Me and Daz Studio - Just so you know
Dartanbeck
Posts: 21,623
Okay, I'm sure that from the outside it might look like I'm jumping ship from Carrara to Daz Studio.
I have been spending a Lot of time in Studio, figuring out new technologies to work with to get my stuff done.
In the process, I've been discovering that Daz Studio is a Lot more beneficial to my workflow than I had originally hoped for. So I've been really digging in and learning all kinds of new tools and ways to get seemingly impossible things to work for me.
But I am NEVER leaving Carrara - not EVER!!!
Funny. I always felt that animating in Daz Studio was the worst experience I could ever put myself through. Fact is, the more I get used to it, the more it starts to feel like anything else: Just another workspace to get accustomed to. Yeah... it's missing a lot still.
It seems that nobody wants to use aniMate 2 for some reason. To me, as a person who loves animating in Carrara, aniMate 2 seems to be what makes everything work. It's like GoFigure designed a Carrara NLA system sort of thing that works within Daz Studio, and then refined it to make it a it more user-friendly - other than the fact that it's ten times smaller, visually, than the Sequencer tray. Oh... it lets us zoom in with the spin of the mouse wheel? Weird! Daz Studio doesn't even let us do that! How the hell?!!!
Anyways, yes. I'm having a great time learn Studio, but I'm never - NOT EVER!!! leaving Carrara.
I'll be using both.
Fact is, for what I'll be using Carrara for I'm pretty darned comfortable with already. I am still making new ground every time I do these things, but it's like learning a new route on a bicycle I've ridden for ten years - truly. Carrara functions so nicely that it's like drinking water. The parts that have really been holding me back are now going to be done mostly either in Daz Studio or in both Daz Studio and in Carrara - and there's always a possibility that I might add some Blender into the mix in the near future.
So with such limited time to work on any of this, it's been a bit of a struggle - but even then I'm still getting a lot of my important rendering in.
Anyways... Cheers! See you all a lot more often fairly soonish - and of course, I always try to drop in and have a look, even though I can't sign in because I don't know my password when I peeek in from my phone! LOL I'll have to mess with that one of these days!
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Comments
Thanks Dart,
Yes Carrara is like shopping at your favourite super market.
You not onlty know where the bread is, but you can be sure it's fresh and everything that you wanted it to be.
And if you get sick of the pre made bread you can go down aisle 36, get some whole meal flour and bake your own.
I used anim8or for many years. The people who used it were purists. There was no way they would use pre made content.
It took me quite a while when I came over to Carrara before I used pre made content.
Eventually we realise that things we use are just tools.
So it's great that you are using the tools available.
good luck!
Okay back to the aniMate 2 thing (after reading my post back I might have missed some things), I am using the Paid version of aniMate 2.
I know that there used to be a difference when I bought it - which is why I bought it (it was in that first set of orders I placed when I first joined Daz 3d over ten years ago) but I'm not sure how much, if any of that version has now been adopted into Daz Studio, because... well... I own the Paid version. So I can't tell unless I disable it. And I'm not going to do that.
Hmmm... maybe I should just so that I can tell folks what the... okay, back on track:
Okay now this is important, because this applies to how I've worked in Carrara too. In fact, my aniMate 2 page is in my Carrara CG Workshop section at my site.
My aniMate 2 page
If you have a look at my aniMate 2 page, you'll see that I have some older video tutorials in there. Well, they're actually just links to videos.
Watching through all of those videos helps to show the power of aniMate 2. Those are the videos that convinced me to buy it more than ten years ago - so, yeah... they're old videos! But they're also very good. They are very short and tell us exactly how to do things and, more importantly they tell us that we can do these things.
It's like someone wanted Carrara animation stuff in DS and then they also went and added a bunch of special features that Carrara lacks as well.
Don't get me wrong - I am Not saying that this is a Carrara replacement by any means!
DS still doesn't have tweeners, other than the two. (there's three, but Constant is saying that you don't want a tweener, so it's like an option to remove tweeners - exactly like our Discreet)
Still, aniMate makes it possible to immitate our tweeners with their cool way of working within their tiny little tools menu bar. It's really kind of amazing.
Why am I saying this here?
Because I've always been a fan of aniMate 2.
If I have a pile of BVH files to work with in Carrara - I won't. Instead, I'll import them into Daz Studio's timeline and create an aniBlock, and import that into Carrara.
One thing I've always run into working with animated pose files of any kind in Carrara, is that there really isn't as slick a way to do it as aniMate 2 in Daz Studio, even though Carrara's animation tools are a LOT more powerful and easy to use.
Example: Let's say that I want to blend a walk cycle with something else that isn't even made to work with a walk cycle. We can do it, but it involves a bit of digging through hierarchies in either the sequence or graph editor, whereas in aniMate 2, we just slider the blend control, work with the orientation buttons, set which foot to lock to between them, etc.,
If we like the results of our hard work, we can then merge it all into its own new aniBlock. Pretty slick.
