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Yes, and I love it!
This dForce hair is actually dForce cloth, however. Very well designed. I also have the wet version and, since I like them so much, I'm collecting all of Linday's dForce hair.
dforce cloth hairs the best IMO and I can use and export them easily to other apps
Strand I only buy for fur
Agreed.
I get some of the strand-based hair - mostly the shorter stuff for males.
It bothers me that the tools to work with it are locked up tight - only for PAs. I mean... I get it... but it makes buying the products (for someone like me who has to tweak EVERYTHING) much less appealing.
Buy one or two, discover that I get what I get, and that's it, and then just stop looking at them. It's a shame for the PAs, I think. They could probably sell a lot more if they'd open those features up to everybody.
My two cents.
...and they'd likely attract more artists making it. The wat it stands, they can only get new strand-based hair products from their collective PAs. Another shame.
yeah it's something everyone but the PAs and DAZ agree on
I don't get it, being able to make my own content has never stopped me buying stuff
my bank account wishes it did
it actually has the opposite effect
I rarely by HD morphs and Dforce strandbased hairs
Wow! I hope that anyone following this stuff knows that I am a big fan of ActionVFX. Starting from scratch making top-notch, professional VFX stock footage with the latest concepts, highest grade gear and turning out truly high end stock footage at incredibly reasonable prices - and a whole lot for free. A lot for free. Great stuff too.
Watching them grow has been a delight. They're all still just as wonderful as always. Energetic and fun VFX artists rising up from HitFilm forums creating their own incredible company... so cool!
I just got this from them today. Amazing! Free practice footage for VFX artists of any level to just... have and use. Royalty Free - releases for all actors, just free to do what we want with. High end footage shot for us to practice with and learn the incredible art of VFX!
Check out the collection here
Action VFX Free Practice Footage Library
Rosie 8 as the Platinum Knight
Here she demonstrates how real the fantasy metal bikini armor is. Nevermind the nay-sayers, she says. I have a pretty cool feature regarding that in the works. Many (fun and wonderful) RPG mockery videos regarding this magical type of armor all over YouTube. Inspired, the CG version of Dartanbeck demonstrates to the world, once and for all, that the magical metal bikini is some of the best protection a warrior maiden could possibly wear. Thank heavens for that! It's actually a really fun skit!
Carved using FitControl and MeshGrabber, the top and loin are the vintage Platina Armor for V3, by who is now Aeon Soul - makers of some of the most exquisite conforming art on the planet.
I have yet to make a version that works in dForce yet because it all works so well using VWD - so that's how it's simulated. I edited the materials to Iray by hand, letting my imagination play with the various shader possibilities. Still in the early phases.
Hand and Forearm armor from The Legend, Boots from Y'vas, both also by Aeon Soul
I want to eventually match the Platina Armor materials to The Legend's amazing metal. I love the way Aeon Soul build their shaders. Sil is definitely one of my favorite texture artists Ever. Being one who loves making his own texture art, I am so jealous of how good she is! Just jaw-dropping! Not to take away from others. There are a Lot of amazing texture artists out there. Sil has been inspiring me since I first discovered this amazing thing to do with a computer - that was a long time ago. Awful Soul days. 2000ish, I think? Maybe later.
She also uses The Legend's amazing sword
I'm going to try a different approach than Auto-Fit for the loin cloth, but I'm not decided how I want to do it just yet. Thinking through various options.
Ran that video file through PoseRecorder and the results are Fantastic!!!
Performance Capture on a non-existant budget like mine? Absolutely!!!
It's really cool how it caught everything! Blinks are perfect - especially the wonderful little quirks she does with her mouth when she talks (or doesn't talk) that I Love so much! PoseRecorder then converts the facial video capture into a DUF animated pose file for Genesis 8. I then load that and save it as a new aniBlock, so I can put the phrase anywhere along the animation as a sub track. Bam!!!
Then I use Face Control for Genesis 3 and 8 to tweak the results on the micro-scale. Beautiful workflow!
Lip Sync via audio-to-phenome/viseme by itself is only one small, very inaccurate method if left by itself.
An example:
Without drawing attention to yourself, watch people talk. It doesn't matter if you know them, see them on TV, YouTube... whatever. I'd like you to pay attention to how perfectly the lips and face always make the same shape for every version of the same sound. Good Luck!
Audio-to-Lip Sync is really cool - and it's kind of difficult. Visemes/phonemes make the task possible. I'm no expert, nor can I remember which is which. But in essence, these describe shapes of the lips and facial muscles for their specific sound. A sound shape. A viseme or phoneme.
