Daz3d Tips for optimizing animation's?

[Porcus Dev]

I actually did an animation last night using Keymate for first time... It's not that hard to figure out but for me gives me more usability than Timeline or Animate does. The animation turned out pretty good, but i can still edit the anim to fine tune it. I think with Graphmate you can smoothen out a lot of awkward movements.

But are you already using version 4.12? I say this because of the IK-Chains... it's really worth it.

If you want a (somewhat) smooth preview playback of your animation without having to render it, simply disabling all smoothing modifiers helps a lot. Reducing subdivion levels helps as well.

Daz skips some frames in the preview automatically. In 4.11 you could set it to show every single frame (resulted in a slow, but consistant playback). However, this option seems to be gone in 4.12

If you're not happy with the animation flow between the key frames, change the interpolation method (TCB: ease in/out, Linear: every frame changes an equal amount, Constant: no idea, never used it^^)

Also you have to be careful with the smoother and collition in the pieces of clothing, because it can not give the same result in each frame if the position of the character is changing and the animation will not look good (the clothes will move in a strange way), just yesterday I had to repeat an animation for this, leaving the smoother and collition to 1 to be perfect.

As for previewing the animation, from the DAZ itself is difficult... a great trick is the one that Rick comments (Trick #2), rendering in Basic OpenGL; it will take very little time (1-2 minutes for 30 frames) and you will be able to make a very faithful preview of how the animation will look like.

With "Constant" the animation jumps abruptly to the changed value, that is, if in frame 0 you have a value of 50 and in frame 30 you have a value of 100, the animation will maintain a value of 50 from frame 0 to 29, and in frame 30 it will jump abruptly to 100.

 

[recreation]

Also you have to be careful with the smoother and collition in the pieces of clothing, because it can not give the same result in each frame if the position of the character is changing and the animation will not look good (the clothes will move in a strange way), just yesterday I had to repeat an animation for this, leaving the smoother and collition to 1 to be perfect.

Oh yes... I've learned it the hard way with an animation that had almost 1000 frames. I had to redo it 3 times >_<
Lesson learned.

With "Constant" the animation jumps abruptly to the changed value, that is, if in frame 0 you have a value of 50 and in frame 30 you have a value of 100, the animation will maintain a value of 50 from frame 0 to 29, and in frame 30 it will jump abruptly to 100.

Ah, so it's basically what's known as a "stepped" animation from other programs (which is a better name for that kind of animation imo). Thx for the info.

Hopefully my Bad Memory wont fail me when i try your advice tonight.... sorry just had to throw that in.. BTW great game you making, really love that innocent little redhead sister and the mom...

xD
Thx but:

innocent little redhead sister

Innocent?

 

[Porcus Dev]

Oh yes... I've learned it the hard way with an animation that had almost 1000 frames. I had to redo it 3 times >_<
Lesson learned.

Oh, shit! 1000 frames?...That's gotta hurt

 

[recreation]

Oh, shit! 1000 frames?...That's gotta hurt

It did. After the third try I closed Daz and started photoshop instead^^

 

[Deleted member 167032]

recreation... lol i say innocent but I think she's playing her little innocent game and not innocent. Just did not want to put you on the spot.
Ive also yet to play Big City Pleasure game... as it looks good for sure...

Seeing as both you devs know animations better than I do it seems why would these extra keyframe nodes appear as seen in below Nicky group?
There should only be 9 keyframes for the NIcky timeline but Keymate added them. I can delete them but its annoying. The Jensen timeline nothing gets added without me adding it so that is fine.

 

[recreation]

recreation... lol i say innocent but I think she's playing her little innocent game and not innocent. Just did not want to put you on the spot.
Ive also yet to play Big City Pleasure game... as it looks good for sure...

Seeing as both you devs know animations better than I do it seems why would these extra keyframe nodes appear as seen in below Nicky group?
There should only be 9 keyframes for the NIcky timeline but Keymate added them. I can delete them but its annoying. The Jensen timeline nothing gets added without me adding it so that is fine.
View attachment 418067

I have never used keymate, but it looks like the new timeline in 4.12, so you should be able to expand it into a tree view and have a look where exactly the key is added. Maybe this helps to figure out why it happens.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Yah ill give it a pop... Ive heard Keymate/Graphmate is good with doing anims and fine tuning it. Ill give Daz4.12 timeline a crack again seeing as it incorporated Keymate/Graphmate?

Like i said i just gave it a whirl last night so baby steps.

