Would we ever see a more pro character designers/animators tool here?

13

Comments

  • SempieSempie Posts: 651
    edited June 2019

    Isn't it best to have a tool that can do everything? So that you have the choise? Maya has had a decent graph editor since the first time I touched it, around 2006-  And a proper IK system. That's 13 years ago. And probably longer. There's people that use Maya for keyframing. And there's people using it for mocapping. It's even been used for animating flat-as-a-pancake South Park. It's up to the user.

    DS is free, I understand when it's too much effort to include it for free. Considering only animators would have a use for it.

    But it could work as a plug in.

    Post edited by Sempie on
  • ScarletX1969ScarletX1969 Posts: 587

    I was finding this interesting reading in spite of having the Original Poster on ignore cheeky

    Sempie offers some real insight into professional animation and Wolf’s points are valid too, I didn’t think they were arguing just giving different perspectives and advantages of both methods.

    It was definitely getting a bit hot in here for a moment.  This is an interesting topic; however.

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,749

    And i don't think you can compare 2D vs 3D with chemical photography vs Digital photography.

    I was not making a comparison between 2D&3D
    I am a die hard fan of 2D anime
    ( particulary GUNDAM & space based sci fi/tech genre anime)

    I was reffering to how an industry (like photography) and its practioners can under a radical, often rapid change based on advances in technology.

    I was "2D" Graphic Designer for print for 19 years in the Washington DC metro market before coming near this 3D stuff in my early 40's.

    I am fluent in the Adobe Creative Suite.All the decorative embellishments on this 
    "Celestial" from my feature length  animated  film,  were made in the venerable Adobe Illustator CS and imported as splines into maxon C4Dand extruded into 3D objects.

     

    As a "2D" Graphic Designer for print I witnessed how the old film to metal plate pipelines of the printing Industry were supplanted by Digital  direct to plastic plate, and then Software  to final substrate pipelines.I heard all of these same self validating arguments about how a digital press will never have the "look and feel" of an offset printing press etc.
    and those people who did not upgrade their tech skills & shops were Displaced.


    Mocap has a different feel and look as keyframing. Try to do cartoony 

    stuff in mocap and you'll fail miserably.


    Try hand keyframing crowd physics or even convincing single actor
    ragdoll hit &fall collissions and you'll fail miserably.

    key frame purist only seem to ever do the "Cute stuff".
    Cartoony,  big eyed critters with over exaggerated "12 principles"
     body movements.
      Lovely ..bloody good for them, that is not my prefered genre.


    Because modern or high-tech does not define quality.


    And vestigial,labor intensive techniques used by "the old masters" do NOT define Quality  by virtue of the fact that the "Old masters" used them.

    It is all about talent, creative, vision and having a good narrative  to communicate to the layperson viewer who does not  know or care if some film was mocapped or hand keyed.

    I find "south park" utterly repugnant.
    Not because of the low quality near stop motion, 2D animation.
    but because I dont find Juvinle toilet humor 
    about human feces to have any intrinsic value even 
    back when I was actually 13 years old.

    The CG in "Star Wars The last Jedi "was Uber quality Showcase work by ILM and the other shops that worked on that project.

    Yet I find the film itself utterly repugnant  for reasons I wont mention here.

  • ScarletX1969ScarletX1969 Posts: 587

    What I find about this discussion is that no one is really wrong, but when did the discussion vear from getting pro tools for daz studio to the finer points and counter points of keyframe animation versus mocap?  Everyone is giving solid points but I think we got lost somewhere.

    To those of you who are keyframe, "Old Masters" types...you are correct.  One of the things that I found problematic with mocap sometimes is the inability to capture the "subtlety" of human movement...hand gesters, weight distributed foot placement, etc.  It's one of the reasons I stayed away from iClone for awhile (plus some of the awful videos that people posted using the app to show they learned something new).  So, being able to control this and present it better does make for a more fluid animation cycle all around.  However...

