Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2026 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
More:
I normally animate tons of motions to a particular theme based on a story that's rolling around in my head. So I have a pretty good idea of where the video is going.
When I feel that I have a good selection to make a video from, that's when I fire up Magix Music Maker and start building music that makes me feel the right attitude of what I've been animating. Having Music Maker for many years now, I've collected a nice assortment of commercially licensed soundpools - so when I create the music, I can put my name on it.
Being a drummer myself, I often begin with percussion, but not always. Sometimes I just have some kind of a beat in my head and I start building in other ways - it really depends on the feel that I'm after. For example, I might want some soft strings playing mysteriously, so that will be where I being and start evolving the rest of the instruments around them. Other times it might be the guitar that's my driving force, or a specific bass sound that I'm after. When it comes to creating the music, it's always a new experience starting something completely different. Of course, there are also times when I revisit themes to extend them to further a story arc along.
The music video shorts that I made recently were created using ComfyUI, where I get a lot less control over everything - so I still prefer building my own from scratch using Music Maker - but ComfyUI is fun too, always being surprised on what comes out the other end! :)
Music Maker is also very powerful for making modular tracks that can fit right next to each other on the timeline when making a movie. This way I can have a full theme, a looping chunk of the prominent 'feel' of the theme, and emotional changes that take us either into or out of of the 'modules' of the music, and I can then edit the movie together emotionally.
The big trick with foley, as I'm sure you already know, is to Not overdo it. Just because it looks like something should make sound doesn't mean that it needs to be realized - yet, if we're focusing on that thing, and it really should be making noise (like the camera tracking footsteps along the ground, for example) we better put some foley there!
In that example, which is a common sound to add, for footsteps that are being focused on I'll use a sound file of footsteps on the appropriate material. I use DaVinci Resolve, but I'm still a noob at Fairlight Audio in many ways - so I do most of this stuff in the Edit page. I'll chop the footsteps audio track into single, individual footsteps, keep a few and discard the rest, drag them all out of the way and copy one of them.
Then I play the video forward to just before I should start hearing the sound and paste it in and align it to sound right with the visuals on screen. Skip ahead a few steps visually and paste it again - depending on how many footsteps I need. Then I can go copy another and repeat that, keeping them from not repeating that same pattern each time, then repeat that with the third and final sound (using three as an example), then just go back and make sure that I like what I see and hear together.
Because of the way I make my music tracks, I often find myself editing the video with music first - so I get the feel and timing right visually. So then, when I need to do foley I may mute those music tracks so that I can focus more intently on the sound effects.
Great idea on the Humble Bundles, I've bought a few over the years but don't monitor them too closely unless I'm looking for something specific, I'll keep 'em in mind.
@wsterdan, the animation you are doing with AI is with a local installation or are you using an online free or paid service? I tried installing Pinokio Wan2GP locally, but my video card is just not up to snuff to handle it.
wow, thanks so much for the info! Very, very much appreciated, and good tips, too!
I'm currently using OpenArt with their various tools and models, mainly for the convenience and simplified layout. I Spent some time trying Pinokio and ComfyUI locally, but I ran into issues with my Mac, either not getting it to use 16-bit with different engines or running out of GPU RAM (I had roughly 40 GB). For now, I've got an annual subscription for another 10-11 months that I'm going to use, but I'm still peeking at other options. If I could have gotten ComfyUI to work – even slowly – I would have put a future M5Pro with 128 RAM in the future budget, but I just couldn't get it happening well enough.
Hi everyone!
I’d like to share my new work, "Parapapam!, a short film about a girl playing the drums and... a little twist. Let me know what you think of the animation (it was pretty tricky and the result isn’t perfect, but it’s the best I could do, it was quite complicated xDD).
It’s available on YouTube. The language is Catalan, but English subtitles are available. The voice was recorded by a friend. I didn’t use any AI at any point in the short film.
I hope someone enjoys it. Cheers! ^^
Link:
https://youtu.be/LsDgNxDQGDU?si=dtIDb87qsgaxX0Up
Nice to see something done with own effort with no AI or premade animations!
Very nicely done! That was lots of fun, and very impressive animation!
wsterdan,
Bravo! That was fun to watch.
Cheers!
Thanks, the little clips are fun to do.
Brilliant! You know, I can totally relate. I played live rock drums for income for 44 years. I still thank my parents!!! After moving out of the house I quickly came to realize that drums are just plain illegal to play!!! LOL
Love the story, the soundtrack, and really love what you've done visually! Very Nice!!!
dForce Hair Sim Tip
Now, it was Linday's Classic Long Curly Hair that got me into Daz Studio in the first place, so this mostly applies to any of Linday's dForce Hair since it's all I've ever used as far as dForce-ready hair.
First of all, I find dForce Archmage to make my dForce simulations night and day easier, faster, and better simply because it shows everything involved in the simulation in one interface before launch - and that's just plain convenient and awesome! It makes it quick and simple to turn on/off various parts of a figure to collide or not with the click of a button, set friction at a glance, freeze, unfreeze, hide from sim, simulation settings... it's all right there - so this makes trying new 'takes' really easy and much more organized and precise. Nothing wrong with doing it another way - I just wanted to point out that many of my hair topics are now much more simplified simply because Archmage takes all of that running around to diffent GUI panes out of the workflow.
Those who have heard me talk about my process will also already know that I use simple cone primitives to help direct the hair from where I don't want it to go. In dForce Archmage, these 'collision helpers' show up as a button to turn on/off at any time, helping to take the guess work out of the equation. So now I have each of these named so that I can clearly see what each one is in Archmage so I can set each simulation at a glance.
Okay, if you do use simulated hair - no matter the simulation solver, there are always certain Action sequences that hair just does not like to survive!
Before I get to my first take of a simulation run, I always step my way carefully through the entire sequence looking for times when any limb (or whatever) gets too close or even collides with the body in a way that will SQUASH the dForce object into what it collides with - this will cause the dForce item to stick to that part of the mesh or even explode right then and there. So I use the Pose Control dials to make corrections visually and, if I need to, I zero those changes back out on each side of where that problem occurs, giving enough time to be a fluid motion that dForce can accept.
Okay, even after all of that, sometimes it's still a real BUMMER to try and get the dForce item to survive fast, far moving simulations. The simulated mesh simply gives up and snarls, flies apart, and breaks. It blows up!
One thing that can save all of this: Multiple simulations/renders for the same sequence! Sometimes this works, sometimes we have to try something else. But when this works it's so elegant and much more pain free.
This can often end up giving a much nicer result visually that performing drastic settings that makes the dForce item "survive", forsaking visual appeal for survivability.