Will Animate2/Go Figure ever be updated for Genesis line?
SnowSultan
Posts: 3,773
I started experimenting with Animate2 yesterday and noticed that the Sub-track properties panel only allows body parts for the Generation 4 figures to be selected or deselected. If I'm not mistaken, we also haven't gotten any official GoFigure aniblocks for any figure more recent than the Generation 4 figures as well. Are they still in business and working with DAZ? It seems like Animate is yet another DAZ Studio addon (like Powerpose) that isn't getting the attention and updates it deserves.
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Hi,
This is a licensing issue
Although "aniMate" is technically part of Daz Studio
it is still owned by "GOfigure" who has been seemingly inactive for years.
Daz does not have the legal Authority to Alter the aniMate code and redistribute it
It would have to be done by "GoFigure"
This is the reason we do not, and will likely never see, a 64 bit version of the lipsynch plugin in Daz studio as it is still owned by "mimic"
This is also why the internal Cloth plugin for poser was never updated
since poser 5 as it is owned by "Size8" software.
And Im suspicious that the raytracer in Bryce Still uses the Original
Code Written by French Musician Eric Wenger in the early 1990's
for this very same reason.
I however have had much success using the G1,G2 figures
with the full unlocked aniMate2 as G1-G2 has essentially the same overall bone Rig as the millenium figures
Genesis 3 is not as useful for Myself and most of the self identified Character animators in this community,
This is due to the Fact that the new rigging Completely breaks compatibilty
with aniMate2 and adds 20 minutes of manual bone mapping to use it in Iclone when genesis was a previously Automaticly recognized by the Iclone 3D Exchange retargeting tools.
I'm finally beginning to understand the appeal of Open Source...!
Yes sir indeed open source has many
advantages in this regard.
particularly as it allows any member/members
of the public to take up the mantle and keep vital&popular third party
add-ons to our creative tools, alive & current
long after the original coders have stopped supporting them.
FYI @ the OP ,"powerpose" has been updated for G2 even G3 I beleive
By a third party.
On one of the newer DAZ videos, it was mentioned that GoFigure is working on an update for aniMate2 for G3 figures. I believe there are couple semi-workarounds, too with YMMV.
Your Mileage May Vary. Having a balding moment myself.
What are these work arounds??
I ask only because I have attempted every Daz Studio based measure I
could find including "Mcasual's" free Frame by Frame Copy script -Fail.
Dragonstorms Commercial Frame by Frame retargeting script has reports
of random popping and jerking After transferring Character motion from
another figure to G3,and has pubilicly stated ,in a thread here, that it "cant
be helped" due the Exotic rigging of G3- Fail
I have Iclone Pro& 3D Exchange and yes, of course, After a 15 - 20 minute session of manual bone mapping in the Iclone 3D exchange app, Genesis 3 Accepts Reallusion Imotion Data like any nonstandard,unsupported rig
FBX imported into Iclone3DX from Blender ,Lightwave, houdini, Cinema4D etc.
But I have Lightwave 2015 ,Maxon Cinema4D Studio and, like anyone else
Blender 2.7x with their advanced Rigs at my Disposal.
I personally find Little justification for enduring such vicissitudes each session in Iclone with them ...or Genesis 3
Not when My perfectly viable Daz G1 &G2 figures
accepts My iclone motion After a simple one click conversion in 3D Exchange giving me access to the massive library and motion generation tools of Iclone Pro.
G2 works with aniMate2 and can access all existing Daz aniblocks and My personal Library of animated poser figure motions I have compiled over the last decade for every previous generation of Poser/Daz figure Dating back to Mike& Vicky2.
Additionally G2 accepts the Dynamic Ragdoll Motion data Exported
from My seat of Natural motion's "Endorphin"
And what of the G3 Face Rig & lipsynch?? for talking characters??
again, &unless I am mistaken, With G3 you must first $$buy$$ Iclone& 3D exchange and manually map the face bones to accept iclone lip sync and render the Final hi res animation where exactly?
