Looking for advice on amateur animation.
Saiyaness
Posts: 715
Hi all, just a few quick questions.
1. What animation program is best to use for use with Genesis figures? I would like to get people's opinions before I make any decision on Animate 2. I have seen various animation programs including iClone but I am an EXTREME newbie.
2. I have tried various animation using Animate Lite and get a "tilted feet" problem. They walk around on their damn heels....is there a fix for this?
3. If animating in Daz Studio, what setting do most people use in regards to subdivision, decimation, skin and SSS settings? And what lighting settings? I have tried Deep Shadow Mapping and Raytracing and yes, the render time for a tiny, 2 second video was ridiculous, but the skin and shadows DID look great.
I only ask because I've recently enrolled in a Video and Animation course and I'm happily familiar with Daz and would like to try my hand at utilising these figures and software to at least learn...I just don't want to blow money on a program (such as Animate 2) when there's potentially a more effective one. :)
Thankyou!!
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Comments
iClone is good - going to cost you about $500 or more to get a lot out of it .
What is best software ? Hmm I 've been wondering that for a long time !
Its a bit like asking what is the best food for me - depends on a great many things and we could discuss them for the next 5years.
Daz studio / Poser / and Daz Carrara all support genisis and other daz characters - moving to other software always involves workarounds - which is ok if you want the extra work and headaches. Each software has its strengths and weaknesses and so far Ive not found the holy grail.
My suggestion is take good look at Carrara. It combines many features which are extras in other software if available at all.
Its not the perfect answer( let me know if you find one ) Animation Is easier in Daz Studio in my opinion but Carrara has faster rendering I'm told.
I use Carrara and get frustrated by it every day but despite exploring other avenues always come back to it appreciating its versatility .
you can download a trial version free and pro is often on sale - actually its on sale now.
The current version 8.5 does not support genesis but if you own C8 you can get the beta version of 8.5 which does. Public release of 8.5 due later this year and further releas next year of Version 9.
http://www.daz3d.com/software/carrara/carrara-8-pro
Im not a professional by the way but hope my comment is helpful.
One tip for DS animation, always Render to Frames and Assemble to a Movie file later.
Hi Ya Jaderail
You about took the words out of my mouth, :)
except Ya can't use Super Smoother Shader maps (SSS) in DS4.5 There is not enough room for expansion in the subdivision, SSS maps do work great with IDL & HDR light sources in Poser for which they were developed for and Maya using poser fusion. with Vray or metal-ray & you can get them to work in DAZ3A with a little tweaking of the refraction rates. , in IMO I think they look more defined in the still renders, But they really get Pixaly in animation. I'm not sure why that is.
I haven't tried Iclone yet. But i have been doing a lot of reading & research on how to use it and I have seen some pretty awesome stuff being done with it. But I think Maya has more options and better animation control once a person learns how to use it.
Properly If was making animation for Gaming I would I use Iclone because of the faster rendering times and how it utilizes the Low poly map shaders, and smaller rendered files sizes, the only draw back I have seen with Iclone is the shadow mapping seems to be weak.
I might add to your list that a having a good movie editor, like Adobe Premiere pro or Sony Vega or even Adobe premiere elements is also beneficial to producing good animation. I don't consider Windows-movie-maker a good film editor...lol
i got Maya and 3DS through the school. Let me tell you Maya is very hard. there so much too it ,. That class has been killing me..lol ,
The last animation I released a week ago , I made some of the models i used in it with 3ds, so I'm getting there though.
I can't wait to see what kind of creation you come up with in Iclone,
I have another new animation coming out in a couple of days you have to keep a eye out for it.
Thankyou for the feedback! I haven't had the net for over a week so I couldn't check my messages.
I've been mucking around with animate lite and it's surprisingly easy so I'm happy. More aniblocks would be useful though...:p
I have programs like Nuke, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and plenty of other programs to play at uni with for the purposes of cutting and post-production. I'll try the render to frames thing instead of rendering it as a movie. If I make anything of worth (or if I run into a wall) I'll be back with more questions. Thankyou!
