Faeryl Womyn said:

Stezza said:

you could try the MilDog and spin the breeds a bit..

quick one in Carrara with fur.

Looks great, wish I could get that into Daz, but I assume you can't use that hair in Daz, will try the morphs though. 

 Phlemo has a plugin thab converts cararra hair to mesh, trhen you can export it

Faeryl Womyn said:

Stezza said:

you could try the MilDog and spin the breeds a bit..

quick one in Carrara with fur.

Looks great, wish I could get that into Daz, but I assume you can't use that hair in Daz, will try the morphs though. 

well you can as mesh if you have Carrara and Philemo's script 
https://sourceforge.net/projects/carrara-time-savers/files/HairConvertorWin64.zip/download

Stezza said:

you could try the MilDog and spin the breeds a bit..

quick one in Carrara with fur.

Looks great, wish I could get that into Daz, but I assume you can't use that hair in Daz, will try the morphs though. 

Bunyip02 said:

VIArts said:

thanks, Stezza!

 

I'm a little confused. i looks like all of Mil dog's morphs are everywhere and only partials. are you applying those breed values to everything r certain parts? 

Thanks Stezza !!!

In Carrara go down the list and enter the values for only those shown by Stezza.

For the Head morps click on Head in the Instances Tab/Scene tab and likewise enter the values shown by Stezza.

To get the hair to work, drag the Hair onto the Mildog.

Enjoy !

 

 i feel dumb. iu was looking fore those morphs in the WRONG place. but now, where is that "gear" he mentioned?

edit--found it

Diomede said:

I also use nulls and primitives to aid navigation.  Do you think it is a Carrara-veteran thing?  Jay is a Carrara veteran and entered the monthly challenge for the 'Give Me a Sign' theme. 

Alberto released a Text Modeler for Studio.  It is interesting to me that Howie released a replicator add on (ultra-scatter) to mimic Carrara and now Alberto has released a text modeler.  Who is going to release the Metaball modeler?  Not just a metaball sticky, but an actual modeler?  There is a store item that will goop blobs all over your figure.

I hope to be through the rest of the public MasterClass tutorials by close of business today.  Then I will start on the Masterclass tutes for Daz+. 

I am a few days behind schedule, but I got through parts 1-55 of the Jay Versluis Masterclass videos on the Daz3D Community/Help Page/Tutorials.  Parts 1-22 are available to everyone.  Have to be a Daz+ subscriber to watch the others.  I am very glad I watched from the beginning to end.  I had watched a few on specific topics on an ad hoc basis.  Found out I was completely unaware of a number of features that make life easier and faster. For people who intend to use Daz Studio as part of the work flow, I highly recommend being a Daz+ subscriber long enough to watch the entire Masterclass tutorial series.  

Next up?  Content creation, not storytelling.  Integrating other programs.  I plan to mix in tutorials for ZBrush, Marvelous Designer, and Substance Painter while my subscriptions for the paid programs is in effect.  I also intend to watch some Blender tutorials and continue watching Daz Studio videos.  

Learning a content workflow.  Today is the 12th.  I am picking the 15th as the day to start a specific advanced content project to offer as a high quality freebie.  Something like an outfit for G9 that is also backwards designed for either G8F or G8M.  By advanced, I merely mean that it should have appropriately adjusted weight maps, appropriate morphs to address joint bends, appropriate morphs for a few commonly used major full body characters, dedicated custom materials created in Substance Painter painted on UVMaps that can support tileable shaders.  In other words, completing quality content creation from alpha to omega.  So after the 15th, I will be spending a lot of time with Mada's Genesis 9 thread, Bohemian3's Marvelous Designer Sewing Concepts thread, and tutorials by Esha from Digital Art Live, among other resources.  Along the way, I will try to make sure I properly respect the tutorials that are for sale and act as an ad for them, not undermine them. Where possible though, I will point to resources freely available.

Encouragement encouraged!  And if I get through all of this, the community gets a decent freebie.

VIArts said:

thanks, Stezza!

 

I'm a little confused. i looks like all of Mil dog's morphs are everywhere and only partials. are you applying those breed values to everything r certain parts? 

Thanks Stezza !!!

In Carrara go down the list and enter the values for only those shown by Stezza.

