Animation (where are the tutorials?)

jdavison67

Um...

Where are the tutorials for animating in Daz Studio 4.6?

JD

jaebea

Are you using just the timeline or to you have Animate2?

jdavison67

I purchased animate/ the graph editor and key mapper...
I just don't see any useful documentation or tutorials.

Am I just not looking in the right place?

JD

jaebea

Keymate and Graphmate tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryUgvapGUG0

Animate2 tutorials:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0BB84111C070D080

There is also written documentation over at GoFigure but you have to be logged in to view them

http://www.gofigure3d.com/site/

Sempie

If you want to do key frame animation instead of working with pre-made motion capture files,
tutorials about the software will not be enough, regardless if you are animating in Studio,
3D Max or Maya. Knowledge about key frame animation is software independend.

You may want to check out The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams and Disney
Animation; The Illusion Of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston - both written
for hand drawn animation, but these principles apply to 3D CG animation as well.

Or, if you really have a couple of thousands of Dollars too many on your bank account,
apply at an online animation course like Animation Mentor and get taught by
Pixar-professionals and the likes....

jdavison67

I own the animator a survival kit,and that is great for animation principles,but it does not help me with how the animation interface works in DAZ. More to the point, how do I use premade animations and manipulate them to define a useful animation for my scene without having to resort to doing everything via old school key frame animation?

I'm trying to speed up a process that is long enough with the amount of time it will take to render each frame..

JD

Sempie

It will all depend on the quality you will want to settle with.

I am a professional animator (traditional hand drawn and Maya using key frame, I only use Poser
and Studio for creating stills), and bent on fixing even the smallest mistakes - which means spending
ages in the graph editor.

I have a few friends that work at Weta, and worked on Avatar, Rise Of The Planet of The
Apes, and on Smaug in the last Hobbit film, and they told me even a short scene based
on mocap date takes them weeks to tweak until it all really works.

At the other hand of the scale there are the animations that look like the stuff that iClone
produces, with jerky motions, bad follow through, and feet sliding all over the place, a far
cry from professional work - your quality will be anywhere between these two extremes.
I usually cringe when I see stuff like iClone, but that is because my mind is set on being very
critical with animation, it is what I'm getting payed for.

Good animation quality is very work intensive, regardless if you do Previs to create good
image compositions, the actual animations, or the rendering, and I have noticed that patience
is a quality most of the Poser and Studio animators lack.

I would still recommend studying the Survival Kit, as you cannot do proper mocap tweaking
if you do not know the animation principles; cannot help you with the interface, though.
Good ease out and ease in are crucial to smooth motion, follow through, or offsets, are needed to
create animations with believable weight, These can be created using a graph editor, but I am used
to Maya, with a better Graph Editor than in Studio or Poser. Whatever you do, avoid even spacing, it will
cause your animations to look floaty, weightless and and mechanical.

Good luck!

jdavison67

I would love to animate in Maya, but I doubt my budget or schedule would allow it. I used to play with it ,about 13 years ago.

I'm at the point where I realize, I'm not going to be one to create characters from scratch, and I might only dabble in objects or clothing.

I really want to tell stories. Either with still images or a mix of small animations, and stills combined.

I understand why people use iclone. It is accessible, people can afford it.

DAZ is a step up from that.

We can't all work for ILM, Some of us will always be hobbyists.

I really just need to understand how I can mix keyframe and pre made animations to complete movements based on my sets and objects using the DAZ interface. The lack of lip-synch will keep me from getting too crazy with trying to make the next Toy Story.

:)

I'll figure it out...eventually.

JD

Reisormocap

Hi JD,

I know exactly where you're coming from - that's one reason why I use Genesis/G2M/G2F and the tremendous array of content available here at Daz and elsewhere for my own animations. My suggestion would be to use aniMate 2 to drive the bulk of your animation, and incorporate subtracks to do some of the modifications to the motions.

Here's a link to the aniMate 2 user guide:

http://www.gofigure3d.com/site/?option=com_content&view=article&id=92&Itemid=86

Check the section about 3/4th down the page dealing with Tracks and Sub-tracks for some really useful concepts that will get you started. This was a real "A-HA!" moment for me.

Above that is a section on modifying keyframes - also useful, but I think subtracks are more useful and flexible once you have aniblocks applied. Also, as Jaebea suggested above check out their Youtube channel for some older but still useful videos.

https://www.youtube.com/user/GoFigure3D/videos

I'm working on some tutorials for animating with Daz, but given how busy August is going to be, I don't even see getting started until September on those tutorials. In the meantime, I hope this helps.

jdavison67

Thank you!

