Fan Art A Wife And Mother Fan Art

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Night Hacker

Night Hacker

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redle said:
Word of warning from the few times I've fooled around with animation in Daz. The interpretation between keyframes was flaky at best. It calculates, stores, and uses information beyond the keyframes. I never dug deep enough to figure out exactly the why of it. The end result though is that the animation you spend ages perfecting doesn't necessarily match what you get after you save the file and later load said file. (Hopefully there have been improvements. I haven't touched animation in the most recent daz version. But be forewarned.)

To add on... if I were to guess it probably boils down to "limits" and/or nested morph/movement. Like if one does a "raise arm" morph which causes multiple joints to move and rotate as part of a single morph you get one look, but then instead move and rotate the shoulder and elbow manually to the numbers they were assigned by the combined morph and the finished look isn't quite the same. And daz may interpret off the master morph when actively creating, but then interprets off the components when loading (just a possible guess). Like if one saves a camera pose, I've done that and used it later to find that the camera is pointing at the same place but the camera is upside down or X and Y rotations were translated into a Z rotation (basically the look is similar but the numbers don't match what I originally set).

As an example I have a horizontal line along the X-axis. I rotate it 90 degrees along the ground so that it aligns with the Z-axis, then rotate it 90 degrees up so that is finally sits on the Y-axis. (Both rotations were added at the same timeline point) Now if you interpolate from the original position to the 2nd position you will see the line kind of sweep backwards and up in a curving arc.

But say daz then translates my rotations on save (as it only saves the keyframes) and says well, all that matters is that it is in this exact position. How it gets there doesn't matter. So when you load it now has the same start position and end position, and the interpretation causes it to loose that away-from-the-camera curve. Now it simply rotates in a flat plane.
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I've been getting much better at moving characters and posing. I don't use any premade poses, all my renders use my own poses. I use the ActivePose tool Screenshot 2022-09-19 152128.jpg , then click on the body parts I don't want to move and press SPACE. I do this A LOT for parts all over the body before say, moving an arm with it (left click and drag mouse to move using this) and it has been really handy for posing. I imagine you have to be careful that way in an animation. Not sure, I'll definitely experiment with it and figure it out. Not sure of the animator respects limits imposed by the ActivePose tool or not, guess time will tell.

Is there an option to choose the type of interpolation it does? I know in Blender you have linear and other curved options etc which will make a big difference.

Also, I don't know about animations, but I know with poses and facial expressions, you have to disable certain information from being saved. Whenever I save a premade pose, I uncheck "GENERAL" as it will also save translations, rotations and scaling which will move and rotate your character away from it's location. This way ONLY the pose gets saved. With facial expressions you have to first uncheck EVERYTHING, then make certain ONLY the head elements are checked and GENERAL (under HEAD) is also unchecked so it doesn't move, rotate or scale your character, but only applies the expression to their face where they are currently located.
 
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redle

redle

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Night Hacker said:
I've been getting much better at moving characters and posing. I don't use any premade poses, all my renders use my own poses. I use the ActivePose tool View attachment 2053206 , then click on the body parts I don't want to move and press SPACE. I do this A LOT for parts all over the body before say, moving an arm with it (left click and drag mouse to move using this) and it has been really handy for posing. I imagine you have to be careful that way in an animation. Not sure, I'll definitely experiment with it and figure it out. Not sure of the animator respects limits imposed by the ActivePose tool or not, guess time will tell.

Is there an option to choose the type of interpolation it does? I know in Blender you have linear and other curved options etc which will make a big difference.

Also, I don't know about animations, but I know with poses and facial expressions, you have to disable certain information from being saved. Whenever I save a premade pose, I uncheck "GENERAL" as it will also save translations, rotations and scaling which will move and rotate your character away from it's location. This way ONLY the pose gets saved. With facial expressions you have to first uncheck EVERYTHING, then make certain ONLY the head elements are checked and GENERAL (under HEAD) is also unchecked so it doesn't move, rotate or scale your character, but only applies the expression to their face where they are currently located.
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Yeah, Daz has curve settings for the interpolations (TCB I believe is the button label).

I've used the ActivePose very little. I should try it again using the "space" much more liberally. Always felt it was too aggressive with motion and a bit jerky for control. Locking more parts in place may stabilize things to prevent that and be just what I was missing. Good tip.

As for the saving... I wasn't specifically talking about exporting my animation. I was talking about simply saving the entire scene that had an animation as a part of it. Coming back later and opening that scene and running the animation with doing nothing inbetween ran a movie that looked like a devil's possession reenactment of the beautiful masterpiece (tongue-in-cheek) I had created and watched previously.
 
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Night Hacker

Night Hacker

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redle said:
I've used the ActivePose very little. I should try it again using the "space" much more liberally. Always felt it was too aggressive with motion and a bit jerky for control. Locking more parts in place may stabilize things to prevent that and be just what I was missing. Good tip.
Click to expand...
When I first used it, I didn't much like it. But then I started to pin like crazy. For example, I wanted to move a hand, so I pinned both shoulders, all sections of the chest and waist as well as the pelvis so only the hand and the upper and lower arm were free and the guy looked like he had a dozen pins sticking out of him, LOL... then when I moved the hand, ever so slightly, no sudden quick moves, it all moved nicely. Just keep changing your camera angles then move as it only moves along the horizontal and vertical plane depending on your view. I mainly use it to get the parts roughly where I want, then i use the dials to fine tune. but it has been handy now that I have the hang of how to use it.

Of course, I save most of my unique poses and expressions as I go. Just have to remember to disable GENERAL (disable translations, rotations and scaling) before saving poses so the character doesn't move to a new location when you apply them. It's been fun messing around and creating my own anyhow. Also a big time saver.
 
Old Dog

Old Dog

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alexandro1969 said:
hi, how long did it take you to learn how to use daz3d? thank you
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How long is a piece is string?
I have been using Daz now for over 2 years and I still find new features on it.
Also Daz is only 50% of the learning curve as the assets/models/lighting/environments/poses all bring there own learning curve along as well.
 
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naughtynafz

naughtynafz

Creating "Aiden's Revenge"
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alexandro1969 said:
hi, how long did it take you to learn how to use daz3d? thank you
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daz is pretty easier compared to blender to make a render.... the main thing with daz is vast library of assets available, you can find every little big things of an environment in some assets... and then proper lighting, pose and expressions will make your render lively... i find the expressions most hard.. it differs from characters to characters... so downloaded expressions sometimes feels weird, sometimes feel ok
so keep making renders, don't compare with other's renders... there's no end to learning
 
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alexandro1969

alexandro1969

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naughtynafz said:
daz is pretty easier compared to blender to make a render.... the main thing with daz is vast library of assets available, you can find every little big things of an environment in some assets... and then proper lighting, pose and expressions will make your render lively... i find the expressions most hard.. it differs from characters to characters... so downloaded expressions sometimes feels weird, sometimes feel ok
so keep making renders, don't compare with other's renders... there's no end to learning
Click to expand...
thank you very much
 
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Old Dog

Old Dog

Formerly 'Old Sea Dog'
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naughtynafz said:
daz is pretty easier compared to blender to make a render.... the main thing with daz is vast library of assets available, you can find every little big things of an environment in some assets... and then proper lighting, pose and expressions will make your render lively... i find the expressions most hard.. it differs from characters to characters... so downloaded expressions sometimes feels weird, sometimes feel ok
so keep making renders, don't compare with other's renders... there's no end to learning
Click to expand...
I agree just keep going and you will see soon enough the difference in your renders and don't compare your renders with other as everybody has there own style
 
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4.60 star(s) 11 Votes