I know that at least some of you are thinking that it sounds exactly like what we can do with NLA, and you'd be right in thinking that way. That's how I think of it too. But trust me when I say that aniMate 2 is a Lot easier.
Furthermore, aniMate 2 has a tiny little key frame editor in the tool menu. It's a Lot more handy than what it seems. If we need a closer look to select a specific key frame, we can zoom in on the graph with the mouse wheel. Most of the time we only need to do that if we don't like what we did or if we need to redo it a bit. Still... it's as easy as a wheel turn - something I never knew until I accidentally did it by accident.
Well... here
With this key frame editor, we can make changes to the animation - the aniBlock data. If we don't want that change to take place through the entire range of the aniBlock, we just go to a point in time where we don't want the change to be in affect, and click the Zero Key Frame button, and it will interpolate from that point up to the change we've made. We can add as many key changes as we like and zero it as many times as we'd like, and we can work this way in layers. I've seen that there are at least 20 layers that we can use - possibly more. I'd have to look to be sure. I only ever need one or a few. Never more than 3 so far.
Even better, if we want our key frame changes to continue into the next block, simply don't zero it. Yep. the key changes take place on the global level, not just per aniBlock.
or if you'd rather grab the actual keys on a visual motion path...
Cool Stuff!
Okay, there are a lot more advantages to how we can pass our work back and forth - and a lot of that will be explained in my videos to come, but I hope you get the idea.
Go check out those videos and give aniMate 2 a try if you like working with animations. BVH import really smoothly into Daz Studio, and then aniMate 2 is how we can tweak them to our liking, then create a final aniBlock and import them into Carrara. Easy peazy!
The other cool advantage to this, which had me doing this years ago, is that there are easier ways to convert motions from one figure generation to another in Daz studio. I have a simle script that I use to convert anywhere from generation 3 to 8 with a few clicks.
Sorry for the long rant, but this is really important stuff if you like to blend motions together.
My aniMate 2 page
Glad you are finding ways to be productive. I use the free Carrara plugin called Daz Studio for a lot of things. I am even getting more comfortable modeling in Blender. But do keep using Carrara for the things it makes sense, and keep us updated in any case.
Thanks!
Hey, why can't I say that much with so few words?!!!
I'll have to learn that too!!! :D
Absolutely - I can't help but to use Carrara. It ROCKS in So Many Ways!
...and I love it when it ROCKS while I'm sitting behind it! ;)
Carrara is the place where 'everybody knows your name'. The place where you can come to for creative thinkers and discover new ways to use tools you already have for whatever models you use: DAZ or others or your own. Where nobody judges you if your ability is not the same as the experts who are so willing to help you. Yes, it's fun to visit other boutique software to test and taste, guilty myself for visiting Zbrush to get that bit of 'extra' glam and sophistication for my models. But I always come home to Carrara!
Where everybody knows your name,
Silene
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name.
Cheers! (I always say that, too)
it's only cheating if you are not in an open relationship
otherwise Carrara would not read duf format and load Poser formats and you would be modeling everything from a cube like Stezza in the vertex room, he even uses a bit of DAZ studio content
Okay, I may have missed something, but for creating short animations, what does DS add to Carrara's tools? I'm not trying to be negative, but I don't feel like I'm missing anything in Carrara. And it takes a lot to get into learning a new complex tool. Admittedly, I long ago gave up on DUF and other DS formats, and I don't model other than to alter an exisiting mesh in Carrara. Is there one particular feature of DS that stands out for short animations?
Yes.
That really long post I did above regarding aniMate is a big one that I have used pretty much all along - using aniMate 2 to create, edit, merge and save new aniBlocks that I can bring into Carrara.
My current need for DS goes much deeper than that, however. That had everything to do with Rosie's hair, at the start, and has been expanding ever since.
It'll be a lot easy to demonstrate in videos how the whole workflow works. So I'm eager to get some up.
'Tis true. The workflow I'm employing may not be for everyone. I certainly landed on it to try and solve a particular problem, and I ended up giving up on the idea quite a few times.
After a while, however, I finally started using more of my Carrara practices in DS, but using a language that DS could understand - and it's working.
It used to be that, whenever I was trying to work in DS, I couldn't wait to finish so that I could hop back into Carrara.
Now, however, I've got to a point where I enjoy using both for their strengths. I can recognize which app to be in more immediately now, depending on what I'm needing to do.
...and when I really get stuck, I ask Wendy! :)
Okay, that does sound interesting. I have been importing aniBlocks into Carrara and saving them as clips, but it sounds like you are going much further ... thanks.
I haven't had to much success importing aniBlocks into Carrara. I generally convert them to poses and then save them as clips in C
I'm using the Animate Aniblock Importer for Carrara, I don't recall any problems.
https://www.daz3d.com/animate-aniblock-importer-for-carrara
I've never had a problem either. It was with my first purchases when I bought Carrara.
