Animations in C8.5 beta

Mosk the Scribe

Hi. Is there any problem / limitation on doing animations with Genesis in the C8.5 beta release? (I just did a few second test of untextured genesis by itself going through a couple of poses and worked fine, but I thought I'd come across something in the forums that implied it wasn't working correctly yet.

I'd like to know up front, because I'm going to be putting together some animations, and I may consider getting FaceGen if genesis is working smoothly inside the C8.5 beta (mine looks like it converted over to a 30 day trial yesterday).

Thanks for any replies.

WendyLuvsCatz

first grab that new serial CDZCPRO-085-0000026-BLW-001-EBTOLPQ Expires August 31st, 2012
it ran out day before yesterday!!! I had 24+ hours no C8.5 (weeps uncontollably)
lip sync, I mean Mimic, combined with aniblocks or nla clips gave me and a few others issues
seperately ok
mimic and keyframed poses ok for example
I got weird eye pops as seen on this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUQnUh29-jg

Mosk the Scribe

OK - thanks for the clarification.

3DAGE

HI Mosk :)

Yes, there are issues with using Genesis and animating it in Carrara 8.5 beta.

NOTE: The Beta is for testing,. rather than production work, so you shouldn't start using a beta, for anything serious.

The first issue is the IK on genesis since the bones are rigged differently, so, if you grab one foot and move it, then the other foot will also move an opposite direction, the same IK issues apply to the hands/arms.

You can work around that by adding an IK Terminator to the thigh and shoulders, which wil stop the unwanted movement,.

Faba has built a set of Modifiers and constraints which help by simplifying that to dropping her modifiers in place.

The second issue is with animation converted to NLA clips,..

There are two problems,. one is edit NLA mode, which makes Genesis appear like the rubber guy from the fantastic four.

The second problem is looped, or multiple NLA clips on a clothed genesis figure,.
At the looping point of the clip,.. or , at the change point from one clip to another,. the clothing on genesis will explode.

AFAIK .. Both of these have been reported and are being worked on.

Hope it helps :)

Mosk the Scribe

3dAge -

Sadly, your warning is not what I wanted to hear, but I think I need to heed it, because I'm about to launch into a fairly sizable project and I really can't afford to run into huge problems halfway through.

I'll be turning a number of songs I've written into music videos which will require lip synched animations and frequent use of NLA clips. Was hoping to do this with Genesis in C8.5, but may be best to handle some in 2D (with crazytalk) and other parts with non-genesis figures in C8 Pro if I can get FaceShop working well enough for my needs.

Thanks for the warning.

bigh

just wondering why you don't use DS to do your lip synch - works real good for me

bigh

bigh said:

just wondering why you don't use DS to do your lip synch - works real good for me

did this the other day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hIfYWcSzOw

Mosk the Scribe

bigh -

I gave up rendering animations in DAZ Studio for several reasons:

1) Studio doesn't render nearly as fast as Carrara
2) Studio used to crash on me all the time as soon as the scenes were populated with a decent amount of stuff. Not sure if that's still an issue now that Studio has 64 bit option (though Lip Synch not available in 64 but version unfortunately, though could simply export pz2 from mimic pro and get info in that way.)
3) I prefer lighting options in Carrara

I've considered just rendering pngs sequence of lip synched character and could then composite that with background rendered in Carrara, but while that may work for some circumstances, it introduces all sorts of practical limitations about how character can interact with the entire scene.

Mosk the Scribe

To 3dage and Wendy -

Are the problems in Carrara Pro 8.5 with Lip Synch / NLA tracks / and clothed figures limited to use of the Genesis figure?
Or am I likely to run into problems using generation 3 and 4 figures as well? (I did a trial of animated, dressed, lip synched genesis character and my figure went flying off the screen never to return partway through the animation :( )

I'm planning to convert several songs I've written into music videos which will incorporate some animated and lip-synched figures.

I think I'm putting thoughts of using genesis on hold till that's all smoothed out, but Genesis aside, there are a number of improvements in C8.5 over C8 (or 8.1) that I'd like to take advantage of unless the whole program is unstable and prone to random calamities.

