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Chapter Three of Quest of the Key is now available on YouTube. As always, lots of Daz assets used here!
Thank you for the compliments! I was hoping it could evoke some emotions :)
Thank you! I rendered whole images, so as you can imagine, the whole proccess took a very long time...
There were some cheat clips though, such as the laundry basket or pedestrian light. But like you said, minimal movement to bring life to a scene!
For anyone curious about my animation process, this the animatic I made for Chapter 3 of my animated series, using the final dialog, but sketches for placeholders for the animated sequences. I find it a useful way to plan my shots.
I've been trying to get a handle on C4D's dynamics objects (motors, connectors, etc.) to automate a car driving. This is how well that's going so far:
The funny thing is that I started in C4D, ran into an unrelated problem and moved on from that, then started trying to figure the physics out, and realized that I could easily do both of the things I was trying to do in Houdini, so I did that. After only a minute or two of setting the car up for carring, I started looking through the operators and was quickly reminded that 20.5 introduced specific car physics objects, so setting up a car for driving is damn near a one-click solution. So having seen just how easy it is in Houdini, I naturally dove right back into trying to achieve the same thing in C4D, because my brain is broken like that.
Yikes! I've been using C4D for years; it's a great program, but I have to confess that whenever I try to understand physics in C4D, I get so frustrated that I generally end up animating things by hand.
They've improved the physics quite a lot in recent updates, but I'm still intending to use Houdini for all the actual animation and physics I do (after creating base animations in Cascadeur). I'm mostly just engaging in this whole exercise because I want to understand how C4D's systems work. They've always had a pretty good hair system, their cloth physics got a major upgrade in....2023, I think, and now they've got a better particle system and pyro simulations to boot. But, you know, Houdini.
edit: I should add that it's stupid simple to make a working car out of primitives, and I did later discover that the Character object has a car rig component, but I haven't been able to make either work with an actual car model. I think the biggest obstacle is the collision mesh of the car's chassis, which even creating a custom collision mesh hasn't entirely solved.
Okay, thanks! I'll give it another look. I did find the cloth to be a lot better in the more recent versions, and have recently been playing with hair again. It's pretty hilarious when these things fail, tho!
Click to go to Movie
Click to go to Movie
Mopat: Motion Path Animation Plugin
Mopat test movie.
Motions that used to be difficult to create because they were time-consuming and non-intuitive are now easier to create with the advent of Mopat.
Very cool! That's been on the top of my To-Get list since it came out! Just too broke right now. I'm glad to hear that you love it! That test is freaking Awesome!!! Kudos!
Animators Assemble,
Happy Halloween
from Dartanbeck
I am still practicing, but Mopat is interesting.
I am finally going to be able to do some animations that have been difficult for me.
Mopat test movie.
Wow! Your Mopat test movie is Awesome!!! I Love It!!!
Movie https://i.imgur.com/NqwuyNY.mp4
FilaToon renders quickly, so you can produce animated movies faster.
Testing can be repeated quickly, so adjustments are easy.
Very Nice Job!!!
Creating motions in DazStudio is very difficult.
It is also very difficult to create motions in DazStudio.
The current DazStudio has limited interpolation methods for motion, so it is really hard to create the motion you want.
KeyGraph appears on the timeline.
There are only three types of keys: “T”, “L” and “C” .
The “T” key has no control handle, so it is often impossible to draw the desired curve.
It is also very difficult to adjust.
Sometimes it is impossible to keep the original curve after hitting a new key.
I would like to see DazStudio be able to use “Bezier”, “Auto Bezier”, “Continuous Bezier,” etc., where the curve can be freely controlled with the control handles.
I would like to see an interface like iClone's “CURVE EDITOR”.
My friend, we are asking for better animation tools since years, so you have to be patient.
Anyway, it's not that difficult to create motions, you just need to practice a bit with the TBC values in the bottom-right part of the timeline. With the right settings you can easily recreate any kind of tweener. What the timeline really needs are the handlers to help us set the right values.
Also, you have to use a lot the three tweeners that DAZ Studio got: Linear, Constant and TBC. The TBC in DAZ Studio is "overshoot" type and, my word, is the best I ever tried to make biological motions (living being to be clear) even better than the one present in Blender. But, yes, we need more tweeners like sawtooth, easy-in-easy-out and real bezier.
I do lots of animations everyday, so I know what I'm saying.
P.S.
If you need good animation tools, just look oline for the MCasual's ones, they are free and really easy to use.
I see you already own the Mopat plugin, I suggest to check the other tools made by Alvin Bemar, I can assure you they are all great.
Also, don't forget the DAZ's Puppeteer, an inner tool that helps you storing, blending and recording poses and animations to be quickly used and applied.
Thank you very much.
I find the overshoot behavior very disturbing.
It is laborious to turn off the overshoot, and even more laborious to adjust the main trajectory changed by turning off the overshoot.