    I'm going with wolf's argument on this one.  For those of us who don't have the necessary time nor resources to dedicate to just that, mocap is a better choice and you always have the ability to clean motion capture up and added the subtleties of movement.  IClone has come a LOOOOOONG way in doing better with animation.  Mocap is not a drag and drop solution either but it's much easier and faster for those of us trying to tell our story in a reasonable amount of time.  Plus, nowadays, its good to be a generalist and find a way to see the connection between your disclipines to advance the skill you wish to develop much better. 

    But man, if I could afford a team of animators, who wouldn't jump at that.

    Now, back to the pro tools question...there are "pro" tools (and let's be honest, usually the word "pro" has something to do with selling something that is expensive to ignite the idea of making money with it, so it's an "investment".  Has nothing to do with the skill or talent of the user) that can already be used to do decent to quality animation with DAZ content.  People have provided great examples here, so I will not state something already been stated (although I'm a HUGE FAN of C4D and I'm currently learning it to get off the DAZ Hamster Wheel as someone put it in a previous post...lol).

    When I look at questions like the one asked by this post, I think of this saying that pretty much goes for any industry or discipline that you work in.  Goes something like this...

    "People want things QUICK, GOOD, and CHEAP!!!  You are guaranteed two of these but rarely all three."

    If you want tools that are quick and good, it's not going to be cheap (unless you can find a discount somewhere).  If you want tools that cheap and good, it's not going to be fast (not without assistance from a third party tool, which puts it into the expensive category).  If you want tools that quick and cheap, the results are rarely good (unless you put a lot of work in it, which goes for all of the packages, actually).  At least one of the pro tool apps mentioned in this thread belongs in one of those scenarios.  Once you figure out which of these is most important to you, then you will go in the direction you need to.

    Just my two cents. :)

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,890

    This seems to be picking up the tone of a political or religious debate - perhaps it is time to ease back on the heat.

    Not sure if you meant me but ,no, it's they are ignored because they are not advertise much at all and because people like 'brand names' like Disney.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,890

    I'd actually like to learn old time cartoon style key-framing animation in Blender but want and avoidance of other distractions in trying to actually do so are two different things.

    As far as mo-cap for games and probably for animations there are already so many mo-cap libraries available that can be altered enough to look somewhat unique that I don't think I'll ever bother to learn how to use cheap mo-cap equipment or invest in buying That's not to say I'm dismissing mo-cap or saying it's not any good just that I won't likely invest in mo-cap equipment and learn how to use it.

    I don't see why there wouldn't be some use cases where they co-exist in the same project out of need because of artistic and man-hour limitation reasons.

  • SempieSempie Posts: 651
    edited June 2019
    wolf359 said:
     


    Try hand keyframing crowd physics or even convincing single actor
    ragdoll hit &fall collissions and you'll fail miserably.

    key frame purist only seem to ever do the "Cute stuff".
    Cartoony,  big eyed critters with over exaggerated "12 principles"
     body movements.
      Lovely ..bloody good for them, that is not my prefered genre.

    Cartoony, 12 principle style animation with comedy timing, is the ONLY style I'M interested in.

    I was even specialized in cute and broad characters, not so much the villains.

    Animating ragdoll fall scenes is not particulary the stuff I'd like to animate. (I'd rather have them go the Road Runner Coyote way..) It's way too much Newton's laws of motion and way too little acting for me. Plus, it's too violent and bloody. something I don't particulary like in animation. I prrefer Tom & Jerry style cartoon violence, the stylized kind where noone gets really hurt.. To me, animation is escapism, not more realistic violence.

    Never cared much for realistic styles - I think they are better done in live action with some special effects. I consider crowd simulations with software like Massive more as special effects as animation. And mocap won't get you a best animation nomination at the Academy Awards, as it's considered a special effect rather than animation.