I am working to figure out how I can modify some unblocks, where hand placement is a bit off.

Also I want to ad facial animations like expressions and blinking.

JD

bigh

The lack of lip-synch will keep me from getting too crazy with trying to make the next Toy Story.

smile "

DS 32 bit has it - it is not in the 64 bit version .

argus1000

Sempie said:

At the other hand of the scale there are the animations that look like the stuff that iClone
produces, with jerky motions, bad follow through, and feet sliding all over the place, a far
cry from professional work -

I haven't seen any jerky motions coming from iClone. Maybe you don't have the same iClone I have... Bad follow through is in the hands of the animator only. It has nothing to do with iClone. And feet sliding all over the place, you can find in any program, including MotionBuilder. It has nothing to do with iClone itself. It, again, is all in the hands on the animator.

Your contempt for iClone is manifest. I don't partake with any of it. iClone is a great program. Period.

Sempie

@ argus1000

In Maya you just lock your feet by creating a stepped key or flat tangent
in the graph editor and there is absolutely no sliding at all. The graph-curves
or your feet will not be affected by the keys surrounding it any more - the thing
that causes the sliding. You have a heel roll and a toe roll in your rigs to add
movement to a fixed base foot for creating walks. And as soon as the foot
needs to move again, you set your tangent to curved again.
Unless something changed lately, Studio and Poser do not have a Graph Editor
that allows you to do the same thing, and iClone probably even less so.
The best option you have there, is to set a key for every frame of non sliding feet,
which usually only causes imprecise jittering.

In Maya I usually prepare a scene doing the movements broadly in a straight
ahead fashion, (I cannot work intuitively in pose to pose method animation); if I
like the flow, I pick out the main poses, key all attributes for those, go to the general
timeline, delete anything that is not a pose, set proper breakdown poses between
the keys to determine the leads and the drags (follow through) by delaying parts of the
chains (eg upper arm leads, lower arm drags, hand drags even more), add details like
fingers and facial expressions, and then spend ages in the graph editor to smooth things
out. Since the animation is now based on a minimum of keys and breakdowns, whatever
last minute changes the director wants can be implemented without the need of throwing
the entire scene in the dustbin and starting from scratch.
Plus, the curves in your graph editor are tidy, and fine tuning is not more cumbersome
than absolutely necessary. Once the director is satisfied I create some extra breakdowns
for fine tuning the movements.

I have requested a similar graph editor for Studio, years ago. I'm still waiting...

(I'm just animating on small european productions, never moved on to Weta or
Dreamworks, as some of my colleagues did. Did get an animation workshop
from Pixar veteran Kyla Balda, though. I have a fair idea of what it takes to
create broadcast quality animation, produced some myself, even if I am still a far
cry from the best animator.)

I only have a full magazine copy of iClone 4 and I was not impressed with the
mocap animations that I played with at all - stiff and weightless. I just watched
the avis that I created again - less jerky than I remembered, but stiff and
weightless just the same. In Maya, the first pass may look like that - and then you
invest another week or so to make it smooth and juicy. (At least in a professional
production). I have to admit that I never tried to animate in iClone from scratch.

But if you could show me an example of good iClone animation, please do.

I have to warn you though - any animation program that cannot deliver
Maya quality animation, I consider a toy.

Hell, I just supervised a TV series done in Flash, a professional program,
and that sucked - partly because it was animated in China, partly because
the designs were too elaborate for cut out style animation, but mostly
because Flash lacks a proper graph editor and cannot do precise ease out
and ease in. (Which is why more sensible people use Toon Boom, and even
more sensible people go hand drawn.) The second season I directed, it
was done traditionally hand drawn, no problems at all, smooth sailing all
the way, but now we used overpriced Adobe Flash and we got in a sea of
problems and had nothing but production delays. If your software has
severe limitations, everything else will have them as well. (Yes, you can
do traditional hand drawn stuff in Flash as well, but we neither had the
time, the budget or the right type of animators for that - the whole big
idea was to produce in cut out style and now it all looks stiff and sterile.)

If the software limits you, it is going to show in the motion.

But, admittedly, I have other expectations from an animation software as most
Poser or DS animators, as I am not a hobbyist. Working with pre-fabricated
mocapped files also does not remotely interest me, I only do key frame
animation, preferably with cartoony characters.

I like Poser and Studio for its free content though; I am an animator only,
also in Maya, and I have to rely on the models and rigs that other people
provide me, and that are copyrighted and cannot be used outside of
the productions. (Meaning Maya is not very useful to me for creating private
stuff, as I cannot model or rig to save my life..) I would like future versions
of Studio and Poser to be better in animation - it is one of the reasons I keep
on nagging here about the current restrictions, and little is going to be improved if
everybody is happy and satisfied with the way things are...

