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Oh... and I was told that VWD works even better in DS than it does in Carrara. Gonna have to test that.
I'm still a die hard Carraraist at heart though! DS still feels like dragging bricks compared to working in my beloved Carrara 8.5 Pro!
Have you had a chance to test out the new Filament renderer? It is supposed to be a super time saver for animations, but at the cost of certain lighting and surface options, and a few other details. Am curious of your thoughts about the trade-offs.
Yes I have. I'm learning a lot about Daz Studio right now - trying to learn how to do the things that have always kept me from using it before, like editing key frames and such.
It's still nowhere near as friendly in that regard as Carrara, where I can easily manipulate any key for any aspect of the animation very easily, and being very easily found, etc., but I'm getting acquainted.
I don't particularly like using Filament yet for actually rendering. I imagine gaming avatars and rops would excel in this, but if I can't render the Cornea and eye fluid... I'm lost! LOL So I use Filament as my working environment until I'm ready to render, which is when I switch the amazingly incredible Iray! Yikes is that a great engine!
Last night I did a somewhat successful simulation of Branwen Hair on a Rosie 7 prototype WIP using VWD. I'm really excited about that idea!
Testing VWD on Hair in Daz Studio (Iray Render)
This example:
Started a new page to celebrate Valzheimer's new ORK (Octane Render Kit) for Daz Studio:
Free OctaneRender for Daz Studio!
I've also used Philemo's amazing Carrara Dynamic Hair-to-Vertex Object plugin to turn Rosie 5's hair into a conforming hair for Genesis 8 Female. It simulates really well in VWD in DS, but I keep crashing DS 4.14 just before I render it :(
The hair has roughly 35,000 more vertices than Bronwyn Hair, so perhaps I just need to make a more optimized version of it.
Getting a little frustrated with that, I went back to animating Rosie 5 in a new upcoming scene, and felt so comfy and relaxed in good ol' Carrara! The manipulation tools (Translate, Rotate and Scale) are so much eaiser to use in Carrara. It baffles my mind that something as developed as Daz Studio that this hasn't been addressed at all, besides adding some kind of funky manipulation ball in the upper left corner that is just as funkt to try and use as the akward tools it's trying to save us from having to use. I just don't get it!
A big example comes when I'm trying to aim the direction of a Distant Light. That horrible wireframe outline of a light is barely visible, and the manipulation tools work on that like... well it's very frustrating - like having my thumbs taped together, then tied to my ankles behind my back, and then trying to drink water from a big box from a table that I simply cannot reach!
So getting back into Carrara, as always, makes me want to just stay there!!! :)
A Workflow Demonstration
Animate - Simulate - Composite
In this episode, we create a dramatic scene where Rosie 5, dressed as a street warrior, is running toward a situation - only to discover that she's too late!
For Rosie's acting, we begin with Posermocap's "Run To Edge Stop Balance 2" aniBlock from Ambient Moves - Volume 1, which is for Genesis 1, 2 and 3 males and females, and then I go through how I can use simple Pose dials on the figure to adjust her posture and keep her head looking up, down the street, rather than down over the edge.
For all animation and simulation work shown, I speed the actual screen capture (of me working) to avoid the video taking too long, since there's so much to cover.
For Rosie 5's Street Warrior attire, we start with her Sci-Fi J-Suit and retexture it into mottled brown and black leather before shrink-wrapping it to her using VWD. Then we top this with Michael 4's Steam Cowboy Jacket (long leather coat that looks Really Cool!) and simulate that onto her also using VWD. For this Jacket I actually show the process used for converting the conforming clothing into a static prop and using simple scaling and translations to adjust it to somewhat fit, and let VWD take care of the rest.
