Are there any benefits for a Carrara user to learning Daz Studio 4.6?
scottidog2
Posts: 319
I do everything in Carrara 8.5. Does Daz Studio 4.6 offer any important benefits that are lacking in Carrara?
I dont want to spend my limited time learning something that can already be done in Carrara.
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Comments
Quite a few. First up being able to select what UVmap to use, genesis, V4 or M4 on genesis 1. But there are quite a few tools for working your character in Studio which can be saved out and used in carrara. I've said for a while Studio is a great support app for carrara if you use a lot of DAZ content.
Thank You ManStan for the info.
I know that, here they are talking about how to make money using Daz Studio, but I find that it contains a wealth of information on how to use DS in the "Content Creation" modes. Like how to use it to make conforming clothes and such. I like it - but not for rendering and animating. That's my Carrara's job!
These are probably the two areas that I would single out - using Genesis to its full potential currently means using Daz Studio. It is also good for content creation as you can take an inanimate obj file of clothing and have DS rig it for you to your chosen character, which is very cool. I have also used it for the Reality plugin to render in Luxrender, but that was before Luxus for Carrara came along!
I'm not that much of a software junky any more - I used to be, when I first started getting into this. Carrara took a lot of that 'need' away. But Daz Studio is a beautiful piece of software. So is Bryce and Hexagon. I'm glad that I have them, but rarely find he time to play in any of them - since Carrara is so good on its own.
I guess it all depends upon what you do - and what you want to be doing.
i was using daz studio before and it's about the same functions like carrara just a bit easier to use as you can also search for the content.
At the end both have the same functions, just carrara seem to have a bit more and also more possebilities for modefying and so
It depends on what you want to do, but Carrara has way more functionality than Daz Studio! Whether you need it for what you do is down to the individual, but DS does not have modelling, landscaping, dynamic hair, replicators of various types, etc. It is a long list.
for me it is still easier to use Daz Studio to create a figure/model so i am creating them with daz studio and modefy them in carrara as it is still easier for me but thinking about changing complete to carrara.
but somehow the renderings of carrara and daz studio are also a bit different.
Well, while we're on the subject...
I really enjoy using Daz Studio for messing around with aniBlocks, since it's OpenGL interpretation is very much real-time, unlike that of Carrara. I really hope that, someday, we can get an OpenGL interpretation that smooth in Carrara.
But aniMate is an excellent tool. I haven't got the new DS tools by GoFigure yet, which makes the DS animation abilities appear (to me from a peek at the ads) more like Carrara's sequencer. AniMate2 lets us take keyframes from the DS timeline and 'Bake' them into an aniBlock, we can adjust, combine, shorten and lengthen aniBlocks and save them new. This is fantastic if you also own the aniBlock importer for Carrara - which I got the day I bought Carrara, I believe.
Doesn't NLA Clips give you all that in Carrara?
I know you're supposed to be able to mix and match and this and that... I'm not exactly sure how. I have personally asked three of my training mentors to make training on the subject - as I am somewhat lost to all that has been reported that they are capable of. You were the only one whom didn't shut me down outright... but it wasn't a "yes" either.
I use aniBlock Importer for Carrara to create NLA Clips. Within AniMate2 you can set heel height and manipulate various ranges of the animation - and GoFigure has some decent, free lessons on YouTube on how to do it.
I've heard that you can use the graph editor in Carrara to fix feet problems and such. But I doubt that you can do that on a figure while an NLA clip is applied. Don't get me wrong. I love NLA clips and making/using them. But I only make them after I'm totally happy with the animation. AniMate2 can help me get those animations the way I want them.
I have had lack of success in editing existing NLA Clips in the past. So I make Clips for various parts of the body - so that I can animate by hand over the Clip-Locked animation. Works really good. I read through the manual a few times - perhaps I'll try that again. Seems they talk about what I already know and not what I don't if I recall correctly. I know that there's a lot that I don't know yet about them.