Having read this and some other threads, and having played around with aniMate Lite a bit, I have to admit that I am really disenchanted about the possibility of my creating even a five minute video or so. It's not so much the learning curve that puts me off, but the render times (of high quality stills to an image sequence... not even a video) prior to export to another application for post work. This discourages me from even buying aniMate 2.
That said, if one is trying to tell a short story with some sound effects and imagery, has anyone here ever explored the possibility of using carefully choreographed stills to sort of "fake the notion" of animation? I realize that this question speaks more to creativity than software/hardware resources, but the reality that animation is (regardless of when the marketing hype would have one believe) IMMENSELY time intensive may force me to pursue a more practical avenue of telling a "living" story, if you will.
Yes. (The following is similar to my response to another thread here, but maybe you missed it).
For background, I have entered a number of 48 Hour Film contests (the entire 5 minute video has to be completed in two days, given a random genre and other elements). I have used Carrara for the short animations, running on a Core i7 machine which typically renders frames in 5 to 10 seconds, depending on the settings (no Global Illumination, fast antialiasing, etc.).
But for that hi res "money shot", a still image can work, larger than the frame and then panned around in the video editor (sometimes called the "Ken Burns Effect"). So if the video is 720x480 (works OK in the contest movie theater screening), a still of 1440x960 or larger can be used. With high render settings, this can take 30 to 60 minutes to render, but you only need the one still. Obviously an hour per frame for the entire video (5 minutes x 60sec/minute x 30frames/second x 1 hour/frame = 9000 hours render time) is not a good plan for a two day contest. But at 5 seconds per frame, the whole video would take 12 hours render time, not unreasonable for a two day contest, leaving the majority of the time for writing, setting up the shots, editing, adding sound, rendering the final video, etc. Its still exhausting, and I recommend live action ... :P
Here is a video using this technique, one the judges liked (for once - there are some very good videos entered in these contests, almost all live action):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN1pXYvEqIc
Thanks for your detailed reply, Steve. A lot of what you wrote is a bit rich for my uninitiated blood, but I liked that video, and that pretty much illustrates my idea. My computer will render a really high quality, detailed image in anywhere from 6 to 9-ish minutes, and even if I were to compose quite a few stills, it would still be less than the half-a-lifetime that I'd have to wait for rendering an aniMate sequence to stills. I'm on a Pentium machine with 4GB RAM, and not inclined to drop a lot of coin on an experiment. So, maybe this is an option, though I really am very disappointed that animation, in this day and age, still seems to be so impractical in terms of time and resource dedication.
You're welcome, and I'm glad you liked the video (the beauty of the 48 Hour contest is if someone doesn't like it, you can say "Well, we only had two days ...") And I do think your machine is a little underpowered for hi res 3D animation, like Carrara. Mine is 8GB Core i7, a high end video card and 64 bit windows, and when it renders all eight cores show 100% loaded (quad core with multi-threading).
Still, the sequenced still image approach can be pretty impressive, with voice over, sound effects, music, etc. (Like Ken Burns' documentary "The Civil War" and others). You could also consider special effects with programs like Particle Illusion, which renders 2D effect overlays that work with any still or video clip. And it renders very fast, faster than real time in many cases. I.e. five seconds of effects can take 3-4 seconds.
http://www.wondertouch.com/index_2.asp
You might also consider 2D animation, like Smith Micro's "Anime Studio" (they are the Poser company), a pretty good program with a 30day trial:
http://anime.smithmicro.com/
Lots of add on content including ready to animate characters (I think):
http://contentparadise.com/SearchRanked.aspx?searchText=anime studio
The story is the thing, and a 2D animation can tell the story.
