Looping animations

gareth.murfin

Ive been trying for a long time to make loops in Daz, but I cannot figure it out. In Poser I can sort of do it by memorising the figure at frame 0, then going to the end adding 20 more frames, and going to last one and restoring the figure. This works in Daz but does not remember the position so my character leaps from frame 0 x,y,z to last frame x,z,y. How do I get around this?

Any other tips on looping would be good, I cannot find a single animation designed for looping, and I need loops, it's actually very confusing trying to do anything with the animation side of Daz and theres little or no videos on it.

Ideally I would also like to know how to use aniblocks but keep the character always in the same place instead of pacing around away from 0,0,0.

Thanks in advance,

rek_2158272

I would recommend buying keymate and graphmate if you want to do animations in DS without chewing your hand off in frustration.
Both these tools let you copy and paste keys along the timeline. Thus you can copy the keys in frame 0 and paste it in the last frame creating loops easily. Both also lets you change the interpolation between keys making it a lot easier to avoid sliding feet or sinking into floors and the like. Graphmate has a few other options affectiong the interpolation as well.

I have seen a video on youtube explaining how to keep you character in place in Animate, but I can not find it right now. But have search and see what shows up.

Richard Haseltine

I'm not quite clear what is happening, but one thing you may need to do is to select all bones of the figure, with it posed as needed, and then click the make key frame button in the first and last frames. then you can set the intermediate frames as needed. However the lack of precise keying controls in the base DS may make life trickier - the DS timeline alone is pretty basic.

gareth.murfin

Thanks very much, I searched and found a way to lock the Z translate on the hips, which pretty much puts me ten steps forward! :-) Seems all along I was searching for "walk on the spot" rather than "walk in place".. Thanks again.. this is probably the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1unZt4_Vp1g

gareth.murfin

Richard Haseltine said:

I'm not quite clear what is happening, but one thing you may need to do is to select all bones of the figure, with it posed as needed, and then click the make key frame button in the first and last frames. then you can set the intermediate frames as needed. However the lack of precise keying controls in the base DS may make life trickier - the DS timeline alone is pretty basic.

Thanks, I tried this but it seems like my guys pose is tweened to but his position isnt, so when the loop starts he jumps into position. I will keep experimenting.

Thanks for the fast reponses guys!

EDIT, in fact when I select all of him on frame 1 and memorise, and restore it on my last frame I see him visibly jump back as if it will work ,but then he still takes a leap back on the first frame.. It is as if what I do is being skipped.. Im using Animate Lite.

gareth.murfin

I was messing with Aniblocks and forgetting to bake studio keyframes, so I think this was messing it up when I try to do stuff in the timeline, seems to work now!!! Thanks :-D

Edit: Although I still cant get a proper loop without having my guy float over to the start point lol... Damn this is hard.