Aw you should not be discourage by others art work, if you work & play with daz long enough you should be able to do all kinds of neat stuff like animation

Here is one I just posted this one last night I hope it will encourage you to keep going :)

Karate Girl in the 5th chamber of the Shaolin

Watch along as Suki the Karate Girl tries to defeat the 3rd master of the 5th chamber in this 3 minute animated short of Kung Fu mastery.. Created with Daz Studio 4.12 pro, rendered in NVIDIA iRAY

click pic to play

...nicely done.  I wish I had the horsepower to do animation. I would so love to do my namesake's duel with her Sensei which even though she lost, was the "passing test" for her at the dojo, and is very central to her story.

 

It leads to the scene attached below. 

KK: " I see that I have so much more to learn."

Master Kobyashi:  "And that is why you truly win and the others don't."

BTW where did you find a Naginata?

I would like to see that scene animated too bet it be great.

Thanks for watching my anime :)

...I love your work.  Wonderful visual storytelling.

Yeah that long ponytail would be a total pain though.  I now have OOT's Rochelle Ponytail which has a lot more bones and morphs to it (it even has upside down morphs).  That hair though is a killer to render even in a still frame image let alone multiple "cels" required for animating.  I feel I would need Pixar's custom system which they used for Merida's hair in Brave just for the movements.

I used OOT Linda Ponytail Hair for this animations I added a dForce Modifier Weight Node to just the pony of the hair in this film to make it more dynamic. i was pretty happy with the results  of course it was the only item deforce in her wardrobe so it was not much to render out in animations . I've been having pretty good luck making conforming hair deforce. maybe you could give it a try

 

 

 

Aw you should not be discourage by others art work, if you work & play with daz long enough you should be able to do all kinds of neat stuff like animation

Here is one I just posted this one last night I hope it will encourage you to keep going :)

Karate Girl in the 5th chamber of the Shaolin

Watch along as Suki the Karate Girl tries to defeat the 3rd master of the 5th chamber in this 3 minute animated short of Kung Fu mastery.. Created with Daz Studio 4.12 pro, rendered in NVIDIA iRAY

click pic to play

...nicely done.  I wish I had the horsepower to do animation. I would so love to do my namesake's duel with her Sensei which even though she lost, was the "passing test" for her at the dojo, and is very central to her story.

 

It leads to the scene attached below. 

KK: " I see that I have so much more to learn."

Master Kobyashi:  "And that is why you truly win and the others don't."

BTW where did you find a Naginata?

I would like to see that scene animated too bet it be great.

Thanks for watching my anime :)

...I love your work.  Wonderful visual storytelling.

Yeah that long ponytail would be a total pain though.  I now have OOT's Rochelle Ponytail which has a lot more bones and morphs to it (it even has upside down morphs).  That hair though is a killer to render even in a still frame image let alone multiple "cels" required for animating.  I feel I would need Pixar's custom system which they used for Merida's hair in Brave just for the movements.

 

 

 

Aw you should not be discourage by others art work, if you work & play with daz long enough you should be able to do all kinds of neat stuff like animation

Here is one I just posted this one last night I hope it will encourage you to keep going :)

Karate Girl in the 5th chamber of the Shaolin

Watch along as Suki the Karate Girl tries to defeat the 3rd master of the 5th chamber in this 3 minute animated short of Kung Fu mastery.. Created with Daz Studio 4.12 pro, rendered in NVIDIA iRAY

click pic to play

...nicely done.  I wish I had the horsepower to do animation. I would so love to do my namesake's duel with her Sensei which even though she lost, was the "passing test" for her at the dojo, and is very central to her story.

 

It leads to the scene attached below. 

KK: " I see that I have so much more to learn."

Master Kobyashi:  "And that is why you truly win and the others don't."

BTW where did you find a Naginata?

I would like to see that scene animated too bet it be great.

Thanks for watching my anime :)

 

 

 

Aw you should not be discourage by others art work, if you work & play with daz long enough you should be able to do all kinds of neat stuff like animation

Here is one I just posted this one last night I hope it will encourage you to keep going :)

Karate Girl in the 5th chamber of the Shaolin

Watch along as Suki the Karate Girl tries to defeat the 3rd master of the 5th chamber in this 3 minute animated short of Kung Fu mastery.. Created with Daz Studio 4.12 pro, rendered in NVIDIA iRAY

click pic to play

...nicely done.  I wish I had the horsepower to do animation. I would so love to do my namesake's duel with her Sensei which even though she lost, was the "passing test" for her at the dojo, and is very central to her story.

