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Dreamlight AnimateTextures & DS4

mobilefinitymobilefinity Posts: 0
edited December 1969 in Daz Studio Discussion

Has anyone working with this combination? I purchased it, but it appears only to work in DS3 (which I have but doesn't do much good since my scenes are using genesis and DS4.5..).

Any tricks to make this work?

I am using the DS4.5 64 bit version. I haven't tried installing the 32 bit to see if the plugin will load.

Thanks!

Comments

  • carolinebegbiecarolinebegbie Posts: 162
    edited December 1969

    I don't think it's been updated for DS 4.

    Texanim by Casual will do animated image series.
    https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/texanimfords3

    It's a script, not a plugin, so will work for both DS3 and 4.

    Casual's Matanim allows you to keyframe the surface options, such as color and opacity:
    https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/matanim

  • freecomerfreecomer Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Hi Carnite

    I admired your videos about the bears in your garden :-)

    Concerning MatAnim, I have tried it in DS4.5 64bit, but I can't get it to animate anything.

    The CanAnimate changes to True when you hit the Make Property Animatable, but when the animation runs, nothing happens.

    Is this a known problem, maybe due to update from 4 to 4.5?

    If so, maybe Casual might update the script one day?

    Thanks for any help, I need an opacity slider for a project ..

  • carolinebegbiecarolinebegbie Posts: 162
    edited December 1969

    Hi, freecomer - thanks for the kind words :).

    It works for me in DS4.5 - are you sure you are doing it right?

    1. Choose the surface using the surface selection too. On the Surfaces pane, check the name of the surface.

    2. Go into Matanim. Select the name of the surface and make the Opacity property animatable.

    3. Go to frame 30 and set the opacity property to 0.

    4. Go to frame 0 and set the opacity property to 100.

    Then the surface should go from 100% to 0% in 30 frames.

    (I did 3 and 4 like that to make sure that keys were set on both frames.)

  • freecomerfreecomer Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Thank you for a swift reply.

    Yes, indeed, it does work in DS45 ... many thanks for your assistance.

    I see what I was doing wrong (I won't bore you with it :-( )

    Appreciate the kindness

    PS

    I also enjoyed your YouTube videos about Movie Maker with Aiko and the King with the Dragon.
    It inspired me to try using DAZ for small movie clips.
    What a pity Movie Maker does not work in DS4 ... (Oh no, it doesnt ...)

    Thanks again

  • carolinebegbiecarolinebegbie Posts: 162
    edited December 1969

    freecomer said:
    Thank you for a swift reply.

    Yes, indeed, it does work in DS45 ... many thanks for your assistance.

    When I started using it, I was convinced it had an intermittent fault. I had to read the instructions every single time :). Glad you got it going.

    What a pity Movie Maker does not work in DS4 ... (Oh no, it doesnt ...)

    Yes, but you can make your own to some extent. You can render your own 360 degree backgrounds in something like Bryce or Carrara or Vue, or use ones found on the net, for example http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html , and apply the background to a very large sphere, and place your camera dead central. When you create a shadow catcher plane, that gives you the same effect as MovieMaker. MovieMaker has the pre-rendered nodes and the ability to switch between the nodes, which is good. You can use the MovieMaker pre-rendered backgrounds without the node switching ability.

  • freecomerfreecomer Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    MATANIM
    Yes, you have to be terribly fussy to select the surface correctly in Surfaces and in Matanim (which is where I was duffing it) and close Matanim when you change the function to true. It needs a new Matanim opened and closed for each surface, which ain't no problem for a simple surface, but can get tedious for multi-part surfaces [hope that makes sense]. Anyway, I have managed it now for a wide variety of surfaces and functions, so I am fairly happy with it. Thanks again.

    PS Certainly a lot easier than Shader Mixer, although being a bit of a programming buff I got a weird satisfaction in making animated opacity work in Shader Mixer, with inspiration from Richard Haseltine's post. SM needs lots of TLC, I think.

    MOVIE MAKER
    Well, I just threw that in, in disgust with Dreamlight, who pester me daily to buy their wonderful bargains, but don't update their software!

    However, using your idea with the sphere, I am already getting great rough results just with photos on my hard drive and on my copy of Carrara. Great idea, looking forward to learning more about HDRI, which always put me off before. No idea how to render HDRI in Carrara, can't see it in the render settings, but I will sure be investigating this bigtime. Thanks for that little bonus, would never have occurred to me.

    Thank you oh "Caroline, also known as Carnite" :-)

    Regards
    Ed (also known as DeadEd)

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