For the Head morps click on Head in the Instances Tab/Scene tab and likewise enter the values shown by Stezza.

To get the hair to work, drag the Hair onto the Mildog.

Enjoy !

I hate this "workaround" it stuffs up the UV's in Carrara among other things (my problem not DAZ studio users problem)

it causes other issues too even in DAZ studio, I think to fix it you need to use the geometry editor to show all vertices after removing the shoes

Stezza said:

you could try the MilDog and spin the breeds a bit..

quick one in Carrara with fur.

hey Stezza, long time!

that's exactly the dog i need.  Are  you able and willing to share? i have MilDog and 'rara.

you could try the MilDog and spin the breeds a bit..

quick one in Carrara with fur.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I personally don't bother with the bridge to the slums when I can just export an obj for editing in Carrara's vertex room and use morphloader, hell sometimes I even use Zbrush

Yes, I will probably ignore the bridges in the end.  Still early in my 2024 tutorial deep dive, but my initial reactions to the tutorials leans toward using the manual file transfers between programs, and to use Blender a lot more, including its sculpting tools for adjustment morphs.  Like you Wendy, I am fine with using the morph loader manually.  I am also testing the workflow for a few other software options like ZBrush and Marvelous Designer.  ZBrush is awesome, very awesome!, but it is hard to justify the expense given my current amount of usage.  Marvelous Designer is also awesome. Similarly, it may be too expensive for how much I would use it.  But there is not a good substitute for what MD does, like Blender's sculpt tools substituting for ZBrush.

RuudL said:

Maybe you are already knowledgeable about PyCarrara capabilities. If not and if you're interested in doing an animation with MIDI as a basis for the timeline, then my suggestion would be to take a look at PyCarrara. It comes with sample scene files that demonstrate just that.

No, I was not aware of it, sounds really intriguing, thanks.  I actually did contact the creator of Animusic years ago about making his MIDI driven animation software available for purchase (MIDIMotion?), but he was not interested in all the effort to publish, support, etc.  But PyCarrara sounds interesting, I found more here from the inimitable Dartanbeck:

https://www.dartanbeck.com/carrara-zone/carrara-info/carrara-plugins/frederic-rible

I personally don't bother with the bridge to the slums when I can just export an obj for editing in Carrara's vertex room and use morphloader, hell sometimes I even use Zbrush

aniMate 2 continues to fill me with animation Glee!

Introducing the sword back into Rosie's hand, I converted even more of my legacy and Mixamo animations to Genesis 8.

In doing so, as usual, I noticed all kinds of great motion capture for the arms, head, and torso. So I baked my new aniBlocks back into the timeline, selected the keys I want to keep - copy selected keys, then cleared the figure's pose from animation before pasting those keys back in. Instant Partial. I cover this in both courses because it's an essential part of my workflow.

Wow! What a Blast! I mean, it's one thing to remove the key frames from a limb or two and hand-key frame in new movements onto them. But it's another to be able to add actual motion capture data to them from completely different sources! 

Back when I was animating in Carrara I wrote an article about doing this and I called it "Hybrid aniMation".

In Carrara it's kind of opposite, however. Instead of bringing aniBlocks in as NLA clips of data, the aniBlock importer empties the aniBlock into key frames within Carrara's incredible Sequencer, after which we can turn whichever keys we want into NLA (non-linear animation) clips and work with them very much as we do in aniMate 2. 

For partials like this, I'd import them at a different time in the sequencer to ensure I don't mess things up, then select all of the keys I want to use as my partial and drag them in where I've removed the original keys from the previous aniBlock.

Well, with the latest update in Daz Studio, we can do that here too! We can simply add an aniBlock further down the track in aniMate's pane, bake to timeline and use aniMate's pane as a guide to where our 'actual' base motion ends. 

Now we have all of these keys in the timeline. Select the ones we want to replace from the base animation and remove them, then select those limbs from the subsequent set of keys and drag them into place! The previous builds of Daz Studio wouldn't let me slide collapsed keys along the timeline like this - at least I was never successful at it.

Like I mentioned before about this latest update - Game Changer!!! 

To simplify this whole process, I would put space between the base animation and the secondary (and beyond?) aniBlocks in aniMate before baking. Then, once baked, I'd select All of the keys between the two (or more) blocks, using the aniMate pane to guide my scrubber placement, and remove them, creating a visible gap.

