Someone, please make an advanced animation tutorial for DAZ Studio.

vozolgant

I think DAZ Studio may actually be decent for making animations, but the problem is there's no real examples of how to make them.  The current animation tutorials are all beginner level.

DAZ TEAM HAVEN'T MADE A TUTORIAL THAT EXPLAINS ALL THE ANIMATION & TIMELINE FEATURES.   There's no explanation and demonstration of how to use TCB, Linear & Constant properly.

Someone, anyone, please try to make advanced animation tutorials by the start of next year please.   

DAZ Studio came out in 2005.  After 16 years, I expect there to be a library of 10,000 animations ready to be used with any Genesis 8 figure, both non-adult and adult related, but there isn't. 

We need to fix this now, or just put it off another 10 years?

In the community, DAZ Studio has a reputation as being the WORST animation suite, bottom tier, even worse than Poser. You don't want that title. Poser was ten times better in the animation department, and that software is total fail now, DAZ defeated Poser, but not in the animation department.

Posing in DAZ is still archaic, I'm surprised that hasn't been fixed yet, but we'll save that rant for another post.

FSMCDesigns

i don't do much animation in DS since it is painfully slow, but I find posing to be pretty easy and effortless. maybe I am just used to it.

I think the reason there isn't a big store of premade animations is many that are serious about animation, just use other apps like Unity or Blender.

SnowSultan

I'm sure some would disagree with me, but I think Studio has excellent animation tools. The combination of AniMate's layer-like blocks, speed adjustment, and copy/pasting of keyframes, the graph editor, and Powerpose seem like they should be enough for many users. I still think Powerpose is the most revolutionary posing tool in this business and have yet to see anything as intuitive in any other software, Blender and Maya included (and please inform me if they do). No matter how much better Blender's animation features are, I'll take Powerpose over trying to figure out which of the thousand posing rig primitives I'm supposed to grab in order to rotate a body part over there.

Like you said, the problem may have to do more with these tools not being explained terribly well. My biggest problem is that while the features are nice, they can be very finicky. Animating in Studio is like walking a tightrope; one mistake can quickly either crash your scene or result in an undoable checkpoint that can cause the loss of your animation. Filament is also...well, lousy to be honest, so we don't really have the real-time animation potential that Unreal and Blender have.

A webinar on this topic might be a good idea.

 

margrave

SnowSultan said:

I'm sure some would disagree with me, but I think Studio has excellent animation tools. The combination of AniMate's layer-like blocks, speed adjustment, and copy/pasting of keyframes, the graph editor, and Powerpose seem like they should be enough for many users. I still think Powerpose is the most revolutionary posing tool in this business and have yet to see anything as intuitive in any other software, Blender and Maya included (and please inform me if they do). No matter how much better Blender's animation features are, I'll take Powerpose over trying to figure out which of the thousand posing rig primitives I'm supposed to grab in order to rotate a body part over there.

Diffeo lets you import "Face Units" into Blender. Those're basically Powerpose, except without the nifty interface. With Face Units imported, all the Powerpose nodes are represented as sliders from 0.0 to 1.0. If you want to raise the brow, you just drag the slider. It's totally importable back into Daz Studio too, since you can save out pose presets with v1.6.

SnowSultan

That's good for Blender users at least. We have that in Studio natively though, including dial controls for the 8.1 face rig.

margrave

SnowSultan said:

That's good for Blender users at least. We have that in Studio natively though, including dial controls for the 8.1 face rig.

On the other hand, Blender has a production-quality IK system, whereas Daz Studio...doesn't.

SnowSultan

Studio does have IK, but I don't know about the features in a full-featured IK system like Blender's. Probably very useful, it's too bad no program can do everything right.  :)

margrave

SnowSultan said:

it's too bad no program can do everything right.  :)

See if you still feel that way after making an animation where your figure's feet stick to the floor.