The setting is a cyberpunk techno city made up of Stonemason's Urban Sprawl city with many of Coflek-Gnorg's elements added from TechnoTown series and Steampunk Towers - all built on an EnvironKit Base scene for atmosphere and lighting. We could go a lot further with this scene for an actual production, but for this demo we have two of Stonemason's Skyrider Cars flying quickly by, Winnston1984's Elevated Subway speeding passed in the distance, as TheAntFarm's M11-Flea drudges through carrying a full load of cargo.
Since this scene is at night, using a lot of volumetric lighting and smoggy atmosphere, we render this separately from Rosie 5, whose dynamic hair is a volumetric effect that clashes with other volumetrics during renders.
So we put these two animations in Batch Queue rendering and bring the results into DaVinci Resolve and layer them together in the Fusion page, then check out our final work with the song I wrote for MatCreator's The Hole playing behind it and through the end credits scroll.
I hope you like it.
Moreso, I hope this helps to spark some workflow ideas to help you all get more out of your current gear to get your vision to appear on screen.
Cheers!
Check out the support page/article here
I forgot to mention that, in the above workflow, The J-Suit was also reduced from a conforming clothing item to a prop. It was already set up that way in my browser. So I explained the process for the Steam Cowboy Jacket to illustrate the process I go through.
Why simulate clothing that otherwise conforms? Several reasons:
It might be different if the simulation process was difficult or time-consuming, but it really works quite well and gets easier to predict (settings for simulation) with experience. Just keep in mind that not all outfits or hair are built the same way, so some things just don't work well for this.
For example: Hongyu's Shirt for V4 (excellent product!!!) isn't welded at any of the seams, so it just blows apart when we try to simulate it. By turning it into a static prop, we could go into the Vertex Modeler and weld the seams if we were ambitious enough!
I's pretty cool, though, that I can (theoretically - I haven't tried this yet) grab a clothing item made for Genesis 8 Male (or Female) and first covert the rigging to Weighted in DS, save as support asset > Figure, and bring that into Carrara, turn it into a prop and simulate it to fit any figure I want to!
Love seeing your progress.
As you know, I've taken the plunge into ZBrush. As a result, I've reconsidered my whole approach to the Brash and Moxie space serial. It has been a very difficult slog, but I'm glad I did it. But designing it all in Carrara first has helped me quite a bit, even if I ultimately don't use my original character meshes.
Your images have a consistent atmosphere (excellent). How much is that due to your original lighting/render settings and how much to your compositing and howler? Ratio of time. Only answer if you have time, of course.
Of that, I am certain, my friend! All that rigging, weight painting and work on edge loops and all... just the initial modeling and idea building... you've done a Lot of Great Work with that series! Big Fan = Me!!!
The atmosphere and volumetric lighting is All done in Carrara, and then accentuated through color grading in Howler and/or DaVinci Resolve.
Lens flare sorts of things I reserve for post (Howler, for the most part) for the added control and simly because rework doesn't require full rerendering.
Thanks!!! Ditto!!!
to use less make fatter ribbons or better yet tubes (more than 3 sides) with Philemo's plugin and transmap them with stripes
I reuse diffuse coloursand transmaps from other DAZ hairs that are full vertical squares
Sweet! Thanks!
Hey all, some of you might remember back in a time when Markus Rothkranz let us watch his cool new pilot for a TV series he was pitching - one that he used Carrara to help with the visual effects - Atomic City.
Back then his YouTube channel was filled with fun Carrara experiments, behind the scenes of Atomic City and other features as well as the full pilot.
Well the Pilot seems to have vanished, but I do have other videos of his that I've found, so I decided to create an Homage Corner section within the Inspiration portion of the Gallery. A few of his videos start things off followed by a bunch more inspirational and fun videos that I think would really help those of us endeavoring to make CG movies using whatever software.
Check it out! Homage Corner at Dartanbeck.com
So here's one of the promo spots about Markus' Atomic City to spark your memories. It was pretty darned cool!
Edit: Argh! Drives me nuts when they remove their videos! Why?!!!!