Creating Partial aniBlocks is such a quick and easy process, which also gives me a nice preview as I hover over it in the library, that I will continue to work that way. The ability to preview motions in aniMate is a magical power that we don't have in Carrara, so sometimes I'd have DS open just for previewing! ;)

Still, I know that this new ability is going to come in handy. And just knowing that it's available, I'll definitely find practical uses for it - and probably very soon!

LOL!!! It's fun to use a rather life-like walk (a full motion capture instead of a cycle) and have Rosie very easily reach back and draw her Aeon Soul Legend Sword from the scabbard on her back! Then she can continue walking as usual or I can add another partial after that of any of the many sword-holding partials I've just created - both hands out in front, many different versions, or perhaps both hands recoiled into a 'ready-to-attack' position, or even swing the sword around a bit.

After trying a few, um... yeah... it's working Great, as expected! :)

I love this stuff!!!

I love mcasual scripts. He has some really nice work there - absolutely agreed!

Yeah, all this stuff can be an investment. Daz + membership helps immensely even though that stuff isn't Daz +. The sales events members see throughout the year cut those costs Waaaaaaaay down. Just wish list them and keep an eye out.

The cost of setting up the tools we create in my Dynamic Character Animation course cost nothing but a wee bit of time. I even demonstrate how quickly I can do it as I show more and more examples - and I'm still distracted a bit by talking and working - so it's even faster once you get into it. It's fun to do, takes very little time, and has Graph Editor-like capabilities.

Instead of deleting any keyframes (unless there are glitches that we want to remove) simply make a dial that does the changes we need to make. Making that change with the dial places a single key frame all by itself in it's own line - so no clutter. 

The way I demonstrate it, I keep my timeline view on my Pose controls line and work out adjustments to the pose of the figure along the same frames in the beginning.

As I need to start getting deeper, I simply open the Pose Controls hierarchy so I can see individual dials along their own line - it's very speedy and works exactly the same as shaping a spline in the graph. 

The really handy thing is that those keys are So Visible - and the mocap data is all still on its own down below. Like I said, if any of that gets in the way of what I want to do, I just select problem areas and remove them and set the interpolation to my needs. Handy - Fast.

I think we might see Rosie speak this year. It's not high on my priority list. The Real Rosie and I did some tests with PoseRecorder and... I really like that!!! We'll see how it turns out when that time comes.

I'm more interested in putting Rosie (the 3D version) to motion with my music. So higher on the list is to make more music to go along with Rosie.

I actually love how Coyote and The Road Runner tell their stories! :)

I thought about doing something along those lines too. But after seeing the Real Rosie's performance on Rosie 8, and hearing her voice with it... yeah... I dropped the idea of holding up funny signs. 

I still consider myself very new to animating in Daz Studio - so I'm really only just getting started. I'm working out the hair right now as I am not happy with the way it looks and reacts in my latest videos. I think I may have it worked out now - it's looking a Lot nicer - moving fluidly, less constraint from collision manipulation, etc., 

I've also made an improved "Breathe" dial that includes subtle joint rotations. Tests have looked Great so far. 

A beefy orc-like monster thinks he can take her out, so he's starting to bully her. She let it go for a short while, hoping he'd give up and leave her alone, but he didn't. So it's Go Time. Oh... looky here... he brought a weapon! <she snickers and goes to the dead knight and borrows his sword for a bit>

So the interaction between the swords had been a fun adventure. using the dials I make, I can use motion capture to run the base animation. Then when the swords are supposed to clash, the dials help me work that out really nice! Just that slight pause from metal-on-metal before recoiling back. Tests are looking pretty cool so far.

Getting Pose Architect on sale - when she does her confident stance, I can have her rock more weight onto her right foot, rolling her hip to the right, keeping her torso with the gravity. Brilliant! But there's more dials to help shift the shoulders and/or the hip a bit to match with what's going on - so that helps too. I bet I could make a belly dance animation with Pose Architect alone!

LimbStick is really cool too. LightWave had this feature so I'm sure that Maya does too. When the Orc grabs her to through her down, he can actually lock onto her forearm during the time he's supposed to, and then just let go. 

