Daz Daz studio alternative animation software

[LePapaPizza]

I'll start with my actual question, context below.

Question
What other animation software do some devs use to easily import their daz scene to, and export it back to render. I've seen "IClone" pop up here and there but not sure if it actually offers that much more. It doesn't have to be free, as long as it's decent animation software where you can easily import and export daz from then I'm happy.

Context
While I'm not an expert at making animations, I know how to do it in like Blender, where it's an absolute joy to fine tune your animation loop.
I also use DAZ Studio a lot to make frame by frame scenes, and while I think the software is trash in many ways, it simply offers too much content (easy fitting/placement/rendering) to not use it.

Rarely I see games with actual good/complex animations that go beyond the 2 keyframes with bezier interpolation, but when I do see them I wonder how they ever managed to do that in DAZ Studio, assuming they even use it. They definitely use it for content + iray rendering at least, as it's easy to tell. Maybe they use other software to animate it? They "simply" export their daz scene to it, animate it, then import it back to daz to render it there.... I have tried this with blender, but it just doesn't work good enough, not to mention that the actual "rig" you get in blender is unusable anyway when importing a gen 8 character.

DAZ Studio has keyframes, and that's about it. There's no layering, there's not an easy to use graph view to change timing, there's no filtering either and you basically get EVERYTHING thrown in your face in a single window. It's hard to navigate/work in scene too as the "select" and "move" functions are separate...not to mention that TCB filtering (bezier curves) is completely broken with morphs and scales, and 90% of the time causes it to crash anyway as it ends up interpolating something to an infinite value...And don't get me started on their barely implemented/broken FK and IK system that rarely ever does what you want it to do...The preview system is also a joke, where even the "play all frames" function was missing for quite a long time...All of this leads me back to my main question.

Hope anyone can help me out here, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Thanos247]

I'm not sure what other people are using, but I myself am using Unreal Engine for Daz animations. I love it, because I already know a bit about Unreal Engine as its super easy to use. If you don't, there are hundreds of tutorials you can find. I'm an idiot, if I can learn it, you can as well. And not only that, you easily use Mixamo to get the animations you want for your character. IClone is cool, but using it WITH Unreal Engine makes it so much better. Of course you'll still want to use a video editing software as well. Unreal Engine as well as Mixamo are free, so it doesn't hurt to try them out and just spend a day playing with the software.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Rich]

iClone was specifically designed for animation, so it has a lot of bells and whistles that Daz lacks. The problem is that it, like a lot of other software, doesn't "understand" the twist bones that G3 and G8 characters have in their arms and legs. This means that if you take a character from Daz to iClone, animate it, and try to export it back to Daz to render, the animation doesn't necessarily come out correctly. I've actually been fiddling with tools to make that more possible, but have just had too little time of late. When I restart that, I'll probably focus on Blender instead of iClone, since Daz now has a bridge to Blender.

There are people on the Daz forums who are big into animations, and who have used some other (paid) packages to do this kind of thing. You'll probably be able to find more if you go to the Daz forums and look for some of the animation threads there.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

>using Daz for (quite complex) animations

Yeah about that.

 

[Madmanator99]

I'm not sure I understand your question, but you can import an animation to daz, you don't have to export anything from daz, daz is compatible with many formats, as long as you use the right skeleton/bones.

I may open a can of worms here, but when you say "some devs", do you mean asset devs, or game devs? Because asset devs will spend alot of time, and I mean alot of time, to make the animation look just right, but game devs can't affoard that luxury.

The rendering is done in daz, and it's based on keyframes indeed, but the values for each bone can be imported (not including the morphs, but that can also be done), as long as the data is accurately matched with the figure in play. You probably knew that, but my answer would have been too short and somewhat disrespectful to my fellow forum members in my opinion.

So once again, did you mean asset devs (animation makers) or game devs?

 

[LePapaPizza]

First of all, thanks for all the info everyone! I've tried out IClone and managed to get it to work quite well. It's still not easy to get any animation back into Daz because its "bone retargeting" window is absolutely broken, so unless the rig being imported is identical, it will mess up badly...That's also where the only issue lies for me, I've tried blender too but since you have to convert it to a different rig for ease of us, most of the original bones are gone and it really doesn't want to be imported back into daz.

iClone was specifically designed for animation, so it has a lot of bells and whistles that Daz lacks. The problem is that it, like a lot of other software, doesn't "understand" the twist bones that G3 and G8 characters have in their arms and legs. This means that if you take a character from Daz to iClone, animate it, and try to export it back to Daz to render, the animation doesn't necessarily come out correctly. I've actually been fiddling with tools to make that more possible, but have just had too little time of late. When I restart that, I'll probably focus on Blender instead of iClone, since Daz now has a bridge to Blender.