The page has quite a few videos on it. To expand I should probably make more pages to save on load times. I may have to do that now.
Some of the other highlights include:
Action Movie Kids is Amazing!
Joe Pingleton's awesome Mimic tests
Some cool Blur Studio action!
Animusic
We also take some steps into nostalgia!
Roddy McDowell shows us his Makeup Diary
Creature from the Black Lagoon
History of Special Effects Part 1 (and it's an old video!)
Planet of the Apes is such a classic. Loved the home movie link you posted. Here is the special academy award ceremony.
I agree! That makeup was the coolest thing EVER!!!
Speaking of such things, today's airing of The Mandalorin saw the magnificemt Rosario Dawson made up and playing as none other than my favorite Jedi ever... Ahsoka Tano!!! What a treat to see such a beloved being in Live Action played by such an incredibly talanted and beautiful actress!!!
Filoni and Favereau doing such an amazing job of bringing Star Wars back into what it should be - makes me wonder what they'll do with her next... maybe Ahsoka Tano - a Star Wars Story!!!! :)
Okay, my Homage Corner was a bit too taxed with videos, so I've moved Blur Studio and Willaim Forsche into their own, separate pages under their names, so the Inspirations Section now looks like this:
Inspirations - STAR WARS
Inspirations - The Witcher
Inspirations - Alita Battle Angel
Inspirations - Homage Corner
Inspirations - Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)
Inspirations - Weta Digital
Inspirations - Blur Studio
Inspirations - William Forsche
All links from before should still be fine unless there were any which lead specifically to Blur Studio or William Forsche - also, we'll no longer find the titles I had highlighted from those two within Homage Corner. Aside from that, everything's still there - so hop on in and have some fun!
This GIF is resized to make the file size smaller and, being turned to a GIF has made it much slower, which is kinda cool, but not as good as the original clip.
I am experimenting (and very new at it) with Paticle Illusion - creating my own particle effects, and then getting more experience with Fusion within DaVinci Resolve, which I'm also still quite new at - but feeling more and more comfortable all the time.
The portal room alarm went off, so we went in to see what was going on. Before we had a chance to get to the controls, something... someone came through. Oh... it's Her!!!
In Carrara, I made a special shader for the inner portal light tubes, so that I could animate them separately. Quite the weighty scene, I rendered it with Rosie in it, again without Rosie and then made a pass with only Rosie without the Solaris Portal (by Petipet - Awesome scene!!!).
I created the scene and animation while I was in the middle of watching the news on DaVinci Resolve 17, a near two-hour video, briefly (Briefly!!!) covering only some (Only Some!!!) of the new features and enhancements to the software. What a Major Update!!!
So I paused the video just as they were getting into the Fusion Room coverage, went to my office and decided that a Star Trek-like Transformer effect would be fun, and that the Solaris Portal would be a fun scene for it. That's when the idea for the animation came in - I was so inspired by the new Resolve conference!.
So I built the scene, animated Rosie and then the scene lights, and went to finish the cool new Resolve coverage as the render went on.
Great videos, by the way. Nice, basic steps on the software and, with a bit of experience with Carrara's particle emitters, the logic of working with particles is then quite easy to grasp - yet still take experience to get good at - a level where I am Not... yet, at least.
Although I'm really excited to try the new DaVinci Resolve, I haven't downloaded the beta of Resolve 17 yet, but that's happening really soon. My little dog goes in for surgery tomorrow, so I wanted to keep it simple for now.
Although there are no "New Pages" within the new resolve, every page (Cut, Edit, Fusion, Fairlight Audio, Color and Deliver) have received MAJOR updates and new features! Seriously, it's amazing what they've done. And if that wasn't enough already, the Collaboration Tools, which were previously only available in the Paid (Studio) version, with the world being changed by COVID-19, Blackmagic Design decided to offer that as a free add-on to the Free version as well, and will be available as a separate download soon.