:)

SnowSultan

Haha, oh I include Studio as a program that can't do everything right. None of them can.

benniewoodell

Powerpose is one of the reasons I'm so stubborn to leave Daz. I try to animate in Blender, and though the IK is leaps and bounds better than Daz and I'm always like dang this is fantastic, I just want to go into power pose and quickly pose the limbs. It's far more intuitive. If Daz can just get feet to stick to the ground and objects not to move when they shouldn't, they'd be up there with Blender and Maya. 

margrave

benniewoodell said:

Powerpose is one of the reasons I'm so stubborn to leave Daz. I try to animate in Blender, and though the IK is leaps and bounds better than Daz and I'm always like dang this is fantastic, I just want to go into power pose and quickly pose the limbs. It's far more intuitive. If Daz can just get feet to stick to the ground and objects not to move when they shouldn't, they'd be up there with Blender and Maya. 

Started this at 8:35 (fifty minutes ago), done in under an hour. Normally I'd never begin a scene this late at night since posing in Daz takes so long and is so fiddly. But using Rigify, it took me literally less than half the time, if not more. Smooth UI, smooth IK. Also, it has FACS sliders even for Genesis 8, so you can decide if you want Powerpose or FACS facial controls. Then just export a pose preset, load it back into Daz, and render in Iray.

Looks good, feels good.

And if you're really deadset on using IK, you can just select an FK bone and press R twice to enable trackball rotation. It's basically the same thing.

SnowSultan

Is that animated? I just ask because that is something I could put together in a lot less than an hour in Studio - and I really don't say that to demean your work at all, I mean it's just so much faster to make fairly simple character art in Studio where the MATs are already pretty accurate and you don't have to do any extra work to make things function as you'd expect in Blender.

There is a plugin by 3D Universe to stick the feet to the ground, but I don't have it and don't know how well it works compared to true IK systems like what Blender has.

margrave

SnowSultan said:

Is that animated? I just ask because that is something I could put together in a lot less than an hour in Studio - and I really don't say that to demean your work at all, I mean it's just so much faster to make fairly simple character art in Studio where the MATs are already pretty accurate and you don't have to do any extra work to make things function as you'd expect in Blender.

There is a plugin by 3D Universe to stick the feet to the ground, but I don't have it and don't know how well it works compared to true IK systems like what Blender has.

I think you misunderstood me; I posed Sanjay 8 in Blender, then exported a pose preset into Daz Studio to render with Iray.

I don't know about you, but when I hit Zero Figure Pose it takes about 90-120 seconds before Daz Studio decides to do anything. With Blender, I can just hit Alt G and Alt R and it happens immediately. That's one of many reasons it's so much faster to work with.

SnowSultan

Zeroing shouldn't take nearly that long, wow. Can I ask what CPU you have? As far as posing Sanjay in Blender, you did a good job of course, but I still think he could be posed in a fraction of that time in Studio without the need for exporting back. However, if Studio is as slow for you as you say, then I'm glad you're able to use a good workflow through Blender.

benniewoodell

margrave said:

SnowSultan said:

Is that animated? I just ask because that is something I could put together in a lot less than an hour in Studio - and I really don't say that to demean your work at all, I mean it's just so much faster to make fairly simple character art in Studio where the MATs are already pretty accurate and you don't have to do any extra work to make things function as you'd expect in Blender.

There is a plugin by 3D Universe to stick the feet to the ground, but I don't have it and don't know how well it works compared to true IK systems like what Blender has.

I think you misunderstood me; I posed Sanjay 8 in Blender, then exported a pose preset into Daz Studio to render with Iray.

I don't know about you, but when I hit Zero Figure Pose it takes about 90-120 seconds before Daz Studio decides to do anything. With Blender, I can just hit Alt G and Alt R and it happens immediately. That's one of many reasons it's so much faster to work with.