It leads to the scene attached below. 

KK: " I see that I have so much more to learn."

Master Kobyashi:  "And that is why you truly win and the others don't."

BTW where did you find a Naginata?

..well, a new month and suddenly it's autumn even though there are 11 days to go. Not even going to make it to 70° today with possible rain & thunder. Surprisingly we actually had a tornado warning here yesterday evening. 

Leaves are changing colour early this year.  Makes me wonder if we are not going to get one of those (unusual for here) cold snowy winters where the city gets paralysed for a week or so.

Non Complaint   In our long running D&D 5th ed campaign (yeah, been a geek for along time) which wound up this weekend we literally snatched victory from the "jaws" (or in this case "fangs") of defeat. It looked like it was all over and likely what we call a TPK (total party kill), two powerful vampires and a horde of tough vampire spawn. Yeah, too long a story to go into but sometimes you don't need to have that uber powerful magic weapon (which my character had taken away by a telekinesis spell) that causes radiant damage and sheds sunlight in an area (both which vampires are particularly vulnerable to) to turn the tide.  Sometimes just being in the right place at the proper time with a wooden stake in hand (and a compatriot strong enough to push the lid off the crypt that the biggest baddest vampire escaped into to recover as we did finally get him on the ropes) is all you need. 

[sport]

Also Wisconsin literally rolled over Central Michigan 61 - 0 on Saturday after defeating Southern Florida 49 - 0 the week before.  That's 120 unanswered points in only 2 games. Wisconsin racked up ten times the yardage their opponent did, 599 - 58. and their defence looked extremely good compared to past years.  Next up the first big test against conference rival #10 Michigan who had some difficulty with unranked Army last weekend and had to go into overtime to win.

[/sport]

The input directory is not the problem.  The output directory, that you set the first time you ran the script, is.  The first time you ran the script, you clicked the output directory button and set it.  (It is not set by the script.  It just remembers your selection)  As the manual states:

Click Set Clothing Output Directory... button to define the output directory where the converted clothing items will be saved. This should be the top-level directory, such as /People/Genesis 3/Female/Clothing (for G2F to G3F) or /People/Genesis 3/Male/Clothing (for G2M to G3M).  It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you select the DAZ 3D/Studio/My Library and create a Genesis 3/Female/Clothing or Genesis 3/Male/Clothing folder.  You could use the My DAZ 3D Library path; however, the clothing converter could overwrite vendor created content.  

The script should not try and change the directory as it could put stuff where you wouldn't find it.

OK, I do understand what you're saying and why you're saying it. I really and truly do.

I created a new base directory at G:/Converted Clothing (neither My Library nor My Daz 3D Library exist on my system), with a subdirectory at "Genesis 8/Female". I selected that as the output directory.

The script allowed me to Add Directory. It created an entirely new data directory for the converted clothing inside the G:/Converted Clothing level, so it wasn't possible for it to overwrite anything from the vendor.

It still stripped the custom bones right out of the converted clothing. The bones are just gone, period.

Is there any way to make it stop doing that?

Looking at the script log, there's an error message now that hasn't appeared previously:

23:23:14 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Cannot find assets for old preset /People/Genesis 2 Female/Clothing/Shifting Images/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Arm Wrap.duf
 

23:23:41 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Cannot find assets for old preset /People/Genesis 2 Female/Clothing/Shifting Images/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Body Wrap.duf
EDIT: My mistake. That message does in fact appear if the clothing output directory is /Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/Shifting Images/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap.

Is there any way to tell what assets it isn't finding? Maybe thats the clue to why the bones are being stripped.

EDIT 2: Log files from both the Clothing Converter and Studio in attached zip file.

Thanks for the log.  That error occurs when the script is trying to copy the categories for the original G2F clothing item.  It asks the Daz DB for assets associated with the old file to copy its categories to the new file it created.  If you right-click your original G2F item in Smart Content and select "Explore Product", does it find anything?  It should find the original product.  In this case, "SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap" and all of its files.  I would uninstall and reinstall this product.