Performance capture changes all of that, and I'm amazed at just my first tippy toes into this. The results are amazing at the fact that there is No Way I could have produced these results using audio-to-speech or Text-to-speech... People know what they're going to say and are often thinking of at least one other thing at the same time. That's just a tiny example of how the face doesn't focus hard enough on the vocal shape - the sound shape/viseme/phoneme that it's 'supposed' to make. We do that when we're infants first learning to shape sounds into what everyone else is saying. At a very early age after that, our minds get very busy. We don't even always know what's coming out of our mouths every second of the day. We might sing or make a sound effect. Click our tongue to the roof of our mouth. Someone asks something and, without stopping the thoughts that are still working away, we reply.
When I started watching how people talk for animation purposes, the first thing I noticed is that conventional lip sync works great for cartoons.
In the Hrimfaxi series, the animator did a fantastic job of blending lip sync with facial expressions using puppeteer live as the results of the mimic session play through. The results are absolutely wonderful!
Great story, brilliant dialog, and superb animated performances.
By the time I discovered those videos I had already purchased a Windows product from Daz 3d: PoseRecorder.
Now I can see! Awesome!!! They didn't quite match up. There's a tick box in PoseRecorder - something about force 30 frames or somesuch. I left it unticked as default.
To match them up is super simple, at least in Resolve, because they're both supposed to take up the same amount of time. Rather than to mess with the audio, I sped up the video slightly until it was the same length as the audio.
Oh My!!! Our lips don't always make an O shape, even when saying: "Oh". When we make words, our lack of creating each spoken sound as if it was a viseme is incredible - once we pay attention and take a good look. Even if our speech isn't slurred, our visemes are. Many times our mouths barely move.
In an actor's performance, it's very common (always) that they'll be doing things with their facial muscles even when they're not talking.
PoseRecorder captured it brilliantly!!! What's really cool is how well the real Rosie's performance capture looks when applied to the Rosie 8 digital actress! Amazing!!!
I am very excited to get some of this together and up in a video to show you all! Woot!!! Success is So Freaking Fun!!!
Very interesting point about how "Oh My!!! Our lips don't always make an O shape, even when saying: "Oh"." You're absolutely correct, and something I've never considered, to be honest.
Poserecorder sounds great and is really economically priced, if you're a Windows user. I'm interested in seeing more of Rosie chatting.
Thanks for the pitch for my first attempts at 3D animation, much appreciated. I realized – after I'd already done a second part of the story – that the reason the lips are sometime exaggerated more than they should was that I'd applied the lip sync, then often applied an expression and the expression used (e.g. angry, sad, etc.) occasionally applied morphs to the mouth, eyes and eyebrows doubling up the morphs. Lesson learned for when I try 3D animation again, possibly when DAZ Studio 5 is released.
-- Walt Sterdan
But Walt... I Love the exaggerated facial performances in your work. It looks very good and very realistic!
I've used PoseRecorder, and it delivers some great facial expressions and viseme results, but I will mention that the quality of the performance of the original video actor plays an important part in the final output. The original actor must be conscious of keeping head movements in check to minimize potential distortion in the output. But certainly worth getting if you are doing any kind of animation.
Right. The actors will need a Director - the animator.
I told Rosie that I'd like her to try and keep her face straight forward and square-on in the camera. She can move her head around if she wants, but keep that camera centered on her face, and at the same distance.
I'm very lucky in that regard as Rosie takes my direction Very Well. Before I started making a 3D Superhero of her, I had no clue she could act. Seriously, I don't think she did either. But the first time I asked her to record something for Mimic Pro, she lit right up, clicked into her persona and went to town! Bravo Rosie!!!
Man, I Love my Rose!
Don't forget to go look at the store for freebies and cheapies!
The Sale Event pages are one thing, but don't forget to just look at the store too. Amazing what we can find.
I just bought that old MadLab pack Simon3D did waaaaay back. Amazing how great it looks today. Oh... poor Rosie. I'm sorry I bought that, but story has its demands!
Anyways, the very next day (today) the Expansion Pack for it (which is Awesome) was up for Free!!! I was going to buy it today after my check got deposited! There was a lot of other cool free stuff in there too - but even the Not Free... there are some really nice things constantly coming on sale. Do yourself a favor and buy yourself something nice for your collection. It's truly amazing what we can find!