Thanks for any advice.

bigh

Mosk the Scribe said:

bigh -

I gave up rendering animations in DAZ Studio for several reasons:

1) Studio doesn't render nearly as fast as Carrara
2) Studio used to crash on me all the time as soon as the scenes were populated with a decent amount of stuff. Not sure if that's still an issue now that Studio has 64 bit option (though Lip Synch not available in 64 but version unfortunately, though could simply export pz2 from mimic pro and get info in that way.)
3) I prefer lighting options in Carrara

I've considered just rendering pngs sequence of lip synched character and could then composite that with background rendered in Carrara, but while that may work for some circumstances, it introduces all sorts of practical limitations about how character can interact with the entire scene.

I see .
1 - studio depends
2 - you could do lip synch in 32 bit - then load in to 64 bit
3 - ok

don't know what you are doing .
I'm just saying it can be done in DS .
I know DS better then Carrara - thats where I'm coming from .

bigh

Mosk the Scribe said:

To 3dage and Wendy -

Are the problems in Carrara Pro 8.5 with Lip Synch / NLA tracks / and clothed figures limited to use of the Genesis figure?
Or am I likely to run into problems using generation 3 and 4 figures as well? (I did a trial of animated, dressed, lip synched genesis character and my figure went flying off the screen never to return partway through the animation :( )

I'm planning to convert several songs I've written into music videos which will incorporate some animated and lip-synched figures.

I think I'm putting thoughts of using genesis on hold till that's all smoothed out, but Genesis aside, there are a number of improvements in C8.5 over C8 (or 8.1) that I'd like to take advantage of unless the whole program is unstable and prone to random calamities.

Thanks for any advice.

I loaded Genesis with lip Synch from DS to C - it works but no sound .
Genesis looks fine - don't know what they are seeing .

Mosk the Scribe

Problem happens when you add clothing to genesis model and use NLA clips in addition to the simple lip synch.

Just did a test with textured genesis, lip synched to 2 audio clips, and with 2 aniblocks imported to timeline and nothing blew up.

So maybe avoiding use of NLA clips avoids this problem?

(3dage? wendy? is that the case? Can you more or less work around this simply by avoiding use of NLA clips?)

WendyLuvsCatz

well I had no NLA clips in my mimic clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hIfYWcSzOw except the mimic ones, had autofitted V3 clothes though and Aniblocks, it did it after adding the Aniblocks, SciFi Funk's voice btw!!!

3DAGE

HI Mosk :)

If you keyframe the animations, then using a clothed genesis will be fine,.

Also, as Big H suggests, you can use Mimic pro or Mimic in DS to add the lipsync and save the results as a Poser PZ2 file, which will load as Key-frames in Carrara.
If you also animate the figure using Aniblocks in DS, then this animation can be transferred to the DS timeline, Exported as a single animation in either PZ2 or BVH or saved as a single Aniblock and imported into carrara as Key-frames

None on the mimic transfer options will include the sound file, (it;s just an animation export) and the sound file can be added to Carrara, or to a video editor in post.

Using a clothed genesis with multiple NLA clips will cause an issue right now when the first clips transitions to the next clip, or at the loop point of a repeating clip.

This doesn't happen with a single NLA clip, or with traditional key-framed animations.

Hope it helps :)

Mosk the Scribe

Thanks for all the replies - they are very helpful.

The NLA clips add a lot of flexibility for building the type of scenes I'm interested in.
But with some extra organization up front to figure out the timing of things, I should be able to get by with pz2's and keyframing.

Will do some more tests and see how it goes.

One note - I'd tried importing a couple of aniblocks and made a couple of Mimic sequences in C8.5 and that worked fine until I added clothing to the genesis figure at which point the character flew off. I hadn't added any NLA clips (aside from what Mimic for Carrara automatically adds). Will try again. If I could reliably use multiple Aniblocks, that would make my work very doable.

bigh

Carrara 8.5 test today .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67j94IDm1hg