Product uninstalled and reinstalled.

Smart Content found all the wardrobe parts, materials, shaping presets, everything.

Converter ran without any error messages this time.

Custom bones stripped right out of the converted clothing again.

I think at this point, I'm just going to have to give up on this. Despite everything, the converter insists on stripping out the custom bones, for no apparent reason, and since you don't have the item, troubleshooting is just very difficult.

I do wonder if maybe there's something that Shifting Images does in their workflow that the converters find difficult to understand. She also did the Victorian Gown, up at the beginning of page 8 (roughly) of this thread, just before I started posting about this. If the bones are outside the converter's field of influence, but the cloth itself is one item instead of layered geometry, then it maybe just drops the bones completely.

Anyway, thank you for trying to help.

I did put the wrap on my wishlist.  If I ever get it, I will investigate.  Sorry for the inconvenience. 

I am glad reinstalling it fixed your metadata problem though.

First time user, install problems.

Computer: Win10, i7, 32GB Ram

DAZ Studio: The latest version 4.11, via Install Manager

1) First attempt: Install Manager

Boy, that took a while. Got a lot of stuff ok but some gave a highly informative error message "Install failed!". No explanation or reason or anything. (See the attached image.) You could click them and try to install again, with the same results. Unfortunately, some of these failed components were pretty central - like the Genesis 8 Starter Essentials.

2) Running DAZ Studio

Oh, DAZ Studio runs ok. And I can access and use the content that was installed successfully. Even better, I could use the runtime downloader to fecth and install most of the missing content that couldn't be installed from the Install Manager. But still no luck with Genesis 8 Starter Essentials.

3) Direct file copying

Next I tried to figure out the program directory structure. I found the library directory easily enough, and since I already had the install zips for the Genesis 8 Starter Essentials, I simply manually copied the content from the zip files to the relevant library subdirectories. Then I launched DAZ again. Lo and behold, now I can access the Genesis 8 Starter male and female figures all right - but I still can't give them any clothes. I get the list of wearables for G8 figures but trying to double-click them I get a "failed to load" error message. So obviously this was not the correct way to go about it either...

What to do now?

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

When I began using DAZ Studio, Genesis has just become available.  I invested in it and loved using it.

Now Genesis 8 is out and I would like to get my custom character into the Genesis 8 format.

What I now have is my Genesis original migrated into Genesis 2, but I have little success getting into Genesis 3, for which a converter to Genesis 8 now exists.

Can anyone suggest how to get my Genesis character into GF8?

This character is central to my artwork and I want to get the physical characteristics of at least the face translated. I can deal with the body shape after that has succeeded.

Thanks.

The input directory is not the problem.  The output directory, that you set the first time you ran the script, is.  The first time you ran the script, you clicked the output directory button and set it.  (It is not set by the script.  It just remembers your selection)  As the manual states:

Click Set Clothing Output Directory... button to define the output directory where the converted clothing items will be saved. This should be the top-level directory, such as /People/Genesis 3/Female/Clothing (for G2F to G3F) or /People/Genesis 3/Male/Clothing (for G2M to G3M).  It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you select the DAZ 3D/Studio/My Library and create a Genesis 3/Female/Clothing or Genesis 3/Male/Clothing folder.  You could use the My DAZ 3D Library path; however, the clothing converter could overwrite vendor created content.  

The script should not try and change the directory as it could put stuff where you wouldn't find it.

OK, I do understand what you're saying and why you're saying it. I really and truly do.

I created a new base directory at G:/Converted Clothing (neither My Library nor My Daz 3D Library exist on my system), with a subdirectory at "Genesis 8/Female". I selected that as the output directory.

The script allowed me to Add Directory. It created an entirely new data directory for the converted clothing inside the G:/Converted Clothing level, so it wasn't possible for it to overwrite anything from the vendor.

It still stripped the custom bones right out of the converted clothing. The bones are just gone, period.

Is there any way to make it stop doing that?

Looking at the script log, there's an error message now that hasn't appeared previously:

23:23:14 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Cannot find assets for old preset /People/Genesis 2 Female/Clothing/Shifting Images/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Arm Wrap.duf
 

23:23:41 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Cannot find assets for old preset /People/Genesis 2 Female/Clothing/Shifting Images/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Body Wrap.duf
EDIT: My mistake. That message does in fact appear if the clothing output directory is /Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/Shifting Images/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap.