You are entitled to your own opinion, of course - as much as I am... ;)

WendyLuvsCatz

Ah Sempe is back again and been watching my videos it seems :lol: :snake:

Sempie

Hi Wendy!

Haven't been around here much lately.
Was supervising the animation for a very
frustrating Flash based TV series for a year
and a half, had to spend a lot of (unpaid)
overtime in that, and I'm currently in between
jobs, will participate in a small project with
friends involving old fashioned hand drawn
animation.

I actually like your stuff, mostly because
it is just zany, and not an attempt to do the stuff
that they do in Hollywood with Poser or Studio.
(Or, like in the series that I worked for, trying
to go for hand drawn quality with Flash, that
just does not work - they should have done
simpler character design and simpler story
boards and saved us all the trouble.)

I'm just not into using pre made motion cap
files myself, prefer doing everything in Key
Animation, so Poser, Studio or iClone are
not really my kind of animation software.

I do still believe that Poser or Studio
animators can improve their results with
some better knowledge of the basic
animation principles, though...

But well, you know me.. ;)

argus1000

@ Sempie,

Of course, iClone doesn't have a graph editor, not yet anyway. I wouldn't recommend anybody working in animation to remain in iClone. That is why I use it for base motions, like walking (IClone has a fantastic walk designer called "Motion puppet"). Then I export the base motions to Daz Studio, on which I work some more in Animate 2. Animate 2has several of the same attributes as MotionBuilder's "Story" window. Finally, I export the animation to Carrara, where I finalize it in its pretty sophisticated graph editor.

iClone 5.5 has come a long way since iClone 4. Sure, if you limit yourself to pre-made motions with AML templates, that sucks. That is for kids. But iClone now has several sophisticated enhanced facial animation features, a motion layer editor, a walk designer, a physics toolbox, and numerous other features. And you can export all of it, even to Maya in DXchange 5.5. I recommend you check it out.

I am not a professional animator. But since you asked me to show you an animation that comes out of iClone, here's my latest movie, where all the walking was first done in iClone's "Motion puppet". And some other stuff too. Then I worked on it some more in Animate 2 and finalized it in Carrara's graph editor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya78oBLqRlg

Sempie

@ Argus 1000

Just watched your film.

Liked the story, and the direction; think you probably squeezed
the maximum out of the software, but it is still too floaty for my
taste - a lot of the movements either too slow, or with not enough
ease out and ease in. Also some of it was weightless, lacking up
and down movement in the walks, a usual problem - good walks
are very difficult to animate, regardless of the software.

Then again, to do a 15 minute thing like this flawlessly you would
need a small team of animators working for several months,
the big advantage of iClone and co is the ability to produce
really fast.

Talk is cheap, so a snippet of the stuff that I worked on:

I did some of the character animation for this production;

Link to the English spoken trailer (it is originally in German):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy2iQSKAPsI

It is a live action TV special with the gnome and the Loch Ness Monster
animated in Maya, I did the blow pipe and high five animations around
1:45, and the shot of Nessie diving up at the end (monster only, water
simulation was done by somebody else.)
No mocap used by any of the animators, this was all key framed,
without any reference material.
(Most of the animated scenes in the last one third of the trailer.)

It seems that a student short I once worked at is posted on YouTube;
I did the CG walks and the hand drawn monster shadows between 5:50
and 6:22, my first commission as a 3D animator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGElK3oWsfA

iClone would not give enough control for stuff like this, ad neither
would Studio or Poser, even if this was just low budget TV stuff,
and a low budget student film, and a lot of it could have been done
better if we would have had.

(I love the short, though, the directors did a terrific job and were lucky
enough to get the voices for free...)
the extra time..

argus1000

Sempie said:

but it is still too floaty for my taste - a lot of the movements either too slow, or with not enough
ease out and ease in. Also some of it was weightless, lacking up and down movement in the walks, a usual problem - good walks
are very difficult to animate, regardless of the software.

Since my character is a sleepwalker, for the walks to be "floaty" was precisely my intention. I especially made my camera track a null object parented to the character's chest so that all her movements would be in direct synchronization with all camera movements like in a dream, "floaty", "weightless" and "lacking up and down movements", even though the walks themselves were very real.

Sempie

Agreed.

But you have to admit, that, given that my main critique of iClone
is, that it produces weightless and floaty animation, this is not
the best example to prove me wrong... :P