I have never used keymate, but it looks like the new timeline in 4.12, so you should be able to expand it into a tree view and have a look where exactly the key is added. Maybe this helps to figure out why it happens.

 

[recreation]

Ill give Daz4.12 timeline a crack again seeing as it incorporated Keymate/Graphmate?

Yes, they're integrated, that's why they're not avaiable in the store anymore. I think it's also easier to work within the timeline instead of using different tools

 

[Porcus Dev]

recreation... lol i say innocent but I think she's playing her little innocent game and not innocent. Just did not want to put you on the spot.
Ive also yet to play Big City Pleasure game... as it looks good for sure...

Seeing as both you devs know animations better than I do it seems why would these extra keyframe nodes appear as seen in below Nicky group?
There should only be 9 keyframes for the NIcky timeline but Keymate added them. I can delete them but its annoying. The Jensen timeline nothing gets added without me adding it so that is fine.
View attachment 418067

As recreation comments, if you expand the group you will see where those keyframes are applied...

...I don't know the reason but sometimes when I load a scene, when I go to prepare the animation I find some keyframes already created (lol); so the first thing I do if it is with "KeyMate", to change the option "TR" to "TRSV" to see any keyframe and delete them all but those of the frame 0, and then I start working on the animation (If you use version 4.12 you have to activate, in the timeline, in "Types", all types except "Hidden"; it has to stay that way: Types: TRSOA).

Also keep in mind that any small change will generate a new keyframe, any small adjustment you make.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Mmm let me ask you this...

Let;s say i want in my animation the one characters eyes blink. Would you in the timeline create a keyframe at say frame 30 (eyes closed) and at frame 35 (yes open) create a keyframe again ?

As recreation comments, if you expand the group you will see where those keyframes are applied...

...I don't know the reason but sometimes when I load a scene, when I go to prepare the animation I find some keyframes already created (lol); so the first thing I do if it is with "KeyMate", to change the option "TR" to "TRSV" to see any keyframe and delete them all but those of the frame 0, and then I start working on the animation (If you use version 4.12 you have to activate, in the timeline, in "Types", all types except "Hidden"; it has to stay that way: Types: TRSOA).

Also keep in mind that any small change will generate a new keyframe, any small adjustment you make.

 

[Porcus Dev]

Mmm let me ask you this...

Let;s say i want in my animation the one characters eyes blink. Would you in the timeline create a keyframe at say frame 30 (eyes closed) and at frame 35 (yes open) create a keyframe again ?

Exactly, BUT... keep this in mind...

If you set the value of "Closed Eyes" to 100% in frame 30, the following will happen: frame 0 has a "Closed Eyes" at 0%, so that value will increase towards 100% when you reach frame 30, and that's not what you want. Therefore, what you would have to do is go to frame 25 and set a value of "Closed Eyes" to 0.0001%, this way a keyframe is created and from frame 0 to 25 you will have open eyes, then you go to frame 30 and set the value of "Closed Eyes" to 100%, and finally you go to frame 35 and put that value back to 0%.

Resume,  Eyes Closed:  0%-----------------------0.001%----100%----0%
                      frame 0                 frame 25 - frame 30 - frame 35

This is important because DAZ must understand what you want to do and it does it through keyframes.
To give another example, imagine that you make an arm movement from frame 0 to frame 30, but then reviewing the animation you want to make a small correction only in the hand that starts in frame 25 and ends in frame 30.
If you make that correction directly in frame 30, DAZ has no other reference for that hand, only for the arm, then the movement of the hand will go from frame 0 to 30.
In this case, you have to do something similar to what I told you about the eyes; go to frame 25 and change the minimum value of the hand so that DAZ creates a keyframe... for example, the hand has a value of 9.5, you just have to change that for 9.51 (or 9.5001) and then DAZ will have a reference frame... The hand will not move from frame 0 to 25

Resume,  Left Shoulder Bend:  -22%--------------------------------- -67%
Resume, Left Hand            : 9.5%-----------------------9.51%------5%
                             frame 0                  frame 25 - frame 30

NOTE: I know that there is the option to create keyframe directly without having to change those values, but from experience I know that it doesn't always work, instead making these small and imperceptible changes, it works


Another tip is to save several versions of the animation while you are creating it, because sometimes it can happen that you take it for good up to frame 30, then you want to make some change from frame 30 to 60 and for some reason (lack of reference keyframes) this ends up affecting the first 30 frames, if you have a previous version saved you can always go back and fix it.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Brilliant thx dude...

to quote you: The hand will not move from frame 0 to 25
I think this has been happening to my anim last night. I did a hand movement with two keyframes only where i shouldve added the third minscule one. Daz just kept going with my change. I think i get what you saying.