With G2 I can use the basic, 32 bit only lipsync, plugin that ships with Daz
but also I have found that if I Export G2 as a poser CR2 and use that CR2 in My old seat of mimic3 pro I can generate more accurate lipsync pose files usable on G2 in my 64 bit version of Studio.
Yes indeed we hope Daz & Gofigure et al, implement more NATIVE DAZ STUDIO animation support for their flagship Figure(Genesis3) in the future.
But for any animator needing to animate Daz figures in the present
the choice seems rather clear from my personal perspective.
OK, went through all the videos about aniMate and of course it was the last one I got to! About 2 minutes in he explains what happens to a G3 character and says the aniMate team is working on it, but he gives you a fix you can try. Watch the video all the way through so you can see what was different with G2 as he starts with her first.
Your mileage may vary. There numerous converters and adjusters available for aniblocks, but conversions may not be 100% accurate.
IIRC, the main difference is that V4 has less 'bones' than G1/G2, and the hand articulation for each generation is different enough to cause issues for complex animations.
Hi Thanks for posting the vid
I would be curious to know where he got the aniblok
that had G3 walking in the first place
because I have yet to find an aniblok( and I have many)
that will make G3 take actual steps at all.
I see he manually went into the graph editor
to grok a fix .
I have Graphmate and keymate and am not aversed to this type of manual editing as I did it for many long years with poser's aged graph& Dopesheet.
but I can not justfiy the extra time for such a simple motion just to use G3 at this point.
and I still need speaking Characters for My paid, deadline oriented Client work produced instantly without the tedious "work arounds" so its G2 for me going forward.
There are a couple in store :
http://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-walk-cycle
http://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-female-s-victoria-7-high-heel-walk-aniblock
http://www.daz3d.com/sexy-walk-cycle-for-genesis-3-female-s
Not a huge amount of content included though
The walk is here:
http://www.daz3d.com/sultry-walk-tutorial-content
This is my feeling on Daz 4.9 and Genesis 3. Maybe when genesis 4 is released and if the compatibility is not broken with genesis 3 , then it will be worth people making motion files and aniblocks and investing time for developing animation tools for those generation figures. because you will have at least 2 characters figures that can use the same motions files, aniblocks & animation content. Because, again this is just my opinion. Buying and making motions files for one type figure mesh like g3 is silly. because i have so much content that already works and is compatible with each other including g2, Genesis and V4 & M4. and as the song said .. Once bitten twice shy, after i went all in on genesis 2 and daz came out with Genesis 3 and broke everything as far as animation go..lol Plus no new Gofigure Animate2 updates or any new anniblocks I'm kind of taking that as a sign that there is either some big new changes coming to animation, or the animation support will end.
So at this point in time. I'm gonna stick with Genesis 2 and later generation characters for animation only because of the fact I have a huge library of older content that are all pretty much compatible with each either. and still works in my poser & older daz programs.. When genesis 3 came along, and broke compatibility with everything it pretty much soured me on investing my time with it., . So as far as I am concerned genesis 3 is gonna stand alone because its will be the only character mesh that can use the motions files created for it at this time. , And when Genesis 4 comes out and daz broke the compatibility with genesis 3 , then dare bet you can pretty much kiss animation support good bye. because who's going to keep developing stuff for a software or character that keeps changing the rules on what can be used & compatibility . But if g4 plays nice with g3 when its released then it will be worth me investing in it. at least i will have 2 character meshes for the same motion files.
But again that is just my feeling on this subject.
