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That pretty much sums it up perfectly. I can't think of any constructive criticism, only, that I enjoyed it and am looking forward to more.
As always, thanks for sharing!
-- Walt Sterdan
Thanks, Walt! I'm working on Part 2 now!
Still some things I don't fully get about how to make the fire look like fire, nor do I understand why it's more pixelated in the render than in the viewport. It's also in an awkward position where I put more work into this than I needed to for a proof-of-concept, but not enough for a good render.
Sorry Gordig, but it looks like a pretty darn good render to me. We'll just have to agree to disagree.
-- Walt Sterdan
Thank you, but I meant in the sense that it's so unfinished. The character has hair and face/body paint that I haven't done anything with yet, and there's no background, there's just a stock environmental light, etc.
Ah, okay, my mistake. Thanks for correcting me. I found the effect itself quite good.
- Walt Sterdan
Hello Everyone, I have been using daz for a little while and now i want to jump to start learning animation, but i'm not sure to go about it and daz can be funny with other programs i was looking at Iclone 8 or Blender and not sure which ones work flow would be more user friendly since i am a beginner. So any help would be appreciated
you can animate in DAZ studio too
it's probably where you should start
there are Aniblocks included or you can use poses and interpolate between them
Filament render useful for fast rendering
I'm not familar with filament render
it's the drawstyle directly under iray
to render in it or OpenGL or Wireframe you choose viewport instead of iray or 3Delight
Thanks i actually jsut found a video on it to i appreciate it
Since I'm on a Mac, I'm still waiting for Filament, hopefully soon.
In the meantime, I just finished my first serious attempt at a cartoon short. Back in November, 2021 I had a few days off work and I did a very quick 'n' dirty test video to help show me how much I didn't know. It was a lot. Uuuuuuugly.
I retired recently and am finally sitting down and working on projects that have been sitting on the back burner for literally decades.
This is the second draft of my first real video (still lots to learn).
My goal wasn't to rival Pixar (or any of the animators in this thread who do such incredible work) but to show what's possible using DAZ Studio and a low-end computer in a production-style environment, not great video but decent; I was thinking of 60s/70s quality, inspired by Fireball XL5 and Star Trek: The Animated Series.
In makng this, I spent a total of 95 minutes doing 7 minutes of lip synch using DAZ's 32-bit lip synch (still the best lip synching availble in my opinion). This video uses about half of the 55+ clips, a second video uses the other half. All of the lip synching is in 55+ partial-poses and can be applied to any G3, G8 characters as well as my custom toons used here, without significantly changing any of the targets' body poses or animations.
As a proof-of-concept, I did the first draft using an Intel MacBook Air using OpenGL. I did any corrections to the first draft to make this draft using an M1 iMac, speeding up the renders a fair bit, but if I were doing a new video in this style (lots of talking) I'm pretty confident I could generate four or five minutes of animation like this a week without breaking a sweat.
-- Walt Sterdan
very cute Walt
Thanks, I had a lot of fun with it.
-- Walt Sterdan
Added her tattoo, face/body paint and gave her some dynamic hair. I'm also using Karma to render instead of Mantra, which puts me in kind of a Catch 22 situation where I don't know how much I want to invest in learning how to render in Karma (or Mantra, for that matter) since as soon as I buy a license for Houdini I'm going to render in Arnold. Still need to work out the settings to get rid of the pixelation on the fire.
It came out great, very cool effect!
-- Walt Sterdan
I don't think it is just the smoke as she looks pixelated too.
I rendered the figures in Studio and then put it together in Vegas Pro using Particle Illusion for the effects.
Pixelated isn't really the right term, more "voxelated". When the fire trails off, you can see the wisps form sizable squares rather than dispersing more evenly. Any pixelation in the figure is more a factor of not fully grasping texturing and render settings yet (and it doesn't help that the max resolution in Houdini Apprentice is 720p), while the issue with the fire is more likely a matter of the solver.
Made some minor adjustments:
I've solved all the major problems, now I just need to make little changes like fixing the jacket clipping through her inner elbow and top, tweaking the animation, etc.