    Apart from the Miyasaki-films I have never been interested in Anime.  I mostly have a thing with the characters. Can't get into them and I don't care whether they live or die. If they invoke any emotional connection at all I mostly dislike them, To me they are moving drawings that never come to life. I love Akira from a technical point of view, but the characters left me utterly cold. Who lived, who died - I didn't care. Put a Disney film on silent and it''s still interesting to watch. Even dialogue scenes. Expressive body language and facial mimics are the trademark of that type of animation. Try turning an Anime silent in non-violent action moments. And I like animation to be more individualtic. At Disney, you could clearly see whether a character was animated by Glen Keane, Andreas Deja, Eric Goldberg or Nik Ranieri, to name a few. They all had their individual styles. They would be typecast like real.actors. In Anime, every animator seems to do the exact same thing. And every character seems to move in the same way - or with very little variation. (Probably while the Japanese culture is a lot less individualistic)

    Most of it is boring talking heads without interesting acting, and then they blow all their budget on overcomplicated action scenes and explosions. (that usually bore me to death after a minute or so) I would not be interested in animating any of these. I like the comedy timing and the interesting individual expressions. I like Shere Kahn from Junglebook, Hades from Hercules, the Genie from Aladdin, Scar from The Lion King, Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone. Tex Avery's Droopy. That's what inspired me to become an animator. Never cared much for the more live action animated adventure type films that Disney did either, like Pocahontas, Treasuire Planet or Atlantis. For my taste you should do stuff like that in live action. I sometimes had to animate a 'straight' human character. Found it tedious and boring. The Disney animators weren't particulary fond of doing the straight humans either.. It's very hard work to make it look right with hardly any fun to it. The Disney animators mostly studied reference material for that, even if they rarely rotoscoped things.

    Apart from that I loved the graphics. The non realistic illustration style backgrounds that Eyvind Earle did in Sleeping Beauty, Mary Blair in Alice in Wonderland, the gorgeous flat designs by Maurice Noble for the later Warner Brothers shorts. The xerox style in 101 Dalmatians, the flattest of all Disney features. I love that these were all illustrations coming to life, not imitations of real life. I miss that in current 3D. It's all more technical and less artistic.

    If you want to do anime or live action inspired animation, yes, mocap seems a clever way to go. (Even if the Japanese themselves still mostly animate by hand). If you want to do the cartoony stuff, like me - forget it.

    Also in 3D CGI, I like the cartoony stuff. Ratatouille, the Incredibles, Indispicable Me, Tangled, etc. That's the sort of stuff I'm interested in animating.

    And, as I said, try mocapping that.

    Post edited by Sempie on
  • SempieSempie Posts: 651
    edited June 2019
     Mocap is not a drag and drop solution either but it's much easier and faster for those of us trying to tell our story in a reasonable amount of time.  Plus, nowadays, its good to be a generalist and find a way to see the connection between your disclipines to advance the skill you wish to develop much better. 

    But man, if I could afford a team of animators, who wouldn't jump at that.

    I worked on several shorts. I small teams. In Europe, animated shorts are funded. There's a budget for these. And all of these five minutes or so thingies took years to complete. We just took that time for granted. Mostly we did commerciual stuff like TV-commercials inbetween to pay the rent.

    Here's two that I had a small part in:

     

     

     

    Both took the directors several years to complete.

    (The 3D one is the first that I ever did a 3D animation in Maya for; a walk cycle, combined with hand drawn monster shadows, not much overall footage. In the other one, about a minute was animated by me, over three months. We never went for fast. That seems to be very much a DAZ-Poser thing.)

     

    (EDIT: Hmmm. This Forum seems to not allow links to Vimeo. The links are there if you press the quote button.)

     

    Post edited by Sempie on
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,711

    https://vimeo.com/96053642

    https://vimeo.com/310083535

    it trys to embed them and the Chrome and other browsers don't display it

  • SempieSempie Posts: 651
    edited June 2019

    I'd actually like to learn old time cartoon style key-framing animation in Blender but want and avoidance of other distractions in trying to actually do so are two different things.

    There's a team in the Netherlands that produced this semi-trailer in Blender:

    If they will get the funding for the entire feature remains yet to be seen.... (But Blender seems to be good for toony stuff. And it's basically the sort of stuff I'd like to be able to animate in DAZ Studio - OK, probably a bit less lavish, that would be asking for very much...)

