Animation for beginners

nubianbdsmart

I was just wondering does anyone have any advice for purchasing an animation tool for a beginner. I prefer to purchase something through the Daz Market Place and something simple and easy to learn.

KA1

AniMate2 is a good place to start, I find KeyMate incredibly useful as well. I'll expand further when I have time later.

KA1

So AniMate2 uses Aniblocks of which some come with it, others can be found on the net and in store. A lot of aniblocks focus is V4/M4 based though both bone tech and posermocap have Genesis and Genesis 2 blocks available. You can try AniMate2 as a basic version is included with Daz Studio so that can give you an idea of how it works. KeyMate is hand for keying your own animations or going pose to pose, most any of it though will require tweaking depending on your requirements for the animation you have in mind. There are also the Genesis Alive aniblocks in store for most generations which add breathing etc as secondary aniblocks to add a more natural look to them. There is also GraphMate which is good for smoothing key frames to get them looking more natural as well. It's a case of experimenting and finding what works for you and your work flow but there's a few ideas to investigate to get you started. Several tutorials are about on YouTube etc to give some insight into all these products.

chickenman

If you have Carrara there is an awesome tutoral by MMoir on how to create a walk cycle. Even if you are not using Carrara it identifies how a walk cycle works and how to make it look good.

http://www.daz3d.com/create-a-walk-cycle-in-carrara

KA1

chickenman said:

If you have Carrara there is an awesome tutoral by MMoir on how to create a walk cycle. Even if you are not using Carrara it identifies how a walk cycle works and how to make it look good.

http://www.daz3d.com/create-a-walk-cycle-in-carrara

Ooo not sure about two OP but I'll be checking that out later, thank you :)

N-RArts

Hi, 

I don't want to hijack the thread but, I was wondering what the difference is between the basic version of Animate that's included in Daz3D and the full version of Animate 2 that can be purchased from the Daz site.

 Thanks

Knittingmommy

chickenman said:

If you have Carrara there is an awesome tutoral by MMoir on how to create a walk cycle. Even if you are not using Carrara it identifies how a walk cycle works and how to make it look good.

http://www.daz3d.com/create-a-walk-cycle-in-carrara

Yep, I have that.  I haven't done much in my copy of Carrara as I mostly use DS, but this really helped me figure out how to fine tune a couple of "walk cycles" I was working on for a kata animation with movement of the blocks and punches combined with the movement of the karate stances during the kata inside DS.

nubianbdsmart

Thanks for all the advice, although a lot of it I dont understand. How easy was it to learn if you have no ideo how to create animations? Also I didnt know there was a basic version of Animate already included. I use version 4.9 of Daz.

KA1

devilsatdusk15 said:

Hi, 

I don't want to hijack the thread but, I was wondering what the difference is between the basic version of Animate that's included in Daz3D and the full version of Animate 2 that can be purchased from the Daz site.

 Thanks

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/8081/what-s-the-difference-berween-animate2-full-version-and-lite-version

Here, this thread has you covered 

KA1

nubianbdsmart said:

Thanks for all the advice, although a lot of it I dont understand. How easy was it to learn if you have no ideo how to create animations? Also I didnt know there was a basic version of Animate already included. I use version 4.9 of Daz.

Animate lite is included with Dazs studio so there is a good place to start. 

As for how easy  it is to start... I started Daz in March 2015 (properly, I actually signed up a few years before then!) I'd always wanted to do some animation but actually only recently (end of may) started it. Before I got used to lighting, camera etc and generally using Daz for still images and assets. There are a lot of tutorials which give some good tips on animating and in Daz whether you use animate or just the dazzling time line for it you'll want to learn key framing.

An easy start to look at this could be to set up let's say 60 frames (default is 30 frames a second so 2 seconds of animation)

Load a character in and pick a pose or pose them to your liking in frame 0 and add that as a key frame. Scrub the play head through to frame 60 and pick a different pose and add that as a key frame. When you press play studio will fill in the frames between the poses getting you from one to the other, it's at that point you'd need to tweak frames along the way to make the transition look as natural as possible. 

Knittingmommy

nubianbdsmart said:

Thanks for all the advice, although a lot of it I dont understand. How easy was it to learn if you have no ideo how to create animations? Also I didnt know there was a basic version of Animate already included. I use version 4.9 of Daz.

I would start with some of the great animation tutorials that were uploaded to the DAZ 3D YouTube Channel.  Here are a few to get you started.

There are lots more, but these will give a start to understanding how things work.

N-RArts

KA1 said:

 

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/8081/what-s-the-difference-berween-animate2-full-version-and-lite-version

Here, this thread has you covered 

Thank you ^^

KA1

On the back of Knittingmommys post, I was going to create a quick tutorial demonstrating the normal timeline pose to pose animation I outlined above, turns out Daz have already done a decent one covering EXACTLY this and is a great starting point to just get a basic feel of what's going on under the hood:

https://youtu.be/r05ZysHDkPU

nubianbdsmart

Thanks a lot, all of this has really been helping!