There are people on the Daz forums who are big into animations, and who have used some other (paid) packages to do this kind of thing. You'll probably be able to find more if you go to the Daz forums and look for some of the animation threads there.

Yeah, I noticed that the arms and legs were not bend/twisted in the right way. Luckily you can bypass it by "unlocking" and turning off "limit rotatiom on all the bones. Downside is that because now the x-y-z translate and rotation of bones are unlocked, you get more skin deformation in extreme examples...but it's not really a problem. Ideal solution would be to get a script to copy/paste the "twist" bone values of the BVH into the actual twist bones of Daz.

As for Blender, I've used the bridge, and I've used 3rd party daz to blender conversion stuff too. The bridge is broken though, the IK Rig doesn't work which, and even the ~4 extra bones in the rig causes Daz to freak out when imported back in...That dialogue window to target the correct bones simply doesn't work.
The 3rd party one had a better rig, but because of that, it was completely impossible to get it imported back to Daz.

I'm not sure I understand your question, but you can import an animation to daz, you don't have to export anything from daz, daz is compatible with many formats, as long as you use the right skeleton/bones.

I may open a can of worms here, but when you say "some devs", do you mean asset devs, or game devs? Because asset devs will spend alot of time, and I mean alot of time, to make the animation look just right, but game devs can't affoard that luxury.

The rendering is done in daz, and it's based on keyframes indeed, but the values for each bone can be imported (not including the morphs, but that can also be done), as long as the data is accurately matched with the figure in play. You probably knew that, but my answer would have been too short and somewhat disrespectful to my fellow forum members in my opinion.

So once again, did you mean asset devs (animation makers) or game devs?

That's what I don't really know. Do those "good" animation game devs simply make them somewhere else and import it back to Daz? Because that's what I wanted to do, and with IClone I think I've found my answer. Entirely possible that some just have fancy scripts to make complex animation in Daz doable but I doubt that very much. I keep on struggling to get the BVH data to import correctly to Daz, like I said above...I may just end up cleaning up the file to get a 1-1 output and leave out any extra bones as it's just a simple text format.

I'm not sure what other people are using, but I myself am using Unreal Engine for Daz animations. I love it, because I already know a bit about Unreal Engine as its super easy to use. If you don't, there are hundreds of tutorials you can find. I'm an idiot, if I can learn it, you can as well. And not only that, you easily use Mixamo to get the animations you want for your character. IClone is cool, but using it WITH Unreal Engine makes it so much better. Of course you'll still want to use a video editing software as well. Unreal Engine as well as Mixamo are free, so it doesn't hurt to try them out and just spend a day playing with the software.

Best of luck to you.

It doesn't seem hard to export a genesis character to some other software to there use it. But my main problem has been getting the animation I made back into Daz. Is that something you can do in Unreal Engine? Keyframing an animation you made there and having that saved into a file format that Daz can import without a problem?

 

[Rich]

First of all, thanks for all the info everyone! I've tried out IClone and managed to get it to work quite well. It's still not easy to get any animation back into Daz because its "bone retargeting" window is absolutely broken, so unless the rig being imported is identical, it will mess up badly...That's also where the only issue lies for me, I've tried blender too but since you have to convert it to a different rig for ease of us, most of the original bones are gone and it really doesn't want to be imported back into daz.

Yes, if you want to pull something back into Daz Studio, you really HAVE to have the same skeleton.

Yeah, I noticed that the arms and legs were not bend/twisted in the right way. Luckily you can bypass it by "unlocking" and turning off "limit rotatiom on all the bones. Downside is that because now the x-y-z translate and rotation of bones are unlocked, you get more skin deformation in extreme examples...but it's not really a problem. Ideal solution would be to get a script to copy/paste the "twist" bone values of the BVH into the actual twist bones of Daz.

I've seen a couple of scripts out there that did this - took the "twist" part of the non-twist bones and moved it to the twist bone. That usually fixes the problem. Those scripts were kind of hacks, though - I haven't seen anyone "productionize" one. I've done some of the same (also in non-production scripts) operating on FBX files instead of BVH. But, as you say, the BVH file format isn't that hard to program with, so write a "proper" program that will do the required fixups probably won't be hard. In my case, I was looking to go directly from FBX back to Daz-format .duf scripts. BVH has its own problems, and FBX seems to have fewer of them, although it takes more programming to deal with it.

As for Blender, I've used the bridge, and I've used 3rd party daz to blender conversion stuff too. The bridge is broken though, the IK Rig doesn't work which, and even the ~4 extra bones in the rig causes Daz to freak out when imported back in...That dialogue window to target the correct bones simply doesn't work.
The 3rd party one had a better rig, but because of that, it was completely impossible to get it imported back to Daz.