     

    Post edited by Sempie on
  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,749
    edited June 2019

    And it's basically the sort of stuff I'd like to be able to animate in DAZ Studio - OK, probably a bit less lavish, that would be asking for very much...)

    @Sempie First  Thanks for the opportunity to have a  useful & educational dialog with an experienced Industry veteran like yourself.yes
     
     Second The Daz Change log Crypticly
    ( as usual), states that DS 4.12 will have "persistant IK within a scene"

    It remains to be seen what that actually means in terms  of  true IK foot & hand contact solving
    as you would really need a Maya or Iclone pro styled IK system for Hand keying your type of Cartoon styled animation in Daz Studio. 

    In its current state, Hand keying Locomotion and "holds" from Scratch in DS will be a very frustrating experience for someone with your Knowledge of how things should work.

    If you are not completely wedded  to the Daz eco system& figures you should investigate the source filmaker program By Valve.

    I have seen some Impressive Cartoon styled 
    animated films made with that program

     

     

     

     It's one of the reasons I stayed away from iClone for awhile (plus some of the awful videos that people posted using the app to show they learned something new).  So, being able to control this and present it better does make for a more fluid animation cycle all around.  

    However...
    I'm going with wolf's argument on this one.  For those of us who don't have the necessary time nor resources to dedicate to just that, mocap is a better choice and you always have the ability to clean motion capture up and added the subtleties of movement.  IClone has come a LOOOOOONG way in doing better with animation. 

     

    @ScarletX1969
    In my time, in the iclone community, I have concluded that most of the people there are,
    (Drag and drop the presets),hobbyists
    ,much like the Daz  community...Thats fine for them.
    Hence the many "less than stellar" videos
    You will find if you search youtube for "Iclone.blush

    My biggest citicism is that most Icloners dont bother studying the
    Art of Cinematic shot framing.
    Everything is a wide head to toe shot framed like fixed camera 
    FBI surveilence Footage  of John Gotti and his Cronies on the sidewalk outside of their "social club".

    You see this quite often with Daz studio animations as well.
    People spend Money and time Curating their matching outfits from the Daz store  or  RL marketplace and feel obligated to show the entire ensemble in very shot.

    I use Iclone for the things it does best
    Quick iteration of major body motion in realtime
    and retargeting Data from outside sources and export of motion data.

    I use DAZ studio  for the things it does best
    Quick creation of  high quality Diverse Characters
    (human &non-human)that accept my externally created
    motion data and can be exported to industry Standard formats for scene assembly &rendering in other pro application environments.

    IMHO Neither Iclone nor Daz studio is anywhere near being a suitable final output environment as both programs have abysmal LARGE SCENE Managment Capability  for my types of projects. 

    Post edited by wolf359 on
  • SempieSempie Posts: 651
    edited June 2019

    In the end they are all tools. Be it pencil and eraser, DAZ Studio, Poser, Blender, iClone, Maya. They all have their strenghts and weaknesses.

    With a pencil, you have to be able to draw your character from every percievable angle and have a very sound knowledge of motion and foreshortening. And no computer is going to do the interpolation. That's a lot of drawings. Rotating, moving cameras with perspective changes are a nightmare, as you would have to animate them by hand. Or match the character perspective if you take some CGI aid there and do your settings by computer. You don't want a lot of details in the characters, as every line in the design needs to be animated on every drawing.

    With 2D vector animation you don't have to do a lot of drawing. You just move a 2-Dimensional digital puppet by dragging your mouse. The software will calculate the inbetweens. But the rigging is tedious, and the characters are very limited in their motion possibilities. Basically they can walk like an egyptian. That said, you can produce the animation very fast once you have your rigged characters. (And there are some hybrid solutions mixing vector with digitally handdrawn)

    DAZ and Poser give you the ready content (OK, when you buy it, but it's there) and 3D motion but too little control in the graph editor. It's not a good tool for keyframe animation - yet.

    IClone seems to have come a lot further.

