it happens. Why it's a nightmare? Because it damages the figure making it UNUSUABLE, and then it can result in HOURS OF WORK simply LOST. Here I attach a video as the evidence. There you can see how the figure gets distorted in a way that you can't manipulate it anymore. There, I bend the neck, and it makes all the torso contortion, and the neck can't move. Same happens with chest, abdomen 1 and 2. In this case, it's a genesis figure. With a genesis 9, it happens even worse, as it does things like tearing the body apart like putting the head next to the abdomen. The only safe to handle keyframes in timeline is awful, but I got used to it: Save each keyframe as position and then load it. Save-name-browse-load.... each time you want to move or copy something, without the risk of ruining your animation. I really hope in DAZ 2025 developers created timeline from scratch. Otherwise, this will keep happening...

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/yg7h6vcssxe5v8n4w01bv/daz-failure.mp4?rlkey=d1hnn1k7xp5qad7iqsgwiflbm&dl=0

WendyLuvsCatz

it's because not everything is keyframed on every key, so things like jcms, scaling, likely many hidden properties may interpolate from another key quite some frames away and copy pasting can miss a previous key needed

the only solution I know is to create an AniBlock then bake that to the timeline as that keys everything on every frame

elhectro

WendyLuvsCatz said:

it's because not everything is keyframed on every key, so things like jcms, scaling, likely many hidden properties may interpolate from another key quite some frames away and copy pasting can miss a previous key needed

the only solution I know is to create an AniBlock then bake that to the timeline as that keys everything on every frame

But that's not a reason for the figure to become completely corrupted..In any case, those hidden properties shouldn't be copied and that's all Anyway, I didn't used any hidden properties you talk about in this timeline... so that's not the case..

WendyLuvsCatz

OK then

crosswind

You have some joints pinned. If you unpin all, issue stills persists?

Richard Haseltine

An issue with joint pinning would be IK, not the Timeline

Padone

I do not animate in daz studio because I find it somewhat "primitive" for my needs, especially the IK system, however of course I tested it to draw this conclusion so I believe I know what the limits are. The explanation by Wendy is sound so you may want to reconsider it, since you keep the keyframes on "node" it's not the whole figure that's keyframed, a better approach is to use "node recurse" then select the figure root and keyframe the whole pose.

Another thing I noticed is you use the parameters tab to pose the figure, this works for posing but not for animation, as the sliders can't handle keyframe interpolation aka they flip and break as in your example. To pose for animation always use the translate and rotate tools on the top bar, which also have options in the tool settings, these can work fine with interpolation it's not the same as the sliders.

WendyLuvsCatz

Padone said:

I do not animate in daz studio because I find it somewhat "primitive" for my needs, especially the IK system, however of course I tested it to draw this conclusion so I believe I know what the limits are. The explanation by Wendy is sound so you may want to reconsider it, since you keep the keyframes on "node" it's not the whole figure that's keyframed, a better approach is to use "node recurse" then select the figure root and keyframe the whole pose.

Another thing I noticed is you use the parameters tab to pose the figure, this works for posing but not for animation, as the sliders can't handle keyframe interpolation aka they flip and break as in your example. To pose for animation always use the translate and rotate tools on the top bar, which also have options in the tool settings, these can work fine with interpolation it's not the same as the sliders.

I only mention it because it is yet another one of those issues for me in DAZ Studio that Carrara, Poser and iClone don't have and peeves me off endlessly, things literally explode copying and pasting

but if the user says it isn't their issue, I understand