I'm really glad rigify works for you, I've used it before and it is a great way to pose, but I'm honestly much, much quicker with powerpose. I don't even use FACS, I use the dots in the powerpose and it's so much more intuitive for me. In less than an hour I animate entire shots in Daz with powerpose, not just one pose. But that's the beautiful thing about this, whatever floats your boat and you find works for you is the correct answer, I just wish there was a powerpose'esque tool for Blender. 

margrave

SnowSultan said:

Zeroing shouldn't take nearly that long, wow. Can I ask what CPU you have? As far as posing Sanjay in Blender, you did a good job of course, but I still think he could be posed in a fraction of that time in Studio without the need for exporting back. However, if Studio is as slow for you as you say, then I'm glad you're able to use a good workflow through Blender.

Intel Core i7. 

Cybersox

SnowSultan said:

I'm sure some would disagree with me, but I think Studio has excellent animation tools. The combination of AniMate's layer-like blocks, speed adjustment, and copy/pasting of keyframes, the graph editor, and Powerpose seem like they should be enough for many users. I still think Powerpose is the most revolutionary posing tool in this business and have yet to see anything as intuitive in any other software, Blender and Maya included (and please inform me if they do). No matter how much better Blender's animation features are, I'll take Powerpose over trying to figure out which of the thousand posing rig primitives I'm supposed to grab in order to rotate a body part over there.

Like you said, the problem may have to do more with these tools not being explained terribly well. My biggest problem is that while the features are nice, they can be very finicky. Animating in Studio is like walking a tightrope; one mistake can quickly either crash your scene or result in an undoable checkpoint that can cause the loss of your animation. Filament is also...well, lousy to be honest, so we don't really have the real-time animation potential that Unreal and Blender have.

A webinar on this topic might be a good idea.

 

Wouldn't it be great if DAZ actually released some great, easy to understand and current documentation?  Of course, it'll be hard to read when that happens due to all the shadows from the pigs flying overhead  Because, let's face it:  If DAZ Studio was a child, DAZ's aversion to updating documentation would qualify as criminal neglect and I've always felt that that's one of the major reasons DS continues not to be taken seriously as a program in professional circles.  I mean, I've tried turning a number of people on to DS over the years, but given that, even today, we're still looking at a users manual that is barely unchanged since the version for Studio 3.0, and the last time either it or the Quick start guide was touched at all was eight years ago during the days of 4.6, I can't blame them for dropping it and moving on to other programs.  As a relative reference as to how out of date everything is, if you go by the manual then the primary figure is still Genesis 2 and Iray doesn't even exist, let alone Dforce or the integration of the current animation tools, and even things that did exist back then, like geoshells, aren't mentioned at all.  To find out half the things DS can do, you have to play Sherlock Holmes with the forums and random tutorials... and, unfortunately, a lot of the information that was once stored in the forums was wiped out during the various store rebuilds.  

benniewoodell

Cybersox said:

SnowSultan said:

I'm sure some would disagree with me, but I think Studio has excellent animation tools. The combination of AniMate's layer-like blocks, speed adjustment, and copy/pasting of keyframes, the graph editor, and Powerpose seem like they should be enough for many users. I still think Powerpose is the most revolutionary posing tool in this business and have yet to see anything as intuitive in any other software, Blender and Maya included (and please inform me if they do). No matter how much better Blender's animation features are, I'll take Powerpose over trying to figure out which of the thousand posing rig primitives I'm supposed to grab in order to rotate a body part over there.

Like you said, the problem may have to do more with these tools not being explained terribly well. My biggest problem is that while the features are nice, they can be very finicky. Animating in Studio is like walking a tightrope; one mistake can quickly either crash your scene or result in an undoable checkpoint that can cause the loss of your animation. Filament is also...well, lousy to be honest, so we don't really have the real-time animation potential that Unreal and Blender have.

A webinar on this topic might be a good idea.