Perhaps it's because of how excited I was to find this world of 3d animation art back when I did, but I really like a lot of the older Generation 1, 2 and 3 products. Eager artists entering a whole new marketplace really went to the extreme to make some really cool stuff. I love my legacy collection and still enjoy adding to it. So when folks like Valzheimer and SickleYield make Clones, I like to buy them - all of them if I can. I have most of them now and it's really nice how slick they can work for being able to use Generation 3 and 4 products on my Genesis 3 and 8 figures. Rosie looks Amazing in Dixie for A3!!! And I never want to have to stop using my wonderful Awful Soul/AS/Aery Soul/Aeon Soul collection from the past. Amazing Art!
Totally off-topic, I don't really play computer games but Cyberpunk 2077 caught way too much of my attention to Not buy it and give it a go.
Made by the same folks that brought us The Witcher series of games, I had a certain 'trust' that I'd enjoy it even if I don't really play the game much. The Witcher games, when bought through GOG, were like buying a complete RPG Boxed Set type of thing - maps, artwork, very nicely crafted art books, music... very nice. I actually started buying the Witcher games for the art books and the music, then found that the games are really good.
Oh... I'm getting off-topic of my off-topic! LOL
So I get Cyberpunk 2077 late enough where all of the intial horrors of bugs and glitches were all worked out already - so I never experienced any of that. I feel bad for the team having to live through that.
Anyways, great freaking game that inspired me to once again bring Rosie into the Cyberpunk/Shadowrun/Sci-Fi genre. Throughout this exciting game the music is absolutely incredible! CD Projeky RED (creators of the game) hired top-notch musicians and bands from around the world to write music specific for the game, including making a whole imaginary band: Samurai, the band that our beloved NPC, Johnny Silverhand, played by Keanu Reives, was part of. That music really drives me.
Speaking of driving, when driving in Night City we can turn the radio on in the car and select from quite a few stations. Although I really like pretty much all of the music, this has become my favorite action/driving tune!
Speaking of Shadowrun, I found Shadowrun Dragonfall at GOG for a really low price and bought it (this was years ago). Crafted by a team called Hairbrained Schemes, this game reminds me of games like Baldur's Gate. Fantastic story, engaging music and gameplay that one doesn't have to be a "Gamer" to be able to play without getting headaches. Really cool, story-driven game so I bought the whole trilogy, played it, played it again, and again....
One of my favorite songs from Shadowrun!
I do this when I'm working - put on some really good game music! :)
Johnny Silverhand's band: Samurai - performed by the amazing Swedish band, Refused
Have you read the Daz BLOG about the new animation plugin coming?
Didn't know about it. Thanks So Much for the heads up! Reading now! :)
Initial thoughts - Very Cool! So I signed up. Argh... of course it is. Subscription. I hate having to pay monthly/yearly. It might be different if I had a disposable income. But I don't.
There's a Free service, but that only gets you 25 motions. Not even close to enough.
Probably not for me. I hope that Daz Studio 5 doesn't exclude aniMate to make way for this.
All of that aside, I'm curious as to what all we can do with these motions once inside Studio. Can they be baked to the timeline and edited? I rarely use aniBlocks just as they are. I always go through a whole process of "Making Them My Own".
There are also only 28 motions in their library that use the hip for translation - according to their filters.
Difficulties with a dForce simulation? Try thinking outside the box - Get Simple
A little article I wrote in case anyone wants to know the workflow I use. I'm sure it will expand as I get more and more experience (doing it every day) and find new ways to deal with new things.
Fun Stuff going on at Dartanbeck.com!
I can see that I'm going to need to make a video tutorial about navigating the monstrosity that Dartanbeck.com has become.
I'm writing things in there for me as much as for others. It's great fun and it can be a real trip for me to see how expansive it has become over the years. It started out as my Carrara haven, for the most part, even though I also wanted to explore many other things there, so I planned for those and created pages for those as well. Now a lot of those pages are getting stuff in them!
Now that I'm up and running in Studio I realize very much that, just like Carrara, I'm really only scratching the surface. So as I discover new things to learn I like to put them up so I have a visual hangout where I can pick topics and go pounce on them. The Carrara section, I think is awesome in that regard. I hang out there and really have a good time just exploring stuff.
In contrast, the Daz Studio portions are more about my progress and the tools and content I use, plan to use, etc.,
Then I have inspiration pages, idea pages, video links... I don't know... I think it's pretty fun!
I want to pick up Bryce. Finding time to do anything other than what I do is tough... but I'm going to do it anyway so that Bryce can also become part of "what I'm doing".
So to help with that, I've also started creating a whole section on just Bryce. This time it really is all about learning something that I barely ever opened! So that's a whole fun aspect as well.
Waaaah... Of course now I had to go and peruse my Bryce page.
This application just excites the heck out of me! As you can clearly see, I've made these pages to make it an easy entry into this splendid bit of magical CG bliss!