Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
iClone facial animation tutorial
my long video here http://youtu.be/uRXNNIN4IxQ
viseme wav file https://www.box.com/shared/plpn909svhs3h020ly0q
quick summary in pictures
in Daz studio 32bit, not 64bit (you can install both if the same build)
open lipsync tab
first load and analyze my viseme. wav file
find the correct mimic. dmc file if prompted
your viseme morphs are now baked to the timeline
add any extra morphs you want at the end (not beginning) of the animation
do not worry what it looks like
just move the sliders, this will bake those to the timeline too.
then export the FBX using the settings shown in my image
import into iClone 3dxchange5.4pro with animation ticked
choose convert to non-standard avatar,
retarget the bones
add facial and spring bones once retargeted and ticked
then convert
go into expression editor and set the head and eye movement, jaw if it has one
manually add the visemes morphs using the sliders and set
just use open mouth if the figure has none for visemes with an open mouth, closed for closed etc
match what ones you can
use/utilize things like smile, frown, kiss etc depending on what other morphs the figure has to resemble the visemes you do not have using the picture guides for each
also for muscle movement
negative blink can be widen eyes
surprise raise eyebrows
frown, lower eyebrows
finally, the unused bones you selected for spring can be given spring under the spring tab
choose how much and which bones testing with dance and walk presets.
the save/convert and export to iClone
great tut . - thank you
Hi Wendy thanks for this tutorial. If you have the time perhaps you might consider producing a more comprehensive video or pdf tutorial about integrating DAZ/Carrara/iClone that you could sell at DAZ? I would definitely buy it. That way you won't have to keep repeating this information as it'll be all in one place and you'd be rewarded for all that work. Personally, I'm really happy to buy a well made tutorial because it helps me to learn new software much more quickly.
not me lol!
I will hunt up links to better ones though eventually
So, I took the plunge today and bought just iClone pro and 3DXChange. I will agree with one poster on another forum blog...Reallusion need to work it out when comes to how it imports dynamic cloth and the animation still looks a bit robotic to me in some spots. I'm sure there is some great workarounds to this, but I can't wait til school starts to start working around in this pipeline.
it does not import Dynamic cloth YET but since morph based stuff is now possibe, I would not rule it out one day in a later dearer version!
There is softbody physics though using kinetic proxy props attached to iAvatars
Actually, there's some plugin called Flow Cloth or something like that. It makes Dynamic clothing possible in iClone but I don't think it can work on imported ones.
That is a product by Apparition using iClone characters with cloth pinned in 3dsMAX and made into a softbody physics item colliding against proxy props attached to the iAvatar.
While I do not own that one, I own similar products by Wil Veeke for physics hair.
without MAX I cannot do this attach magic!
You can however use any figure with kinetic proxy props attached and loose cloth as in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4u5qcxx-4A an imported Poser dynamic cloth prop.
most are too high poly to enable physics using full mesh though, just simple things like scarves or like in this case disrobing from a low poly garment.
or this test I did with an exported and reimported iClone garment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jrl2m94Nr0
Hi Wendy,
Thanks very much for the tutorial. I tried to download the visime wav file, but the link goes to a file called clothsim.car.
I will take a good look at the tutorial and hopefully I will be able to try importing some characters into Iclone
Cheers
Ian
oops, will fix that
was my April fool joke in carrara thread, must have had wrong address still in clipboard
One thing I'm wondering about with iClone is why it always looks like people are skating on ice when they are walking. Is there no easy way to fix this?
I was just watching this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=OF7s6F3S0YA
which assume is made in DS. The figures here have rock solid foot contact with the ground, so I wonder how that video is made.
I get that skating footslide effect in ALL software, the only way to overcome it I think is to use excellent predone transformed keyframe animations for a specific figure that follow a set path, and distance, as soon as you try your own path you are lost.
SKA motion has some brilliant stuff I have seen but it is the skill of the user that shows there.
What is SKA? Can't find anything about it anywhere.
Anyway, I found a video about how to make a figure walk on a specified path:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEnRetrPtIQ
It seems to work reasonably well but it's like the legs jerks a bit every time he puts his feet to the ground which to me looks like the main problem. If that could be adjusted it might look reasonably okay.
Anyway, there must be a way to automatically coordinate the feet with the ground - it sounds simple but it's probably complex since they haven't made it. Maybe more expensive animation programs have this feature?
He doesn't say either. Just marketing his HDR Pro-sets, which are also awesome. I wonder what he used.
iClone has foot contact
and if you load a persona you can right click walk and click where to walk too and it will calculate the steps and times needed.
SKAmotion makes Poser pz2 walks, seen great vids using his stuff
Found their site now. Looks great quality wise, but "sultry" stuff and high heels (which damage women's legs and feet btw) are not my style, and there don't seem to be much else there.