    Maya gives you full control and no content. Plus a steep learning curve. At a high price. It's not really for individual independends, even if I know some that can do everything from modelling to rigging to animating to lighting etc.

    The main thing will always be; what is it that I want to create? What do I want to communicate? What is the overall look I want? Am I going to show it on YouTube for free or do I expect people to pay to watch it? Do I have a budget and time at all or does it have to be fast and cheap? Is the acting essential or will a voice over and generic movement suffice? Do I have to do it all alone or do other artists help me? Am I content with generic motion (custom made mocap) or do i want full control and very specific motion (keyframing or having to arange your own private mocapping). Can the style be generic or does it have to be very stylized? Do I want cartoony or real?

    Every answer will need a different solution. In some cases, generic mocap will be best, in others, you'd better have a good graph editor.

    And my wishes require a good graph editor...

    Post edited by Sempie on
  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,749

     you'd better have a good graph editor.
    And my wishes require a good graph editor...

     

    Daz acquired the rights to the graphMate plugin for Daz studio Now selling it as Daz product.

    As far as graph editors go its very rudimentery, compared the ones I have used, (Lightwave, Maxon Cinema4D)

    However it is Far superior to the extremely primitive poser graph editor

    DS graphMate has  a default interpolation of cubic where the spline is "auto clamped" between each keyto prevent "overshoot" .you can optionally switch from spline/linear/constant
    and there are TCB controls ..but no bezier handles.

    Graphmate can display multiple color coded channels at once.
     


    There is a free key frame culling script for reducing the keys to a managable level for editing.
     
    Not so much needed for those judiciously setting keyframes by hand.

    But vital for us users importing Mocap from Iclone /mixamo etc or baking a Daz aniblock to keyframes which all create a 100 percent population of the graph with keys.

    Its biggest shorcoming IMHO is that there is no "home " or "reset view" option.
    If you scroll your splines too far out of the fixed view area it can be 

    very...very...very difficult to get them back into view.angry


    Posers Splinegraph is a nightmare of over shooting, with spline
    interpolation, as you can only pin your spline in place with
    place holder keys as "manual clamps" or have massive overshoot
    stretching your spline when to set any key with an extreme parameter.

    Poser can only display one monocolored spline at a time
    If you import mocap it had better be perfect!!
     because there is no option to Cull down the keyframe population  in poser other than manaully selecting
    and deleting them by hand.

    To me a good graph editor is Moot without a Human IK solver 
    for terrain & prop contact & pinning to create a sense of weight.

    Poser's Alleged"IK" creates utter ruin if switched on & off in the same sessio.

    The Daz " limb Pins" are ......"not useful" in this regard either.angel
    Hopefully DS 4.12 will address this properly if my "decryption"
    of the change log technobabble  is accurate.

  • Rumor has it that you will see some significant advancements in both animation in Daz Studio, and the ability to use Daz content in other software late this summer.  But of course, I am not the type to spread rumors ;)

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,026
    Sempie said:
    drzap said:
    Sempie said:
     
    DAZ_Steve said:

    Rumor has it that you will see some significant advancements in both animation in Daz Studio, and the ability to use Daz content in other software late this summer.  But of course, I am not the type to spread rumors ;)

    Coincidently, I am not the type to exaggerate rumors.  Or, am I? 

     

  • Sven DullahSven Dullah Posts: 7,621
    DAZ_Steve said:

    Rumor has it that you will see some significant advancements in both animation in Daz Studio, and the ability to use Daz content in other software late this summer.  But of course, I am not the type to spread rumors ;)

    surprise...laugh

  • GordigGordig Posts: 9,024
    edited June 2019
    drzap said:

    Here is completely audio driven animation ("autolipsync").  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqJJzUMYwUg Its the software I'm using from SpeechGraphics.   

    Damn, that looks great. Their website is pretty cagey about pricing information, so could you give any insight on what this costs?