 

Wouldn't it be great if DAZ actually released some great, easy to understand and current documentation?  Of course, it'll be hard to read when that happens due to all the shadows from the pigs flying overhead  Because, let's face it:  If DAZ Studio was a child, DAZ's aversion to updating documentation would qualify as criminal neglect and I've always felt that that's one of the major reasons DS continues not to be taken seriously as a program in professional circles.  I mean, I've tried turning a number of people on to DS over the years, but given that, even today, we're still looking at a users manual that is barely unchanged since the version for Studio 3.0, and the last time either it or the Quick start guide was touched at all was eight years ago during the days of 4.6, I can't blame them for dropping it and moving on to other programs.  As a relative reference as to how out of date everything is, if you go by the manual then the primary figure is still Genesis 2 and Iray doesn't even exist, let alone Dforce or the integration of the current animation tools, and even things that did exist back then, like geoshells, aren't mentioned at all.  To find out half the things DS can do, you have to play Sherlock Holmes with the forums and random tutorials... and, unfortunately, a lot of the information that was once stored in the forums was wiped out during the various store rebuilds.  

100% agree about it not looking viable in professional circles due to things like IK and needing a huge overhaul in the documentation department. I have a friend who wants to get into animation and was looking at Daz and I told him learn Blender instead as it takes awhile to figure out what you can and can't do with Daz and how to work around those things you can't. I said get the Daz assets and port them over. Don't get used to the tools in Daz like powerpose like I did because, even though it's super intuitive and now I don't want to live without it as animating is lighting fast with it once you know how to use it, there's drawbacks to Daz's animation system. I hope Daz Studio 5 has an overhaul on the animation system to make it on par with the rest as I want Daz to be a go-to for folks. 

marble

I try to make short animations in DAZ Studio but I struggle. Not that I have anything to compare it with because I have not yet exported to Blender to try an animation. I did try posing in Blender and find it cumbersome compared to DAZ Studio but that might be due to long-term familiarity with DAZ Studio. I use the sliders to pose (exclusively) - I did try PowerPose but couldn't see any advantage.

However, the poor pinning with DAZ animation is a real problem. Not just feet. I am still using Active Pose rather than IK because the DAZ IK seems troublesome.

rcourtri_789f4b1c6b

The OP is raising three different issues:

1. Daz isn't committed to comprehensive and systematic documentation and user education.  Animation is only one aspect of Daz Studio that isn't well explained or documented.  Users are left with some combination of what Daz provides (which includes some useful stuff, but also a lot that is obsolete, and some DS features are hardly explained at all), paid tutorials (ranging from excellent to almost worthless), forum posts, gleanings from Youtube and other internet materials (certainly not comprehensive and systematic), and their own trial and error.  I don't find this ideal, and I suspect many of the people who try Daz Studio but soon abandon it are leaving out of frustration.  I suspect that nothing would grow the user/customer base more than improving the documentation and customer education materials.

2. While Daz Studio has animation capabilities, it began, and remains, primarily an application for making still images.  DS's animation interface is somewhat awkward.  And the render speeds for the current generation of characters in even simple environments mean that I couldn't produce an animated short (7-9 minutes) before the heat death of the universe happens.  I've been wondering for at least two years about whether Daz is planning an animation application separate from Daz Studio, and what kind of models that application would use--That's a topic for a different thread.

3. The OP complains about posing difficulty but, like FSMCDesigns, I find that I'm able to pose characters quickly, even the fingers and fine-tuning the expressions.

 

akmerlow

Back in days Poser was  THE choice of making (hobbyist) animated movies, i remember. Wonder how daz succeeded...

juvesatriani

I learn a lot from these videos 

Another useful Video 

And old but useful Go Figure Animate 2 tutorial 

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

And  there are a lot tutorials in youtube with DAZ  Animate2 as keyword seach

nicstt

I use both for all sorts of things, cause they're... well tools.

PerttiA

akmerlow said:

Back in days Poser was  THE choice of making (hobbyist) animated movies, i remember. Wonder how daz succeeded...