Thanks I found the free "sultry walk"aniblock from the Daz store
That was likely made by "SKAMOTION"
who uses a combination of an optical human mocap system
plus alot of manual hand crafting his stuff is quite good,
The problem I see is that one aniblok only works for genesis 3 so I would have to start building a new separate G3 motion library from scratch even with a new G3 compatible update to aniMate 2
Here is what happens when you take a basic walk cycle aniblock
that works on Genesis1-2,Vickies,1,2,3,4 ,Poser Jessie,Sydney Alison Roxie
Mikk 1,2 .. and their male counterparts and apply it to Genesis 3
Fixable through manual editing with Keymate&GraphMate?..? Sure
Worth the extra time ?? not by my estimate.
Ivy, the video mentioning that the aniMate team is working on it was posted in February. They are probably still working on it. And DAZ has been posting a lot of animation video tutes lately. I bet that's a positive sign!
Thank you for the comments. It's good to hear that DAZ hasn't totally abandoned AniMate.
I agree animate & animate2 is a awesome plugin for daz studio. without it, animating within daz studio would be a heck of a lot more difficult. I think graph-mate and keymate were the last add-on plugins for animate ,. But that has been a while, so that is why i said its either there something big coming in changes , Or....!? I'll stick with my wait and see attutude.for now until genesis 4 comes out to see if I want to invest anymore in genesis 3 for animation. So far nothing has been released to change my mind .
skamotion is not using mocap
his animations are done in poser as far as i know
and i would like to see more from him cause he is the best
what i am missing and said this often here
just some decent normal walks
Draagonstorm has some animation converters:
http://www.daz3d.com/animation-conversion-v4-2-to-genesis-and-genesis-2-female
http://www.daz3d.com/animation-conversion-genesis-2-to-genesis-3
Here's a test sample I made converting a G2F jogging aniblock to G3F (G3F is the dark one AFAIR):
http://taosoft.dk/temp/g2_to_g3_ani.gif
I see people post this stuff all the time.. Have you used any of them? I have animation converters it work okay for the basic motions ani blocks , But you still have to do a lot of tweaking of hand, figures and feets and some aniblocks won't convert over like the yoga aniblocks the legs still did not convert on some of them & the motion convertors do not work on poser and Maya BVH files at all from my experience when i tried them. and lastly .. if i was making a 10 minute film I would not be spending a week converting over old aniblocks for one new generation character mesh when I have tons of characters that can use the ani blocks with out convertion.. But that is just my opinion . I like to find simpler solutions not harder ones. But i guess if your stuck with only genesis3 then this is properly your only options.
I went throught similar rabbit hole, tried the CR2 route with Mimic Lite...
even considered making G3 Cr2 work with Poser Talk Designer and make my own Genesis3.xml (yep damn ambitious I was)
Eventually I found Genesis3.dmc existed all along inside my library
Sitting under a folder called General. Genesis2.dmc in there too.
Installed with Genesis 3 Essential, link courtesy of fixmypcmike if you don't have it in your library for some reasons.
This dmc will work with Mimic Live! and DS 32bit Lip Sync.
Theoretically should work with Mimic Lite/ Carrara Pro/ legacy Pro standalone
Imagine how
I was to find out Genesis 3 lipsync is possible in DS - for some time now!
I saw that too. In fact the whole animation-focused video series was what attracted me back to Daz Studio!
(Been away at Carrara/ Poser/ iClone animating for the last year)
Always felt DS undervalue its GoFigure gems. But the wind is blowing in the video makers direction!
Quite happy to rekindle with my purchased-long-ago underused aniBlocks
Genesis 3 compatibility issue can be worked around manually but yes "pre" retarget would be kinder (and sell more back catalogs!)
I do watch a lot more YouTube than TV these days. So I plan to make some myself
Daz Studio is so ready to go into animation mode! (Zuckerberg did say a few months back, something like 'video is the future'???)
I would like to see video files import directly into a Surface, and not just mat anim, with own KeyMate "video" track
Material/ shader animation Puppeteering... also its own Material track...
All possible to bake to aniBlocks! Reusable/ share-able, new product line?!!!
Why not right? :)
Thank you Ivy!!