I watched this video first, then just added it to the cart:
It's a fairly lengthy babble, but my Hybrid aniMation article explains a lot more about my workflow in Carrara, using aniBlocks as my initial basis of an animated portion of the figure, then perhaps doing the same for another. This is where converting certain parts of the figure's animation to NLA clips can really Rock!
Especially when I was filling a room full of Orcs.
I'd load in an angry, frustrated or otherwise impatient sort of aniBlock and save the arms only as an NLA clips - and do this for as many such motions as I can find in my collection, saving all of those partial clips to a special part of my Clips browser.
Then I'd do the same for the hip down.
I'd also do this for various head/neck motions as well.
Now I would load in an Orc that I've made and load him up with a Lower Body clips, an Arms clips and sometimes a Head clip as well - or just animate the head by hand, depending on how important his head movements are to the scene.
Load i another Orc and repeat the process, and then repeat that over and over to get a full room of angry, upset and aggitated Orcs!
For my main charactes, I almost always begin with an aniBlock (or more than one) and mainly use that for some natural motion and timing, while also deleting many of the joints' key frames that are important to what I'm making the animation for - and finish that all by hand. It was tedious, but fun and rewarding.
How does DS play into all of this?
Well aniMate 2 is kind of a smart NLA system. Actually, it IS a smart NLA system!
We can load in an aniBlock, trim it down (by simply dragging either end of the block (I often trim both ends) and then adding another aniBlock to continue with a different motion altogether, and it has various options in the menu bar along the top of aniMate 2's timeline where we can set various way to blend the two (or more) aniBlocks together, as well as having a little blend slider on the bottom of each aniBlock (viewable when the aniBlock is selected in aniMate 2. The slider sets how far into the previous aniBlock aniMate 2 should begin interpolating to either smoothen the transition or make it more harsh.
A claasic and simple example of this working:
I have the "Hero Actions" collection by GoFigure (for generation 4 figures) and will often use the "Landing" block, but this block ends with a gentle squat, and then stands back up straight.
So I trim the end to where the figure is still in the downward motion, but after the feet have touched ground. Then I'll add something like Crouch 1 or 2, or the Crouch Moving aniBlocks so that the character drops in and crouches down and kinda stays down a bit.
But there are endless possibilities for this - like beginning with a walk, cycling in a quicker paced walk or a run, then interpolating back down to the original walk - to create a bit of an anticipation-like gesture to the walk.
Or I'll have my character begin with a run, then meld into a combat fighting motion, or a dance, or just an idle, etc.,
When we're all done with the aniBlock portion, we can bake the results to the timeline, where we can tweak more with DS's new graph editor on a keyframe level.
It's usually in the timeline were I find that I have more control with dealing with expression and those animation helper Genesis Morphforms + morphs dials I made.
If the head is doing something in the middle that I don't want it doing, I'll select all keys surrounding the part I don't want and delete them, them adjust in between to make sure I like what's going on.
After we're all done tweaking in the timeline, noow we og back to aniMate 2 and create a new aniBlock and save it.
Speaking of my Genesis Morphforms +, I've made a whole lot of these things for G3 and 8 females so far - males and G2 to come.
They work exceptionally well!
I've added hand posing, bending, etc., motions, more with legs and feet, forearms, etc., so that any anomalies that don't work (intersect with body parts) can be fixed globally with animated changes. That is another set of tools that I love working with in DS - making those controls!
got to donate your brain to science :) - after you have finished using it of course
I am odd... tis true!
I agree with all of that, and the importer works great with aniblocks created for the Generation 4 figures. I don't have a problem with those either. But when I start importing motions from, say iClone, in bvh format, save them as an aniblock, which work great in daz Studio, but not so good in Carrara. Converting those to animated pose files work as expected in Carrara.
Ah, I see. I have not done that, sticking to Carrara, Gen 4 figures, and related aniblocks. Good to know the problem, though, thanks.
Yeah, I didn't know that's what you meant either.
I wonder - are those for Genesis 3 or newer? It might be the joint rotations that get messed up due to Genesis 3 adopting the new two bone per joint thing for the limbs - one for bending, one for twisting. Carrara would look at that and go: "What? Hmmm... maybe this is what you meant!"
When I get my tutorials going, you'll see how I use my Generation 4 motions with any of the Genesis figures.
I am floored by how much I can miss when I get excited about a certain thing that I can't wait to try.
I've seen those videos on my aniMate 2 page many, many times now. Just watching them through again for fun, I'm now seeing how he opens the graph editor for aniMate 2 directly in the aniMate 2 tab. I can't wait to pay with this!!!
I was actually just going back to see how the heck he activated the animated parenting. So I have to remember to test that out as well.