Daz Tips for improving animation

[DreamscapeGames]

Just looking for opinions mostly. I've only been doing this for a few months. Render quality is good, by motions are lacking
Is linear better than interpolation?
Should I be keying every frame?
Would switching to Blender be the best option?

 

[LeeGoGo]

Just looking for opinions mostly. I've only been doing this for a few months. Render quality is good, by motions are lacking
Is linear better than interpolation?
Should I be keying every frame?
Would switching to Blender be the best option?

I would highly recommend pushing over to Blender as soon as you're happy with your character/environment build. There are plenty of tutorials out there for using the diffeomorphic bridge as well as posing/animating characters in Blender. The Iray renderer in DAZ is good, but you can easily get the same quality in Blender after the learning curve.

 

[osanaiko]

There is a classic book "The Animator's Survival Kit" by Richard Williams that discussing the fundamentals of 2d drawn animation.

Obviously not everything is exactly the same in 3d but many of the principals are important to understand - stuff like: no linear motion, acceleration and deceleration, overshoot, transitions, useful shortcuts and many more.

Animation is a lot of work, 5-10x more than still images. And if you are doing anything remotely "realistic" then you need to stick within the rules of physics and biological joint constrains, which just adds to the burden of the uncanny valley.

 

[DreamscapeGames]

I really appreciate the insight. That reminds me of when I did 2D drafting board work before moving to CAD. I'll pick that book up. The jerkiness is what I'm trying to eliminate. I'll probably release what I've built so far and clean it up once I'm more proficient.

 

[osanaiko]

I'll probably release what I've built so far and clean it up once I'm more proficient.

This is the key - practice and repeat, and review critically once you have some time-separation. It's very hard to immediately critique your own work when it is still "you" and any negative areas are personal failings. Once a few weeks have gone past then it's no longer "present you" and you can be objective about it.

Cleanup if and only if you will generate more value doing so that just making new stuff.

successful creatives SHIP. even if it's "not ready".

(personally i'm not yet able to count myself as successful, i ruminate and redo too much and then get afraid of showing the world my failings. much easier to give advice to others, lol)