 

[Porcus Dev]

Brilliant thx dude...

to quote you: The hand will not move from frame 0 to 25
I think this has been happening to my anim last night. I did a hand movement with two keyframes only where i shouldve added the third minscule one. Daz just kept going with my change. I think i get what you saying.

Yeah, when you have to move something, always think before from which point it has to move, go to that point and make some ridiculous and imperceptible change in its current value so that you create the keyframe

 

[Deleted member 167032]

HOLY shit i just had a look at your anim in your signature... DAMN its good. I've honestly been meaning to play your game for so long but keep forgetting. I'll do so this weekend for sure... Thx for all your advice...
Main thing for me is to get it looking smooth adn natural.. much like what you did in that anim in your sig...

 

[Porcus Dev]

HOLY shit i just had a look at your anim in your signature... DAMN its good. I've honestly been meaning to play your game for so long but keep forgetting. I'll do so this weekend for sure... Thx for all your advice...
Main thing for me is to get it looking smooth adn natural.. much like what you did in that anim in your sig...

Thanks!

No doubt what has more work are the small details, it's relatively easy to create a simple loop, but as you say, the important thing is to make it natural ... move several parts of the body, hair if possible, facial expression, etc...

Here you can see some more:
https://f95zone.to/threads/which-ad...ation-or-sex-scenes.29511/page-2#post-2041835

But there aren't the most recent with Gina, which in my opinion are the best (although the one you've seen with Jessy is also good, hihi). If you have the opportunity to try the game I hope you have fun... and if you get to the end of the current version (v0.2.2b) you will see those animations with Gina
(NOTE: the game has some repetitive parts that we are trying to improve... soon we will publish a new version)


BTW, I also find it hard to find time to play games since I started with the creation of mine, LOL

 

[Deleted member 167032]

I MAKE time honestly. I want to see what other devs are doing and personally find it lacking if you do not play other VN's. I love VN's and to see what ideas erotic or non erotic devs come up with... So yah ill definitely play and looking forward to it. Play Bad Memories too if you can...

 

[thengineer]

Here's what I did for a recent animation:

Start by rendering an image series at relatively low iterations:

Denoise all frames using an AI denoiser (I used the nvidia one):

Use ffmpeg to convert the png series to v9 webm (should give you a small filesize, mine was like 700kb):

You must be registered to see the links

(final result)

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

What a great thread \o/
I learned a lot. I stayed away from complex animations because it's quite time consuming.
But I'm fired up now!

 

[Deleted member 416612]

Hi mates,

First of all, thank you for giving me the best tips ever. I already started to put them to good use.

Now I have an issue... I started rendering the animation as a series of images and not as a movie.
The problem is that after the first image, it starts using the CPU instead of the GPU even if I have set it to render only with GPU.
I made a test of the scene by rendering an image as a test and it took 30 minutes to be completed with the min samples set to 2000 and full HD resolution. Render quality is set to Off.
If I render it as a movie, the same thing happens. First frame uses the GPU and after it switches to CPU.

Is there anything I can do?

 

[Porcus Dev]

Hi mates,

First of all, thank you for giving me the best tips ever. I already started to put them to good use.

Now I have an issue... I started rendering the animation as a series of images and not as a movie.
The problem is that after the first image, it starts using the CPU instead of the GPU even if I have set it to render only with GPU.
I made a test of the scene by rendering an image as a test and it took 30 minutes to be completed with the min samples set to 2000 and full HD resolution. Render quality is set to Off.
If I render it as a movie, the same thing happens. First frame uses the GPU and after it switches to CPU.

Is there anything I can do?

Indeed, with animations there can be that problem. When you make renders of several images DAZ "clear" the scene before continuing with the next but that doesn't happen with the animations, it loads the scene once and is rendering the different frames, and I think that should mean a little more memory consumption of the graphics card (VRAM) ... you have to try reduce the memory scene consumption: try to delete objects that aren't seen in the plane especially if there is some reflective, lowers the resolution of textures that are far away (Scene Optimizer), etc ...
As for iterations, I usually let DAZ calculate the ones that are enough (Render Quality: ON), because sometimes 1000 will suffice and other times more will be needed, but time doesn't have to be superior, everything depends on light
If you want to give it a value of iterations, the best thing is to render a frame and observe how many it looks good enough and use that value ... I found that with an animation with lots of light, 400 iterations were enough.