Its certainly appreciated when people share information and links to videos etc.
But for Character animators visual story telling, Digital film making is not limited short walks and sexy runway struts.
No offense to "skamotion"
Speaking for myself I use Character motion Data from Mulitple sources as no single source is sufficient
for the wide variety of Character animation I need to create.
Here is a Low res OGL previs of a scene that will ultimately be in My current animated film.
It is a test render of the Daz Genesis male in combat with three Genesis assailants.
The motion Data for this Fight was created in Natural Motions "Endorphin"using the "Dynamic synthesis intelligence engine" of that program...no manual key frames.
Endorphin uses basic Stick figures for better realtime performance and has no render engine but exports POSER COMPATIBLE bvh files That work out of the box with genesis 1-2
I use Iclone for some of my animation Data
Daz studio for certain other types of Character motion and Endorphin for dynamic ragdoll collisions
So for me ,at least, an updated aniMate2 plugin with G3 compatibilty or more G3 compatible aniblocks in the market is little incentive for me to adopt the figure into my animation work as it still wont easily accept motion Data from my other sources.
Hi Wolf,
You are exactly right on all accounts , I am like you I have a wide and varied pose and motion file library already, some of them are Older BVH files from my poser days, and some motions files I have are real illusions, or Poser Mocaps or aniblocks, and A lot of motion files I have created myself for generation 4, genesis & genesis 2 because there were no avilable motions files for what I needed at the time so I made what I needed,. and that is why I have said I am going to just wait for a while to see what is developed in the future or not .. and besides its not like i have not put in the time to see what I could do with g3 & bought a few pose and animation conversions tools which left me disappointed, and I don;t really care if there is new aniblocks created for genesis3 when I have such a instensive library of animation content already. So until something happens to change or update how G3 works in animation like fixing the IK problems, and making g3 more compatible with older mesh characters..etc. . I see no incentive to invest in Genesis3 either at this time for animations.
I haven't used them yet on larger animations. If there are so many problems with them I'd say the text on the product page is misleading.
Hi this a quote by Dragonstorm:
"I do see a minor jump around the 10 second mark... There's no 'fix' I could do in the script that wouldn't then break the rest of the conversion. There is so much difference between Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 that some comprimises had to be made.
The only suggestion for a fix I can think of would be keymate or graphmate, or by hand to make adjustments."
The thread is here:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/58074/animation-conversion-for-genesis-3-commercial
Not knocking DraagonStorm They make excellent top tier products.
But his/her "Compromises" are the result of DAZ's decsion to implement the pointlessly exotic rigging in Genesis 3 (IMHO)
knowing full well it destroys compatibility with the one internal Daz animation tool that made me Dump poser for good
(other than Iclone Pro of course.)
Oh and not to "pile on" but there is also this:
"Trying your product now, I get an error when I run the script: "Genesis 3 Female not loaded in the scene..."
I have a Genesis 3 male loaded in the scene...strange...Does this script only work with the female character?
.................You need to load Genesis 3 Female. Once you save the converted animation then it can be used with Genesis 3 Male."
That "compromise"alone, adding another layer of work, is a Deal killer for me as I mostly animate males and have no use for "booty shaking"Dances and Sexy female struts.
its a pity gofigure never contribute to this forums
how about some first hand information ?
Technically anything is possible in programming, but sometimes the amount of work it takes is too much within the actual context. If you're willing to spend $100.000 or whatever it takes you could probably find someone who could write a perfect G2 to G3 converter.
That's a problem with most 3D content it seems, the profit is small (at least for the vendors) so there is a limit to how much work you can put into a product.
My big question is why has DAZ never even attempted to make a figure that could take advantage of the hundreds of BVH animations out there? We'd see ten times the animations that we do now if we didn't have to make our animations from scratch. GoFigure seems to be obsessed with hip-hop dance animations (and really, bathroom animations?), so our choices are fairly limited.