Odd - I didn't have issues with getting IK to work in Blender using the official Daz bridge. But, yes, there's no way (well, no easy way) you're going to be able to work with the Diffeomorphic bridge and then bring it back into Daz Studio - you're right back to the "bone retargeting" thing.

That's what I don't really know. Do those "good" animation game devs simply make them somewhere else and import it back to Daz? Because that's what I wanted to do, and with IClone I think I've found my answer. Entirely possible that some just have fancy scripts to make complex animation in Daz doable but I doubt that very much. I keep on struggling to get the BVH data to import correctly to Daz, like I said above...I may just end up cleaning up the file to get a 1-1 output and leave out any extra bones as it's just a simple text format.

As I said, I think some of the high-end packages may work - I've seen discussions in the animation threads on the Daz forums about it. Just never ponied up the $$ to try it.

It doesn't seem hard to export a genesis character to some other software to there use it. But my main problem has been getting the animation I made back into Daz. Is that something you can do in Unreal Engine? Keyframing an animation you made there and having that saved into a file format that Daz can import without a problem?

Never used Unreal Engine, only Unity. With Unity, you have to do the animations externally, and then just have Unity latch onto them. Unity doesn't purport to be an animation building tool.

 

[LePapaPizza]

Odd - I didn't have issues with getting IK to work in Blender using the official Daz bridge. But, yes, there's no way (well, no easy way) you're going to be able to work with the Diffeomorphic bridge and then bring it back into Daz Studio - you're right back to the "bone retargeting" thing.

It was an odd problem. Either IK didn't work at all, or changing the IK solver only made the legs work and the hands be stuck forever. I didn't really investigate it further, was more focused on seeing if importing it back would still be a problem since the original rig was still there (albeit with some extra IK bones), it didn't so that's where I left it at. I've used Daz Studio long enough to know that everything is broken in some way so I assumed the same with their bridge

Never used Unreal Engine, only Unity. With Unity, you have to do the animations externally, and then just have Unity latch onto them. Unity doesn't purport to be an animation building tool.

I've seen asset store plugins for Unity that seem to add enough tools to make proper animations in, relying on the 2D animation system unity itself has built, but it's obviously not going to be perfect or as complete as pricy animation software. I suspect unreal engine has a similar amount of assets going on...I haven't really given much attention to them since it's just not what the engines are meant to be used for. It's going to be messy a mess process to bring any of it back into Daz, if at all possible...so definitely not worth the trouble if IClone alone seems to be covering the main hiccups I encountered.

The BVH format is easy enough to understand, shouldn't be much of a problem to get it to work better once I figure out which values of the original bones go in the twisted bones. I'll also check out those animation threads you talked about, will be interesting to see what other people think.

 

[Rich]

The BVH format is easy enough to understand, shouldn't be much of a problem to get it to work better once I figure out which values of the original bones go in the twisted bones. I'll also check out those animation threads you talked about, will be interesting to see what other people think.

I don't remember which is which off the top of my head, but I remember that I figured it out pretty simply - create a pose inside Daz Studio in which the arms and legs have some twist in them. Dump the pose to BVH. (Can even just be a single frame.) See which of the XYZ channels are non-zero on the twist bones. Basically, that channel and that channel only is supposed to be non-zero on the twist bones, and that same channel is always supposed to be zero on the non-twist bones. So, take anything on that channel in the non-twist bones and add it to that channel in the twist bones, then set that channel to zero in the non-twist bones. That's all it took. Translation - any twist needs to get moved off the non-twist bones and onto the twist bones, because DS won't (normally) allow the non-twist bones to twist, so that part gets thrown away.

 

[Madmanator99]

I believe the animations are mostly made in daz, with a lot of time spent on them. The reason is that 'if I'm going to make an animation, why would I export, animate, import back, if I can just do it in daz directly'.
Now that's a kind of "naive" opinion some would say, and I totally agree.

But again, when it comes to games made in renpy, the animations are quite short and rough.

If you develop for a full 3d game, it's a different story, but if it's for renpy, it is most likely that the animations will be looped, and it can be done in daz with some patience and dedication, and alot of 'save files'.

As for exporting figures from daz to blender, I use fbx 2012 binary format to get the figure/armature in blender, do the work in blender, then export the animation as bvh, import it in daz and it works.
For the export from daz I use these settings:

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For the import in blender , I use use these settings:

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For bvh export I leave the default rotation, but tick the root translation only.

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And that gets my animation back into daz3d.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

I don't do animations so my knowledge is rather limited.
But have people tried to use Maya and DazToMaya with the DAZTools MEL script?
(retarget/export back directly as duf file)

 

[Madmanator99]

I haven't but maya has always been one of my "one day I'll tackle it" things
I'm sure it can handle this type of manipulations. I invite maya experts to tell us how to!