Is there any way to tell what assets it isn't finding? Maybe thats the clue to why the bones are being stripped.

EDIT 2: Log files from both the Clothing Converter and Studio in attached zip file.

Thanks for the log.  That error occurs when the script is trying to copy the categories for the original G2F clothing item.  It asks the Daz DB for assets associated with the old file to copy its categories to the new file it created.  If you right-click your original G2F item in Smart Content and select "Explore Product", does it find anything?  It should find the original product.  In this case, "SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap" and all of its files.  I would uninstall and reinstall this product.

The input directory is not the problem.  The output directory, that you set the first time you ran the script, is.  The first time you ran the script, you clicked the output directory button and set it.  (It is not set by the script.  It just remembers your selection)  As the manual states:

Click Set Clothing Output Directory... button to define the output directory where the converted clothing items will be saved. This should be the top-level directory, such as /People/Genesis 3/Female/Clothing (for G2F to G3F) or /People/Genesis 3/Male/Clothing (for G2M to G3M).  It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you select the DAZ 3D/Studio/My Library and create a Genesis 3/Female/Clothing or Genesis 3/Male/Clothing folder.  You could use the My DAZ 3D Library path; however, the clothing converter could overwrite vendor created content.  

The script should not try and change the directory as it could put stuff where you wouldn't find it.

OK, I do understand what you're saying and why you're saying it. I really and truly do.

I created a new base directory at G:/Converted Clothing (neither My Library nor My Daz 3D Library exist on my system), with a subdirectory at "Genesis 8/Female". I selected that as the output directory.

The script allowed me to Add Directory. It created an entirely new data directory for the converted clothing inside the G:/Converted Clothing level, so it wasn't possible for it to overwrite anything from the vendor.

It still stripped the custom bones right out of the converted clothing. The bones are just gone, period.

Is there any way to make it stop doing that?

Looking at the script log, there's an error message now that hasn't appeared previously:

23:23:14 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Cannot find assets for old preset /People/Genesis 2 Female/Clothing/Shifting Images/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Arm Wrap.duf
 

23:23:41 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Cannot find assets for old preset /People/Genesis 2 Female/Clothing/Shifting Images/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Body Wrap.duf
EDIT: My mistake. That message does in fact appear if the clothing output directory is /Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/Shifting Images/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap.

Is there any way to tell what assets it isn't finding? Maybe thats the clue to why the bones are being stripped.

EDIT 2: Log files from both the Clothing Converter and Studio in attached zip file.

You can move the Connect Library in itself, then the emtadata wills till work

Somehow the central points of my original post keep disappearing as though I never stated them. In that original post I said (my emphasis added): "some ... duplicates were in the 'My Daz Connect Library' on my Mac. ... I also don't want the possibility of duplicate content."

If there are duplicates in the "My Daz Connect Library," and I merely move it to my own Daz Studio format directory, it will merely be moving the primary problem from one location to another.

I know this stuff can be confusing. If you don't understand the situation I'm trying to solve, I appreciate your attempting to help, but I'd really like to stay focused on comprehensive and workable solutions.

- as long as you have the folder that contains the /data folder selected as a Daz Studio Format and Poser Format Content Directory

You don't address the /cloud folder, as shown in the images I posted.  My own Daz Studio format and Poser format content directories do not have a "cloud" folder in them anywhere.

DS doesn't care where it is (this is one advantage of Connect over DIM, it uses relative paths throughout). You can also just take the contents of each 1_sku/ folder and merge them all into a single content directory, but merging folders used to be tricky on the Mac and that will break the metadata.

Well, I know how to do merging on a Mac, and I thought it would go without saying that I don't want to break the metadata, but I guess not, so: I don't want to break the metadata.

(Incidentally, the G2M hair converter did the same thing to AprilYSH's Milen Hair -- the G2 version of the hair has lots of motion morphs, and every single one of them got killed dead when sent through the G2M-G8M hair converter. Maybe there's something about the G2 generation of stuff that's weird or quirky?)

