Adding Environment to Animation

[Craiggerbird]

Hello everyone,

I've set up an animation between two characters that spans 80 frames. I'm happy with it, and now it's time to add the environment around them (a bedroom). But I'm finding that, when I add the bedroom to Frame 0, it disappears by the end of the animation.

Do I have to add the environment to every keyframe? Or is there some way of designating the environment as something that remains there for the duration of the animation?

Thanks

 

[MissFortune]

How are you trying to animate the room, exactly? I don't really see a situation in which you'd need to animate an entire room, honestly. It doesn't sound efficient. Generally speaking, you're going to want to animate a camera for any movement within a room. If you're animating sex, you move the character/hair/etc. If you're animating someone walking in, then have the camera follow each step they take. Like so:


Daz is far from the easiest program to animate in, and it isn't exactly close. It's typically an awful experience, and even worse learning it. When it comes to this stuff, I really do recommend watching videos as it's hard to get everything across in words while trying to teach Daz-related concepts. Dreamlight has a lengthy manual sex animation tutorial his

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. He also has another dedicated to

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. Which may or may not be worth it for some. He has a lot of nice concepts, but there's also a fair amount of tutorials on it that aren't related to Daz at all (Lightwave, some Blender, iirc.). YouTube tutorials for this type of stuff generally suck (no disrespect to said Youtubers, but the quality just isn't there.), or lack proper information, but still might be

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.

 

[Craiggerbird]

Hi MissFortune. Thank you for the reply. You're always so helpful!

I'll definitely check out those videos.

I actually don't want to animate backgrounds at all. I just want them to stay in one damn place throughout the entire animation but find that they tend to move, jiggle, and sometimes disappear as my characters go through their movements.

 

[CocoVC]

1. Change View Mode to "Advanced Mode" and check your Environment for keyframes. You may need to extend the timeline past the animation (do something like 999) and see if there are any keyframes there.
2. (Testing purposes) Delete the Environment and merge in a new one (at frame 0) and see if the same thing happens. Check your characters and make sure that they aren't moving.
3. If all fails, render the Environment and Animation separately(as frames) and compost in post. I personally use Davinci Resolve for Static Environment + Animations.

 

[MissFortune]

It sounds to me like you moved something/the environment on a frame that wasn't zero.

Generally, you want to make sure that you have everything in place before you start animating your character(s). But if you have to move something - anything - then you should probably check that your frame is on 0. This applies to all environments, and a lot of times, characters. When you're trying to animate/move a limb, make sure it's that limb you have selected. There's a few different ways to animate overall. Some use a large amount of frames (400+) in a loop (I believe. I've never done it this way myself.) and then draw the camera up and/or back down to the action, I can't speak too much on this one. Others do the shorter loops (181 frames), but only use the 'golden frames' to render out with (60 - 119. The idea is that 60 is your starting frame - the beginning of the act. 90 is the end of the act. 120 is the starting starting frame once again. Since both 60 and 120 are the starting frames, you can delete the 120th frame. You won't technically delete it, just render an image series from 60 to 119.).

Watch how the parameters change from one number to another and then back (her head being the selected bone here):


The idea is that you're creating a back and forth movement, such as a blowjob. What moves in a blowjob? The head, mouth, and perhaps neck/throat. In the above example's case, it's really only the mouth and head (though the head is the focus here.). As it goes down the shaft, her head slightly twists and goes to the side a bit, and then returns to the previous point as it goes up. In the example for the head, both Twist and Side-Side start at 0.00 and both change as she goes down (Twist: -2.00, Side-Side: 10.00. Sometimes you'll have numbers like 1.33 or -7.69, I find it easier to remember the numbers if I round up or down. So 1.33 would become 1.00 and -7.69 would become -8.00). If you were to follow the head parameters above. Frame 60 would have 0.00 for both Twist and Side-Side, and as she deepthroats - frame 90 - they become -2.00 for Twist and 10.00 for Side-Side. Then frame 120 should have them both back at 0.00. Animating the camera for scenes like this isn't entirely necessary, but it does give some of the scenes some level of life as it's a little more than just characters moving back and forth.

This is a little further along than you probably are, but you don't really need to render out an animation in 4K or anything like that. It's unnecessary. 1080p (turn "Max Time (secs" to 0) at 600 Samples (should be "Max Samples") with the Post-Denoiser Start Iteration (under Filtering) at about 560 or so should be fine.

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has a nice video on it, though I would only use these settings for animations only. Denoising should only be used as needed for still renders. (Also, if you'd like, I could send you over that manual sex animation tutorial I referenced in the other post. Shoot me a DM.)