Here's the problem I see (no offense to you, wendy<3katz). I think that people, when they have something new or figured out something new, have a tendency to want to show off what's they have or learned. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with being proud of figuring out something. The problem comes when others (myself included) see these displays, take as an example of what the application can do, and not necessarily what the user can do.</p>
Again, I'm all for beta and omega testing, but you have to admit, some people have done some not-so-great things with iClone, Daz3d Studio, Poser, and Carrara and show that they haven't really spent the time necessary to push the software..and they are not beta testing anything. Yet, they rush to post this stuff and it's far from polished. Why do you think the 3D artist elite always bash the category of software, it's because of its "accessibility" with the general notion being that if you are going to spend the amount of money equivalent to a down payment on a house, then you are "serious" about learning the software.
In my heart, I know iClone, in the right pipeline, can be pushed a helluva lot farther than what I've seen. To that end, that's why I decided to go ahead and buy it and try to do just that. Maybe it can work seamlessly with 100,000 polygon meshes instead of 50,000 or less? Maybe it can handle textures better? Maybe, with some maticulous tweaking, animation can be smoother? Maybe I can see some animated hands as well (that's one of my biggest issues, little details like "stiff hands" in iClone drives me nuts).
Maybe I'm a Pixar or Dreamworks whore. LOL! Naw, that's not it. I'm a professed anime junkie and lover of Disney and superhero animation (2D). I just have a profound understanding of animation in general (although I can't 2D animate to save my son's life). So, I think once people who have plopped down $300 or more ($300 is still A LOT OF MONEY to those of us who don't have it all the time) to purchase iClone and are dedicated to learning the software, doing what it states can be done, THEN pushing it past that, I think attitudes will change. I've always wanted iClone since version 3 because I'm an aspiring filmmaker and I think it makes one helluva great animatronics, scene pre-viz tool. But now, I want to do my entire movie in iClone (and maybe Carrara). :)
On a side note, @wendy<3katz, every time I see your beta video of Heidi singing the Sound of Music I believe and all of a sudden, still while singing, she breaks out in Gungdum Style, I just have to laugh. That's the funniest thing I've ever seen, plus it's a great example of how smooth the animation in iClone can be. :)</p>
I think it's great that you want to push Iclone to it's limits, and I hope you will share some of the tricks you learn along the way with us
I also would like to get better results, but being realistic I don't think I have the patience to do a ' Nick Park' tweaking of every tiny part in each frame, but I acknowledge that is one of the ways Nick's characters come to life.
I'm sure I have seen tutorials on youtube about solving foot slide in Iclone so I know it can be done, but how much time and effort is required I couldn't say.With the hands I guess it's just a matter of making fine adjustments to the joints along the timeline.
I think each person makes a decision what they are aiming for, and how much time and effort they want to spend on a particular project. That applies to users of the most expensive software through to the most basic. What one person considers 'finished' another person might see a lot of ways they would have taken it further.
Edit to add: This is the youtube video i was thinking of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uDBbZmzbY4
It's called 'ICLONE5 Tutorial: Sliding feet? Not on my watch :)' by Stuckon3D .
Cheers
Ian
Great tutorial, thanks for the link!
What is a good export format and setting for ICLONE for video you want to upload to YouTube.... what do you folks use? I have ICLONE4 Pro I got real cheap so I am playing with it before I decide to take the plunge with ICLONE5 or maybe wait for ICLONE6.
okay, I read some of the stuff here on Iclone, and i'm still ify on buying this iClone5 Facial Pipeline Power Bundle. iclone sounds great, but how good is it? I mean, I am a genesis user, and now genesis2...... so will g2 work in iclone? I started using daz to bring a 10 year old comic book idea to life, but if I can do animations for it, i'd like to do that. how easy is iclone to use for someone who doesn't know the pro stuff? how bad are poke thoughs? $350 sounds great, but I want to make sure I can create my "world" in daz and make episodes in iclone with them without a lot of fixing clothes and such. does any of this make sense? Sorry, long day at work. Also, which is really better, this one "iClone5 Facial Pipeline Power Bundle--- $350" or the (3 in 1)-- $600. MoCap seems to be great for custom animation and animating your people a lot faster than manually edit, unless iclone has tons of preset stuff, then mocap wouldn't be needed as much.
Thanks for the help.
odd thing happened today
the Reallusion facial animation key duf file used on G2M actually worked for me in 3dx5
not perfect but near enough
no visemes or jaw movement worked at all before.
so something has changed
am wondering who though as both Daz and Reallusion had updates and I also used generationX to transfer stuff to genesis 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hHNbsEQVEM
ok editing the duf in notepad replacing CTRL with PHM gave better results
can clean up in expression editor but gets a lot of the morphs in the right places at least
Well, I did it. I looked through this thread, watched a couple of vids, then ran a Genesis figure through 3DX. This is the first time I got this far. There are, of course, a couple of problems.
The trapezius muscles are out of control, I don't know what that's all about. The hands are sticking through the legs, I may have seen a fix for that, I'll need to retrace my steps to find it. The viseme morphs made it through, but don't seem to be working. The body morphs work fine, but the face morphs do not work.
In spite of these problems, I feel a sense of triumph. I think that in time, I'll get to the bottom of these problems. Any suggestions or recommendations would be welcome.