I mention all of this because, Fusion is yet another great option for particles - and theirs live in 3D space. Unlike Particle Illusion Free Standalone, in Fusion we can work with our scene video and the particles interactively. And, unlike Carrara, we can view our progress in real time. Fusion's particles are award-winning solutions for high-end filmmakers, so I do intend to get experience with those as well.
About the image - Particle Illusion workflow showing several Point Forces and a Grid Force to create a dramatic effect with the 2D particles
Animating Speech
One of the things that can really make or break the believability of our characters is the manner in which we animate them to emote, move and almost most importantly of all - speak, if we have them speak at all.
There are many tools available to us to help automate the process of speech, from the audio itself to applying animations to the figure, but we artists are the ones responsible for the final output - what appears on the screen. We can't just "Do it" and blame the software for our failures - something I see more and more of in community discussions revolving around most everything with 3D character animation.
To begin this journey of speech therapy, I've prepared a small animation using Mimic Pro. This will give us a launching point for this series. Stay tuned for more!
My Site Page on Mimic Pro for Carrara and Animating Speech
Rosie Speaks!
In terms of cultural implications, this is right up there with Garbo Laughs. In fact, it is bigger than Garbo Laighs because Garbo retired long before I was born (but one hint that it was culturally important is that I still know the slogan even though it occurred long before I was born).
I will be following Rosie's pronouncements with great interest. There are quite a few alternatives for adding movement to aid in animated speech. Very curious to find out the choices you make for Rosie.
Change subject to Clutch Cargo. Personally, I did not like the method of speech in Clutch Cargo, although the animation in general was classic. The superimposition over the cell might be an example of Unhappy Valley. Or, it might be a different problem. Do you have an opinion on the method of speech in Clutch Cargo?
Well it certainly is different looking, doing it that way. Breaks the norm of what we're used to seeing n cartoons, for sure. But whoever did the lip acting sure did a nice job. I enjoy the kid-like phonemes done on Spinner.
I like cartoon hand-animated styles, yet I applaud the advanced thinking outside the box to do something different. I'm sure they thought they'd changed cartoon lip animation forever!
Personally, the cartoon is great, love the story and the work they did to impose the photoreal mouths is spot on. So I'm good with it.
I'm sure I'll get eggs thrown at me, but when I was a kid, I never really liked the cartoons with too little animation in the mouth. The all-on all-off with a few variations that they land on or begin with. Also the ones where every time the kid talks it's like he's yelling. These were quite common, and I'd often watch them anyway, but always wished they'd have done something different.
But I was a kid. Now I tend to chalk these decisions up to artistic creativity, and try to enjoy things from the artist's perspective, so I'm usually not very judgmental. There are things like and things I don't, yet I try to appreciate where the mind was at when it was made.
Sometimes things are just plain poorly done, and that's different. If it's either an artist that hasn't grown wings yet, I try to nudge - I need these nudges because I'm still a fledgling. If it's somebody who just doesn't seem to 'get it', I'll try another approach of nudging.
To me, Clutch Cargo is entirely an artistic decision. The artists can clearly phoneme by hand. We see it. But decided to try something new and, while it may look disturbing to some, I really liked it. Probably in part because they did it so well. Look at the corners of Clutch's mouth when he 'lands' his speech. That's Clutch right there. Very well done. Spinners has that whisical level of curiosity, doubt and excitement in his phonemes - fun to watch even if the sound is turned off.
I'm sure they caught a Lot of criticism for it though. Just not from me. ;)
Like all of the videos I make for my channel, this one is a historical marker. I did it without first making special characteristics for Rosie 5, aside from how I've set up her morphs so the her mouth automatically takes on a certain shape any time she opens it - with or without speech.
While I was rendering this one out, I began the study of creating custom character phonetics, so I'm hoping to see improvement as I grow in this.