It is also annoying that if I hit a key in the middle of a constant change, it decelerates toward the key and then re-accelerates.
When you want to move smoothly through a given location, the movement is tricky.
On the other hand, if you make the key a liner, the acceleration/deceleration curves before and after the liner will be affected, and it will not necessarily be a smooth passage.
For various reasons, we need many complicated keys to create a simple movement.
Therefore, once a motion has been created, any attempt to make new changes to it can lead to a variety of breakdowns.
For free movements of living creatures, such as gestures, the overshooting effect can look natural, and the tool's natural behavior can be a good result, since the movements do not have to be precise.
However, in many cases, overshooting is a hindrance in movements that touch something.
Another problem is that the degree of overshoot cannot be changed even for free movements.
To me, it is very difficult to use.
I have bought all of Alvin Bemar's plug-ins.
Thanks MCasual for the plugin introduction.
I will definitely try it out.
As I said, you just need to make a bit of practice with the TBC values in the timeline. You can find them in the bottom part of the timeline pane and you can input the right values there.
For example, you can mitigate the overshoot by setting the Tension to values between 0.50 and 1.50 and acting a bit on Continuity and Bias as the specific animation needs. Once you "play" a bit with those values you will grasp their function and learn how to obtain the right effect.
Basically the "Handlers" that you can find on other products (and DAZ Studio still lacks of) changes those values.
Of course, if there were an handler on the very keyframe it would be better and faster, but in the meantime it's good to learn how to work with those values.
Thank you very much.
When I change the TBC of any key, the tangent angle is affected if the state of the previous or next key changes.
I'm not very good at this, but I'm going in circles and can't adjust the curve to the desired curve for any length of time.
It is not as easy as “Handlers” to determine the tangent direction.
It would be a little easier if I could use a slider or dial to visually adjust the values of the curves, but keyGraph has eliminated even the up and down buttons like GraphMate.
If you have GraphMate, use that instead, you aren't forced into using the integrated one.
I'm using GraphMate too, it's way better.
Anyway, if you like, in the timeline you can select the keyframes and then select one of the TBC boxes, pressing up and down arrows in the keyboard you can increase or decrease the values by 0.10 each step.
Dartanbeck Rosie makes for a cute Vampirella.
Space Jingoroh Great tests with Mopat! I haven't had a chance to test Mopat yet, but I'm looking forward to trying it out.
Cool Filatoon animation too. Agreed - thanks to FilaToon, I'm totally going to be trying out some proper animation. The renders are so fast!
Imago I appreciate all those tips. Thanks for sharing!
I've been following the animation related threads in the forum for a while (though a lot of the technical aspects are still way over my head right now).
Last month, I finally decided to dip my toes into some basic animation (some turntable animation and bits sprinkled here and there) with this little music video for a music challenge I did. Rendering stuff was a slow process and my computer wasn't cooperating, so I went with a very low frame rate... But still, I feel very excited at the idea of doing more animating, especially with the addition of faster render times in FilaToon/Filament. Will be starting off very simple though...
This song is called Twin Hearts, but is really about the intertwined relationship between artists and their inner muses. The music video visualizes the idea as twins linked in harmony. (The idea was inspired by the Olympic synchronized swimming duet teams, where 4 out of the 5 top teams were twins).
Thank you for your reply.
For me, the numerical input of TCB takes too much time and effort to finally create the desired curve.
What would be done quickly by a handler has to be repeated many times by trial and error.
It is especially difficult to adjust the rough motion once created later.
The state of the TCB is not displayed until a key is selected.
I can only see and understand the state of the TCB for one key at a time.
With motions that use a lot of keys, I can't remember which key does which behavior.
If I use control handles, I can see the behavior of all the keys just by looking at the Graph.
It is easy to fine-tune the curves later.
After all, now I type auxiliary keys instead of control handles.
This is because I can see the overall state of the key and auxiliary key placement and curves without having to select the key, which makes it easier for me to make corrections later on.
When the curve cannot be reproduced with auxiliary keys, we have no choice but to use TCB.
In today's GUI-dominated world, numerical input is not something I want to use.
Until control handles are equipped, I would like it to be a slider/dial where I can at least see the changes in real time.
FilaToon renders quickly and is easy to make motion movies with, so I hope that DazStudio's motion curves will be more operable in the future.
Thank you very much.
I made the movie a little longer.
I agree. While it's nice to have some control over the TCB using numeric fields, it's hardly an efficient way to work.
Yes, I really hope the Devs will finally give us animators some more attention, now that FilaToon opened new roads.
If they really give us the bezier handles, the need for more tweener would be mitigated if not fullfilled.
After all we already have good tweeners (as I said before "our" overshooting TBC is the best I tried for biological animations) if we get easier control over the Tension, Bias and Continuity would be awesome.