You are definitely right that it is best to get the animation right before making the clip, and there is no equivalent of AniMate's heel height in Carrara. You can have multiple animation tracks and add different clips to each track, so for example one track might have a walk cycle, a second might have a specific hand gesture, and a third could be used for facial expressions. You can drag them around to time and mix your animation. I don't do a huge amount of this so I am probably out of practice, but it can be a very powerful system. But then so is AniMate, so use which you feel more comfortable with!
Yes. That's the example of 'stacking' I've seen before. It is whatever you have to do next to get it all to work that I never seem to get instructions to.
Err, press play? Not quite sure what you mean by this. NLA and using Clips is covered in my training somewhere though.
I mean, if you have a clip that has a guy walking with arm movements. Another clip of a guy standing there and then he turns and waves. Now stack those. Just pushing play doesn't really mix them. there's got to be stuff that you know how to solve between there because NLA clips seem to 'lock' anything that they're set to control from being controlled any other way.
Example: If I use a walk cycle from an aniBlock and just make the whole animation into a Clip, once I apply that clip to a figure I cannot animate the head turning because the clip has it locked into doing what it has in its data. But if I try to rotate something, Carrara doesn't know that the rotation isn't actually taking place - because it is. We just don't have access to that rotation without getting rid of the clip. So I've learned that if I perform a rotation or translation, whatever, with a clip in play - and it doesn't happen because the clip won't allow it - I undo that action right away - or you can end up with a mess later. No biggie, as I save everything separately anyways - but still.
So it seems that what the above statement that you've made about adding a waving clip to a walking clip - that might only working if you've preplanned the clips to work that way. But when you, and the written material that I've read, explain it the way you just did - it doesn't say that. And I know that 3dage knows a way to make it work. But I don't know the procedure. I think Argus knows how they work too. I've never studied into them that hard. I simply make them as I mention above - prepared to do as I need them to.
Make a walk cycle, then make a clip of the hip down. But the more that I leave out of the clip, the more work I have to do later to get the motions to match up right - because the really good walk cycles swing the hip in a natural movement, and the abdomen and chest, neck and head counter those movements. So I've learned a quick process:
Load in the walk cycle. Make any fixes necessary so the complete walk cycle is just right. Make a clip but during clip creation, deselect the box: "Delete Keyframes" and deselect the arms (collars - fingers) and the head. Now I have the counter movements of the entire torso with walking legs. Now, with that clip in play, I can add a pose that makes the figure hold a rifle. So now the figure walks with a rifle in his hands. Now I can animate the head to turn side to side looking with his eyes up and around - watching for intruders.
I work in Carrara like this better that I can in animate. But I don't think I'm getting the best use of clips due to my lack of knowing how to take full advantage of Tracks vs Groups and I guess there's blending methods to consider... I'll have to dig into them and really figure them out one day... soon.
As I said earlier, I am a bit rusty on this, but I think that the order of the tracks is important, as some take priority over others? (or maybe I am dreaming this...can't really check at the moment). Also, only include in a Clip what you need - so for example, if you make a Clip of a head turn, just include that body part in the Clip and exclude everything else. Other than that, I am sure you are just as capable as I am to explore and learn!
Tee hee hee! See? Now I don't feel so bad! :)
'Cause you don't know either! lol
(Messing around, of course you know that, right?)
Yeah, that stuff I do know. But NLA goes much deeper. I look forward to the day a can take it all apart and look. Hopefully with, perhaps, some sort of guidance from Andy 3dage and/or Argus1000! Truly powerful is the forum community that discusses Carrara endeavors. Where would any of us be without the rest of us?
Oh... and to help get back on topic...
DAZ STUDIO also has the bridges to and from Hexagon and Bryce. The thing I love about that fact is that all of these are now owned by DAZ3D. A bridge to and from Carrara would make the bizarroid looking circle complete! But until then, as I've learned via Phil's Advanced Carrara Techniques, Carrara exports to obj in formats friendly to DS. So with a proper naming convention system in place with a well designed folder library, we can have a beautiful relationship system going throughout all of DAZ3D software choices. In a sense, you could actually build something in Carrara, rig it and apply weight maps in DS - send in morph channels via Hexagon and render it in Bryce. We can also use Bryce to create Background footage for Carrara, or so I've been led to understand.