I don't like how the YouTube conversion came out. It's like it's out of focus until she gets right in our face. I either have to find a way to stop YouTube from doig that or find another method (Vimeo?) of showing my progress - because this video does not look like it should.
A highlight from my Inspiration section: Wete Digital 2019 VFX Showreel - Amazing Excellence!
Of course, that Incredible, Amazing Excellence has some serious help from absolute genius minds under their employ. Check This Out!
That said (and seen), Daz 3D's Flexion technology that goes into Genesis 8 should not be (but we see it all the time, eh?) underestimated for the immense value we get for the small amounts we pay.
https://www.daz3d.com/technology/
I love to visit that page from time to time - this time around it begins with some Genesis 8 technological highlights, and how cool it is, and then moves on down the line to visit the generations that came before, which I think is absolutley Excellent! I'd like to capture that before it gets changed.
I'd love to still have the amazing promo pages that used to adorn the Daz 3D store for Carrara. Page after page of features, highlights and details of what the software offers.
I just had a wonderful journey into learning more about using Daz Studio 4.14 and now 4.15 and learned a lot about Studio and Genesis 8. Had some great experiences with the graph editor and timeline, dForce, Octane Render plugin and building custom shaders... what a blast!
Strange though. I commend the developers, so don't take this against them in any way whatsoever. Genius are they!
Carrara is being considered old software, I assume. But working in the Sequencer (main timeline area in Carrara) is such a dream compared to what Daz Studio has.
Example:
When we look at the key frames for a particular joint (bone) we see a single line of keys, even though this represents any of several aspects of that joint, which we can see if we open the hierarchy of that joint. Within we'll see manipulation data, like translate, rotate and scale, each of which opens to the three axis in 3D, we also have miscellaneous data for morphs and the like.
In Carrara, I never have to open that limb's hierarchy if I only want to do things like
In Daz Studio, even selecting key frames is odd and frustrating. Sometimes I can just delete large chunks of them (very important that I ca do that!), other times I have to expand the hierarchy down to its actual specific keys for any part of the structure that contains a change (key) and get it deleted that way - and I've even still had keys that refused the Delete command, no matter what I did. That alone is not only incredibly frustrating, but it takes away the freedom to attempt getting animations the way I want them to be, having to settle for what I can or cannot do due to... I'm not sure what it's due to. Delete should Delete.
Another thing that I find odd, since I know that Carrara was heavily worked upon to great success by Daz 3D minds, so I know they're aware of these things - Carrara has tweeners to choose from. Discreet, Linear, Bezier, Ocillate, Noise and even Formula. We also have plugins that add to this list. Daz Studio has very little choice and that's not always enough.
Example: Especially for dynamic simulations, it's important to be able to leave frame 0.00 at default pose, move to frame 30 (or whatever the artist chooses) to begin with the first frame of animation. At this point everything is fine, unless I've got to this point using aniBlocks, in which case I have to delete frames 1 through 29 (which shouldn't be a big deal, right? It usually isn't, but there are times) which will often produce impossible results until I select frames 0 and 30 and set to Linear - again, this wouldn't be so bad if it was as easy to select and set things as it is in Carrara - just drag a selection, set a parameter and move on. It does work this way in Studio, but not always. Sometimes even just selecting a single key can be a total and utter burden. We'll notice that there are three keys at the end of the sequence that absolutely refuse to deselect, no matter what we try, short of exiting and starting a new scene.
Okay whew! Finally got my transition between frames 0 and 30 straightened out. Oh... Hmmm... the pose at frame 30 is no longer what it was. (?) Okay, I'll deal with that later. Right now I ned to make sure that the bulk of the dynamic movement settles before frame 30, so I copy the frames at 30 and paste to frame 25. Good to go. What? Umm....
Now the character takes an impossible journey of contortion and pain and in frustration I exit the program and head back into Carrara.