The one and only thing I miss from Poser 

eric susch

I wrote this article years ago before keyMate and graphMate were integrated into the Studio timeline.  It's basically about keyframing but it may answer a few questions that you have.  The new integrated timeline works basically the same.

https://issuu.com/philatdsc/docs/ds_creative_18/72

DAZ Studio is a beast to amimate in.  I've been looking for a simple and reliable workflow for years but the animation features really need to be updated in a big way.  There are many work-arounds but they really bog down the creative process and make things near impossible.  Of course transferring scenes to other software with better animation features like Blender creates problems too.  There really isn't an ideal solution for animating DAZ content.

wolf359

If use diffeo and convert to rigify you have access to Blenders professional tools.

enochianborg_eca39c0093

vozolgant said:

I think DAZ Studio may actually be decent for making animations, but the problem is there's no real examples of how to make them.  The current animation tutorials are all beginner level.

DAZ TEAM HAVEN'T MADE A TUTORIAL THAT EXPLAINS ALL THE ANIMATION & TIMELINE FEATURES.   There's no explanation and demonstration of how to use TCB, Linear & Constant properly.

Someone, anyone, please try to make advanced animation tutorials by the start of next year please.   

DAZ Studio came out in 2005.  After 16 years, I expect there to be a library of 10,000 animations ready to be used with any Genesis 8 figure, both non-adult and adult related, but there isn't. 

We need to fix this now, or just put it off another 10 years?

In the community, DAZ Studio has a reputation as being the WORST animation suite, bottom tier, even worse than Poser. You don't want that title. Poser was ten times better in the animation department, and that software is total fail now, DAZ defeated Poser, but not in the animation department.

Posing in DAZ is still archaic, I'm surprised that hasn't been fixed yet, but we'll save that rant for another post.

watch video.   But how to create your own figure/character with bones etc...  that is the more advanced that I'd like to see.  What if I want to create something that is NOT downloadable?  I want to create my own characters with detailed faces and movements, rig them and pose them...   make a movie using them... etc... details on how to do this is what I'd love to see.

WendyLuvsCatz

Hello Dartanbeck, someone dug up a necro thread for you to Evangelize in 

Bunyip02

https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-creating-themed-content-from-concepts-to-products

https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-content-creation-mastery-bundle

https://www.daz3d.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-creating-complex-outfits-bundle

https://www.daz3d.com/how-to-create-a-new-daz-studio-custom-creature

https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio--getting-started-with-animation

https://www.daz3d.com/the-complete-guide-to-animating-dynamic-characters-in-daz-studio

https://www.daz3d.com/the-power-of-animate-2--animating-with-precision-in-daz-studio

Dartanbeck

WendyLuvsCatz said:

Hello Dartanbeck, someone dug up a necro thread for you to Evangelize in 

LOL!!! Alright Then! :)

aniMating in Daz Studio! What a Blast!!!

I've uncovered a wonderful and powerful (and fast and easy) method for shaping pose information throughout the timeline - those changes making their own, separate editable key frames - making the changes we make Very easy to work with and edit further.

Paul Bussey, from Digital Art Live, was kind enough to offer a means for me to get this information out to the world - so now we have "Dynamic Character Animation in Daz Studio"

Since then I've realized that a Lot of Daz Studio users - even those who have the paid version of aniMate 2 don't fully understand or too often overlook and under-use many of the wonderful features and tools it holds for us. So Paul and I got together again for another round - "The Power of aniMate 2"

I have a bunch of the information available on my website: The Power of aniMate 2 at Dartanbeck.com in a cool kind of article with links to support content, videos from GoFigure and the complete aniMate 2 instruction manual available to read online and/or download. It's a growing thing too, with a special forum thread so that you can come in and ask questions, get answers, share experiences, etc., Pretty cool!

 

Here are the two courses and some of the promo videos

Dartanbeck

One of the Bonus Videos from Dynamic Character Animation in Daz Studio