Would we ever see a more pro character designers/animators tool here?
Fixme12
Posts: 589
Would we ever see a more pro character designers/animators tool here?? In a world where most of us use Zbrush, some use C4D, or a Maya/Max subscribtion.
Soft that can do lot's more in effects and animation.... But never seen a complete soft specially for just character design and animation to render vids/game content. (realillusion try to be one with low quality content)... There is so much content around for the figures, you can dress paint pose and render.
Will these place remain a platform just to sell 3d content for a free "closed platform", where only a few content creators try to sell mostly same stuff over and over again? Think most people here have the same ponytail, boots, dresses, pants, skins for now. Now we need better soft to handle all our stuff and play with.
Just wondering after all those years since 2005 hanging around here from time to time.
Will this place ever see a "PRO" version again? Not a free program, but great software for character design and animators tool (some maya quality tools for character animaton)? Exporting all content and re-rig to Maya or other pro soft takes so much time. For just a few fun 3d hobby moments...
Since poser is dead for a while SM actually didn't care about the soft, realillusion try to be some animatorstool for low figures.
There seems to be nothing in 3d world anymore, where you can look at for WOW that's cool software to play with a huge figure/content library.
All developing in character designers are running very slow latest years or are becoming mostly just dead projects.
Iray add on was the latest WOW effect i'll had here and external nvidia phys-X or the Unreal realtime render...
I don't follow the 3d market anymore that much because laks of time in life...
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My impression is that daz is doing great steps forward from the first 4.xx studio, from iray to dforce to strand-based hair. They are trying to match at least the main features of professional 3d apps. Then there is a lot of work to do in animation and simulation tools.
From what I can see it seems to me that the "pro" tools are reserved to PAs though, so it will not be an open content creation platform, at least not for professional content that requires "pro" features. Also it seems to me that daz is pointing to still pictures rather than animations, since the animation tools are quite basic and iray has problems when you get away from the scene center, other than not supporting motion blur that's essential for animation.
So overall daz seems to aim for a platform to playback the content in the store and also let the users to create some basic assets themselves. That's fair enough in my opinon. Then if you are serious about making your own content and animation I guess Blender or Maya will do fine, given that you can export daz assets fine enough anyway.
The question is what are you prepared to pay for it nothing is for free ???
With Reallusion Character creator 3 program you can project the shape of any Daz Character from Mill3 to G8 onto a High quality Iclone Avatar or Use Iclone native Character shapes you have created in CC3 yourself or purchased from the RL content store if you dont went to bother with the Daz studio ecosystem at all.
Iclone uses the same Maya human IK system of Autodesk Motionbuilder for Character animation and will soon have a live link to the UE4 game engine.
it also exports to all of the major programs (MAX Maya, C4D,Lightwave,houdini Unity ) via FBX or alembic.
It is not a free program in fact you easily hit the $1000 USD mark
if you opt for all of the options I have mentioned.
If you have access to Zbrush, Maya, C4d, Max,etc then you already have access to pro character designers/animators tools. How to do you think DAZ PAs create content, with some magical tool only PAs have (you have to create the asset first to use the HD tool).
My analogy for this is if the goal is to head down the road from point a to point b (the beach) and you have access to a 2020 BMW, you choose to use the bicycle (DS) instead because you don't want to learn to drive, or wanting to take a cab (DAZ) to come and take you there.
@Fixme12 "In a world where most of us use Zbrush, some use C4D, or a Maya/Max subscribtion."
Who exactly is "us".
Seems like there is a little trend with new users joining DAZ wanting to do animation. Makes me hopeful that DAZ will respond, and atleast fix the tools we have already.
Daz has a software package that animators have used for professional film that has won many international animation awards, and that people pay to watch. Daz has chosen to slowly, very slowly, reinvent the Carrara wheel, rather than support Carrara.
most recent case in point? Brouhaha over dynamic, repeat dynamic, strand based hair. Carrara has had it for a long time. Daz has chosen to reinvent the dynamic strand based hair function for Studio. Even with the reinvention, Carrara users have complete control over the dynamic part of dynamic strand based hair, which Daz has thus far denied Studio users.
Daz3D has chosen its place in the market. It is not a bad place, IMO. They make the best quality, ready made, human assets on the market. Emphasizing ready made. Daz figures are like commodity items. They need to be cheap, easy to use, and follow the lowest common denominator (market to both artists and non-artists) so they can sell enough assets to make a buck. They have staked their claim and they are pretty good at it. What you are asking for is diametrically opposed to Daz3d's current trajectory. Pro tools are often complicated, require special training and skills, and are geared for artists with expensive equipment, not the general public. Daz Studio was designed to be less intimidating for a casual user, allowing them to create "art" in hours rather than weeks or months. Like FSMC wrote, there are already many pro tools you can get into and use Daz figures. But with these powerful tools, comes the time and dedication needed to master them. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Not in the current environment. Maybe technology will take things forward a bit in the future where you can just push a "make art" button, but I doubt it.
