dForce Archmage ROCKS!!!
Dartanbeck
Posts: 21,967
What a Blast!!!
This Tool is Awesome!!!
Okay, I animate everyday - all day. Since this is mostly done using my Rosie, that means that I am also simulating everyday - all day - because she has this Amazing dForce Hair, by Linday!
All of the various things to set up for dForce never bothers me - but there really are parameters to change all over the place within Daz Studio - on the simulated items themselves, on some of the things that they collide with, their dForce surface materials, simulation settings....
dForce Archmage is a suite of tools that gives us a nice interface to work in for accessing ALL of these things.
Even better, everything that will be 'seen' in the simulation will be presented within the Archmage interface. So if it's not in there, it's not part of the simulation process. If it is in there, then we can make changes to settings and behaviors - it's all right there for us to see and work with!
This "First Glance" video is all about just that - my first glance - because I just got it.
For my first try I wanted to see how well it works for making seamless loops from the simulation data. This was one of the big things that really caught my eye in mate w's promo and tutorial videos - but there are many niceties about this suite that really make this a special buy for me!
I say it in the video - I'm saying it again here:
Thanks mate w! You ROCK!!!
Love this thing!!!
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Comments
Thanks for your comments, made it easy to decide that I need this!
Greymom
I got it as the buy-in for the spectacular pose sale... because I really do need to learn to use dForce properly and it intimidates the snot out of me. Haven't had a chance to try it out yet.
I don't antimate at all and don't intend to... hoping it's still just as useful for static shots.
I've been using dForce Companion 2, and it helps a lot. It sounds like this new tool has more features. Would this be an upgrade from dForce Companion 2 or could they be used together?
I don't have Companion, but I am a Premier Member and have the dForce Manager that comes with that, which doesn't really do what I wanted from such a thing.
Part of what really made dForce Archmage feel valuable (before buying it) to me that are Not present in Studio Premier:
I do love that it has the dForce Animator that I show in the video, but it's nowhere near as appealing to my personal workflow as the Loop Master, which I think is just the cat's meow!
In practice, however, I feel that I am liking this suite more than what I was expecting to - and I was fairly giddy when I first saw it hit the store. I started begging my friends to buy it for me! Finally got paid - in the cart it went and into my DIM.
In mate w's tutorial video (second one down in the store page) I really liked the interface where we can easily access which parts of the figure are visible in Simulation. Rosie's fingers can get stuck in her long curly hair fairly easily! Well... in practice I like it a Lot more than I thought I would. It's just so easy to use.
Likewise, something that I thought was really missing from Studio Premier's Manager is the ability to quickly turn other elements OFF from being visible to the simulation. dForce Archmage takes this to a whole new level by excluding anything not in the selection! Not sure? If it's not visible in the Archmage interface, it's not visible in the simulation! I Love That!!!
Truly, I never felt that I needed any sort of dForce Helper tool. I simulate every single day and I really like how dForce is set up in Daz Studio.
That said, dForce Archmage changed my mind on that! Being able to use Archmage to set up the dForce surface materials the way we can... being able to flip smoothing off on specific items only during simulation is fantastic as it saves on resources during simulation in a HUGE way (smoothing can get failry intensive for certain things - doing this for every frame can be highly inefficient!), but even more - it lets me know that smoothing is ON in the first place! Many times I find that I'll get better visual results if I let dForce do the shaping and leave smoothing off entirely!*
* This is Not always the case. Sometimes we still get a lot of benefit from smoothing after a simulation. This is a case-by-case subjectivity based on taste
The fact that he's gone the extra mile to let us create, save, and delete our own presets for different things is Very Cool! Thanks for that mate w!!!
He's even gone as far as to give us a separate utility that we can use to set our own default behaviors for many of the Archmage aspects, put together a wonderful tutorial video and an Amazing manual!
Being able to store animations that we use only to help the dForce item drape or start simulating how we need it to - then disappear from the scene entirely when the simulation is over - this is something that I haven't tried yet. Since I animate everything all the time, I always have a 30 frame (minimum) buffer of frames at the beginning that I use for just these purposes. So I'll have to experiment as to whether or not this feature works well for animated scenes or not. It seems to me that mate w is no stranger to the idea of simulating for animations, so I have a feeling that it will work Really well - so I look forward to testing it when I get a chance!
I feel like I could just keep going on and on - I really like this thing!
I'm really excited to start trying this:
It's a complete dForce Surface Workshop in one place. (click image to open 1080p in new window)
Upper left - Add or Remove dForce Dynamic Properties, Add/Remove dForce Weight Node
Below that - each surface of the selected item. Edit entire item with the main selection at the top, or individual surfaces from the list below
Upper Right - dForce Surface Material Presets! How many of you have even wanted something like that?!!!!