Hmmm.  That is very strange.  I wonder what is different about them?  Because you are able to convert other clothing and hair items for G2 and not lose morphs, correct?

(BTW, can you post the Daz log for when you try to add them again?  I want to figure out what is going on there too)

File attached. Looking at it, the converter appears to be serenely ignoring the "Ignore previously converted clothing" box, whether it's checked or unchecked, and simply defaulting to NOT ignoring -- but only when the "Add Directory" button is used. If I do "Add File" instead, it behaves as expected.

Still no idea why it's killing the morphs, though. The clothing converter's own log of the conversion is ... unhelpful.

22:55:06 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Executing Script
22:55:06 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Selecting Preset: G:\DAZ 3D\Studio3\content\People\Genesis 2 Female\Clothing\SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap\Body Wrap.duf
22:55:06 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Converting clothing from G:\DAZ 3D\Studio3\content\People\Genesis 2 Female\Clothing\SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap\Body Wrap.duf to G:/DAZ 3D/Studio3/content/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Body Wrap.duf
22:55:24 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Copy Icons from G:\DAZ 3D\Studio3\content\People\Genesis 2 Female\Clothing\SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap\Body Wrap.duf to G:/DAZ 3D/Studio3/content/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Body Wrap.duf
22:55:24 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Copy Categories from G:\DAZ 3D\Studio3\content\People\Genesis 2 Female\Clothing\SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap\Body Wrap.duf to G:/DAZ 3D/Studio3/content/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Body Wrap.duf
22:55:37 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Execution Complete.

On the upside, sent Milen Hair through the hair converter again. Because of the way the source directory is set up, it had to be done as an individual file, not a directory, so I don't know if that bug persists in the hair converter. However, sending it through again restored the morphs so that they function properly.

Ok, for the Add Directorty, what is tripping you up is the Does Daz Version Exist check:

2019-09-05 22:45:25.842 DEBUG: Looking to see if Daz File "G:/DAZ 3D/Studio3/content/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Thigh Wrap.duf" exists: true
2019-09-05 22:45:25.842 DEBUG:    SKIPPING, Daz Version already exists: G:/DAZ 3D/Studio3/content/People/Genesis 2 Female/Clothing/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Thigh Wrap.duf

The script thinks the input file is in the Daz managed directories.  So it replaces the "Genesis 2 Female" part with "Genesis 8 Female" and looks to see if the file exists, which it does.  This is one reason why it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to not mix your input directories (that Daz installs) and your OUTPUT directories (where the script creates new content).  On my system, Daz content is in "D:\Documents\My DAZ 3D Library\People\Genesis 2 Female\Clothing" and my content that I create or have scripts create is in "D:\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio\My Library\People\Genesis 8 Female\Clothing"

This mixing of the directories is also probably why you have had issues.  Something was unintentionally overwritten.

(Incidentally, the G2M hair converter did the same thing to AprilYSH's Milen Hair -- the G2 version of the hair has lots of motion morphs, and every single one of them got killed dead when sent through the G2M-G8M hair converter. Maybe there's something about the G2 generation of stuff that's weird or quirky?)

Hmmm.  That is very strange.  I wonder what is different about them?  Because you are able to convert other clothing and hair items for G2 and not lose morphs, correct?

(BTW, can you post the Daz log for when you try to add them again?  I want to figure out what is going on there too)

File attached. Looking at it, the converter appears to be serenely ignoring the "Ignore previously converted clothing" box, whether it's checked or unchecked, and simply defaulting to NOT ignoring -- but only when the "Add Directory" button is used. If I do "Add File" instead, it behaves as expected.

Still no idea why it's killing the morphs, though. The clothing converter's own log of the conversion is ... unhelpful.

22:55:06 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Executing Script
22:55:06 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Selecting Preset: G:\DAZ 3D\Studio3\content\People\Genesis 2 Female\Clothing\SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap\Body Wrap.duf
22:55:06 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Converting clothing from G:\DAZ 3D\Studio3\content\People\Genesis 2 Female\Clothing\SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap\Body Wrap.duf to G:/DAZ 3D/Studio3/content/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Body Wrap.duf
22:55:24 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Copy Icons from G:\DAZ 3D\Studio3\content\People\Genesis 2 Female\Clothing\SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap\Body Wrap.duf to G:/DAZ 3D/Studio3/content/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Body Wrap.duf
22:55:24 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Copy Categories from G:\DAZ 3D\Studio3\content\People\Genesis 2 Female\Clothing\SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap\Body Wrap.duf to G:/DAZ 3D/Studio3/content/People/Genesis 8 Female/Clothing/SI Fantasy Cloth Wrap/Body Wrap.duf
22:55:37 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time): Execution Complete.