     

    By the way, just because the old Gollum character, if not the old Jewish legends about Gollum, is now widely known because of Hollywood movies doesn't mean that people that use Gollum or similar characters are 'ripping off' anyone. The Gollum character and it's old legends have all long been public domain, sorry. Even in the 70s Marvel Comics had a Jewish superhero called Omega (I had issues 1 & 2 but Lil' Champs were not known to keep current comics in stock as I bought comics as old as 5 years old in their comic book turnstile racks, meaning I never saw another issue before it was canceled - try finding comics in a convenient store that old today, collectors/hoarders don't let it happen! laugh). Anyway, rambling on, Gollum was in the Omega comic book from Marvel.

    I'll admit I don't know about the Omega comics, but from your description it sounds like you may be conflating the character of Gollum with Jewish folkloric golems, which are unrelated.

    Post edited by Gordig on
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 37,711
    DAZ_Steve said:

    Rumor has it that you will see some significant advancements in both animation in Daz Studio, and the ability to use Daz content in other software late this summer.  But of course, I am not the type to spread rumors ;)

    Not expecting that to include Carrara though broken heart

  • SempieSempie Posts: 651
    edited June 2019

    @ Wolf359 - The Valve concept has some things that might work for me, but as it is it is not flexible enough. I'm more into fish-out-of-water underdog characters, and not into machos in militaristic situations at all. (one of the reasons I'm not into computer games. Don't like the violence, don't like the themes, don't like the macho stuff. I basically prefer movies about awkward losers not fitting in. Woody Allen rather than Arnold Schwarzenegger. In live action I Ioved Cheers, Frasier, Friends, Wonder Years. No machos there. No cool guys there. All awkward losers. And I hated Lost. And Battlestar Galactica rebooted. Just hated all of the characters. In animation, Ratatouille was a misfit. Even Gru from Indispicable Me was a misfit with some serious childhood issues. Ralph in Wreck-It-Ralph was OK for me, because he was basically a loser not fitting in. The Hobbits in LOTR were losers not fitting in. Even original Star Wars had a bunch of losers as their protagonists. Misfits that somehow defeat a Galactic Empire, against all odds. The prequels were already much too macho-oriented for my taste. My favourite superhero has always been Spiderman. As Peter Parker. ).  I would need different characters in a different setting to get interested.And I would like my characters to be more adjustable than that. But maybe in a The Sims sort of settings with faces a bit more suited for comedy acting...

    So yes, the technical ideas by The Valve are OK, but it would need to be completely different characters and settings to get me interested. Don't have many stories to tell with a bunch of machos wearing machine guns walking around in military zones. Or in Doom or Resident Evil type settings. Only thing I could think of is turn them into a bunch of coward chickens afraid of their own shadows. I need something in my genre. And a world and characters that I can customize to be my own. (Also at DAZ it's not the macho stuff and Big Guns that I'm buying. Stuff of that type that I do have is the stuff they gave away for free, and I haven't used it thus far...)

     

    I tried to animate in Poser, many years ogo. Other than importing BVH files it seems to be good for nothing. No control whatsoever. Useless IK and keys overshooting all over the place. I tried a bit with then free plug ins for DAZ but wasn't impressed either. I'm basically waiting for bezier handles before I will try again.

    Let's wait and see what the rumours are about.

    Post edited by Sempie on
  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,749

    @ Wolf359 - The Valve concept has some things that might work for me, but as it is it is not flexible enough....So yes, the technical ideas by The Valve are OK, but it would need to be completely different characters and settings to get me interested.

    Indeed Some aspects of Valve SFM look really attractive... Sadly however  it seems a closed eco-system.with a few  "Stock" Characters with no options for customization ,import or export.frown

    Although I am A Daz content developer  who creates My own clothing ,custom morphs and props,
    I need the Genesis 1,2,3 base figure framework for my animation Pipeline for their diversity and exportability to my other 3DCC applications.


    "Rumor has it that you will see some significant advancements in both animation in Daz Studio, and the ability to use Daz content in other software late this summer."

