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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.
I'm not proud, but I'm taking the lazy way out and letting Seedance 1.5 Pro handle my foley work (it's way smarter than I am and has way, way more patience); here's a quick initial test:
And a little longer example of auto-foley using Seedance 1.5 Pro:
Very nice! Well done!
My problem is that I enjoy the hands-on too much. I love doing that stuff!
That's hardly a "problem", though, in your case that's "the good stuff". Your work is always going to shine far brighter than someone like me can pump out using AI, and it's why AI will never replace real artists or craftsmen. Ever.
Well said!
You all have inspired users to do more with what they have and to teach us how to achieve great images and animations from our beloved programs. Thanks for sharing.
The rays don't seem to be coming from her eyes, quite, which I asume is the intent.
Looking Epic, wsterdan!!!
Wow. I'm honored to hear you say that! Thanks So Much!
Well, speaking for myself, I love to share anything and everything in the hopes that someone might catch that wave and ride it.
I learn from others, so it's truly refreshing to me if someone else learns from me!
It was, but you can see that in the very first frame I messed up and they're not quite right there, and the first frame was used for the animation. I'm having a huge amount of fun just banging stuff out to see how everything works as opposed to trying to do something serious yet. Thanks for pointing it out, I should be paying more attention to things like this.
At the moment, though, I'm more a little kid who tries something on a whim, claps his hands with glee without looking too closely and moves on to the next random thought.
As an example of how random my goldfish brain thoughts are, I started with a 2009 render of Chip as Mon-El:
I ask Nano Banana Pro to replace Mon-El with my Power Girl character, then (without looking too closely at the swap) ask it to animate her fighting the robots and I'm done and on to the next random thing.
Not a recipe for high quality, but for me, a recipe for 10 minutes of pure, unadulterated fun.
On the plus side, every time I do a test like this I get ideas for how to use the features and eventually I will turn it into something bigger.
Fun is the object of the exercise for most of us, so that is good.
You know... that's me as well... and I've been telling people that (but not so well, and with so few words! LOL) for years!
I get feedback all the time about how to improve quality, do this, do that... the fun thing is that, in most cases... I already know that and how to do it.
But I am on a roll with what you just said!
Before I start the render about two hours have passed - generally. Sometimes more, but rarely less (Simulations take time).
When I first started animating in this way, I wasn't nearly this fast, but it still felt Much faster than before coming up with this method. In 2026, after taking all of 2025 to work out a solid set of techniques for animating facial subtleties, variances, and normal behaviors everything I do using the custom dials has become a whole lot more efficient. Working out the timing of various facial musculature changes was an exercise of intuition vs observing the rendered results and locking down corrections. It was really an eye-opener in so many ways that translated beautifully through the rest of the parts of the animation that I had been key framing by hand using my custom pose controls.
Just recently I started rendering less to alpha (Character-only renders) and more with the scenery fully realized. This became a habit after forging a whole new custom GUI experience for my own efficiency within Daz Studio. It was just another set of head-smacking epiphanies that completely changed the fluidity of how I work, making everything more intuitive - less searching through the massive library, because I have an ever-changing palette in my library that is lightning-fast to edit and puts everything I want to work with in one little group in my library.
So how this works is as follows:
I currently have the following custom palettes that reside in My Daz 3D Library:
So all of this stuff is at my fingertips right there near the top, where the aniBlocks are.
Going through the main library to grab stuff isn't a burden at all for me. This was just born from the idea that I was having fun saving environments after replacing static elements, like flames, for example with animated VDB versions, and arranging things how I want them to be. Since that library was so easy for me to get at, I started saving more and more stuff there, under specific categories - most often the name of the artist, like Jack Tomalin, for example. But then I found myself wishing that I had the other pieces to those sets, like lighting, render settings, cameras, material options, etc., in that listing as well. So the idea came to simply copy over the entire folder structure for that product.
After I started doing that, it became very convenient for things whose add-on folders are in a completely different part of the library. So I started consolidating all of that stuff - well... if I was planning on using it Now. It has really grown into something that allows me to work strictly with my imagination now, and leave the "Finding of things" for when I take a break.
The other day I started watching Daredevil again from Season 1, Episode 1 and was inspired by seeing the amazing fight choreography again. I never forgot how cool it is, but seeing it always makes me go "Wow!"
I sprang from my chair and endeavored to start making a series of fight scene animations that are a quite a bit more aggressive than what I can usually get away with when using my dForce hair - but with all of the added experience I've gained from animating every day - multiple times per day - for years now, I had the patience and level-headedness to wade through them until I got settings that survived!
The really cool thing about that is that, these scenes are what were actually missing from what I'm currently working on. I was planning on leaving that all as 'Implied'. Now I just keep planning new ones and they come together really well! One time so far I had more than 10 attempts with dForce fail on me before finally getting it to make it all the way through. Other times, like I mention in an earlier post I'd end up simulating up until just before the frame where it always blows up. The hair stays at that last simulated result, but since it's rigged, the arm. head and neck motions still alter its shape. So I'd render just past that, then try simulating from that point forward. I have a couple of those and they look really good. Definitely good enough to where I'm glad that I managed to allow myself to use that stunt in the final video when I start that process.
Thanks for the process breakdown, very impressive!
It clearly helps define our two lanes: you are an artisan carefully chipping away at block of marble to slowly reveal a masterpiece that was hidden within; I'm a guy with a hammer whacking away at big rocks wondering what it'll look like when I'm done. The end results speak for themselves!
Thanks again for detailng your methodology, it helps me appreciate your animations even more than I already do, if that's possible.
I love your work and am anxiously awaiting seeing it!
(until then, appreciating what you've already made!!!)
Thanks, I really appreciate that! I might actually be stepping away from animation for awhile though, as I've fallen behind in my 3D modelling/printing projects and my game programming... and now Stazza's tricked me into thinking about writing prose. There's just too many cool things to enjoy these days, there's just not enough time for everything all the time...
Yep. Ya gotta Do You!!! That's what I always say...
...and that's why I quit chasing all kinds of other stuff, other long software figure-it-out sessions, etc., and just Do Me! Which is to aniMate! :)
Really impressive that you were able to sync up that drum animation pretty close to the actual sound, that must have taken a long time. And very nice to see some real animation without the use of AI.
Imago, wsterdan, thank you so much for your comments! I'm glad you liked the animation, effort and story, and sorry for not replying sooner xD
FrankTheTank, thanks for your kind words. It really took me a long time to make the whole animation; I had to create a massive Excel spreadsheet with each keyframe and drum part, 6 pages of excel, and compose the drums at a tempo of 144bpm, so that, being 24 fps, each hit could have an exact frame (except for some sixteenth notes xD), but it was fun too!
Dartanbeck, I'm glad that, being a musician and drummer and knowing the instrument, you enjoyed it and found it convincing. Drum practice can be tough, hahaha. And by the way, thanks also for sharing the dForce hair process. I'm doing some tests because my next short film will probably include dForce hair, so the tips are really helpful.