On the upside, sent Milen Hair through the hair converter again. Because of the way the source directory is set up, it had to be done as an individual file, not a directory, so I don't know if that bug persists in the hair converter. However, sending it through again restored the morphs so that they function properly.

It is not so much that as it is the FACT that professional team's store their assets on central server. The Daz CMS wouldn't be usable based on the facts posted in this thread.

If they did have a corporate license or even individuals in some Indy freelance game llc situation if each owned the same content if they were sharing the DIM installed content library root directory shared via a internet file system like OneDrive, that would work fine. Well, for folk that had fibre optic internet speeds it would be reasonable. It'd have to be private shared access internet file system though.

It is not so much that as it is the FACT that professional team's store their assets on central server. The Daz CMS wouldn't be usable based on the facts posted in this thread.

If the dsx files are stored in a central location the CMS could be re-imported from there for each machine, and besides you only need CMS to access smart data, and it is quite possible that a professional team will have set up their own access mechanism using the content library, which does not need it.

Of course they will eventually. Any prediction to the contrary isn't looking very closely at how technology of 3D graphics has changed radically. When I started in 3D graphics (35 years ago in 1984) we had to program all of our own tools. The idea of a "hobbiest" rendering tool like Poser or Daz Studio was almost laughable given how long even the simplest renders would take on our "blazing" 8Mhz Intel 286 CPUs with a whopping 4 MB of memory!

13 years ago, in 2006 when I started with Daz Studio, we were still mostly limited to biased rendering engines that required a great deal of dedication to get realistic approximations of real world lighting. Physically Based Rendering engines were mostly limited to some academics and industry leaders with access to high-end computing power. Nobody was ever going to be fooled by a 3Delight render of Victoria 3!

We're still on a pace where computing power is doubling every 2.5 - 3 years. To predict that technology will "never" be powerful enough to replace humans with virtual actors is likely to be proven false. There will certainly be a time when it is cheaper and faster to render an animation than to take an entire human film crew on location.

As for people not accepting CG replacements for "real" actors, I think that's innaccurate as well. Do you think kids (or adults for that matter) today care that Woody isn't "real"? Didn't we still tear up when Andy said goodbye to him? Did we really care that Gollum was a 3D generated character? If we can get past the "uncanny valley" stage of 3D animation and expression, I can easily see people becoming fans of specific CGI characters. I can forsee a time when the box office draw of "Victoria the 9th" is just as big as any human actress. Or, perhaps even more likely, when people don't care who the actor is anymore, they're going to movies to see the characters and the story, not the headliner.

I have re-watched "Alita Battle Angel" several times, mostly because the blending of CGI and live action is so good (to my eyes) that I'm amazed at the technology and skill of the movie making. I don't even know how many of the characters in that movie didn't have a real actor, just someone doing the voice. And, tbh, I don't really care. The characters and story are compelling enough for me to watch (and re-watch) the movie.

Characters and story.  #1 and #1.  And I liked Alita very much too.

The time will come, if not completely within my lifetime, certainly within my daughters. And I can see on the horizon a time when my grandkids don't even pay attention to "who" is playing the character anymore. The focus will shift completely to directors, writers, animation houses, and voice actors (until we can generate realistic, nuanced human speech then they'll be out of a job too).

But we're in an amazing time to be alive.  Just like how you can write, play, produce, publish, and distribute your own music album with just a laptop and a good audio/MIDI interface, we have the technology to make our own stories come to life.

There once was a day when EVERYBODY could tell stories around the campfire, or in the kitchen while peeling potatoes.  I for one am very happy to have the media industry cracked wide open for all.  Fresh minds, new ideas!

