Zombie Shuffle
Artman009
Posts: 33
With the release of DAZ Studio 4.6, I had noticed its 3Delight render engine had improved render times so I figured I'd do a quick test.
The scene involved a single Genesis figure with a Zombie skin material, 1 SpotLight, 2 Distant Lights, all with Raytraced shadows and Shadow Softness at 11.5%.
Each frame rendered in 7 seconds.
Definitely an improvement compared to previous versions of DAZ Studio.
Post edited by Artman009 on
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I just posted a slightly newer version, if anyone is interested:
http://youtu.be/p6P-bA7FxAs
Just another experimentation. Still very, very far from a final product.
Liked the angle on your first version, fdelt more dynamic, but your lighting setup works really well. The wash of blue moonlight - good stuff. I don't know if it was the word "shuffle" but for some reason I was expecting music and some dance steps or something. Good test. It's always fun watching a clip evolve into a completed scene. Post more when you have 'em.
I agree the first one has a better angle, good stuff. I have not used any version of DAZ Studio for animation, only stills for scenes that require it. Any comments on how animation in DS compares with other programs - Carrara, Poser, Lightwave, etc.?
Yeah, the camera placement/angle wasn't my real intent with this pass. I simply wanted to add background elements to the shot (trees, lamp posts, etc).
As to your question about animation, I couldn't tell you since I've never used Carrara, Poser, or Lightware, but compared to similar programs like Maya and Blender (programs with professional animation tools) DAZ Studio is pretty limited as it lacks a handful of industry standard features. There is no dope sheet for animations, you cannot change the DEFAULT keyframe interpolation, and auto-keyframing is ALWAYS on and CANNOT be turned off to name only a few.
The only form of Non Linear Animation is only available is through a separate plugin called aniMate, and even it lacks a lot of professional features. Although, with the recent addition of keyMate and graphMate, animation has gotten a lot easier but is still far from ideal.
While aniMate, keyMate and graphMate are all required plugins if you intend to animate in DAZ Studio, they all suffer from clunky interfaces that feel both cumbersome and unpolished. And, aside from some light documentation and out of date videos, any sort of advanced documentation or thorough video tutorials are nonexistent (unless you want to scrounge through the DAZ forums for some clues). However, all of this isn't necessarily DAZ3D's fault, except for the lack of animation tools built into DAZ Studio to begin with.
Long story short, DAZ Studio is a fun program with only rudimentary animation tools. In my personal opinion, it feels like a still image renderer that included only a few animation tools as an afterthought.
So maybe with the eventual/hopeful release of DAZ Studio 5, new features focusing on animation will be included. Until then, though, you may want to just stick with Poser or Carrara.
Seems to be a trend here at DAZ. Carrara V.8 came out several years ago, with the updated documentation promised "shortly". It still says that on the documentation page, but no update. Its starting to look like its never coming out, even though V.8.5 is reportedly coming out soon.
So maybe with the eventual/hopeful release of DAZ Studio 5, new features focusing on animation will be included. Until then, though, you may want to just stick with Poser or Carrara.
Right. I greatly prefer Carrara to Poser, since it handles all Poser type content effortlessly, plus has much better features for animation, especially for large scenes. I also have Lightwave, and have heard that "Poser Fusion" works well, so if Carrara does get abandoned, I may try that. But probably not, since the Carrara I have now does almost everything I need, Plus evidently a lot of other things I don't know about without the docs ... :ohh:
Yet another pass: http://youtu.be/ggEb4Slv4PU
Basically the same scene as before but I've since added a new camera, re-lit the shot, applied some facial animation (blinks, eyes & mouth movement) to the zombie, and dirty-ed up the whole thing. Again, just experimentation.
Made with DAZ Studio 4.6 and a crap load of After Effects sweetening.
:lol:
It is looking better, which is good since you make it sound like a struggle.
I also have AE, but generally don't use it much since my video editor (Magix' "Movie Edit Pro MX") has a lot of the basic AE type features included. Its easier to stay in one program than to go back and forth. I do agree AE can do amazing things, its just that I can get along in my video editor in many cases.
If I've got a big scene to do with lots of movement I speed up the process by using 4 steps.
1) Set everything up so it's ready to render.
2) Remove all characters from the scene, without touching the camera movement or anything else, and render the set.
3) Once the render has finished, hit the Daz back-button to put all the characters back. Then delete the set (as you already have it.)
Now, just render the characters against the green backdrop. The render time is super fast compared to having the set there.
4) Once your render has finished, load both renders into your AE and composite the characters onto the set. Because you've left the camera
movement the same in both renders, the job is done and it really does speed up the overall rendering time.
I did a normal render which took 2 hours and 12 minutes. I then did the green screen render which took 2 hours and 11 minutes so it really does help :)
Just kidding, it actually saved 55 minutes overall and it only takes a minute to composite. If you have a lot of rendering to do it could save quite a bit of time.
Yes, an another example of my video editor (Magix Movie Edit Pro) having the same feature as AE, layered video with "green screen" masking (they call it "chroma key" with various colors available to avoid the colors in the video). But wait! There's more!:
"NEW! The built-in anti-spill feature immediately creates neat, sharp contours - without any green edges"
:gulp:
On a similar note, the savings can get even bigger with some scenes if there is no camera movement. E.g. a Howie Farkes Carrara landscape can take a LONG time to render due to all the great detail. Many Vue landscapes are the same. But uses as a backdrop in Carrara, they have to be rendered only once, of course. The nice feature in Carrara is the "shadow catcher", just a primitive or two that roughly matches the backdrop and renders only the shadows of, say, the moving characters. The primitives themselves don't render. Its easier than it sounds.
:P