I concur with SteveK here. As you have noted in 3D animation it is render time that hurts the most. I do believe I have watched all posted SteveK 48 hour videos and find that style very impressive. Finding the work flow that works for you on your system is a must. To me it's not the programs you use, or how powerful your PC is, but how you make it all work for you. If you make a animation that pleases you that is all you can ask for. IMHO.
Thanks, Jaderail. Its a lot of fun, and I love some of the most creative animations. Thank you, Canada:
http://www.nfb.ca/channels/Animation/
But I have to say Pixar is almost beyond belief in their quality. The first to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture (not animated, just best):
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/awards
Thanks for the Link. I will catch those as time allows. Bookmarked for watching at my leisure.
Thanks again, guys. Sadly, I don't think that animation is really practical for me, even if I were to upgrade my computer to 8 GB. It seems to me that it would be just an expensive experiment, with the best case scenario being just watching my own videos in the workspace. So, I guess trying to do something creative with stills is my best option at this point.
Perhaps your Pentium class CPU is creating some challenges that could be overcome by solutions like iClone, which uses your video card to render output files. It uses a real-time rendering environment and does not do raytracing. So the lighting model may not be appropriate for every project (depends on your lighting skills and the look you seek).
If you have time, take a look at a couple of my animated movies that I rendered in iClone, but did post work using Adobe Premiere and After Effects. I'm a hobbyist who enjoys learning and creating movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otw5IY1IHw0 - A Princess Movie (animation is keyframe, personally created mocaps (iPi Recorder / Mocap Studio), as well as some custom motions generated in iClone).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKdlOjtcvxg - Lego Jedi vs Pirates (characters were created and mostly animated in Carrara but imported as animated props; animation is keyframe and my personally generated mocaps).
Regardless of the chosen 3D software, time must be devoted to learning and figuring out what set of tools and workflow will help you get your expected results. If you are committed to animation as a hobby, this might also require at least a small financial investment in software (and maybe hardware).
Render time is a big limitation for anyone starting out in animation. It can take a great deal of time to create an animation, especially if you have to leave your system on for hours, if not days, rendering to get the animation quality you want. For the Daz or Cararra user, there are a couple of options.
Cararra has GRID which can be used to spread your render chores over a number of networked computers. Each computer is automatically assigned a frame to render, and then the render farm software compiles the completed frames in a single directory for a program like Premiere or After Effects to assemble into a movie clip.
Octane is a GPU-based renderer, which uses your graphics card to quickly render out very high-quality images. Renders which take hours on Daz's built-in renderer can end up taking minutes or even seconds on Octane. There is a Daz plugin for Octane available in beta mode, and a Cararra plugin is in the works. I really REALLY like Octane. Not a cheap solution, but very effective.
Other solutions are using iClone, as others have mentioned, or you could always look at exporting your animated scene to an open-source program like Blender and using the built-in Cycles GPU render engine. I've been playing with Blender and I will admit that it is a challenge to learn. But the capabilities it brings to the party (fluids, smoke, instancing, etc.) are very powerful.
In reading through this thread, though all of the advice is good, I think you all forgot what its like to be a newbie. I was a noob back in 2000. I remember asking questions and getting answers in a language I couldn't understand. I thought I would be able to find a program and animate but what I found was that 3d animation is far more than moving a character. Putting together scenes, lighting and rendering are all mixed up in there too. I started on a 32 bit system with 4g memory. It didn't take long to find out that wasn't enough. It was hard and challenging and took me a long time to get it. I started with Poser but animating was too hard. Moved to Daz Studio in 08 when animate was just coming out. It made animating so much easier. I have Carrara and although the render quality is amazing, I find animating difficult and cumbersome. I also have iclone and 3dxchange. Animating is easier but the image quality stinks. They are just now starting to upgrade their lighting.
My advice to you is to stick with Daz Studio and learn the basics.......lighting, rendering and animation. Read lots of material, watch lots and lots of tutorials (plenty on Youtube) play and experiment. When you have a handle on the basics, then start looking for your program. You will have had a chance to work in this stuff "hands-on" and will know have an idea of what you like.