 

[DoubleLust]

Never used Unreal Engine

Use it, its worth learning, at least take advantage of the free assets every month, and yeah in theory you could apply any unreal animation to a daz character and port it back into daz, hell i'm pretty sure with the retargeting animation tool you can port in any FBX animation and apply it to your character

 

[hardwire666]

I haven't but maya has always been one of my "one day I'll tackle it" things
I'm sure it can handle this type of manipulations. I invite maya experts to tell us how to!

Maya quite simply... is a bitch. I have to use it for school and even doing the things it's intended to do sometimes it just implodes, and that's with legal paid copies. No pirated janky stuff. Most teachers teach you to use versioning for save files b/c you never know when Maya will go full Terminator on your project, and it does happen.

The flip side is Maya does have a few tools that are just super handy. Esp for doing your UV's. I'm not saying don't learn it, but I am say Maya is a temperamental mistress that sometimes can make the sea seem forgiving.

Personally I hate using it, and would rather use Blender.

 

[Madmanator99]

When it comes to Blender, as long as you protect your files it's all good

Just make sure your project files are safe, because blender has no protections against viruses/exploits. No matter what the current version says, if it's an open source, always be carefull. And that's good, it will make you a better programer/modeler/animator, etc.

Ps; I've had a customer that fucked up because I sold him a machine, but he used a blender version that was corrupted. Then returned it because it crashed when rendering; I ran then render and it worked, but the client then said he didnd't need the machine it anymore.

Total loss for me, but hey, if you use open source programs, make sure you save your files.

 

[hardwire666]

Blender is perfectly safe. When you download the install that is approved and verified code that has been compiled. No one is going after or attacking Blender users or files with viruses.

If you manage to get a virus from a Blender file you should probably reassess where you are downloading files from to begin with.

 

[nonsane]

I've tried iclone, and couldn't get the animations to import properly.
Have you tried diffeomorphic? I use this plugin alot and it works really well.There was a blog post recently about importing
animations back to daz.It looks like you can import directly as a pose file..Since with bvh or fbx there's always something off..

 

[hardwire666]

Diffeomorphic is the kind of the best thing since sliced bread and indoor plumbing. I also recently figured out my own issues that were being caused buy the Multires modifier that I thought was being caused by something else. Just disabled it and off I went.

 

[anne O'nymous]

When it comes to Blender, as long as you protect your files it's all good

So far they answered positively and always fixed the vulnerabilities discovered. They don't have a dedicated security team, for obvious reasons, so it's difficult to know the exact number, but the last security issue

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, and it was fixed four months later.
Meanwhile, Autodesk products, including Maya, had a

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, and so far their fix is still to use a free additional app that will scan the files before processing them ; have they even warned their users about this ?

Just make sure your project files are safe, because blender has no protections against viruses/exploits. No matter what the current version says, if it's an open source, always be carefull.

It's in fact the opposite. While you've to be careful from where you download it, like for none open source software, if you stay up to date, you've less risk than with proprietary software.

You've thousands of people, all around the world, that regularly audit most available software. Whatever if they works for computer security societies or are just freelancer experts, every single advisory they publish is a proof of their efficiency, and so both an advertisement for their services and a justification for the prices they ask. On top of that, you've computer security agencies, that do the same, with a smaller number of software, for the count of governments and administrations.
And obviously, it's easier to catch the vulnerabilities when you've access to the sources, than when you've to guess. This to the point that Windows, but not only, source aren't as proprietary that people can think. The most important agencies have access to at least a part of the code, in order to to their job ; this with obviously a shit ton of none disclosure clauses. The (way too frequents, what the fuck) leak of (always ridiculously small) parts of Windows' sources generally happen through vulnerabilities on the source sharing system.
If with open source software, most advisories are published before the exploit have been used, it tend to be the opposite with proprietary software. The publisher of the advisory haven't always found the vulnerability, some/most time they in fact caught (before it's too late or not) someone using it. And it's only when they investigated on the case, that they found the vulnerability he used/targeted.

Plus, big open source projects that are vulnerable by design (therefore any major software that rely on network) even have a security team that do only one thing, security audit of the code. And if a *nix version exist for this software, you can expect the OpenBSD team to also audit it if it's part of their official library.

 

[hardwire666]

Meanwhile, Autodesk products, including Maya, had a

You must be registered to see the links

, and so far their fix is still to use a free additional app that will scan the files before processing them ; have they even warned their users about this ?

No they didn't. It's actually the first I've heard of that one. I really wish the industry would get away from Autodesk and and Adobe, just a little bit. Just enough to make them tighten up.