Using aniMate 2's Parent Constraint, I had Genesis 8 Male Gorilla - sized to portray King Kong grasp Rosie from the binding poles and walk away with her. Then I did something stupid and crashed DS before I saved. Drats! It was fun to do then, it'll be fun to do again. Didn't take too long.

I was just watching a fellow's comparison between Blender and Daz Studio. Kind of an odd thing to do, and I'm not sure he really uses either - just from some of the crazy things he says. 

Personally, I don't think there's much to compare. 

Blender is a path to many professional techniques and skills.

Daz Studio is an amazing tool for posing and rendering - especially wonderful for illustrators.

Both can be a great hobby.

For me, I love the fact that I can buy something for very little cash and pour it into Daz Studio and it just freaking works!

I know how to model, rig (Novice/Intermediate), UV Unwrap and map, do texture work... I can do a lot within all of this. That's how I see myself in Blender.

In Daz Studio, I just leave that to these fine folks that are giving it to me for my annual Daz + dues. When I saw the default HDRI light up Teen Josie 8 with her Iray materials for the first time - I made up my mind that I just want to play with this stuff now.

Carrara is an Amazing suite. I love it! everything has animation capabilites built right into it - it's freaking amazing! Like Mixamo, however, it's true compatibility ends with Genesis 2 - but even it isn't 100% up-to-snuff as Auto-Fit doesn't know the difference between one Genesis generation and the next - so Autofit works from other figure, but not between Genesis 1 and 2.

But when I came to Studio, I just started plunking in environments and rendering them. Wow. Nice! bring in my characters and animate them. But in those early days, that was tough, coming from Carrara - or any other animation software. It took a little workflow analysis and good ol' thinkin' to get onto the path I'm on now. And with all of the benefits gained from Daz Studio in everything else - I don't see myself stopping now. Too Freaking Fun!!!

Oh my... am I still talking?

Thanks for the shout-out!

One thing that helps me a lot, I think, is that I've finally decided to stop trying to chase all of these different software solutions to everything. Examples:

I Love to model - I love animating and character personalization more

Solution - Daz 3D already has Great character kits at Phenominal prices - so if I want to model, I leave it to things other than my characters. I'm not as good at it as Daz 3D and their band of amazing PAs!

I love texturing - I love the textures I can get for my characters through Daz - based on real photography - expertly mapped

Solution - I buy in my character's textures via the character packs and edit my chosen character maps for the makeup and eyes, etc., that I might want to tweak - and move on.

More Solution - I buy legacy models and enhance them with my own texturing/shader-building skills. In Studio I don't really have Actual Shader-building skills, so I use shaders from something I really like and use my own maps in the shader to suit the model I'm working on. Copy/Paste is my friend - as is Affinity Photo and PD Howler!

I Love animating! The sheer joy I get when I pull off a nice, natural motion on my own feels So Rewarding!

However, to actually get any of my work done, I need help. My animation sessions are for a final viewable result of somewhere between 3 and 5 seconds - sometimes longer, often times even shorter. One of the 5 second (210 frames following my 30 frame buffer zone - so 240 actual frames) animations generally takes one to two hours just to simulate the hair if I get it right the first time, which I often do these days.

So to get what I want to do done in a more timely fashion, I use aniBlocks and other animated pose files, FBX, BVH, etc.,  No matter the initial format, they All end up as aniBlocks if I intend to use them.

Using those motion captures or hand animations as my base character movement, I then change it to the vision of the motion I wanted my character to be doing - which is almost Never the same as the actual aniBlock I'm using. So this not only helps me to get the animation process started, it also offers me the chance to do my own key frame animation over that result - so I still get that rewarding feeling and get my short clips done in much better time. Not to mention the fact that these aniBlocks have all sorts of little nuances to them that add to the final outcome. I often pick my Base aniBlock because of the little things - knowing I can change the rest myself. It's all part of the fun.

Back when I scattered myself around a bunch of different software solutions for this and for that, I found myself in a never-ending cycle of strictly learning - not getting anything done. It was still a lot of fun for me. I enjoy learning software, which was how I took to Daz Studio so quickly. I mean... I literally just started using it a few years ago.