I have re-watched "Alita Battle Angel" several times, mostly because the blending of CGI and live action is so good (to my eyes) that I'm amazed at the technology and skill of the movie making

 

 

Every time I rewatch "Alita battleAngel" I get a little frustrated that this technology and style was not used for the "Ghost in the shell" remake.
 

I certainly would have preferred a stylized, CG Motoko Kusinaki over a real Scarlet Johansen any day.

For somebody like me who has zero knowledge of Motoko in the comics/anime/wherever, the Scarlet movie was fabulous.  It had interesting characters, a plot with twists, and overall told a GREAT story.  Putting Johansen in it was a stroke of genius.  And I say that not being a huge fan of her.

As for people not accepting CG replacements for "real" actors, I think that's innaccurate as well. Do you think kids (or adults for that matter) today care that Woody isn't "real"? Didn't we still tear up when Andy said goodbye to him? Did we really care that Gollum was a 3D generated character?

And although it's a bit of a trope, we all still cheered when Helen found a job and left Bob at home to take care of the kids and help with homework.  It was great moviemaking.  Bob, Helen, and the kids are ALL 3D based!

If we can get past the "uncanny valley" stage of 3D animation and expression, I can easily see people becoming fans of specific CGI characters. I can forsee a time when the box office draw of "Victoria the 9th" is just as big as any human actress. Or, perhaps even more likely, when people don't care who the actor is anymore, they're going to movies to see the characters and the story, not the headliner.

There still are real actors behind all these characters. If there was a regular human looking CG character with a real actor behind it doing the voice acting and motion capture, why not just use the real actor?

Because they introduce a huge amount of risk to an expensive project.  They get injured, they get sick.  They can die during production.  They can also quit on a whim which may require the reshooting of miles and miles of film (see what I did there?), they have schedule conflicts, they retire at 9 or at 39, suddenly and without warning. 

Also, human actors can and do let you down.  They get arrested for drug, sex, or violent crimes, they become alcoholic, get hooked on drugs.  Or they can make careless comments in social media, annoy a foreign government while on vacation, or just say something totally boneheaded, scaring off half of your audience even before opening day.  And then everybody has to apologize. 

Voice actors can be replaced, as evidenced by the voice of Po.  Jack Black in the movies, somebody else on TV.  In the original Avatar: The Last Airbender TV series, Mako, the voice of "Uncle Iroh" died.  Well damn.  But were they going to stop production because of the death of one of the central characters?  No, of course not.  They found a substitute that was more than passable.

Risk management.  That's why you might not want to hire "the real actors".

CG is great whenever there's a fantastical component or the actions of the character are impossible to do for a real actor (switching Keanu Reeves to CG when he's fighting 100 agents simultaneously), but using a CG character for your average character drama makes no sense and certainly won't save much money either.

It's not always about "saving money".  As I said above, managing risk may be even more important than being economical.

Unless that CG character is a completely autonomous AI that is essentially an actor in its own right. I could see that maybe be a novelty at some point in the future where such an AI could advance to stardom on its own. Even then I doubt this will lead to a complete replacement of real actors. Acting is an art and like other art forms I think these will be the last strongholds of humans even when most other jobs have been replaced by machines.

It is an art, yes indeed.  But actors are not God's gift to humanity and they certainly are not the only posessors of these art skills.

SIGGRAPH was in Los Angeles this year, so I went. I was quite surprised to note that what was cutting edge Virtual Reality type stuff is already considered soooo last year... "You say your company has a VR product? So what, buddy, who doesn't?"

The absolutely most mind-blownig thing I saw at SIGGRAPH was a presentation I attended on FACS. I thought it was going to be about how to construct better facial expressions using the Action Units defined by FACS. I was totally wrong.

Google "Mark Sagar Baby X", and I think you'll find a cut down version of the video he presented. Basically, researchers have modeled the physiological/chemical changes in the brain in certain scenarios, and discovered that they correspond to facial expressions. So they have a neural network that simulates this so when you talk to the baby, and say, it recognizes its own name, it makes a natural expression. If you say "spider" the baby acknowledges what you said but perhaps doesn't understand and the facial expression is what you would expect, a kind of "watchu talkin bout Willis?" but I you say "scary spider" the baby kind of freaks out, with appropriate expressions. It was not explicitly "programmed" to do any of that. Technological advances are not linear, they're exponential, and as such we can never act fast enough to predict the truly revolutionary ones.

