Methods of Animating without too much work (DAZ and CARRARA)
Sci Fi Funk
Posts: 1,198
Methods of Animating without too much work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgghIY3Q7Ic
For those of us with not enough time to animate.
Here is how to source preset mocap, poses and bvh files in fractions of movement in order to create your own small pieces of animation.
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Comments
Very interesting stuff, thanks for making and sharing it. It's just what I needed to see at the moment.
-- Walt Sterdan
Good to hear wsterdan. Hope you have success implementing it.
Should I pick up Animate2, Keymate and Graphmate? I ask because I absolutely despise using Studio for anything, but if I want to make my own 'edited' aniblocks (taking small bits from existing aniblocks that I think are more useable) it sounds like I'll need to set that up and do that in Animate2.
Also I couldn't help but chuckle when you mentioned the first reaction to the gofigure aniblocks. 'Pretty useless' was my exact reaction as well, even though I bought a boatload of them. I picked up the V4 idles set hoping that they would be lifelike aniblocks for someone not moving too much, and to my chagrin it makes V4 look like an ADD-riddled toddler on crack, waving her arms about crazily and leaning to and fro like a drunk. Yet there are some bits within the aniblocks that are useable, and I do think there's great value (just as you've shown) in creating my own library of short useable aniblocks that can be combined with others and poses.
That 'Life' product you showed looks pretty great. Why in the world is it only for DS3, I wonder. I suppose I could get it and use it to make aniblocks for later use in Carrara, very interesting stuff.
Oh and I know you use V4/M4 (so do I primarily) but I wonder if there's some deficiency in the aniblock importer for Carrara, because when I tried to test some Genesis aniblocks I purchased on sale, I couldn't get them to load right on my Genesis figure. the only body part that seemed to be affected was the hip, which made for some very funny animations as a ramrod-stiff Genesis would toodle around the screen pulled by his hip.
Good suggestions, I use similar techniques quite a bit (also M4/V4, but only in Carrara and generally with mocaps from PoserMocap and Eclipse Studios).
One idea is to uncheck Carrara's "Animated" option for a single body part. For example, I have a mocap of M4 walking while shining a flashlight back and forth. I wanted the light aimed down, so I set the initial hand (with the flashlight parented to it) to rotate down. But since with this mocap every frame is a key frame, it just jumped back up after the first frame. So I unchecked the "Animate" box for the hand, and it stayed pointed down, while the arm still moved the light back and forth. I could have probably fiddled in the graph editor, but this was pretty quick and simple.
Also, you mention lo res characters. I like to use Predatron's LoRez figures from DAZ, and they seem to work fine with M4 style mocaps, e.g. from Posermocap.
No biggies, just some time savers. (I have mentioned that I participate in the 48 Hour Film contest, making a five minute animation in two days. "Time is of the Essence!")
Of course, if you are animating in Carrara, you can use NLA Clips in the same manner as AniBlocks - make your own, re-use them, combine them etc. And you can import Aniblocks and resave them as Clips.
What Phil said, and I would add that when creating a clip, you can also uncheck any of the bone trees, (such as arms) to exclude them from the clip.
One last thing to consider, is that IK tracking trumps an NLA clip.
In my cheesecake jiggle deformer and walk cycle test, I created a walk cycle and created an NLA clip from it. Both arms have the same movement which I manually mirrored/keyframed, and both were included in the clip data. As an experiment, I wanted the right hand to be on the hip, so I parented a Target Helper to the hip (offset from it a bit), turned on IK tracking for the hand and had it track the Target Helper. The shoulder still has the roll and the elbow still has a little swing to it, but the hand is locked to the Target Helper, and the animation of the shoulder and elbow help with the organic look of the walk. I didn't animate the hands, and I did exclude them from the clip, so if I ever revisit it, I can add more movement to them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWBRuJlQhA
There is. While I work with aniblocks in DS, I always save the results to the timeline and export to Carrara as a DUF file. It is more accurate, IMO.
Very smart.
Some great suggestions from the guys there. Thanks to all who are contributing here, it's making it a more useful thread.
IMHO (only My opinion, you must find your own path). ...
1. You only need animate 2 in DAZ to export out bits of aniblocks if you want to create your own like I do from a mixture of sources. inc the life plug in. Otherwise you could just stay in Carrara and work off the ready made ones, but then you'd have to use the Carnegie mocaps as BVH. I found gfa blocks the most reliable so I'm sticking with DAZ and export. (I also lothe animating/rendering in DAZ for all the sudden crashes etc).
2. The Predatron lo poly figures are great if the pre-made characters are the look you are after. The purpose of the other thread was that you get figures with Clothes baked into them, THEN reduced so it's a much greater saving and you get to play with your clothing run time as well.
3. The idea of the "animated" off and IK tracking are great additions to this thread. Personally I believe NLA to have some flaws when you get down to editing in and out of an aniblock. I spent time creating a load of speech blocks only to find the bugs made lip sync slower so I abandoned.
Again it's each to his own, I'm just offering up a few alternatives for speed.
STEVE K - 48 hours?? Wow that's animating on steroids!
Indeed, the saying is "If you sleep, you're not doing it right." Needless to say, most are hardly prize winners, but some of the screening audience is very kind. They say "That was impressive!", but I suspect they're thinking "Why did you try this?" Of course, you could ask the same of all the 60 or so Houston live action teams (meaning all the other 59 teams). In a good year, only a handful are memorable, but a few are very good, indeed. Here is one of the best ever in Houston, from 2008:
https://vimeo.com/4204180
Ha ha. Amen to that.
I've been working an average of 55 hours a week on my project since 2010, but I've had to slow it to 40 hours per week as the obsession was getting to my health. It's kind of speed production but non-stop.
Trouble is the scenes are complex so patience has definitely been a virtue. Having said that I'll be happy if I finish TOMORROW!
Let's keep going Steve K, when we look back the size and diversity of the portfolio will be pleasing. :)
I am working on a 5 minute animation that is taking around 5 months to complete! Around half of that was preparatory work - designing the characters and sets and producing an "Animatic" where the sound track is matched to single frame renders of each scene to fine tune the flow of the animation and scene timings, so that when it came to the actual animation, you know how long each scene needs to last for and you are not doing redundant animation setup and rendering. Around one month to go (I have just passed the half way point of the actual animation)!
Nice one Phil. Do let me know when it's complete. If its on youtube for example.
Not exactly sure how and when it will surface as I'm doing it for a client, but I will certainly let people know when it is viewable!
That sounds about right for, say, a Pixar short. And they would have dozens of people on the project.
:P :blank: :coolmad: :-S :kiss:
That sounds about right for, say, a Pixar short. And they would have dozens of people on the project.
:P :blank: :coolmad: :-S :kiss:
Yes, except it is just me doing all the 3D part of the project. Really enjoying doing it though and I will be proud of the result!
I've tried searching the daz store, but can't seem to find this 'Life' product you mentioned that works only in DS3.
I found these:
http://www.daz3d.com/victoria-alive
http://www.daz3d.com/michael-alive
but I suspect these are not what you're referring to, and I quite liked what I saw on the video with the 'Life' thing, even enough to use DS3 to try to create some aniblocks (and not much makes me crack open Studio if I can help it lol)
Yes I liked the effect of that Life thing as well. You could perhaps do something similar with setting up 2 positions - say head slightly up and head slightly down, and then apply a noise tweener with the smmoth option (can't offhand remember what it is called) so that the head varies randomly between the extremes. Make a clip from that, and then make a batch more with different movements. By combining the Clips, you could get your own tailored "Idling" set?