But besides my dreams for doing the immediate above, Daz Studio is an intelligently designed, and very useful software that any 3d aspiring artist should at least try - especially while licensing for the ultimate Pro edition is Free! Which still amazes, and pleases, me!
Daz is a useful piece of software to set up your animations.
aniBlocks are great.
You can do animation in Carrara, but no one sells NLA clips.
I believe 3D Age posted a place that someone had made NLA clips and those were free, but I don't remember the website.
You can use multiple aniBlocks to make complex animations.
I have never figured out how to get even a fraction of the power of an aniBlock into NLA clips.
Also, Daz is a great place to do a quickie scene set up and pose. Great thing to do before you start working on your Carrara scene proper (although I haven't done this in a while).
Sometimes I open up Daz to use the Search function to find content.
Well...
I sell NLA Clips... and I'm working on a lot more for the future for Gen 4, 5 and 6 figures as well. The trick is, we can't just sell NLA Clips as NLA Clips. But if we want to sell NLA Clips, we simply must make aniBlocks or PZ2 files and sell those, which include the NLA clips.
Here's that set in all it's glory!
I came from using Poser, and messing around in older DS versions occasionally before getting Carrara - and have always found it easier to set everything up in Carrara than in any other 3d application I've used - including 3DS and Maya. But that's just me - I know everybody's work flow has different expectations. I still set up my scenes as I would in Poser - except without having to wait a few days for the Poser libraries to open - as Carrara is relatively instantaneous, comparatively. Again... just me.
Okay.
That's one person selling NLA's.
I saw that set before, but didn't notice that NLAs were offered in the package. Hopefully, you will be able to make some nice animations to fill in the gaps of what's out there.
I find that importing a .BVH mocap into Daz Studio then converting it to an Aniblock and exporting it for Carrara works better than a direct import of the .BVH in Carrara. From Aniblock to NLA clip. Sometimes when using an NLA clip, I find dragging the clips to the track gets quirky and the clips don't position where I want them and they stack on top of each other and get "stuck", cannot move them so they need to be deleted and try again. Anyone have the same issue and a workaround?
I think what you have to do is "convert" the clip to an "Editable clip" which then gives you access to all the keyframes.When done you click "finish editing clip" AND if you want to, save it out as another "Master clip"
I think carrara NLA is confusing - at least the work flow - but it has a lot of power.
You can split clips for example as you do in Animate but not a one click job. Hang on I'jll dig out my notes on it. Ok found it ( miracle)
Disclaimer -This is from the notes I write to myself and may not be presented logically/clearly/ or even may not work - I think this one is ok.
CROPPING NLA CLIPS.
You can Edit the Clip and save a shortened version but not actually slice it into two seperate clips.
A new clip can be made by resetting the start and end positions of the range.
The new Clip will then play back only what was between the two markers. The Keyframes for the othe parts are not deleleted. [ This can be seen if you convert the new clip to an editable clip later.]
Procedure.
Load a clip
double click on it [shows keyframes ]
Make changes to key frames if required or simply reset range start and end positions.
Right click on the clip and finish editing.
You'll see the Clip now only has key frame markers [the little noches at bottom of clip] where you selected the range to be.
Delete the clip from the NLA track. ( reading this now it doesn't seem right - do I mean save the clip first then reload?)
When you reload it to the track from the tray you will see it has now been shortened to the portion you set.
Rename it and save to browser if required.
The following was written before C8.5 as I dont think that now has the pz2 import - (I get confused with all the changes going on )
but for what it's worth to anyone reading
Importing
Import an animation pz2 file via the parameters panel or bvh via "file/import"
Select V4's /NLA tab (right panels) then click on "create master clip' to save complete animation as a Carrara Clip.
To save a portion of the animation set start and end position with the yellow "range" markers before clicking the "create master clip button"
TIPS
If you want to make several small clips from the same animation set option to "do not delete keyframes" when creating master clip then go back and reset the range markers then create another clip .