Below that - The ability to change any and all dForce Surface Material parameters - organized by affect, with wonderful descriptions of anything we tap with the mouse.
Seriously, everything in dForce Archmage has these wonderful descriptions that are intelligent and useful. Nice touch!!!
I also love how beautiful he made the interface.
It's so easy now to "See" at a glance whether something with dForce is frozen and/or visible to the upcoming simulation. Forget to set Freeze or Visible in Simulation? A quick click gets you there.
dForce Manager has that, I think. The reason that I don't know is that - because of that fact that the dForce Manager (Studio Premier) doesn't include the ability to switch Off/On items without a dForce Modifier from the simulation - makes it an uneccessary step that takes me away from focusing on my simulations. I need to be 100% present with my simulations because I do them often - and I need to be able to walk away from them once I start them.
Since Archmage includes Everything to do about the simulation to come - and nothing else - there's less to actually have to look at - only what we need to. I LOVE That!!!
If anyone has seen my renders where Rosie is underwater, you'll know that I had to set that up special. Archmage will allow me to load up one of those saved scenes, launch "Invoke Archmage" and save my Simulation Settings and give it a name, like: Underwater Hair A, for example
If we have something that we never want to be part of the simulation, we can set that up as Default Behavior for that item every time - using the Master Settings, which will also allow us to remove that default behavior if we ever change our mind. So useful. So Efficiency Minded!
Fun!!!
I just did a couple of action sequences with a complex dForce outfit - Luthbel's Wise Wizard (bundle) for Genesis 8 Male.
It's so cool how I didn't even think about loading any of the outfit separately, even though I was animating the character.
I used my usual 30 frame buffer zone (first 30 frames) for drape simulation purposes, loaded the Wise Wizard character, then the beard, then the complete outfit.
For the second animation, Reisormocap's Staff of Light Spell from High Fantasy III, I also added the staff and used my custom control dials to twist the forearm enough on frame 0 so that the staff doesn't touch the hooded cloak.
For both animations, I just fired up "Invoke dForce" from the Archmage menu.
From there I set what I wanted to collide and what I did not want to collide (like the beard, etc.,) and then went into the cloth materials of the dynamic items to set a few things how I wanted them.
I didn't want to simulate the under tunic, so I used the preset that cuts it short to just below the waist. I expanded the hooded cloak and worked with the hood a bit to get it behaving how I wanted it to.
I was amazed and impressed with how quickly the whole thing ran and then how well it came out. Buying this has now completely transformed my dForce experience! I mean... I don't even have to open the Surfaces pane at all setting this stuff up - or even the Simulation Settings pane, for that matter. I only Invoke dForce and work on all of it from there!!! So Cool!
Wow! That is So Crazy!!!
I needed a cool wizard for the scene I'm working on, so I immediately went for Luthbel's Wise Wizard Bundle for G8M.
I truly had No Clue that today he was releasing a new version for Genesis 9 - non at all! Crazy!!!
Wise Wizard Remastered HD Bundle
AFter using dForce Archmage all day every day since it came out, I am So Happy that I decided to grab this - What a Game Changer!!!
First of all, I really love how EVERYTHING that will BE SEEN BY dFORCE is visible in the interface, allowing us to quickly and very easily decide what we want to do.
I use "Collision Helper" primitive objects with my character and they are nested within her hierachy using Nulls, which animate these Helpers from a Safe, Zero position (Frame 0) to where they need to help the simulation.
With dForce Archmage, I no longer have to dig through the character's hierarchy when I need to turn them off or back on. They're right there awaiting my decision!
Secondly, I love how we no longer have to go through everything in the scene to set whether it will be visible to the simulation. Using dForce Archmage, if we want dForce to see it but it's not parented to the selected figure, we just Ctrl + Select it before Invoking the Archmage!!! So Cool! So Easy! So Fast!!!
Thirdly, I love how easy and convenient it is to edit dForce behaviors for the current dForce session. Fingers getting stuck in the hair making it explode? Run Archmage again, this time turn the fingers off from dForce visibility! Cloth too stiff or not stiff enough? Invoke dForce Archmage and edit any and/or all of the material settings pertaining to dForce simulations in a very organized way. I was super-impressed to see that it even allows us to Alt + Click values if we want to get to the default. That can be is really helpful!
There are still a few things that we might have to do for our dForce performance outside of the Invoke dForce interface, and that's fine. This wonderful dForce Simulation Launcher has now become my permanent workflow and it saves me a Lot of time and helps me tailor my results.
Thanks again, matew, for this fine suite of tools!!! :)
So that's what happened to the floor! Thanks!! Now I'll get that skirt to work right.
Wow, how did I miss this one. Only had it for a couple of days and don't know how I lived without it...