Benefits of using Bryce for animation
cleveret1
Posts: 30
Hello Everyone,
I am brand new to 3D, but always looking forward to the future. I keep seeing everyone opting to animate in Bryce or Carrera. I was just wondering what the benefits would be to animating in a separate software from Daz studio. Is it easier for camera movements, does it render faster, etc?
Thanks!
Comments
The advantages depend on what you are wanting to animate.
For example: Animating movement of characters like V4, Genesis or suchlike is near impossible.
But rendering good dynamic atmospheres in DAZ Studio isn't good.
So say I wanted to animate a warrior traveling through a dynamic sandy desert, I should animate the warrior in Daz and and the sandstorm in Bryce?
Yes, and no, respectively.
I don't know what Carrara offers, but DAZ offers ani-blocks, which makes walk cycles possible, and therefore, easier to set up.
Bryce does not have collision physics or particle physics. If you had visions of sand washing over a struggling warrior's feet as it waded over endless dunes, or even just leaving footprints in the warrior's wake, you have an enormous task ahead of you to make it look good in Bryce. Bryce will get you some nice looking, static dunes. You'll need a different 3D app to make dynamic sand and shifting dunes, and my limited knowledge of DAZ doesn't tell me what other apps will import DAZ-native models and animations seamlessly into them. Some will take the models fine, but remove the animation sequence.
The reason why people are animating in Bryce (again, I can't speak to Carrara), is because it's very easy, compared to other apps. It's easy, because it doesn't have to deal with simulated physics. You set a time point, a location, and possibly a modification for acceleration or looping if you're really, really finickity. Bryce animation tools are simple, and haven't changed since the day they were implemented circa 2000. And Bryce doesn't take DAZ ani-blocks, or any kind of animation info from DAZ.
So good luck :)
So to get the effect I want I would probably need to make the sand dune in Bryce, export it as a scene into Daz for the walk cycle, then do some kind of post work for swirling sand. Maybe in moviemaker?
Most of it could probably be done in carrara
Hi Wendycatz. Which parts?
Desert-Carrara has terrain editor
moving dunes?
Possibly using animated proceedurals in displacement channel but matching a figure to it might be a bit of work
if using morphs is more controllable however the ocean primitive could even be used and surface replication follow it so a figure can be replicated once then original hidden.
Sand, well particles is the obvious answer but there are other ways too
footsteps not so easy, I have made cumulative image series in gimp of feet poking through a plane and tried layering them on a surface as an animated texture (yes carrara does animated texture abd backgroubd) but looked pretty meh but tbat may be just my lack of skill.
all of what you want to do .
If you buy carrara and mosey on down to the carrara forum
you will find Dartanbeck and Evil Producer who just love solving how to do stuff like this and would be chockablock full of ideas and try them!!!
For this task, I'd take Bryce out of the equation completely: Bryce does many cool things, but it's not an appropriate tool for this project.
Thanks for saving me from learning a program I that wouldn't help. I guess I'll stick with Daz and Carrara.
I spent 2 days evaluating Carrara and it's a great programme... At the time, way too complex for my needs but results were relatively easy to coax out of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Yzg4UxmjM
As far as I know it will import ani-blocks and has particle and physics modelling... Probably the way to go.
I don't think you'd need moving sand dunes, real dunes don't move noticeably, but a good dune-like terrain (can be made in Carrara) with good particles and the 'wind' set right will quickly have sand blowing around their contours... Have fun.
It would also be fun to see if the dunes could be made from a dynamic cloth type object that interacted with the figure (much like clothes do), that way, you may even be able to set it up so it accepts enough 'give' as the figure walks over it to leave footprints... But I'm only guessing that's a way, I've never tried anything like it.