I haven't yet attempted Daz Studio's strand-based hair. That said, the only option I've found so far for bringing my main character into Daz Studio has been dForce Clasic Long Curly Hair, by Linday. This hair and I have had a lot of experiences together along with the lovely Rosie 8. I really love the setup.
The hair takes forever to simulate for animations, but Linday makes that fact quite clear right on the promo page and again in the wonderful instructions included. So I already knew before commiting.
I've come up with some incredible ways of working with this hair and will be writing about that on my site when I can. Linday... I Love this Product! I also have the wet version - Amazing!!!
VWD does an Amazing job with simulating conforming hair to wonderfullly natural looking movements. I did this with Bronwyn Hair to great effect!
Now my troubles with Daz Studio seem to be mostly based on time. As much as I love the software and the absolutely gorgeous renders its capable of, the fact that I'd have to have a $3,000.00 GPU in order to speed up my renders (probably to sommething still not as fast as I'm seeing in Carrara - but a lot better result) is out of the question. I never buy into those obligations - I can't. My GPU is no slouch, but it won't be used in Iray.
Octane Rocks, but it has its limitations as well. Still, it turns out amazing renders and can be tweaked to churn them out quickly without a lot of noticable artifacts - unlike Iray. Well, to be fair to Iray, I'm still not good at setting it up for fast(er?) renders. But if I let it cook, Iray is my favorite so far for sure.
is only good for still images anyway
as Dforce for strandbased is PA only
nobody really bothers because of that as 99% of DAZ users don't do animations
they made something PA only that only affects 1% of users
then cannot understand why those handfull are miffed 
So I took some time over the Holidays to just snuggle up with Daz Studio and learn more about the things I never really used it for.
The things I did often use it for are utter magic and I've been planning a series of tutoorials and demonstrations on that stuff for some time. The wait should be nearly over and I'll fil my site and YouTube channel with some fun, magical wonders of Daz Studio.
When my friend gave me a nudge toward lip syncing I was still heavy into Daz Studio and Genesis 8. I used Mimic Pro for Carrara on Misty's Veronica Wr8th (G8F preset that works in Carrara) and exported the results via Fenric's PZ2/BVH Exporter. Just know that, for anything Genesis 1 and newer, the PZ2 function does not work, so we need to select the BVH option within the dialog.
The results were... okay. I say that now but I was overjoyed at the time. Truth is, not a lot worked correctly. But at least it does work.
Wendy told me that the 32 bit Daz Studio has lip sync built in, so that's likely the better option for that. I don't have that one installed yet, because:
In working with Genesis 8 lip synce, then simulating the hair, then trying to get a render, I was spending days and days on this thing. I just got the render started and Octane told me that I'll get my results back in some 14 hours.
In frustration I aborted and opened up Carrara. At this point, it's been a while.
Oh... there was Rosie 5. What a sweety! I mean, yeah... she can kick my ass! But she's adorable! :)
So strange. I mean, I was really having fun in Daz Studio - amazement galore! Rosie 8 is gorgeous and a lot of fun to work with, truly!
Rosie 5 in Carrara is amazing. She's built using shapes from the whole Victoria 4 family, six Genesis 2 Female characters and a whole lot of the Genesis stuff. She has custom teeth and eyes, Generation 3 clothing, and has Genesis 2, 3 and 8 clothin in her closet.
But animating her... Wow!
Messing with Rosie 8 and Daz Studio - and by this time I felt that I had originally assessed Studio too harshly, I was getting along pretty good, I thought!
I started animating Rosie 5 and it felt like I just had the perfect sleep and have been given the Best cup of coffee I've ever had! She's nowhere near as Realistic as Rosie 8, even though Rosie 8 is still very stylized - Rosie 5 is something special.
She did tell me, however, that since I've created Rosie 8, I'm not allowed to just let her sit in the library by herself. So for 2021, we'll likely be jumping back and forth a bit. She assures me that I'll get better with Daz Studio that way.
Cheers my friends! Happy New Year!