That being said, if you want to use pro tools, there is hardly a tool more pro than Maya. I highly recommend it. Many people complain about the cost but that is only because they lack imagination:
1. Sign up for a semester online 3D course with any number of very credible schools like Gnomon (not a recommendation, just using an example). It can be as little as $300 - $400.
2. Now get Autodesk Maya 2019 for free with their educational license (good for 3 years). You can drop out of school after the semester. There is no obligation to continue.
3. Congratulations! for just $133 per year ($400 amortized over 3 years), you have acquired some of the most sophisticated 3d tools money can buy with plugins in the Daz market to use Daz figures.
After 3 years, you want to continue? NO problem, just wash, rinse and repeat. Did you continue your training and are now skilled enough to do contract jobs? You clients can pay for your pro license!
Now if all this seems like too much for you, and you already have a full time job and you just want to play with 3d figures in your spare time, guess what I have the perfect product for you...... Daz Studio! Its simple (relatively), easy to get into and it has hundreds of ready to render assets to buy inexpensively. Its not a "pro" product, but it allows a casual guy with a job and stuff to easily get into 3D art. LOL, I'm being a little facetious but my point is Daz3D seems to have a firm grasp on their market. They know they will get little profit selling McDonald's assets to pros. If you want pro, there is Maya, C4D, Houdini, 3DSMax... a crowded market, but in this hobbiest market space, Daz Studio is all alone. For now, using pro 3d tools for just a "few fun 3d hobby moments" is an oxymoronic statement. Pick your poison. Life ain't that easy.
Well said.
The newer wild postings and YouTube ads I've seen have emphasized animation, which makes me kind of curious whether there's some bigger stuff in the works for that. I feel like it's currently a distant second to static renders in terms of functionality.
Just for clarity you want a "Paid Daz tool" that has all of the motion building,retargeting & editing tools of iclone pipeline plus the Live face facial animation motion recording system in iclone and support for the perception Neuron mocap suit that we have in iclone.and the Daz HD morph tool and Dforce strand based hair tool.
Why not just do what Drzap suggested and get a Maya License??
there is a person here , who literally told Autodesk he was "self educating" Via youtube video tutorials and was handed a student license for Maya.
The tools you ask for already exist but you must be willing to venture out of the myopic little comfort bubble
of the Daz eco-system.
Every time you buy something here 50% of the proceeds go directly into Daz's pocket...
Or you could just... you know... just use the existing free Blender exporter if you're just looking to do animations and not spend a single red cent...
Not saying Iclone isn't a good option, but there are other options.
Here's a cheaper option for starting.
1) Download the Blender 2.8 beta.
2) Hit up youtube. The number of tutorials these days is utterly hilarious.
Seriously, while Maya is good you simply can't beat "Free" for work on the hobbiest level, and Blender 2.8 is a night and day improvement over the janky UI of blender 2.79
Blenders Character motionbuilding & editing and retargeting tools are woefully underdeveloped compared to Iclone pro to say nothing of how far they are behind the Autodesk products
particulary in the professional areas of importing Mocap Data retargeting Mocap data and facial mocap.
It does not matter that I can send my Daz figure to blender with some plugin for a still.
I need to be able to create nonlinear Character animation in realtime and harvest Character motion data from various sources like endorphin, Mocap hardware, Facial mocap cameras
then combine that data in a nonlinear fashion and retarget it it to a Daz genesis figure to be rendered in Maxon Cinema4D or Lightwave 3D
Yes there are "other options" for scalable Character animation pipelines with the ability to harvest motion Data from multiple sources.
They are called Autodesk Maya &Motionbuilder.
Some of us are not just hobbiest level users and need mature Character tools...
blender does not yet possess such tools not even in 2.8
You won't have any customers if you're working off the educational license as it's non-commercial. You'd need to first pay for the license yourself so you can work commercially, and then use customer payments as a sort of reimbursement. Good news though is that the cost of the subscription is a tax write-off providing it's used commercially in the first place.
If you know 3d animation, Daz is already super powerful. Wanting all those bells and whistles that all the platforms have kludged on over the past decade or two is somewhat of a distraction. I know some people will scoff at what I say, but effectively you could make amazing stuff back in 1998, already with just your 3d program and a compositer, on a freaking Amiga if you had to.
