How to Combine DAZ Studio and Unity Game Engine to create a full featured film?
nokoteb99
Posts: 931
Ok hear me out guys.. I'm making a movie. Ideally it would be great to do it all in DAZ but i have loads of objects, effects, visual effects(explosions, fire, smoke, etc, water) in Unity and not in DAZ. Moreover, i have FBX animations for Unity that i want to use. (tons)
Now, there is an extension in Unity that i bought where you can create a video of the game window. and even have alpha channel.
Note DAZ Studio can also do alpha. i think. (do avi's rendered can have alpha? transparency)?
ANyways so i could make the backgrounds for DAZ as either an image copied through the Printscreen feature and make it the background image of daz. OR i can make the animated Unity backgrounds then mix them together with the DAZ movie using a software such as the one i have "FIlmora"(It's cheap but i couldn't find anything else for WIndows such as Mac's Final Cut ).
So a bit tricky because DAZ video elements won't be able to interact with the Unity video elements but i can use HIDING and clever editing to make it seem as though everything is well. Like for example Make a camera move through a Road really fast and make that a video. Then in daz just have a character running. in place.
That should create the illusion .
So anyways , guys, does this sound like a good way to combine DAZ and Unity for a movie? I know Unity has a timeline and animation capabilities but it's much easier to animate characters with puppetter, etc,etc that DAZ has.
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Comments
If you render to "image series" in DazStudio it will retain the alpha information, great for compositing. Then all you need is a decent video editor program that can import the individual frames, many do, and you can assemble in timeline on that.
You might want to look into Unreal Engine 4, they have an awesome feature called Sequencer that is pretty amazing for making movies. and the engine is free!
Filmora doesn't import image sequences . I even asked the author. So you're saying if i save out as AVI from daz, it won't retain the alpha transparency. oh man i'm screwed.
You could always use something else to convert an image sequence to AVI, assuming your final application will read an alpha from an AVI.
Interesting thread. Would like to know, nokoteb99, if you find the workflow to achieve that, so please keep posted your approaches here.
Hi what you propose may be possible if you only render shots framed squarely from a still camera.
Rendering CG elements in one application and compositing them onto
backgrounds rendered /created elswhere.
will only work if the cameras & lighting are perfectly synchronized .
Otherwise it we look distractingly fake.
Use DAZ Studio & DAZ products to create your characters & sets to export to Unity 3D. However, don't assume the best model, whether it be character or set or other type of model, is always at the DAZ Store. For instance, for non-manmade environmental sets, your best bet is to use a environment modeling product called Gaia in the Unity Asset Store. Similarly for many trees, plants and other models, including buildings and mini-urban/suburban areas the best and often cheaper models is in the Unity Asset Store. The models in the Unity Asset Store are usually already optimized, mostly, for games and animation. DAZ 3D's strength as far as creating an original story is the ability to morph and texture their human models to look like original characters.
You can render the animation in Unity now, however, in 2017 animating in Unity will only improve in quality and in ease of animating with improvements to the mecanim animation state machine and the addition of the Otoy Octane renderer to Unity.
There is also a product in the Unity Asset Store called the Marmoset SkyShop that is more appropriate for creating backgrounds that integrate more easily into the animation scenes you create in Unity, rather than doing that in DAZ Studio.
I just wonder, if one can render characters in Daz Studio with alpha (transparency) and put them on billboards in Unity.
I have tried that approach in different 3D programs, but never got convincing results.
Below is a screenshot from Unity, of how MCS female (Morph3D female - based on Genesis 2 female) looks a like in one of the demo scenes
from Marmoset SkyShop.