And that's when the magic happened. The idea of trying to make Daz Studio my workhorse software led me to trying a character that came set up for Iray out of the box, without doing anything to the scene. I didn't know what to do in Studio anyway - I just wanted to see what an Iray-optimized Daz figure looked like in the Iray Viewport. At that time I didn't have many of them. I was allergic to items sold under DUF-Only. An unnecessary fear I had as a Carrara user. I did have Teen Josie 8, some simple hair and an outfit. When I turned on Iray in the viewport, I nearly fell out of my chair - and it was happening rather quickly. Oh My! Look at that SSS in the skin! 

It took me a while after that point to actually come up with a new Rosie character that I really liked - which was Rosie 7. By that time I was more interested in seeing her in action, within finished renders, than I was in studying software.

I spent no more time learning other software, some of my time at WP Guru on YouTube (my pal, Jay Versluis), much more time learning to come up with a good animation workflow in Daz Studio (my course are the results of that) and, during those times of simulating and rendering, I'd spend perusing the store for assets that would make me happy in this whole endeavor.

Very tight on financial resources, I didn't always buy what I liked, but would at least put them into my wish list for further review and/or purchase when I had the funds. 

That has become my new flow. Work. shop, repeat. 

Always on the lookout for cool new outfits, hair, etc., after a while I didn't need to make that as much of a priority as I had a constant flow coming in via Daz +, so recently my attention has been turned toward scripts and plugins and such that benefit me as someone wanting to make motion pictures.

The Philosopher's iReal products!!! Yes! Making my own VFX footage within Daz Studio? That's a HUGE WIN!!!

aniBlocks, more aniBlocks, and even more aniBlocks. I want to collect every last one of them!

Riversoft Art's Bone Minion products! Finding those- - more specifically, finally looking at them, seeing what they do, and trying one completely changed my life! 

Being such a huge GoFigure/Reisormocap fan, my next Bone Minion product was the complete Generation 4 Poses bundle, so my M4/V4 aniBlocks and animated PZ2s would work out of the box on Any of my Genesis generations - and I use them All up to Genesis 8 - 8.1 for some monsters. The people and the Genesis 9 figures tend to crash my Studio, so I'm holding off on those for now - which is fine. Lots of other stuff!

Getting the Genesis 2 Poses Bone Minion allows me to use my FBX downloads from Mixamo on any generation, and 3D Universe's Body2Hip (another new discovery for me) allows me to turn them into Perfect aniBlocks!!! Now That's a Huge Win!!!

One of my students in The Power of aniMate 2 course mentioned (and later detailed) 3D Universe's Pose Architect products. Something I wouldn't even look at since I do my own poses when I'm not animating. Oh My!!! Pose Architect is like the custom dials I teach how to make in Dynamic Character Animation for Daz Studio, but on steroids! So now I have those too - and I love how they work with my own dials - though, for my animation work, I find my own custom dials to be even more essential, these are Perfect for adding all sorts of additional nuances to the final animation. 

So tools became a target for my shopping experience.

Wow, has my day-to-day ever changed. I glance over at my software manuals that used to consume my day and smile. I love those tomes - I do! I like rendering animation much more.

Solution - Have Fun Animating in Daz Studio - forget the rest!

Carrara has a ...gasp   manual 

http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/artzone/pub/software/carrara/carrara7_user_guide.pdf

May I just say again, it's a 'Would be nice..' list. Apart from Item 1, which is massively overdue.

As for Carrara, I have been looking at it, and trying to find evidence for written documentation. Which is something I'm finding hard to do, as much was on a Wiki which seems to have been good in 2012, but there are a lot of broken links now.

Regards,

Richard.

WendyLuvsCatz said:

that's sounding a lot like Carrara...

Or, you know, basically anything besides DS.

that's sounding a lot like Carrara...

Diomede said:

Stay Motivated!

Saw that your Animate tute with DAL hit the Daz store.  Going to get you a whole new group of fans like me, I am sure.  Hope this encourages you to become a Daz vendor again.  Perhaps some of the resources you develop for Rosie can have a more generic version appropriate for sale?  Or your Enviro-kits be made Iray compatible, with instances replacing the replicators?  Or....

Yes! Working on the same path as I did with Carrara - Starting with Starry Sky Iray for Daz Studio!

Um... well... there's nothing generic about any part of Rosie - so she'll have to just remain the custom little IP that she is! Besides, I buy everything about her in the Daz 3D store! ;)