I say it again, if you think this is not coming, and sooner rather than later, you are not paying attention.

Thank you for the reference.  I'll watch.

I have re-watched "Alita Battle Angel" several times, mostly because the blending of CGI and live action is so good (to my eyes) that I'm amazed at the technology and skill of the movie making

 

 

Every time I rewatch "Alita battleAngel" I get a little frustrated that this technology and style was not used for the "Ghost in the shell" remake.
 

I certainly would have preferred a stylized, CG Motoko Kusinaki over a real Scarlet Johansen any day.

Considering "Alita" was a 16 year old "passion project" for Cameron who has enough clout to "call the shots" as he wished resulted in the film we got (Which I ADORE!!!  I've craved this movie since Cameron first announced it in 2003.)  I suspect there was not the same kind of "drive" behind "Ghost in the Shell".

Sincerely,

Bill

Cameron also waited decades to do the first Avatar film.  He waited for the technology to get to a point where it would meet with his expectations for telling the story without pulling the viewer out of the story.

It's rather funny, but much of what's being debated in this thread was actually addressed in an old 1981 film--called "Looker", staring James Coburn and Albert Finney.

It's a really good thriller, but there was some really logical goofs that made it a rather laughable film with such a forward-looking premise where they correctly predicted the eventual technology that can replace a live actor with CGI, they utterly failed at conceiving the same thing can be done to replacing film stages with CGI, too...and even neglected a certain little used TV magic and were relying on LIVE BROADCASTING like they had to do in the early days of Dark Shadows and Doctor Who--check out the fantastic chase scene where Finney is trying to avoid being killed in the last 30min of the film! 

(or they may have intentionally tossed in those logical goofs, who knows?)

Hmmm... now that's a thought.  Technically, it's all backed up but I'd have to trust the back-up system, which has a sketchy success rate.  Although it did restore that ill-fated year-and-a-half old copy of my content directory.  And I used to burn all the install packs to data disks until I got bored, so I guess I'm covered. And I'm sure I've got the original downloads for Poser Pro 2014.  I found all the earlier ones [shaking head.... along with every working memory chip I ever removed from a computer and my last two video cards...yeah, it's pack-rat central here.]  Onwards to free up space on my content drive.... afterall, there's new stuff to buy.

 

Granted, 3D rigging  has improved since the Gen3 days, but there is still a ways to go.

Basically you want to pose a flesh-and-blood felxible human, but what you get to work with is a slightly improved Barbie doll that only bends at the joints.

 I don't understand this. Couldn't you create morphs or blendshapes or whatever it's called in the software and bend or shape the figure however you want for an animation?

You get what you get. What I got were rigs on the central server, we used references of that. Modelers would keep changing the rig when needed, whenever you reloaded the scene, you would always work with the latest update. We had several animators working on the same character. It was not up to the animators to create new blendshapes. We could ask for changes made to the rig, sometimes we would get them, sometimes not. It's been a while since I animated in Maya, I hope the rigs got a bit better. But especially the torso and shoulder sections would be way too stiff to do strong lines of action. You'd need a freely bendable spline for that. I was already happy to have a rotating hip that left the upper body where it was. (Otherwise doing walks would have been hell on earth)

I think it was also a question of hardware limits. We usually did the broad animation with lores rigs, and switched to the hires versions only when going into detail. Made scrolling through the timeline an ordeal. They tried to keep the rigs as light as possible. Doing a single pose is not that much of a burden for the hardware. Animating with loads of keys; that's another story. Especially in multi character setups.

I saw somebody do a nice elephant rig a few years later, That one had muscles under a loose skin and rigid bones. Must have been a lot of work to animate that. The GOT dragon rigs must have been perfection. The Tarkin and Leia rigs from Rogue One... well, not so much....

Thanks all. 

Who is in Dorian's path now? It seems Pensacola /Panhandle are safe, but my sister in Jacksonville...not so much now. So what thread folks are in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas?

Possibly me. With the slowing of forward speed and consequent change in predicted path it could hug the coast and hit the North Carolina Outer Banks where I am. Also I know that both Miss Bad Wolf and Carrie are in central to eastern North Carolina and I think Petercat is in the coastal Soth Carolina or Georgia area.