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Dartanbeck's Journey - CG Filmmaking

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  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680

    I make my own custom dials for every figure base that I work with for animation. It doesn't take long to make the initial set which are designed specifically to fix things like "Hands in the Legs (or body)", etc.,

    For skirts I like to try dForce for the reason that it would improve the entire animation look. I have special tricks that I use to try and troubleshoot my way into getting dForce to work on many things. If that fails and I haven't decided to toss the idea of using a skirt, I'd break out my good friend: Geometry Sculptor (Mesh Grabber if you don't have Premier).

    I've tried explaining the whole "Custom Dial" thing in text many times and it never went over well even though it takes me forever and a day to try and type it - it's easy (and fast) to do, but there are a lot of variables and important steps not to skip - making the process wordy to try and type. 

    So in the end I made Dynamic Character Animation in Daz Studio to explain it fully.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680

    The basic setup that I made when I came up with the idea (Custom Correction Dials) is made for Genesis 1 and is available free HERE

    They only work for Genesis 1, but by loading in a Genesis 1 figure after installing these, you'll see what I mean. They completely Fix animation issues in Studio to the point of making animation Fun! Addictive even!

     

    In the course, I show a whole lot of examples on how useful these dials are - with a full video just showing all of the dials I made for Rosie 7 at the time, and in the following video I explain how to make them and show many quick ways to add more and more helper dials as we need or want them.

    Currently with my Rosie 8.25 I've been continuing on making more of these dials for her face - facial musculature morphs. I'm not actually making morphs - just making dials that control whatever morphs I use to make a certain 'look' or shape or pose.

     

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680

    Once I've made my dials for "Arms Twist", I can use that dial alone (or the individual ones for each arm) to fix almost all of the arm/hand penetration issues found in Mocap data.

    (Sorry, can only get in here to type in spurts today)

    Most of the time, in my experience, it's a simply twist of the shoulder bone (Genesis 8 and earlier - Upper arm for Genesis 9) that will fix most such issues, especially when used with the Arms Up/Down and/or Front/Back controls that will correct the problem.

     

    For me, however, it goes much further than that. Often times I need to rotate the head back or forward without affecting the lower neck - or even going the opposite direction for the lower neck. Sometimes I just don't like the posture of the torso or one leg is close to being correct, but just the slightes nudge would fix it entirely.

     

    All of these things can be fixed in a graph editor. However, graph editor corrections require a lot more hands-on and back and forth adjustments for even simple fixes - whereas having a dial that can do many fixes or changes at once is a Massive time saver, and after using them a few times, we end up taking them for granted because we just use them as easily as drinking water on a hot day.

     

    I put that video in the above post - not as a commercial, but because of what it shows on the screen. Because it's a promo, the actual video is sped up, but we can still catch glimpses of the system at work.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680

    Now I'm waiting for a render to finish so I can take some screen shots to show what I'm talking about

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680
    edited January 14

    Okay, here we go.

    In this first image we can see a typical motion capture animation on the timeline. They tend to fill every key slot. My first 30 frames are relatively empty because I never apply my animation data before frame 30 so that I have those frames clear for applying stuff to the character Before the animation actually begins. This is useful for bending the head back to get the hair behind the shoulders, or simply moving the hip back so that the hair already starts a flowing motion before hitting the first rendered frame (30, in my case).

    Here we're seeing how few edits I made to completely customize the way the data works on my character - specific posture, arms, head looking forward instead of down - and we can also see that this screen shot was taken before I started working out my facial animations (which will put a bunch of keys into the Head slot on the timeline).

     

     

    Here we see that there's only one edit done to the arms at the very beginning. Which edit is it? Arms Twist!

     

    Also in this shot, I made sure to make just enough screen room with the timeline to show you all of my Genesis 8 custom Arm dials. The names describe exactly what each dial does. In the Parameters pane, they're also nicely color-coded so that I can quickly distinguish which dials are for Both arms (or legs or....) compared to their individual counterparts. The names are carefully thought out to list them in an order that I like to view them. They're "My" dials, so I can set them up however I like :)  

    These are just the Arm dials that I've added to my Genesis 8 figures. I have many, many more dials. Like I said before, they're really easy and fast to make, so when I feel the need for a new one, I load in a Genesis 8 Female (or Male, if I'm working with him) Base figure (Dev Load if I want to) and have myself a little dial-making session!

    Let me know if this helps and/or if you have any further questions :)

    Oh... that course I was talking about above is all about making these dials and ideas on how and why to make other, more special-purpose dials.

    Anim_Timeline_Typical_Mocap.png
    1919 x 1005 - 292K
    Anim_Timeline_Custom_Change_Keys.png
    1919 x 1009 - 295K
    Anim_Timeline_ArmsTwist.png
    1919 x 1009 - 278K
    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680

    I don't know why the aspect ratio of the middle image is all wonky. Just click it to see what it should look like blush

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680

    3D Universe's Pose Architect products use this same custom dial philosophy and are a Lot of fun! They're made to do very specific things and are animated throught the dial's range to make that happen. So for what my custom dials do, Pose Architect doesn't really do the trick. But if you have Pose Architect, try out some of those to make corrections.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680

    V3Digitimes has some amazing pose tools that could very much take the place of creating our own custom dials - I think. I haven't actually tried mine yet for that - I'm just so used to quickly spinning the dials that I've already made that I haven't had the chance to see how well these cool tools work throughout an animation. 

    I should ask her. 

    Better yet, I should just take a few hours off one day and try it. But that is not This day - for I am under the gun with a deadline for this month's Creative Cart, which is going to be So Cool!!!

     

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,626

    Thank you very much for the explanation.

    I like FilaToon very much and I am trying to make my very first animations in Daz Studio.

    With iray I lost my interest in animations long time ago (because of the very long time to render).

     

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680

    There are tricks for that too, my friend!

  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,626

    I have changed clips in Animate and now my animation looks better.

    By the way - great work on Creative Cart series - I have acquired some of them:

    https://www.daz3d.com/the-creative-cart--filament-and-filatoon-fundamentals
    https://www.daz3d.com/the-creative-cart--predatron-content-mastery
    https://www.daz3d.com/the-creative-cart--epic-environments-and-dragon-dynamics
    https://www.daz3d.com/the-creative-cart--discovering-ravnhearts-sci-fi-universe

     

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680

    Thank you! :)

    May I ask which figure you're using? Is it Genesis 9?

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680
    edited January 16

    Using Metro Cargo Pants Graffiti textures on Wasteland Shredded AlphaKini

    RT824MetroAlpha_WalkFemIP_REV346.png
    1280 x 720 - 704K
    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,680
    edited January 16

    Dartanbeck said:

    Looky what I just got!

    Thanks Daz 3D and Aeon Soul!!! I love it when I happen upon Flash Sales like this! :)

    This is my first creation with the new Wasteland Outifit for Genesis 9 and 8

    Image removed

    Here's a link to the removed image if you'd like to see it

    Well, that didn't work either. It's supposed to take you to the image, but it's down further in the Post Apocalyptic area with the showing of Wasteland Outfit

    Post edited by Dartanbeck on
  • ArtiniArtini Posts: 9,626

    Dartanbeck said:

    Thank you! :)

    May I ask which figure you're using? Is it Genesis 9?

    That is a blast from the past, so I use one of the characters of Victoria 4 all rendered in FilaToon.

     

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