     

    I interpret this to mean a New IK solver For Daz studio (hopefully Copied from Autodesk), and the full realization of the DEX plugin for Full Genesis functionality in Maya.
    Sounds Good to me.laugh

  • Leonides02Leonides02 Posts: 1,370
    DAZ_Steve said:

    Rumor has it that you will see some significant advancements in both animation in Daz Studio, and the ability to use Daz content in other software late this summer.  But of course, I am not the type to spread rumors ;)

    I'm already salivating.

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528
    edited June 2019

    I would like to see even better compatibility with Unity, so we could take advantage of that fur and particle effects.

    https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/06/11/introducing-sherman-part-1/

    https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/06/11/introducing-sherman-part-2/

     

    Post edited by Artini on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 8,528

    For big studios, maybe something like this will be usable:

     

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,890
    rynmtylr said:
    drzap said:

    Here is completely audio driven animation ("autolipsync").  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqJJzUMYwUg Its the software I'm using from SpeechGraphics.   

    Damn, that looks great. Their website is pretty cagey about pricing information, so could you give any insight on what this costs?

     

    By the way, just because the old Gollum character, if not the old Jewish legends about Gollum, is now widely known because of Hollywood movies doesn't mean that people that use Gollum or similar characters are 'ripping off' anyone. The Gollum character and it's old legends have all long been public domain, sorry. Even in the 70s Marvel Comics had a Jewish superhero called Omega (I had issues 1 & 2 but Lil' Champs were not known to keep current comics in stock as I bought comics as old as 5 years old in their comic book turnstile racks, meaning I never saw another issue before it was canceled - try finding comics in a convenient store that old today, collectors/hoarders don't let it happen! laugh). Anyway, rambling on, Gollum was in the Omega comic book from Marvel.

    I'll admit I don't know about the Omega comics, but from your description it sounds like you may be conflating the character of Gollum with Jewish folkloric golems, which are unrelated.

    That's like saying Tom & Jerry aren't related to Sylvester & Tweety. 

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,890
    Artini said:

    For big studios, maybe something like this will be usable:

     

    LOL

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,890
    Artini said:

    I would like to see even better compatibility with Unity, so we could take advantage of that fur and particle effects.

    https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/06/11/introducing-sherman-part-1/

    https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/06/11/introducing-sherman-part-2/

     

    Also an enormously fat racoon that waddles down my driveway on it's way to raid all the neighbor's dog and cat food dish bowls. laugh

  • GordigGordig Posts: 9,024

     

    That's like saying Tom & Jerry aren't related to Sylvester & Tweety.

    Explain how. Tom and Sylvester are both animated cats who chase after and generally antagonize smaller creatures who consistently outsmart them. The two pairs of animals are conceptually very similar. What does Gollum have in common with golems except a similar-sounding name?

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,890
    rynmtylr said:

     

    That's like saying Tom & Jerry aren't related to Sylvester & Tweety.

    Explain how. Tom and Sylvester are both animated cats who chase after and generally antagonize smaller creatures who consistently outsmart them. The two pairs of animals are conceptually very similar. What does Gollum have in common with golems except a similar-sounding name?

    Rather than argue:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem

    Golem is mutable and used to form many legends, good, bad, or both.  Similar to Gollum's symbolism in TLOTR where Gollum is also symbolic of the mutability of personality and goals. 

     

  • ParadigmParadigm Posts: 421
    DAZ_Steve said:

    Rumor has it that you will see some significant advancements in both animation in Daz Studio, and the ability to use Daz content in other software late this summer.  But of course, I am not the type to spread rumors ;)

    I'm already salivating.

    Yup, I'm beside myself with excitement. My only grip with DS as a product is that it's a poor animation tool.

  • GordigGordig Posts: 9,024
    edited June 2019

    Rather than argue:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem

    Golem is mutable and used to form many legends, good, bad, or both.  Similar to Gollum's symbolism in TLOTR where Gollum is also symbolic of the mutability of personality and goals. 

     

    That's quite a stretch. By that definition, any story that displays moral ambiguity or complexity is a ripoff of the golem myth. But since you linked to Wikipedia, I can't help but notice how the page for golem contains zero references to Gollum, and vice versa.

    Post edited by Gordig on
Sign In or Register to comment.