If you know the basics, Daz 3d blows the expensive programs away. In my opinion, Maya is for noobs hoping to get stuck on some corporate pipeline.
There might be some clues about that over here: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/change_log#4_12_0_7
Tks! Now that's what I want to see:)
There already exists options to get Daz figures into blender
for still rendering of portraits & pin up girls in cycles
without an official"bridge"
The OP is asking for better tools for Character animation.
What are my options in Blender for creating lipsinc from an audio file? or retarget some motion to a genesis figure from Mixamo,Iclone or even poser?..within blender??..there are none.
you are back to manually hand keying everything from scratch.
We are halfway through the year 2019 ..not 1999.
Sounds cryptically promising on the matter of IK .. thanks
Now when I see a video of Daz studio figure with IK options like we have had in Iclone since 2011 ,
I will be truly impressed and consider actually upgrading from DS 4.8.
Seems like in 4.12 they're working on IK for animation at last .. that would really be another great step forward.
Blender is designed more for original animation rather than mocap playback. So it is true that Blender doesn't fit too well motion retargeting and lipsync, but there are some options anyway ..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FDcRua36oQ
https://morevnaproject.org/2015/11/11/automatic-lipsync-animation-in-blender/
Indeed there have been such Blender rig native options for years.
However this call for a Daz to blender "Bridge" is typicaly from people who are not ready to abandon the Genesis figure framework and start using Blender
native rigs.
With Iclone, the Daz figures
(or their CC3 shape projected Dopplegangers)
,can still talk via sound files or the Live face camera mocap system.
Aslo the facial bone cluster in G3+ makes such options possible in Game engines Like UE4,
with some set up.
Still its cool to see papgayo being used for blender.
Finally, some progress on "IK" after all those years since 2010...
And if there ever will be interaction between characters possible with parenting & constraints between figures...
Now we'll have to wait to see how great it would be....
I've done professional character animation in Maya. The key frame way. No mocap. No mimic for the lipsync. Our animation director would have killed us if we had only suggested using it. You do the lipsync by hand. Including all emotions. That's not only the mouth, but the eyes and facial expressions as well. And the angle of the head. That is called an acting performance. Before even touching the mouths, we first get the body sync right (syncing gestures to accents in the voice track.) Maya has a very good graph editor, complete with bezier handles. I come from handdrawn animation, I actually hate graph editors, but the Maya version does its job. It makes you fix all the glitches and bumps and create fluid animation along proper arcs. Even if you have to tweak for days on a single seven second scene.
Automated lipsync mostly resembles puppet animation as in the Thunderbirds marionettes from the mid 60ies - utterly mechanical, stiff and unrealstic.
Maya animators work with mocapped scenes as well. That usually means fixing all the gltiches in the movements. Raw mocap data is rarely usable without spending days fixing it. That's basically being exclusively in the graph editor. (Aniblocks have already been pre-fixed)
DAZ animation is aimed towards mocap, not keyframe animation. It is aimed at people that ideally want to create a short film in a day, not at people willing to invest days on single shots. Maya not only has other tools; it has animators that only produce 10 seconds of key frame animation per week. While other people are doing the shaders, lights and rendering and they can concentrate on the animation ( = creating the motion) only. DAZ animators often seem to be directors rather than animators, editing existing mocap scenes, rather than doing key frame animation.
I only played wirh iClone up till version 6, but was not impressed either. Feet that should have supported the character's weight were floating and sliding all over the place.
I think DAZ Studio still has some work ahead of it before being considered a professional solution for animation
I feel it will never be a professional solution for animation, there is too much work to be done for it. DAZ Studio is more for DIY quick projects. Nevertheless adding some more basic features as ik for animation and some more physics and fx support is really due to not be too much behind the rest of the market. I mean they just came out with dforce and strand-based hair when the rest of the market has these features for years now .. and the ik system is back from 1998, luckily they seem to be doing some update in 4.12 ..
But I do believe DAZ has a unique strong position in the market for their huge asset library. So anything they can do to improve DAZ Studio and/or the export plugins is really moving the world here.
What if they can combine dazstudio with akeytsu (from nukeygara), like some plugin for it or easy fbx export/importer...?
akeystu is powerfriendly animationtool in reach for the hobbyist/market...
LOL, love this statement.
... That bubble is very comfortable though; I have Zbrush but still prefer to do my 'stuff' in Blender when the bubble doesn't do what I want.
@OP
Daz sell products that provide tools, as well as a myriad of excellent tools elsewhere that provide what you need.
Why do you want to turn Studio into something its not?
Wouldn't it be better to keep users in the same eco-system? Why else learn play and hanging around here, if you better start learning other soft in the first place?