Animation I did for the song "Big Dynamic Robot".
Was hoping that Daz would have a lot more resources for Filament.
Pure fun, thanks for sharing!
-- Walt Sterdan
I forgot to ask, feel free to share any tips or tricks. How was it working with Filament (still waiting for the Mac version, hopefully this year)?
-- Walt Sterdan
Your script was really well done and the syncing of the characters. You really nailed the Trekker vibe.
Um, Filament....Tiffanie who specializes in PD Howler suggested I use Filament. She's a whiz.
The render speed is insane. For some of the clips, it was almost in real time. I wish I had discovered it earlier.
I find the look of the textures and lack of color and lighting control a hassle. Everything is a work-around.
As an idea, it's incredible, in practice, it needs a few more products. I have everything related to Filament- and even some of those products have "guide icons" that still render.
BUT! The best part is - being able to work in Filament Preview mode, to see exactly what you're going to get when you render. That's a blessing.
Thanks for the comments. I'm mostly happy with OpenGL for now, I'm expecting better things from Filament.
I liked the output quality of Filament from what I've tested so far; I've picked up most of the filament store items so far, but I'm waiting for DAZ 5 to really give it a work out. As Kyoto Kid mentioned elsewhere, the renders often have a more "illustrated" look to them, which is perfect for the Toon stuff I'm working with.
Did you do any post work on the rendered frames, or is the movie mostly straight Filament?
I also forgot to mention how well you lined eveything up with the lyrics, you've rendered everything in the "story". Impressive when working with someone else's song.
-- Walt Sterdan
Edited for typos.
It's all straight Filament, the freeze frame into post work is a frame from the video- exported and affected in Photoshop to look more like my comics.
And the song is also mine. I've made a bunch of storytelling songs over the years and a few complete albums.
This animation, where the screen is a render that tilts in 3D was done with the AI-powered LeiaPix.
"Nucleon: Eve of Destruction"
I feel like the Daz animation "engine" or workflow is still based on...like...flash....as opposed to pathfinding.
Like, place a point and instruct the character to walk there (and choose the style of HOW) and I'm surprised no one (Vendors) are making animations.
Like full sets of animations...With poses, they do several walk poses, so I'd expect a variety of runs in an animation package.
And there's very little content in all the offerings. I was always thinking "How do they expect this to catch on, with so few options?"
I'm kinda hanging back to see what happens next.
I didn't realize that was your music, too, so colour me double-impressed!
The AI-aided effects in "Nucleon: Eve of Destruction" were pretty cool, seemed to fit with the song while the solid shots of your hero contrasted nicely to snap it back to "real".
There are a number of animotion blocks in the store beyond walk cycles and while I've tested a few here and there but I find animtion awkward and possibly a little buggy (it could also be me but I seem to see things gummed up if I save and close the file, then open it later, etc.). There are also some sets at "the other place".
Wolf359 posted this very helpful, very easy tutorial to pulling in animations from Adobe's Mixamo site (still free as far as I know) with a huge amount of animation clips to choose from:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/3940711/#Comment_3940711
I'll probably finish off the second half of my animation test in the next day or so, once I've got another project finished, then probably hold off for a bit to see if or when DAZ 5 hits the streets. I don't want to invest too much time in a more serious animation until I see what it offers.
Thanks again for sharing your work, I'll have dig into it a little more, it all looks like stuff I like.
-- Walt Sterdan
A lot of progress, but then I added a bunch of Vellum. Definitely need to prevent intersections between neighboring figures and any cloth, because some wild stuff is happening.
What do you do when you're having trouble with dynamic clothing? Obviously, the answer is to double the amount of dynamic clothing in the scene. You don't see a lot of it in this video, but I've made a huge amount of progress on mixed simulations, where parts are dynamic and other parts are rigid. The problem here is just that the figures aren't doing a good enough job of avoiding collisions with each other.
I've resolved most of the collisions, but a couple jackets are still sliding off. There are a few more tweaks to make, along with resolving the pathfinding, and then I'm ready to build out the rest of the scene.
Seems like you've got it all worked out, congrats!
-- Walt Sterdan